Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Chief Palson, for being here. It's so nice to see somebody from home.
I want to begin by asking you if you could just describe for us the Dakota Ojibway Police Service in terms of how many communities you are serving. Could you tell us the population, the total number of people you serve, and then what your total operating budget is?
The reason I'm asking that is just to compare it with other police services. For example, the City of Portage la Prairie has RCMP policing services that police the city as well as the municipality. Depending on their population, probably anywhere from 10% to 20% of their budget is provided by help from the federal government, whereas in first nations policing the federal government provides about 52%. I think you mentioned 52%, while 48% was from the province.
If you could just describe for us the population that you're policing in terms of numbers, I'll follow up.