Public Safety committee  Thank you. I'm proud of our people.

Public Safety committee  There are either too many or not enough.

Public Safety committee  There are a number of savings. Auxiliary officers, just to clarify, are volunteers. They are paid nothing. We pay for their lunch, and we do train them and equip them to a certain degree so there are costs associated with that, but no salary dollars. They certainly get worker's c

Public Safety committee  For sure, and once again that saves in society in many different ways, whether in a reduction in suicides, addiction, or people getting involved in criminal activity.

Public Safety committee  I have no intention of it, in those positions.

Public Safety committee  Those community services positions are really the gateway and the voice of the police in communities. Through their prevention efforts and what they do, they ultimately save us work. If they can teach a kid what to do when they get lost in the bush and we find that child quickly,

Public Safety committee  I couldn't agree more.

Public Safety committee  Right.

Public Safety committee  Yes. It comes down to funding. In the current funding model—and this isn't a criticism of either the federal or the provincial government—there's the 52% that the feds give, the 48% that the province gives, and when you add those together it cannot sustain adequate policing in th

Public Safety committee  It is, but it's bigger than that. There are other social service agencies that are absent from some of those communities, for obvious reasons—there's nowhere to work or live. If we put more officers in communities and they stayed there because there is a place to live and they ar

Public Safety committee  I don't say it's diminished. Certainly, I think our pressures are such that at times it's difficult for us to routinely assist NAPS, but we do. We put officers in communities to assist them all the time. We take calls for them all the time. We support them in major investigations

Public Safety committee  Yes, I certainly do. We police some of the first nation communities in Ontario alone; we just are the police. Others have their own police, which are funded through the joint federal-Ontario 52%-48% partnership. Others have stand-alone police departments. They are funded the sam

Public Safety committee  It's a community of only about 2,000 people, and I think last year they had almost 4,000 lock-ups in the cells. It's a community that has all sorts of social issues on top of policing. There are no social service agencies there, so the police become all things to all people. It's

Public Safety committee  I know Anne very well. She's a community services officer.

Public Safety committee  She does. Yes.