As I've said on a number of occasions, including earlier today, the independence of the police is fundamental in a democratic society, but I think it's safe to say that the RCMP is independent with respect to some things but very dependent with respect to other things.
Certainly no one can or should tell us who to investigate or how to investigate, but our funding is provided by Parliament as far as our federal policing is concerned and the contribution to provincial policing, and by other levels of government. Earlier we touched on independent oversight and review, and as I indicated, the government will take decisions with respect to that.
I think the minister and all of the department, and I and the members of the RCMP, are aware of the fact that we need to be very independent in many areas. Frankly, I think we need to be more cooperative with the department on a number of issues than perhaps we've been in the past.
I've often said that independence—and I'm not sure whether this is a great analogy—is like a trump card and we should not hesitate to play the trump card, but you can't play the trump card if the hand doesn't call for trump. We're working to establish even closer relationships with the department in a number of very important areas. For example, the current contracts for provincial, territorial, and municipal policing all expire in 2012. The lead for the negotiation of new contracts is not the RCMP but the Department of Public Safety.