Mr. Speaker, I will repeat myself for the benefit of my Conservative colleagues. It costs $52,205 a year to keep someone detained. There will be an additional 13,000 people detained. My colleagues will do the math. It is 13,000 inmates multiplied by $52,205.
I did not make this up. I got it from a study entitled, Adult Correctional Services in Canada, conducted by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, and which we can find in the 2005-06 report of the Adult Correctional Services in Canada, Juristat, Volume 28. I hope my colleagues will wait because I have not finished. It gets better.
I can see why a person would want to bend the truth when they do not want to tell the truth, but statistics do no lie. I am not making this up. “Another Statistics Canada study found that adult offenders who spent their sentence under supervision in the community were far less likely to become reinvolved with correctional authorities within 12 months of their release than those who were in a correctional institution”. Those are not my words. That is what Statistics Canada found.
When we are told something that is not true we must stand up and debunk it. That is precisely the problem with this bill. It does not tell the truth and will not solve our problems.