Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. Certainly our municipal police are hired but some of the things the government is doing, such as the gun registry, are going to take so much of their time. Instead of being on the street they are going to be registering firearms, implementing the Young Offenders Act and all the other aspects the government is downloading. The government is supposed to pay half of the costs of the implementation of the Young Offenders Act and it is only paying 30%. The municipalities and the local police forces are also supposed to implement the gun registry.
As an aside, not all police officers are hired by the municipalities. The RCMP certainly play a big role in my part of the country. It is a federal agency, federally funded and federally paid.
Some of the $133.9 million already spent on the gun registry could supply police officers with better tools to work with or to put more policemen on the street. That is where I think the money should be going instead of to these programs.