Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Through you, to the witnesses, thank you for appearing.
I thought your appearance here today was maybe because you got the short straw, but anyway....
All joking aside, in the dying days of my previous career I was the program manager in Northumberland detachment. One of the programs I brought in, which was already in existence in other places, was the auxiliary program, because as I suspect you did, I thought it was a cost-effective way of supplementing some community needs, and more than just one.
Number one in the community needs were that we had a lot of parades—a Christmas parade, Canada Day parade, etc.—and the fire department was stretched thinly. We also had a group of young men and women who wanted to become more involved in their community from a policing aspect, so we thought the auxiliary unit was....
I looked at your numbers in the RCMP and I gather that those numbers of volunteer hours.... We had the Commissioner of the OPP here and I think his numbers were significant. I wonder if you contemplated expanding the auxiliary program?
I'm going to give you time to flesh that out.
The second part is, I also did first nation policing on the James Bay and Hudson Bay coast and I noticed that in those communities they had people like peacekeepers, and we had first nation constables. It was a different kind of policing, and of course we had the Nishnawbe-Aski police chief here telling us about how the force has transitioned to a different type of policing. But it seemed at that time to have been effective.
I wonder, in your first nation territories, do you have people like peacekeepers who are essentially volunteers in the community who to a lesser extent or to a greater extent help with bylaw enforcement?
I know that even the judge, when he went up to the first nation territories, because it was a dry reserve they looked into his velvet bag and his robes to see if he was bringing in something he shouldn't have. Although at first I know some of us thought this was kind of, wow, but in the end they just wanted to make everybody equal.
I wonder if you could let us know some of your thoughts in regard to those two things.