Correct. The finance minister stated:
We are setting aside funds to expand Canada's correctional facilities to house the expected increase in inmates as a result of changes in sentencing rules.
The budget is unclear as to the funds that are required and indeed it is unusual that one would make a prediction in a budget that one is going to increase the number of prisoners and prisons.
Leaving that aside, the changes in sentencing rules are neither warranted by the facts, falling crime rates, or the evidence, which demonstrates that the proposed and excessive mandatory minimum penalties would neither be effective nor a deterrent.
Indeed, the most comprehensive and recent study that was cited by the justice minister to justify expanded and enhanced mandatory minimums, by the respected authors Thomas Marvell and Carlisle Moody, actually rebuts the government's position. After examining the effects of mandatory minimums and other tough sentence enhancements on gun crimes across the U.S., they concluded that the gun related mandatory minimums do little to reduce crime or gun use. This is a study that has been cited by the minister in support of an evidence based approach with respect to enhanced mandatory minimums.
It is not surprising given the fact of falling crime rates; given the evidence that mandatory minimums are neither a deterrent nor effective; given the fact that they impact disproportionately the most vulnerable of people; and given the enormous cost of housing an inmate, some $90,000 a year. This is an enormous cost which does not even factor in the building of the new correctional facilities that may be required. It is not surprising that Professor Marie-Andrée Bertrand, a distinguished criminologist at the Université de Montréal characterized the sentencing changes as a catastrophe.
She added, “No fewer than 24 new offences will be subject to four years of imprisonment. This is a catastrophe”.
This commitment to enormous expenditures for more prisons and more inmates as a result of sentencing changes is devoid of any evidentary basis. It is a disturbing value choice as a high priority in a budget. It contrasts dramatically with declining investments in university research and equitable access to higher education which prejudices our competitive role in a knowledge based economy.
This is yet another disturbing value choice. This time it is with education as a low priority as compared to enhanced mandatory minimums and non-evidentary based approach as a high priority, even though that education is not only inextricably bound up with the imperatives of a knowledge based economy, but the defining signature of a society's values.
Yet this budget allocates only $250 million over five years to research and development, one-tenth of what the Liberal budget would have allocated, though it is crucial that Canada maintain its momentum of investing in innovation and research.
Indeed, over the last decade Canada has established a package of programs that have allowed universities, hospitals and research institutions, and society as a whole, to attract a large number of the most promising innovators in the world, including Canadians who have come back, repatriated to their homes here because of the attraction of this kind of support for research and education.
As well, when one speaks of investments in higher education and equitable access to post-secondary education, the Liberal budget had included a grant of $6,000 to students over their four years at university, while the Conservative budget is giving students a tax break on textbooks of $80 a year. Again, this is a disturbing value choice with respect to priorities and principles.
This budget does not provide the necessary leadership for the building of an egalitarian, caring and a compassionate society.