Thank you, Mr. Morrison.
Resourcing has been a challenge in the RCMP for the last five years, if not longer, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we really haven't adopted any police resource methodology. When our contracting partners are speaking about a community of 5,000 or 10,000 people, the RCMP won't necessarily have a number: “Service level 1, 2, 3, this is the number of cops that you have.”
If you add in the fact that we've been effectively in a wage freeze since 2017, and add in the Expenditure Restraint Act going back to 2010, we are not the most attractive police employer today. If I were a young guy looking at joining a police service, would I choose Toronto, where I don't have to move and I can have a sustainable family with a spouse who can have a full-time career, or would I choose the RCMP and make considerably less money and possibly have to move around the country?
I think we really need, first, to deal with the compensation issues, and second, to look at our resource methodology. How are we going to deploy our members, into what communities and at what resource levels, in order to sustain those members' careers, not overwork them, allow them to take time off and decompress and use time away from work?