Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Potter, welcome. I'm one of the new members on the committee, and I certainly look forward to playing an active role in the committee. This study is very interesting.
I have a question around the shared forward agenda that you mentioned in your comments today. My question is with respect to what's involved in the agenda. You talk about how it's being developed through collaboration with governments and police associations and whatnot. I guess where I'm going with this is that we all understand that police are being asked to do much more than they were 30 years ago. There are new dimensions in society now that they didn't have to deal with back in those days, 25 to 30 years ago—whether it's Internet crimes or some of the mental health issues you talked about. The police can be spending many hours at hospitals dealing with individuals who have mental health issues.
I hear a lot of people talking about the time police are spending on administrative duties and the time they are spending in courts. Those are issues police had in the past as well. Courtroom time was always an issue for police, to ensure prosecutions were completed. Administrative issues were always there because you want to make sure every detail is recorded for the prosecution.
However, with the shared forward agenda and the talk of collaboration, my mind went to the collaborative care model of health care. When health care providers are dealing with something that is outside of their normal areas of expertise, it's triaged and moved to another area.
Is there any thought given under the shared forward agenda to...I don't want to use the collaborative health care model or a triage model, but to some sort of model like that? If police are dealing with a mental health issue that's outside of the policing realm per se...there are not criminal charges that would be followed up on in that nature. Is there any thought to being able to move this to somebody who is...I don't want to say better suited, but better trained to deal with those issues?