I would agree with that assessment. The RCMP could not contract with an individual outside of the legal protections that Parliament has imposed upon someone in the witness protection program. In those cases, that person should never be in the witness protection program. Once the person has a status of a protectee, then they have all the legal protections.
I'd like to go back to an earlier question by Mr. Cullen, on why Parliament would conceive of such a scheme where, even though someone commits a serious offence, that information about their former identity should not be made public. I think if you were to have counsel here for the people who may be in that position, they could give you a number of arguments. One argument we are getting is that these persons in their former identity assisted the police. They were good citizens and witnesses in a proceeding. If you were to let them know later that because of some action by the police against them in some other proceeding, where they're charged with an offence, at some point in the proceedings that information would become public, and all the people who were after them....
Even if they're sentenced in jail, they would now be regarded as an informant, a rat, and would be subject to another punishment with regard to any other punishment the courts may have imposed upon them with regard to subsequent criminal activity that they maybe know--