Public Safety committee  That's correct.

Public Safety committee  That's possible, depending on their size. I don't know that there are any right now in Ontario that wouldn't have volunteers in some capacity.

Public Safety committee  It could well be. He may be right on the money still. I don't know, but I think the Toronto police has a significant number of volunteers now.

Public Safety committee  Obviously, if the federal government is going to influence any police department that way, it would be through the RCMP. Increased funding—for example, the federal government has funded the police officers recruitment fund for five years. That just ended but that was a great prog

Public Safety committee  There are two things there, sir. One is that smaller police departments don't have the resources or the internal expertise to do some things. We still have police departments with 10 to 12 officers so they don't have a tactical team or homicide investigators and some of those thi

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  Yes. They are not tested and don't have to maintain the fitness level of the full-time officers, but there are extensive background investigations, really as significant as they are for police officers, in terms of a criminal record. We don't want to hire auxiliary members who ar

Public Safety committee  Most do, to a much smaller level of course. Even the auxiliary for the Toronto police, which is almost as big as we are but not quite, is nowhere near the numbers of ours. We're spread out, too, so we have auxiliary officers in most communities that we police. The Toronto police

Public Safety committee  I have no idea.

Public Safety committee  In addition to our 850-person auxiliary, we have volunteers all over Ontario who help us and our detachments. They help us with various committees in the community around crime prevention, and so on. They help with seniors or children. In the eastern region alone, which is the ar

Public Safety committee  Yes. Well, the auxiliary was included in that 600. I just remember that number from when I was stationed down here. In the eastern region alone there are at least 200 auxiliaries. Another 400 or so civilian volunteers help in our detachments, with different community groups and c

Public Safety committee  We can't take any more auxiliary officers than we have. We have a certain number and that's the number we have to live with. We should always be looking at the use of volunteers, but they can't replace police officers. They can help, and there may be some things they can do to fr

Public Safety committee  We in the OPP have traditionally responded to every call for service in policing. We're proud of that. We'll send an officer 75 miles down a gravel road just to verify that a chainsaw's missing out of a truck. There's no reason that we should. We're proud to do it and it's a cont

Public Safety committee  In the OPP, yes. We police a lot of communities and some 30,000 or 40,000 people, as well as a lot of undeveloped and rural land.

Public Safety committee  It is.