Mr. Speaker, that is exactly right. Just last week I met with representatives from the Canadian Federation of Municipalities. These are mayors and council members who represent every conceivable municipality and rural area in our country. I met people in my office from New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan. Their message was uniform. They said that their police forces and resources were stretched to the limit. They all talked about the federal government downloading obligations on to their local police forces without the necessary resources to fund them.
I fear we are going to widen the opportunity for police forces to search the sex offender registry. Our court system is going to put many more people on the registry, but it is going to fall to these cities and rural areas to actually implement it.
What happens if there is a phone call to a force in rural Ontario or Saskatchewan about an alleged child abduction? Let us fast forward to a year from now. There may be thousands more names in the registry for the police forces to search, but they will not have the personnel to do it.
It is not enough to play politics with a crime issue. It is not enough to make ourselves look tough, like the government likes to do on crime. What matters is whether we put the bucks behind the obligations.
There is no money in Bill S-2. The minister has not said that he will give federal money to rural areas and municipalities in order to beef up their police forces so they can make use of this new information. Make no mistake, until that is done, the sex offender registry will not be fully utilized and it will not be fully effective until that happens.
Talk is cheap. I call upon the government to not only make these changes, but to put money where its mouth is. The Conservatives talk tough on crime, let us see them spend tough on crime. Let us see them put dollars toward crime. I challenge the government to tell the House how much money it will give to rural and municipal governments to help them carry out these and other obligations that it wants them to carry out.