That's a great question. You asked one question that I'd like to answer later on if somebody else asks it. What can the federal government do? I'd like to address that one, but you asked a specific one here.
First of all, I'd like to tell you—and I'm sure that Deputy Sloly will also support this—the relative cost of policing has not gone up. I pulled the numbers from when I started in policing in 1975, and the same percentage of the city budget goes to policing today as it did back in 1975.
Second, the salaries are equivalent to the increase in every other indicator, including other people's salaries. Third, the police-to-population ratios in Calgary have not changed. Across Canada, the 10 major cities, we rate eight out of 10. In other words, we have fewer cops policing more people than in the seven other cities that are in front of us.
So what we have done well over the years, and this is what is frustrating. It was frustrating that the conference in January on the economics of policing did not acknowledge two things. First, the cop-to-pop or cop-to-population ratio shows that we've adjusted to huge changes in policing over the last 35 years. Do you guys want to go for a beer afterwards and talk about what policing looked like 38 years ago? I'll tell you, it's nothing like today and nothing like what we're doing.
We have adjusted our resources to reflect community needs, partnerships, all kinds of things that have actually reduced the cost. When the economics of policing conference was going in January, CBC actually put on its website that Canada has the least number of police officers to population of the G-8 countries. That includes Japan—and people say Japan is some kind of nirvana—as well as the U.K., the U.S., and every other G-8 country.
The reality is that we adjust. When things like cybercrime come up, you're right, we have to adjust our resource base. As the city grows—and all cities are growing in this country—as long as we keep that cop-to-pop ratio, then we will make the adjustments, because we're partnering very effectively with community groups.