An obvious limitation is the fact that there is no obligation for an RCMP officer to answer any questions unless I call a public interest inquiry. The last public interest inquiries that were held were probably up in the range of $20 million to hold. My budget, as I said, is $5 million a year. So to call one inquiry...and we're not in an area where we want to add to the deficit.
I did the income trust complaint, for instance. That was one I looked at. Because there's no obligation for the police to cooperate, I had the unfortunate situation that the three most senior RCMP involved—Commissioner Zaccardelli at the time, a deputy commissioner, and an assistant commissioner—did not cooperate to explain what they did and why they did it. I thought that was a very important case, because the issue was whether or not there was an intentional interference in the democratic process. I cannot think of anything more seminal. Fortunately, I had someone there who did cooperate, but not the three main players, so I had to work around that in terms of doing a construct that I felt comfortable in saying here it was. As well, the commissioner retired prior to my launching that particular complaint, and if you're a retired person you're not subject to the review process.
Those things become problematic, and yet there's no doubt that anything you do while in office affects the credibility of that organization, and you should be held accountable for it because it affects the organization, not just the individual. So I think those things are important.
In terms of the risks, I guess the risks are that if you can't do it and you can't give the public assurances that you have all the information and you've looked under every rock that had to be looked under, then it goes back to what weight you can attach to my reports. When you do that, there are issues here of independence, competency, and public trust. Well, those are what flow out of it. So if you can't do it and I can't give the public assurances, then the public will always have lingering concerns.
In areas where I can look at it, great; if I can't, there are problems.