Mr. Speaker, amid multimillion dollar deficits and cutbacks to our frontline correction officers, Correctional Service Canada came up with an ingenious idea of producing a glossy millennium calendar for our inmates and parolees.
If Correctional Service Canada is willing to waste $78,000 on calendars for inmates, then what is next?
I am very concerned that the commissioner has gone new age and we will soon seen mud baths, herbal wraps and yogi flying at the Kingston pen.
I honestly do not think the solicitor general knows what has been spent. From documents I have obtained I know that on October 12, 1999 his department needed $75,000, but was short $30,000, which was diverted from other areas to complete the project. To add insult to injury, no one wants the darn things. I have a box of returned calendars for the solicitor general.
Lesson No. 5 is a little fatherly advice for the solicitor general: get control over the commissioner or face my next lesson on basic government management. He knows the part. It says that cabinet ministers outrank department heads.