--yes, we've overhauled the criminal justice system and we got her done within 100 days, and we made darned sure that when we went through the thing clause by clause, nobody had a chance to talk about it for more than five minutes? Is that a source of pride?
This bill will result in new prisons, mandatory incarcerations for minor, non-violent offenders. It will justify the poor treatment of inmates. It will repeat an experience that has been shown to have failed in Texas and California. Pretty big stuff.
New prisons are going to be a significant demand on our coffers. But what I'm concerned about more than the new federal prisons is the impact on an already overstressed provincial system. Given that we haven't seen price tags--we haven't seen a price tag for how this is going to affect the provincial penal system--I know myself, in my little province of Prince Edward Island, and I fully expect that it's much more pronounced in yours, that the provincial government, the prosecutors who try these cases, are concerned about the impact of this bill. You need, I need, we as legislators need, time to hear from them. We need time to weigh their advice. We need time to incorporate it into whatever sensible changes there should be. We're cheating ourselves of that opportunity by putting this through at the pace you want.
If we really want to address criminal behaviour in this country, if we really want to do what you profess to want to do, which is to put victims first, we need to be addressing child poverty, we need to be providing services for the mentally ill, we need to be diverting young offenders from the adult—