I think it depends on the particulars, but let me say this to just affirm your witness' observation. If you wander around the provincial courthouses, at least in British Columbia, and you were from Mars—you weren't a Canadian—and you were wondering who lives in courthouses, the answer would be uniformed police officers, wandering around the hallway looking lost, or at least looking impatient, or sometimes just looking patient.
So it's a real problem. I actually think there are various technology fixes that need to happen and this is a classic example where having six or eight police officers in the hallway might help a prosecutor, because it enables a prosecutor to say to the accused and his or her counsel, “Look, I'm ready to go; I have all of my witnesses here”, and that might result in a guilty plea that might not otherwise have happened.
In my view, you can replace that system—which is frankly the practical need for those witnesses for the most part—with a call feature that shows that a police officer doesn't have to come except at a scheduled time, and the rest of the system should be able to accommodate that. I think there are a number of ways that could make that efficient and that don't require police officers to wait around. That's my view.