Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be at this committee. This is my first time appearing here, so I have a couple of questions, and bear with me, please.
We hear a lot about the security of our borders and how we need to be doing more, and yet the very government that talks about border security all the time announced major cuts, I would say, in its 2012 budget—$143 million by 2015 to CBSA and $195.2 million by 2015 to the RCMP.
We know from the Customs and Immigration Union that 325 jobs on the front line of border crossings across the country will be cut. The intelligence branch of the CBSA has been hard hit, losing 100 positions, and 19 sniffer dog units—considering we've just been talking about marijuana—are being slashed due to the budget reductions.
What kind of an impact is this actually going to have on our border security? We're not talking just theoretical. We're talking about actual bodies who are needed at the borders who are not going to be there.