Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member both for the fabulous speech he gave this evening and for his question. He sets the bar high in this place.
I too remain troubled. Very clearly, the government is saying that the intention is to expand the witness protection program and enable the various police forces to bring more witnesses into that program. I do not know how police forces are going to do that. I know that police forces are stretched in most jurisdictions. They are stretched even in my province, which is supposedly financially stable but is also suffering from a deficit.
The priority is that people are demanding more police boots on the ground. I do not see a lot of people coming forward and saying that the priority should be witness protection, yet the police forces themselves know that in order to win these cases, they need these kinds of programs and greater access.
We have $3.1 billion missing for the anti-terrorism program. Perhaps if we could find that, it could go into expanding the witness protection program.