I'm sorry. I'm not going to comment on the speed at which bills or legislation moves through Parliament. I'll leave that to all parliamentarians to adjust as they see fit.
However, when it comes to deciding that services should be essential, it comes with recognizing that you need to understand the full demand for those services. Right now, one of the findings in our audit report was that Public Safety doesn't know that full demand, whether it be that there isn't an application process to know how many other communities might want it or what the full need is....
Right now, it's about using the funds available to beef up services under existing agreements. We didn't see much expansion. We saw a small expansion into the north, but not much, and no community moving from a tripartite agreement to a self-administered agreement. While one did move right after the end of our audit period, that's very little progress for the additional funding that was put into the program with the purpose of expanding it.
Defining it as “essential” needs to come with knowing what that means. What will that mean for the federal government to fund this appropriately?