Thank you, Mr. Speaker, but as you well know, the whole issue here is the Conservative misuse of resources, and I will take a moment just to set the case for how badly Conservatives have managed the fiscal direction of the country and how that has an impact on their criminal justice policies as well. I know the Conservative members opposite do not like to hear the facts, but as a financial administrator, which was my profession before I became a member of Parliament, I will say that they are going to have to just accept that facts have to be brought to the table.
We had $1 billion for the G8 and G20 summits. We have had the Senate appointments, of course, the Olympic waste and the overruns in the security budget, and the advertising budget being supersized at multiple times what the advertising budget was supposed to be. We had the absurdity of doorknobs being changed in Prince Edward Island and hundreds of dollars spent on signs advertising that. We had the AbitibiBowater payoff of $130 million and the F-35 fighter jet costs.
Coming back to criminal justice policies, we also have the $9 billion boondoggle on the creation of prisons. That is what the Conservatives say is their criminal justice policy. They have managed very ineptly the finances of the country, but they are saying, “Trust us on crime”. They brought forward this bill that could have received all-party consent immediately, because as I mentioned earlier on Bill C-39, some of the provisions all parties support, but they wanted to throw a few poison pills in it just to provoke more of a debate.
We have to wonder, when they are willing to put $9 billion in prisons, what they are cutting back on. That is the point that I want to make and why it was important to talk about the fiscal ineptitude of the government, because when we look at the criminal justice system we see the same kind of mean-spirited, inept, incompetent approach on criminal justice issues.
What have they cut back? It has not just been the constant verbal assaults on our police officers and police chiefs that we saw during this incredibly divisive gun registry debate. It is also what they have chosen not to put money into. The public safety officer compensation fund was an NDP motion, voted on by Conservatives. Four years after they were elected, they are still refusing to put in place a public safety officer compensation fund so that when police officers or firefighters die in the line of duty, their families are compensated. It is absolutely appalling, but that is their approach, to say to police officers and firefighters, “We do not care about you”. Four years they have been waiting. Every year they come to Parliament Hill. Every year they get the back of the hand from the Conservative government.
The Auditor General's report is very clear about the kinds of investments that are needed for forensic laboratories with the RCMP. What we have seen is an increase of nearly 25% to 30%, depending on the location across the country, in waiting times for important forensic information that leads to crimes being solved. In the Vancouver area, where I come from, the lower mainland of British Columbia, we are talking about now a half a year wait for important forensic information.
It is criminally irresponsible to say, “We are going to throw a bill into the House of Commons but we are not going to provide supports for our police officers. In fact, we are going to verbally attack them. We are not going to put those additional police officers that we promised on the streets of Canadian cities. No, we are going to cut back on that. We are going to cut back on the forensic lab support”.
Even though more resources are called for, they are saying to the Canadian public, “No, we do not want to put more resources into forensic labs so we can get information back more quickly, so our law enforcement authorities will be able to solve crimes more quickly. No, we are going to take all of that $9 billion and invest in new prisons, not in supporting our front-line police officers, not in solving crimes”.
This is absolutely irresponsible, incompetent behaviour, and that is exactly what the government is doing.
It has cut back on courts. We have seen in my own riding of Burnaby--New Westminster, and this is partly federal Conservative but also partly provincial Liberal irresponsibility, that they closed the local courthouse, so we now have more of a backlog in the court system as well.
The front-line police officers are not getting the support they need. The forensic laboratories are not getting the support they need. The court systems are being cut back, so the criminal prosecutors and judges cannot do the work they need to do.
Perhaps the most reprehensible in all of this dumb on crime approach, incredibly short-sighted for all the key sectors that actually need investment of resources, is crime prevention. We have been saying this morning and as the debate has gone on into the afternoon that the Conservative government has cut back on 70% of crime prevention funding.
What does that mean? Looking at the National Crime Prevention Centre, looking at community crime prevention programs, it means that the programs that actually prevent crime are not being adequately funded.
Is that appallingly stupid? Yes, it is. We know, and international studies have shown this as well in case after case, that to put a dollar into crime prevention funding, $6 will be saved later on in policing costs, investigation costs, court costs and prison costs.
On the $9 billion that the government wants to waste on prisons for unreported crime, we must remember that the crime rate has been coming down, despite Conservative ineptness on this issue, because of demographics. As the population ages, the crime rate goes down. It is the same phenomenon we are seeing in western Europe and in the United States.
