Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the minister and officials for being here today.
I don't think there's any dispute around the table about the two quite small measures that are in the bill. In fact, we all know that both of these are already common practice at the Parole Board. The bill has a very comprehensive title. The bill says “drug-free prisons”. From the remarks I've heard from the minister, I guess I'd say it's a new year, but it's not a new song. The minister appears to be continuing to confuse the symptoms with the problem. The problem is addiction. The problem is not drugs in prison. That's a symptom of the problem we have generally in society and in our prisons.
The minister talked again about punishment and individual responsibility. These are not solutions to drug addiction. People who are addicted don't respond to those same triggers that other people respond to.
I would agree with Mr. Easter that we haven't seen the text of the minister's statement and it's hard to see where he's talking about the actual treatment programs in prisons. We know that since 2010 we have an additional 1,000 people in Canadian prisons. We know the correctional services budget has been cut. We know that the correctional services budget only spends about 3% of all its budget on programming.
The minister said that 75% of the people going in have addiction problems. My question for the minister is, are they being treated? Are 75% of the people in the prison system receiving addiction treatment? I think we know the answer, but I'd like to hear it from the minister since it wasn't in his presentation.