Unfortunately, I wasn't getting the interpretation in my ear, but I think I followed you, although I may embarrass myself, and I beg your pardon if I do.
I do think that with a top-down sort of approach, when the Minister of Public Safety came to you very recently on the mandate letter, I'm pretty sure he came with the heads of five or six different organizations. He has a huge portfolio, and I worry that this is beyond the capacity of any one human being. Maybe we need a minister for the RCMP, or maybe it should be taken out of Public Safety and put into some other ministry.
I think this is a real problem. We have a mammoth ministry, and we have the RCMP, which in itself has 20,000 people, some involved in contract policing, others involved in national policing. This is a huge issue, even before you get into the issues of corrections and CBSA. One of my concerns is that we're going to take the existing RCMP complaints and review body—which I think, of its own admission, is really struggling—and add CBSA to it. That's not necessarily going to make things better. I believe there are only two commissioners in that body, so I think it is important to recognize that the federal government has a huge presence.
If the federal government starts moving out of contract policing, I think it also has to think about recouping those funds, which are less, because the federal government is subsidizing contract policing a lot less, and I think that with unionization in the RCMP you're going to see more "Surreys”.
Obviously COVID has thrown a spanner into the works, but if there is a withdrawal from contract policing, I would hope that the federal government would use its spending power to incentivize all existing police forces to partner with other public agencies and community agencies less coercively and without discrimination, or with less discrimination, to deliver essential policing services. As my co-panellist has talked about, that would also involve victims of crime, which is also another huge issue.