That's an extremely important point. There can be no serious progress in countering transnational repression without a much greater effort to support the people involved. The effort must be made not only at the federal level, by training people on the front lines, meaning people from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, but also at the provincial and municipal levels, by training police officers.
In the interviews we did, my co-author and colleague and I constantly heard horror stories. Victims were telling the police terrible things, and, to be blunt, the police had no idea what was going on. There is a complete lack of knowledge about the very threat of transnational repression as well as the actions, strategies and tactics used by the states responsible for it.
I have to say that it's better today than it was five years ago, but we're still a long way from where we should be.
There is also a specific problem when it comes to police officers. The reaction of people on the front lines is often to say that what victims describe is unpleasant, but that it doesn't reach the minimum threshold of criminal activity. They then conclude that it is not a police matter.
In a very narrow sense, that's not necessarily wrong. However, the problem is that it prevents progress, it prevents a response and it ignores reality. When you assemble the pieces of the mosaic made up of all the small activities that fall below the threshold of what constitutes a criminal act, you can exceed the threshold. However, it requires a sustained effort to share information, which is complex.