I can take this one.
First of all, you described the RCMP very well. We are a large and complex organization with a diverse mandate, different from any police agency that I know of in the world.
I can also tell you that we are the envy of the world. If you compare the RCMP with some of our U.S. partners—the Drug Enforcement Administration; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Customs and Border Protection; the U.S. Coast Guard; the Federal Bureau of Investigations—all of them have common mandates, and they're continually stepping over each other. I know most of the number ones and number twos in these organizations personally, and I've been told by them that they envy us because of our mandate and our ability to move things around to accomplish our operational goals.
Having that wide mandate includes having contract policing, our uniform policing, which is an excellent training ground for police officers coming into the RCMP, learning how to do front-line police work, and eventually going to specialized areas such as drugs or national security.
Also, we have the ability to link, to connect the dots. You could have a highway patrol officer in uniform who pulls a car over on the highway near Saskatchewan and finds 50 kilos of cocaine in the trunk of the car, driven by somebody who's driving the cocaine for a major criminal organization. Very quickly, being one organization, that uniformed police officer can make one phone call, and the drug squad can be involved. Where was the cocaine going? If that person is willing to cooperate and identify the final destination of the cocaine, we can be the recipient of it and continue the investigation.
Having that wide mandate is the envy of the world.
Part of your question was about separation from government. When I talk about having a little longer arm's length and more autonomy, more nimbleness and flexibility in the RCMP, it's simply to allow us to meet our operational objectives quicker.
One example I can give you is the expenditures. This is an area I've been responsible for in federal policing, covert expenditures and expenditures for the purchase of evidence, for the payment to human sources. If you exceed a certain level, you need approval from Treasury Board. This has to go through several levels--the Minister of Public Safety, the President of the Treasury Board, and so on--for approval to be given. The amounts are low. They're old-level amounts. I've been pushing to change them for three or four years now, and still nothing has happened. With today's expenditures at 20-year-old levels, we find ourselves needing to get that authority all the time. Police work can't wait for that. The urgency of investigations sometimes requires us to make those expenditures quickly. Having ministers approve an operational expenditure, a purchase of evidence, or the payment of a human source, as I have told ministers before, could potentially require them to come to the stand and testify.
The last case I testified on was only a couple of years ago. It was a Hells Angels case. The point of the defence was whether the minster knew. Was the minister involved in giving the authorizations? My answer was no, because the minister was not involved. But this was one example where a minister could have been involved by saying yes or no to the approval. If it's a rubber stamp, then why are we going there?