Thank you for the question.
There is no doubt that the decision to testify or cooperate with the authorities is an important and difficult decision to make for many witnesses and informants, particularly because we're talking very often talking about crimes that involve very dangerous organizations. Therefore, it's a very difficult decision. It involves not only the witness himself or herself, but also the family, friends, and others. Clearly, when people have the courage to do that, for whatever reason, we have an obligation to protect them. The program does that, to a large extent.
We don't know how well it protects them, because there hasn't really been a whole lot of evaluation of what happens once people are in the program. That's part of the difficulty with this particular program. Out of necessity, it has to protect information, it has to hide what it's done, it has to hide its methods. But as a result, there is so little information available on what's really happening that sometimes it's like writing a blank cheque to the organizations responsible.
From time to time we hear complaints. There were some in 2008, and I'm sure there have been others since. But we don't know about the complaints that do not come forward. You have to imagine that it must be a very difficult thing for witnesses to lodge formal complaints when they perceive that their own security is dependent on their cooperation with the authorities.
I'm not suggesting for one moment that the RCMP or any police force is blackmailing witnesses, or anything of that nature, but psychologically, when you are really dependent on the protection extended to you by one of these programs, it's a very difficult decision to go forward and complain.