Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for Winnipeg North for that question. I am really glad that he asked it. However, I think the way in which he spun the question was interesting.
The member said that the government did not allow the RCMP to spend its allotted budget, which is absolutely not true. There was $10 million sent back over the five years, but there are reasons for that, and I would like to talk about that briefly.
I had the opportunity to work with Sheldon Kennedy at the Child Advocacy Centre in Calgary. He built that program. I was able to tour the facility when it was opened and meet with many of the RCMP officers who are working as part of the team at the CAC in Calgary.
They spoke about some of the issues they are facing and how traumatic and extremely difficult this line of work is. It is something they are passionate about, certainly, but it is also something that I think any law enforcement officer would have a great deal of difficulty doing for more than a couple of years. One of the issues they talked about was the high rate of turnover as part of that job.
I was able to speak to many of those RCMP officers about the traumatic pictures they were seeing and having to sit down with these children who were brought to the CAC to discuss the issues they had gone through. The stories were horrific. Because of that, we are seeing a high turnover among the RCMP in this industry.
Therefore, a great deal of those RCMP dollars went unspent. It was not because we did not allow the RCMP to spend that money, but because of human resources issues. The RCMP just could not fill those child advocacy roles and carry out the cyberjustice activities we were looking to do.
However, we have looked at other ways. We have given $10 million to child advocacy centres across the country. We found other ways to use those dollars. I think it is important to clarify the difference.