Thank you for the question.
We've been on record at the National Police Federation, as I believe have the commissioner and the public safety minister, in support of body cameras for the front-line membership of the RCMP.
I think the challenge we're running into right now, as I mentioned earlier, is that our members have been told for years and years to do more with less. It's a resourcing issue, so in our discussions with Minister Blair and eventually through the finance committee, we will be proposing that you can't do this with internal funding. We have to find money for body cameras. Cameras cannot come at the expense of cops.
The challenge with body cameras is that, although they provide audio and video evidence of an interaction, they are not a panacea. The discussion we're having today really should be to figure out ways to avoid that interaction and ultimately come to a point, in policing in Canada, where we don't need to rely on body cameras or video evidence to determine who's at fault and what's at fault. Really, we should be talking about how we should support social services in Canada to work in partnership with police service agencies in order to have adequate social support networks for all Canadians.
At present, with body-worn cameras, the NPF has been engaged by the RCMP. COVID has been a bit of a challenge in having our first get-together to discuss the specifics of the rollout. For example, how do we comply with privacy? Can you turn it off when you go to the bathroom or receive a phone call from your significant other or your children? Are they on 24-7? It's those types of things.
Really, we're just looking at those details, but I expect it would be fairly quick.