Mr. Speaker, the short answer to that question is no. The committee did not have that information satisfactorily before the committee, nor did the minister or the government provide that information. What we do know and what we did discover from a variety of sources is that the resources for an expanded sex offender information registry have not been provided by the government. One does not have to be a public policy expert to know if that changes are made to the registry that will result in thousands and thousands more names and information being added to the registry, it will need more resources. We would need more people to input that data. We will need more police officers who will actually investigate that data when there is a potential sex offence being committed.
We should remember that the registry is being expanded in two different ways. The access to the registry is being expanded by liberalizing the test as to when police can access it, and we are adding many more people by putting automatic registration of everybody convicted of a broad range of offences into the registry.
Again, like a lot of things with the government, it comes out with the rhetoric but does not put the money there and does not tell Canadians how much money it is going to cost either. We have no idea at this point. The committee has no idea. There has been no evidence by the minister or by any member of the government that says that the effect of these changes is going to cost blank amount of millions of dollars, but what is predictable, is absolutely going to be the case, is that these changes will require millions and millions of dollars coming from somewhere.
The federal government criticizes the Liberals for downloading obligations onto the provinces in the nineties, criticism that is richly deserved because the Liberals did download billions of dollars of costs to the provinces, which caused harm to the provinces to this day. I hope the government is not hypocritical about it, because it is doing the same thing if it transfers these kinds of obligations onto local police forces across the country but then does not provide municipalities and rural areas with the funds to actually carry out those duties.
Once again, if the government is serious about cracking down on sex offenders, if it is serious about improving the sex offender information registry, it must give municipalities and rural areas the funding they require to carry out the very important work that is called for by this legislation. I challenge the Conservatives to do it. The New Democrats will continue to push them until they—