Public Safety committee  As I mentioned earlier, there are things that the federal government almost, I won't say needs to do, but there's almost a sense that you're the only one that can from a federal perspective look after the database issues. You know, those things that affect our whole country. I'll go back to the Police Sector Council and the great work they did that was funded federally.

Public Safety committee  I mentioned in my introduction the funding that the federal government gave the Police Sector Council and I mentioned the suite of police competencies, job descriptions, and that whole piece of work that was put together. That to me is a great example of where the federal government....

Public Safety committee  In the last three years we've actually reduced our strength by one. We've found that we have adequate strength. Some of the realignment that we discussed was front-end loading our response folks. We've actually added supervisors to the street. We have a lot of young officers. We have two patrol sergeants on each team now, which really helps to serve the public better.

Public Safety committee  Yes. It is similar to that of Cobourg. It's around 27%. In a recent budget submission.... We keep hearing that our costs are escalating, compared with other departments in the city. We found that in 1984 the police service represented 15.7% of the cost of all the city departments, and in 2013 we're exactly the same; we're at 15.7%.

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. We are. We've had an auxiliary police program since the mid-nineties. We have about 12 to 15 officers coming and going. It's a great program, in many ways. First, they serve the community by coming out and assisting our officers. It's that extra set of hands on the street.

Public Safety committee  Yes, thank you. Provincially, they're working on witness protection legislation, as well. Again, the chiefs across the province are concerned about the costs that are involved. Right now we're looking at how to absorb those costs. If you look at a community such as ours, the protection of one witness, if funded through the municipality, has a major impact on our budget.

Public Safety committee  One of the things we did, which probably sounds quite operational in nature and which is not a new thing, was implement a priority street crimes unit to go after some of that low-hanging fruit that continually—those calls that you mentioned—repeat over and over again. It's more of a directed policing approach to some of the issues we have, almost like a harm reduction team, more or less, where they're out in the community trying to prevent issues before they happen.

Public Safety committee  Good morning. First, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak. I echo Chief Rudd's comments in many ways. We're an hour and a half apart down the Crowsnest Highway from each other. I'll give you a little context. Medicine Hat is a city of about 62,000 folks in the southeastern corner of Alberta, somewhat isolated from bigger centres such as Calgary and Edmonton, which creates some of its own issues.