We've seen in Canada a modernization of the police services that provide policing to our communities. Many police services across our country have gone through a civilianization and/or civilian professional modernization. Many services have been looking within our organizations as we look at the cost and fiscal impact of policing within Canada.
We do point out that in terms of police per population, Canada has one of the lowest rates per capita when you look at many large countries across the globe. We continue to see some adverse impacts around crime rates, particularly in large urban communities across Canada, when you look at western Canada and particularly Ontario, where violent crime continues to increase and is actually bucking the national trend over the last number of decades. What we see as being behind one of the reasons for this is that we're looking at organizations very differently in terms of who performs certain tasks. Traditionally where police officers would have performed a role within the police agency, organizations have moved towards hiring police professionals, such as within the telecommunications centre, media and public information, or various forms of community outreach. For example, in Ontario and British Columbia, many police services have mental health nurses who are working within the police service and are embedded within the police budget.
This is one of the challenging pieces. As we look at the ability to deploy police officers, we're seeing a decline in that ability. It's always a cause for concern, but it speaks to the heart of leadership that we're willing to do business differently, that we're willing to change our organizations. We can't lose sight of the fact that the core of what we do is to preserve public peace and to ensure that the rule of law remains within the communities to which we provide services. What you'll see in the data, though, if you look very deeply at Stats Canada, is an increase in civilianization within many different police services.