Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have a few different areas to comment on, but I would perhaps switch the format here and see if I could put them out one at a time and see if the Minister would engage in how much ground we could cover in the 10 minutes allotted here. I'm going to be repeating a number of areas, but I do want to get a couple things on the record here.
To the number of police we are able to staff in the Northwest Territories and specifically to the police in the smallest communities, they too should have a police presence. It's something that's certainly very desirable. Is it warranted? I know that in previous discussions of this nature the department has come back and often said, well, you know, given the volume of crime or the kind of things that an RCMP officer would be called to attend to in the community, it has been very difficult to justify. But the presence of police in small communities means so much more than being able to act for or when offences occur. There's so much more about community building and sovereignty. So I am certainly a fan of trying to increase the number of officers we have in small communities.
There's been a call to put together a business plan that would see what the commitment is that would be required for the Northwest Territories to do this. I'm under no illusions that it would be a huge bill of tens of millions of dollars to try and do it all at once, but maybe there is a way that we could, in a planned and more strategic way over perhaps a period of several years, we could achieve this.
The news that the Minister provided about the federal government having to supply 30 percent of the staffing dollars, I guess here's where I'd put a question out. Would that include the cost of overheads and building and operating police barracks and offices in the smaller communities? Where would the revenue come for that, Mr. Chairman?