I'm going to play devil's advocate.
You're coming to the federal government and you're saying we should do these things. But the reality is that it was your communities that allowed the shortage of police officers to occur. I'm throwing this as an accusation, and I'd like a response. How did it happen? Your growth rate here was no greater than Calgary's or Edmonton's. Their ratio of police officers is in keeping with the national average for cities of this size. I'm not trying to be combative here, but I'd like to know how it happened that we got so far behind.
Mr. Cessford, as for the mega-trials, it's a question of dollars. Basically, if there are more than five accused, we can't afford to do a mega-trial. There's a funding shortage here, which we're not seeing nearly as severely in the rest of the country. But how did this develop here? What can we do collectively? Mr. Ménard has raised the issue of the fund. I think it makes some sense. I know you should be getting additional resources. I have no problem with saying that, because I think that's the reality. But we are going to need a plan to get the numbers of your police forces up to snuff.