Thank you, Commissioner.
We've talked a fair bit about the first nation policing, and of course we've renewed that federal funding for the next five years, which certainly will provide some certainty for the first nation communities across Canada.
Having policed in northern Canada up in the Yukon Territory, I know there are some similarities, obviously, in what we'd be facing in the Yukon and in native northern policing and rural and remote Ontario. You touched on the things that we hear other witnesses say and that I have experienced—and that you would have experienced—as a police officer, which is that we can't be all things to all people. Yet we can't help ourselves in still trying to be that.
The real question is, how do we bring.... I mean, costs going up will only do so much, because that will also then drive the demand. As police officers, our human nature as police officers will be to take those resources and just do more and more with them, which will keep that demand going up and up. With the increased funding, we will be responding to calls that we never responded to before. I think the real trick is driving down that demand of the public's expectations.
I know that's a challenging question, but how do we go from that community policing model that we've driven, that I think is very important.... I mean, you play football with the kids at school and integrate into the community, which is a critical role of policing. We've set the bar so high. How do we bring that bar back down to a reasonable level now for Canadians, so that we aren't going to the cat-in-the-tree kind of scenario, or where our emergency response people aren't answering the phone to tell people how to spell the word “subpoena”? That sounds ridiculous, but I know that our telecom operators have done that for people.
How do we do that now that we've set the bar so high? Do you see that as a really important point, versus just pushing that financial envelope up more and more, which in my opinion will only increase our demand and our response to it?