Mr. Speaker, the member for Kootenay—Columbia was an RCMP officer, and I know he knows a lot about this on the ground. There is a sense in which I agree with the comment he just made, and it is in fact reinforcing our point. That is what we heard from police services at the municipal level. They do understand there is going to be a cost. However, what they also said is that it sometimes makes them make decisions based on that cost factor. This is what they told us. The member can shake his head, but this is what they said in testimony before the committee, that they are sometimes constrained. Even the RCMP website on the witness protection program has a statement saying that for smaller police agencies, costs often impose constraints.
There is a sense that police understand that when they are taking on the witness protection program there is a cost, but sometimes it affects their decisions. When the benefits come, they come to society as a whole for breaking down gangs. They do not just come perhaps to the Victoria police force, in my case, but maybe to everybody who lives on Vancouver Island, yet they have to make the decision to shoulder those costs themselves.