Here in Ontario it's interesting for chiefs of police because the police associations bargain their contracts with the police services board. The police services board will settle the contract and chiefs are left to deal with it. As an example, last year our officers received the 3% raise increase and, along with a benefit increase, it worked out to 3.5%. The direction from the board was to come in as close to zero in a budget increase as I could. Well, 90% of our budget is wages and benefits, so without cutting jobs, it was near impossible to come in at zero. I was actually fairly pleased that we were able to come in at 3.5%, which is a very bare-bones budget.
We need to find efficiencies, and I understand that. There's no new money; it's been made very clear. Things like this domestic violence unit are one of the ways we're hoping to free up resources, so maybe we're not paying as much overtime for certain calls.
We're tied up at the hospital quite frequently for hours on end waiting for a prisoner to be seen by a doctor. It's those types of things. We're in negotiations with the hospital here locally to try to free up our officers from those types of things.