I appreciate those comments. Thank you.
We heard a great discussion on collaboration and on working with the diversified agencies that exist in a community. I can say from my past experience that our being the front-line police somewhat contributes to our being the agency of choice. You talked about priorities being set by trends or modelling or municipal-federal-provincial priorities. Ultimately, as Mr. Stamatakis pointed out, it really boils down to calls for service and what people are calling in about. When police respond and then we deal with the aftermath or the consequences of responding to that call, we can't just shut that file down; we have to carry on. There's certainly a level of frustration across Canada, and you hear front-line police officers say, “You know, we shouldn't be doing this. Why are we engaged in this activity?”
As a former police officer, I know the contributing factor in this situation is that the information gets shared upward to our agencies, and we're very reluctant to bring it back down. There are models in our country in which there have been exceptions. They've been positive, as you've indicated.
Is it a legislative shift? Is it a policy shift? How do we make sure that when we as front-line officers are complaining about doing work that we don't see as being direct police work or that we see as being something that should be integrated with the community, we're not contributing to our being that agency of choice by not sharing the information downward? I think a lot of agencies, at least those at the territory level, if you talked to them, would say they put the information up, but it's not reciprocated well.
Do you have any comments?