No, my colleague Mr. Petit made a statement I do not agree with, and I wanted to talk to you about it before putting my questions.
It concerns the statistics in the brief by the John Howard Society of Canada, regarding the correlation between unemployment and robberies committed between 1962 and 2000, the figures you reported. The statistics should be examined more closely before that correlation can be assumed. Nineteen eighty to 1983, as it happens, were the years in which the number of robberies was highest and in which the unemployment rate was also very high. Unless we were living on another planet, we all know what happened in Canada during that time. The number of robberies was also high between 1989 and 1992, and 1993, and perhaps in 1994 as well.
We also had to be living on another planet to claim that unemployment insurance is the only factor at play here. You are quite right in saying that when the economy is doing well, crime rates drop. However, the economy is only one of the factors that need to be taken into account.
I am putting this question to any of you who might wish to answer. I have not heard much about the impact Bill C-10 might have on the increase—and I am choosing that word carefully—in racial prejudice we find in our prisons.
I am talking about penitentiaries, because it is penitentiaries I know about. In fact, I even met with you at the Leclerc detention centre.