Mr. Speaker, this is a government that likes to talk tough on crime and point to all its legislation of increased mandatory minimums and all the deterrents that are supposed to happen, even though we all know that there is absolutely no evidence that these tougher penalties have an impact on the crime rate. At the same time, it does things that make it much more difficult for municipal police and the RCMP to do their jobs.
One of those is the government has continued to cut the budgets available since 2012. The Conservatives like to point back a decade ago to 2006 and talk about things they did 10 years ago, but in fact for the last three years, until this year, they have been cutting the budgets. This year, they are holding them relatively steady at a level much lower than they were in 2012, which makes it much more difficult for police to do their jobs. It also makes it much more difficult for the RCMP to do things like provide the 100 RCMP members that have been promised, with no timeframe, to address the concerns in Surrey.