Thank you.
My name is Rick Norlock. I'm the member of Parliament for Northumberland—Quinte West. In a previous life I was a police officer for 30 years, with the equivalent of the state police.
I'd just like to carry on a little bit further and make a comment with regard to Crime Stoppers, which actually is used very often by police forces, specifically in Ontario. It is highly successful. Just to let you know, it was founded or conceived by a Canadian who was resident in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I would like to explore best practices a little further vis-à-vis whether the decision-making program should be resident with police forces or someone other than police forces. I guess I'll put my little comment in and then leave it up to you two gentlemen to explore this further.
What we're looking for here are best practices. What we've heard from the RCMP in particular and some other police professionals and members of the bureaucracy who deal with the program is that it's relatively successful in Canada. As a matter of fact, I would have to say, based on the negative comments, it's highly successful. But we shouldn't rely on our laurels, as perhaps there's something better. That's where my question goes: is it going towards best practices?
We heard the professor indicate that in some jurisdictions the decision-making process is resident with people associated with the judiciary, or lawyers, etc. We've been discussing some of the social welfare issues surrounding this. So I guess my question would be to ask both of you gentlemen to explore further the differences you perceive, or the negatives and positives, of taking it out of the hands of the police.
I must say—not because of my prior occupation, but because of the observations I've made, both from your testimony and previous testimony from Canadians experts and those managing the system, in particular the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—that my experience is that the more links you put in, the more separations you put in, the more difficult the process becomes. But that's just my interpretation, and I leave it to you two gentlemen to respond to that.