Mr. Speaker, it is very important, indeed.
First I want to thank my hon. colleague from the Bloc for his comments. He is absolutely right, the regions are important. Senior RCMP officers absolutely must understand the dynamic in the regions.
We run into the following type of question of interpretation. The Commissioner of the RCMP appeared before the committee and said that the deployment of police forces is his sole responsibility. It is his decision and no one else's. Not everyone agrees with him.
As elected officials in a region, we would not ask the commissioner to get involved in one particular case or another or to investigate a certain location. However, when it comes to the deployment of police forces, we, as elected officials, our committee, our House of Commons, have a say.
I want to come back to one of the points raised by my colleague, the issue of financial resources. The Commissioner of the RCMP assured us that it was not even a question of money, but a question of how things are done, according to his philosophy. He said he had enough money in his budget and that it was more a philosophical issue.
With his philosophy of assigning 15 police officers to the same case, in the same location, when in the past one officer handled 15 cases, I wonder where things are headed. We are heading toward an absence of police officers in the regions and it is the people living in the regions who will be penalized.