The purpose of the index is basically to recognize that there are a lot of interesting and innovative activities happening across Canada. Of course, we're looking at the U.K., at Australia, and at the U.S., but there's a lot going on in Canada, so why not take the opportunity to learn from what we're doing right here and what works?
A number of provinces and police services have been pulling together information on things that have been happening at the local level over the past seven to eight months to improve policing to better serve their communities. They've compiled these into 150 different examples, and a number of these have actually been validated by researchers as best practices. That information is also related to these initiatives.
So if police services are thinking they want to improve in a certain area, this allows them to go into this database, enter search criteria, and find out what's happening in other parts of the country in those areas that they can learn from. There'll be contact and detailed information on the project or the initiative, so they can get more information, dig more deeply, and essentially learn from what's going on right across Canada.