In fact, my visit to the Yukon was eye-opening. I was supposed to go up there for the northern symposium in the fall and I couldn't make it. I had a ticket I had to use so I got to go up there and see the things I didn't get to see last year.
I was quite impressed. The changes they've been able to make and move forward on there, especially on community engagement, are something else and a model for other people to follow.
My comment on that, though, is that it was really done with not much of an increase in funding. There were a couple of bodies that had to be added to the mix, but it was done with the resource level they had. If you go in there and ask that commanding officer to make all those changes and live with a 20% budget cut, he ain't doing any of them, because there's simply no fat left there to cut any more.
We've talked about the salary dollars that are the big cost user of our fees. That little piece you have left to do any of those initiative-type things is pretty small, and it takes the whole division getting together with the aboriginal communities and everybody else to move these issues forward. But you have to be there, you have to be at those tables, and you have to be dedicated to doing that.
They have a good group of people up there doing that now and watching that move forward.
I got to meet with all the auxiliaries. They happened to have an auxiliary meeting one night when I was there. I got to meet with a group of five or six auxiliaries and they're all government people, guys who have boring government jobs with the Government of Yukon who want to get out on Friday night and drive around with the boys. They go out and they take charge of the check points during bicycle runs and dogsled races and those kinds of things. They're so happy to be involved with the people.
The interaction in the community up there.... If you had told me about the stuff that went on before the changes, I would not have believed it. The community up there is so supportive of their law enforcement. I had to shake hands with half the people in Dawson Creek when I was there. They were telling me about the great work these guys are doing.
We've pulled some great people out of there, like Brenda Butterworth-Carr from Dawson Creek. I tried to go and see her mom, to say hello and be adopted, but that wasn't going to happen. It's fantastic stuff.
What do you do up there in a community like Faro, which is kind of shrinking? You have a detachment there but everybody from the government on down who I talked to said, “No, this is community safety, a community pride thing. Don't touch our RCMP detachment.” When we talk about there being room to shrink that perhaps because the caseload is down, people say, “No, not our detachment. We want you there. You're part of our community.” If you take away the three Mounties in the community of Faro, you take away the power-skating teacher, the hockey coach, and so on. There is some fantastic stuff going on up there.