We're not exactly asking for a new program. Our current Witness Protection Program works very well for the RCMP.
We have no difficulty with the program as it works for the RCMP. The difficulty exists with some other police forces—not all. Some have absolutely no difficulty with the way the Witness Protection Program Act operates and with having to go through us to obtain documentation.
The legal opinion we've received is that obtaining documentation—a new identity, federal documents—for a witness is in and of itself admission to the program. If a police force other than the RCMP has an individual who has helped them in a case and they would like to relocate that person and therefore would require new identity for that individual, of course, in addition to a provincial driver's licence and so on, they require a passport, social insurance card, and the federal documents. So they have to come through us. For them to come through us and be given the right documentation, we have to accept them into the program. In order to accept them into the program, we have to look at the case itself and determine whether or not that individual is suitable for the witness protection program under the criteria in section 7.