Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
It is an excellent question because I heard a Conservative member say during the debate that these were administrative changes that would make the program more efficient and that they were going to relax the admission criteria and thus be able to accept and protect more witnesses. However, as my colleague said, if we accept more people and protect more witnesses, somewhere along the line being more efficient will also be more costly because we will be serving more people. That much is obvious, as I said in my speech.
What will happen is that the municipal and provincial police forces will co-operate with the RCMP. Of course, they are very happy. They will be in a situation in which they can co-operate better, protect more witnesses and have more flexibility. However, that also means that the program will serve more people. Consequently, there will be more spending. That is really obvious and it will be hard to manage at the local level. This is what we criticize on the government's part. I believe a little consultation would have gone a long way in this instance.