Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Just for a little perspective, the RCMP polices in 146 community tripartite agreements; that's 443 regular members. We have 30 positions vacant right now. Those are our latest statistics. That's an approximately 11% vacancy pattern compared to the deputy commissioner's 15% reference to our contract policing overall. I'm not saying that's fantastic, but that's positive in that we're not going the other way.
We also police 22% of Canada's population, which is 75% of our land mass. There are 647 detachments, and 556 of those detachments police in indigenous communities: 489 first nations, 36 Inuit communities and 31 Métis settlements. No two indigenous communities are the same. Some are more remote. There are different cultures and different practices, and there are different levels of engagement.
I would say that this is a really good opportunity, thanks to the Auditor General's report, to give us a foundation of what gaps we have and how to move forward more positively with Public Safety Canada.