Thank you.
You were correct on your first statement. It was $50, out of recognition that everyone in society benefits when people are able to reintegrate into society. That was the idea behind the whole program when it first started at $50 and then consequently went up.
How do we deal with the other aspect of the problem that you haven't spoken about at all? I don't think anybody here in this room, especially me, thinks we should not help the vulnerable. That absolutely must be done. Then we have problems, like they need a criminal record check. A criminal record check now becomes the responsibility of multiple agencies across Canada, and most of the agencies—City of Vancouver, City of Edmonton, City of Kamloops—will charge. They don't give those out for free because it takes time to get them. You need court documents.
I can tell you that every time I've gone to the courthouse to get a copy of a document for someone, it costs money. The private individual has to pay because the province isn't going to give it away for free. They may need immigration records, which are going to cost you, and you may have to get fingerprinted to prove who you are. Again, almost every municipality I know in Canada that has a police contract, charges for the fingerprinting of people. I've argued that for many years because, if you're in minor hockey, all your coaches have to be fingerprinted and anybody related to the team has to be fingerprinted, and there's a cost.
We have a number of factors that come into play that you haven't brought up. I said earlier—and I wasn't trying to be sarcastic—that maybe the minor summary conviction offences should just disappear at five years, and everybody across there said no. But if you say no, then accept that you're going to have a cost for fingerprints. People are still going to have to get immigration records, and somebody's going to have to pay for it.
Someone is going to have to get court documents. Someone's going to have to go to multiple agencies to get the criminal record checks to help the people we want to help. They don't have the money to fill out the form anyway and spend the $600, so they're going to need assistance.
We need to be creative in our thought process. I wonder if you would comment on that, because there's a whole avenue beyond the $625.