Thank you.
With respect to those funding decisions—I think this is something the Auditor General spoke to when she mentioned the fact that some of our funding decisions are based on past funding decisions—the nature of the program provides funding to police officers, and that requires us to earmark that money in a year, and for all future years, because we know that police officer will be in place.
In terms of the equity piece, it's important for us to bear in mind that we are looking at cost-matching with the province. All of the services we have—the 36 police services in the self-administered stream—are expected to meet the standards that are in place in the jurisdiction where they are operating. They are all doing that, some of which are more difficult for them to make it work. As the deputy commissioner has mentioned, some of them are operating in very remote areas.
We continue to try to stabilize those self-administered police services. We continue to try to drive decisions that will ensure they have the funds they need to have stability and predictability and to strategically plan moving into the future.
They are struggling, at times, to recruit, like all police services, and we want to ensure that what we're doing is being there for them to ensure they're playing that role that we see they play in the policing ecosystem in community safety. That's part of the equity piece as well. It's the recognition by other police services as to the role they're playing and how they're operating interchangeably.