Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Minister, it's good to have you here at the committee.
With regard to RCMP funding, recently in my riding there have been brazen criminal acts not seen in many decades: a bank robbery in a community of 250, police impersonators pulling over people and robbing them and more crimes than I can outline here today. Rural crime continues to grow, and too often people in rural areas are being left to fend for themselves.
We know the RCMP has large areas to cover, especially in rural and remote areas, and there are consistent staffing challenges. Your government's response to M-167 in the last Parliament was embarrassing, and Canadians in rural and remote areas deserve to know when the issues of rural crime will be taken seriously.
Can you respond to that?