That is a difficult question.
I see a co-responsibility in the sense that, from the RCMP perspective, we have to ensure that we have the right numbers at each detachment, and we have to start looking at other ways of doing business because there's a lot of time spent that's not on the road.
We have to look at creative ways of increasing the visibility in that community while still ensuring that we have the accountability on the paperwork side with regard to all the various reports that we have to do. Look at how complex things are. I look at an impaired driving investigation in 1994 and an impaired driving investigation today. It's apples and rocks. It's not even in the same fruit family.
It's very complicated and very long, and as things have evolved, I think the numbers haven't evolved. The other thing that I see when I say it's “co-responsibility”—and I'm not at all putting the responsibility on the residents—is that when we deal with rural crime, often things are moving into rural areas and we don't even see it coming. The people in the community still have the mentality of not locking their doors or not locking their vehicles.
I know, myself, because I was a victim in Grande Prairie. I was devastated. My nephew's car was broken into. It was a crime of opportunity because he didn't lock his car. He thought that since he was in rural Alberta, he didn't need to lock his car. He lost everything inside his car. I was really mad and felt vulnerable, so I can only imagine what the people in the communities feel. However, I think we have to work together. There are rural crime watches that work very well in certain communities, so I think that approach of working together might help, as well as looking at numbers to make sure we have adequate resources in those places.