Hon. Marie-Françoise Mégie: Hello, minister. Earlier, you answered Senator Gerba’s question about the content of your mandate letter, which talks about 5% of the total value of federal contracts being held by Indigenous businesses.

I did not quite understand whether you set any targets for Black communities, but you will need to have targets in order to measure these communities’ progress and determine whether the objectives have been met.

I am not sure whether you mentioned targets for these communities.

Hon. Marie-Françoise Mégie: Thank you for being with us today, minister. My question has to do with community safety. In your December 21, 2021, mandate letter, you are asked to do the following, and I quote:

 . . . make our communities safe and increase forest resilience to wildfire, including training 1,000 new community-based firefighters, investing in equipment . . . to reduce risks from wildfire . . . .

How many new firefighters have you trained and what new equipment has been acquired? As senators know, Canada manufactures excellent water bombers.

Hon. Marie-Françoise Mégie: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. Two weeks ago, on May 25, to mark the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death, the U.S. President signed an executive order on the use of deadly force in policing. On December 16, 2021, Prime Minister Trudeau clearly set out the following priority in the Minister of Public Safety’s mandate letter:

Prohibiting the use of neck restraints in any circumstance and the use of tear gas or rubber bullets for crowd control alongside developing national standards for the use-of-force;

If the Minister of Public Safety hasn’t yet prohibited the use of neck restraints in any circumstance, would he consider announcing plans to deliver on that commitment at the Coalition for Canadian Police Reform conference being held next week?