Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to serve and will keep serving. I will try to make 50 years. I will see if I can do it.
There is dissension within the RCMP, and I hate to see it. It breaks my heart. However, there are two factions, and one faction of members wants to unionize, because they think they can make things a lot better for themselves and force the hand of management in the RCMP.
There was a DSSR program that I feel worked extremely well at one time. It was the envy of a lot of police forces, because government paid RCMP members to represent us. We voted for those people, and they represented us. They argued for us, worked on discipline matters, internal matters, promotional matters, and worked very effectively at one time on our pay. When they were very effective and government listened to them, we were at the top level of Canadian police forces. We did not say that we had to be number one; we just wanted to be at the top and be fair. However, things have gone downhill drastically.
Therefore, I support the bill if it will help my members in the field. I do not want to see an organization that I was so proud to serve for 35 years stay at the bottom. I want it up there and my members to be happy. When they are happy, they will serve their communities in a much better way than they do today.