Yes, sir. Thank you very much.
I certainly agree in all respects with what I've heard so far. I think we'll agree that anyone in public services and public safety will understand that the complexity of policing has climbed incredibly quickly in the last few years. The expectation in the community has continued to grow. The resources have remained—I'm speaking for the OPP—reasonably limited within the confines that we have. We always focus on efficiency. We continuously strive to deliver the best we can within the parameters we have, while responding to the expectations of the community.
There's been a lot of discussion nationally in regard to crime rates and reductions, etc. For those contracts that are renewed, where we can, we sit with the community. We assess the required resources and respond to the appropriate levels required at that time. That's a luxury we have in some locations.
What remains, as everybody has commented on, is that we need to look forward to alternatives to certain issues and instances that we address as a police service. The police are often the first call for all issues. In Ontario, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police is beginning to develop their community engagement and mobilization model, which I think is what Mr. McFee was referring to, which engages all agencies within a community to work towards community safety issues and social issues, to perhaps defer some of the issues that are weighing down policing to other types of agencies.
If I can give you just one quick example, in the last two weeks our region responded to a tactical call concerning a mental health issue and we found that there were a hundred incidents on the system related to this individual's mental health issues. Our concern is that we are always the first responders to this type of issue, and it's already been pointed out that there are other community agencies that can address these types of issues, instead of always having the police as the first response.