In terms of cutting back on crime prevention and putting $9 billion into prisons, when one-sixth of that amount would lead to a much more effective approach to criminal justice issues, a much lower crime rate, and most importantly in this corner of the House, fewer victims, should that not be the goal of the government?
That is certainly a fundamental Canadian value. What Canadians want to see in the criminal justice system is fewer victims. They want to see fewer victims of violent crime, fewer victims of property crime.
Yet this government does the exact opposite of what it needs to do and does it by shovelling money like there is no tomorrow, like there is some kind of magical Conservative money tree out there where they can just take $9 billion and build the new prisons for unreported crime. Forget about crime prevention programs and forget about supports for forensic laboratories to actually solve the crimes. Forget about front-line police officers. Forget about compensating the families when those police officers are killed in the line of duty. Forget about all of that because what the Conservatives want to do is build their legacy: $9 billion in brick and mortar prisons for unreported crime. It is an absolutely absurd, irresponsible approach, but that is what the government is choosing to do.
The Conservative MPs here are not ripping up the talking points forced on them by the PMO. They are not supposed to deviate from that or think for themselves. They are not supposed to think for their community. They are not supposed to think in the best interests of the country. No, they are supposed to take what the Prime Minister's Office gives them and read it verbatim.
Every single one of them knows, if they have been consulting with crime prevention activists in their community, that their goal should be fewer crimes and that is done by investing in crime prevention.
Their goal should be a more rapid turnaround and swiftness in justice. That is done by adequately funding the forensic laboratories.
Their goal should be more community policing. The way to do that is to put more front-line police officers in the streets of the city, as they promised years ago and have not delivered.
Their goal should be that when a police officer falls in the line of duty his or her family is taken care of.
Even though they voted on my motion and they said they would bring it in, they have now been stalling for four years in doing that fundamental thing.
What else have the Conservatives cut back on? They have also cut back on programs on drug-impaired driving. It is an absurdity. These are the things they are cutting back on so that they can build nine billion dollars' worth of prisons for unreported crime.
I want to come back to the forensic laboratory. I talked about average wait times of 114 days, and higher in the Vancouver region where it is nearly half a year. How do other countries handle the turnaround for forensic laboratories?
The Forensic Science Service in the United Kingdom has a turnaround of seven days as opposed to nearly half a year. The National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Sweden has a turnaround time of 28 days. The Auditor General's report indicates that even in the United States, which has not been as good at forensic funding as it should be, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has a turnaround of 80 days. These jurisdictions are adequately funding their forensic laboratories. They are putting the resources in place. They are putting the money where it needs to go.
It is absolutely foolish to say that a priority for the criminal justice system as reflected in Bill C-39, with the little poison pills thrown in by the government as justification for the building of more prisons for unreported crime as the President of the Treasury Board said so clearly, is to spend $9 billion to build these prisons. Yet the programs that are being starved for funding or have received substantial cutbacks in funding, such as the National Crime Prevention Centre, have to go hungry while the Conservatives strive through Bill C-39 to build more prisons.
We in this corner of the House are looking for a smart on crime approach. We need fewer victims. We need fewer crimes. We need to ensure that programs for problem youth are present, because we know these youth can be diverted away from a life of crime at an earlier stage. Study after study has shown that. Yet we have seen cutbacks in key youth crime prevention programs and youth program funding, so there is a greater chance for these youth to go to prison, which is a university for crime. Then we see, as the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said yesterday in the House, the government cutting back on other programs, within the prison system, as well.
If our objective is to reduce crime, to have fewer victims, there are two things we have to do. First, we have to make sure that we head off people, particularly youth, who find themselves drawn into a life of crime. We have to stop that cold. We have to make sure there are fewer victims. Crime prevention programs, sadly cut by the government, actually accomplish that. Second, when these individuals go to prison, we have to make sure that we get the rehabilitation rate up as high as possible.
Nobody who is a risk to society should be released. However, we have to make sure that those who come to the end of their sentence have been completely rehabilitated. How do we do that? We do that through the agricultural program in the prison system that the Conservatives cut back. We do that through psychiatric counselling and treatment. In the estimates of the Correctional Service of Canada, up to 50% of those in the prison system are subject to psychiatric counselling and treatment. They have mental health issues, so we have to provide more support there. Instead, the Conservatives have supplied less. In term of education programs, there again the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said very clearly that what we have seen is less support, not more.
In every single stage of the criminal justice system, the mean-spirited Conservative government has slashed and burned all of the programs that reduced the crime rate and reduced the number of victims in society. Instead, the government offers more crime, more victims, and more prisons. What a foolish concept. What a foolish approach.
