Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I can't really talk about decisions around the reductions and the amounts and that sort of thing. It's not within the realm of the organization, other than how we respond to it. I would like to comment, however, on some of the previous discussion relative to policing, the cost, and those elements.
We need to be careful and informed about letting the data and the evidence inform us as to what the state of play is. It's certainly not consistent across the country. There are ebbs and flows, and some of those drivers tend to come out of the context or environment where the policing is being done. It also comes out of what people are expecting from their police service. Some of that investment that's been made in some areas may not have been made in others, and vice-versa.
When you look at the data, if you look at it on a cost-per-citizen basis, which I think permits some relativity when you're looking at policing cost, it informs you somewhat to then arrive at some conclusion about what those costs are relative to a comparable municipality or province or whatever the circumstance would be. That is helpful when we look at this issue.
Generally, it sort of comes down to this: try to reduced costs where possible; re-engineer different ways of delivering the service and those kinds of things; manage demand for service, or what we refer to as call management, and how we ensure that the police get the calls they should and ensure that calls that aren't police calls go to the appropriate location; and that we have an opportunity to share costs across public safety. There are a lot of players within public safety, so we should be looking at opportunities to ensure that we are maximizing the investment for certain outcomes. We need to come to ground on what those outcomes are that we want and we need to assign some values in that, quantitative and qualitative.