This seems to raise a certain problem for me, when the courts have specified that there needs to be action both to deter and to denounce elder abuse. If we're not seeing these prosecutions now, a year after it became clear that there were failures to provide necessities of life, failures to provide what was really needed and we have no prosecutions, then there's no denunciation and there are no deterrents. In fact, what we're seeing now is that it's being left to the relatives of those who lost loved ones to bring lawsuits as a kind of deterrent factor. It seems to me that this raises questions about how seriously we're taking elder abuse.
This is why I wished to have the ministers present today, because I'm not sure that I could ask a public servant to answer that question. That said, I am concerned and I do agree that our system says that local law enforcement is responsible to investigate, but there's something larger happening here that's probably beyond the capacity of local police to investigate the circumstances of when it comes to companies that operate in multiple jurisdictions.