You've brought a lot of insight and information into our discussion. You brought a new perspective. As you alluded to in your opening remarks, we've been mostly meeting police chiefs and front-line officers and so on. It's good to have a bit more of a theoretical perspective.
I'm still trying to get a handle on the idea of civilianization. For example, I understand the concept that we can get civilians to be doing things that police officers would normally have done. One example that was brought up was the example from Ontario that Mr. Norlock discussed. I believe it was the idea—and correct me if I'm wrong—that in Ontario if you get your car stolen they could send a non-civilian...no, that's just an idea. You gave another example where there's more civilianization happening.
But let's just take that example. We have one objection, which of course is a valid one to that model. That is, people have their cars stolen, they rarely deal with the police, if ever, and they expect that a police officer will come by because it's a law and order issue. It's a good idea, but then there's some pushback there.
Then we say we could use civilianization for traffic violations. For example, in Montreal, there are special units that only deal with traffic. They're in police cars and they can't deal with anything else but traffic violations, speeding and so on. They may be manned by cadets, but I'm not sure—or maybe not cadets but perhaps a different level of officer, I'm not sure. Then you said that pulling people over on the service road of a highway is potentially dangerous. It's a potentially dangerous manoeuvre. In fact, that's where sometimes police officers get injured and so on. That kind of argues against civilianization. Then we get to if it's a domestic dispute, maybe we don't need to send a police officer. Maybe we need to send someone else because there's so much paperwork involved and statements to be taken. On the other hand, if ever there was a situation where you might like to see a police officer at the door, it would be in the context of conjugal violence.
So I'm having trouble. I understand the concept of civilianization, but everywhere you turn there seems to be a reason why you can't civilianize necessarily or to the extent that one would like.