It will vary a little bit by program.
In the context of first nations policing, we undertook what we call a comprehensive review of that program in 2009-10, and in that context part of that comprehensive review involved a departmental evaluation of the program. But it also involved external consultations with our aboriginal partners and with our provincial and territorial partners. We were able to gauge largely how our partners viewed the program. The results were unequivocal in the sense of the support. We had something like an 80% positive review from aboriginal communities in terms of their support for the program. I think it was because we really have focused this program to provide appropriate and culturally sensitive policing in those communities.
We can certainly look at the data we're seeing with respect to those communities, in terms of the impact these programs have had, the way they are in those communities, in terms of the crime severity index, where we see a clear differentiation between those communities where the first nations policing program exists and those communities where it doesn't exist. The reduction in the crime severity index is quite significantly different. So we have fairly good data that I think is independent of the department's assessment that would indicate that this is a good investment and it's making headway.
On the other side, within the context of the National Crime Prevention Centre, we do extensive investments in evaluation and audit of those programs, and those are done independently of the program. They are part of the formation of each of the projects as we move forward. We don't audit and evaluate 100% of the projects externally because that would just simply be too expensive. But we do a very good cross-sampling of our projects that we support. Again, the whole ambition of this program, designed in 2008, is to make sure that we are looking at community-based, on-the-ground, community-needed crime prevention activities. So the evaluations really pay attention to whether these investments are being effective in the communities.
We're having very good results in that context, and I think we're building an evidence base for Canada that would suggest the right kind of prevention investments are being made.