Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North): My question is for the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services. It involves the city of Guelph. I want to add right off the bat that Guelph has joined Club Zero as of 2006 under the Ontario municipal partnership fund.

In an article in the Guelph Mercury on Saturday, a spokesman from your ministry identified the latest in your arsenal of stalling tactics on your campaign promise to put 1,000 new police officers on our streets. I'll quote from the ministry spokesman, who says, "It's not just hiring the officers, but we also have to determine what areas need officers." That's exactly what the spokesperson from your ministry said.

May I remind you that your ministry doesn't hire the officers? Local police services do. These local police services also know better than anyone else in the province what areas of policing require the officers most. When are you going to stop stalling on keeping this promise, let municipalities know how many officers they are actually getting and let local police services decide how they want the officers allocated?

Hon. Monte Kwinter (Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services): I thank the member for the question. He obviously doesn't understand how the system works. Under the community policing program that his government initiated, it was a shared-cost program, with the government paying 50%, to a maximum of $30,000 per officer. The ministry does not decide how many officers a particular municipality is going to have. The municipality has to decide how many officers they can afford, pegging their share of the cost.

What happens is that we are negotiating with police services across the province to determine what number of officers they would like to access. When they do that, and when we have them all in order so we know how many of the 1,000 are going to what particular police service, we will do it. We are absolutely committed, and I can give you my guarantee, that before this mandate is over, we will be putting 1,000 new officers in the streets and communities in Ontario.

Mr. Dunlop: Minister, in that same newspaper article, Guelph police chief Rob Davis, right in your parliamentary assistant's own riding, says he couldn't wait for the McGuinty government to make good on its promise to hire 1,000 new police officers. In fact, he hasn't even had a response from your office in over two months. Because of retirements, maternity leaves and injuries, he's had to hire new police officers, but he's not getting a single penny from the McGuinty government to pay for them.

Minister, if and when you finally get around to keeping your promise, will you reimburse the city of Guelph and other municipalities for the police officers they hire on their own in the meantime? Will you do that, since your Premier made the fancy announcement last year on October 24 when he announced that you'd be hiring 1,000 new police officers?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: Every police service in Ontario has retirements, attrition, things that are happening, and they have a complement that their local municipalities have decided they're prepared to fund. What we are talking about is an additional 1,000 officers. What is happening in a lot of communities is that they're saying, "This could be imminent, so why should we hire 100% dollars on police services when we can wait and get 50% dollars?" That is what is happening. But in the meantime, they have an obligation to maintain their police service at the complement they have. We are providing 1,000 extra officers on top of that.