I must admit that when I heard that specific issue raised, it was not something I had anticipated hearing. I was frankly shocked that in 2018, in Canada, we don't have appropriate medical facilities. It was literally that they couldn't maintain continuity on the samples that were taken, and as a result the Crown was saying, “Well, we don't have continuity on the evidence, so we can't proceed with a sexual assault charge.” We should be capable of doing this. I think that one in particular is something the province can do something about through its own regulatory regimes.
I ran into something else. I was the vice-chair and special counsel of the Ontario Office for Victims of Crime. When we were set up in 1998, one of the things we found was that in a specially created statutory fund, the Victims' Justice Fund, there was a $44-million surplus, money that hadn't been spent, and there were huge gaps in victims services all across Ontario.
I gather that the Auditor General has also identified a surplus of about $50 million not being spent in the equivalent Alberta fund, and yet you hear from the victims services agencies, as you described, that they are struggling to help people.
That's not something the federal government has to do, although you should probably remind the provincial government that that money should actually be spent and not simply kept in a bank account somewhere.
The other thing I would suggest you take a look at is that the federal government has a number of crime prevention, domestic violence, and victim funding strategies that provide funds to provinces or municipal agencies. I would suggest you take a look at those to make sure you're maximizing the benefit being obtained. You can certainly take targeted funding out of those existing funds—not new dollars, but money from the existing funds—and say, “There is a specific need, and these funds should be directed towards it.” You work in co-operation with the province and the victims groups to make sure they get at least some of the money they need to do the job that is so important.