Bill C-12 (Historical)

Drug-Free Prisons Act

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to require the Parole Board of Canada (or a provincial parole board, if applicable) to cancel parole granted to an offender if, before the offender’s release, the offender tests positive in a urinalysis, or fails or refuses to provide a urine sample, and the Board considers that the criteria for granting parole are no longer met. It also amends that Act to clarify that any conditions set by a releasing authority on an offender’s parole, statutory release or unescorted temporary absence may include conditions regarding the offender’s use of drugs or alcohol, including in cases when that use has been identified as a risk factor in the offender’s criminal behaviour.

The House proceeded to consideration of Bill C-12, the Drug-Free Prisons Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Drug-Free Prisons Act

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

There is one motion in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-12.

The sponsor has indicated that she will not be proceeding with her motion. Consequently, there will be no motions at report stage. The House will now proceed without debate to the putting of the question to concur in the bill at report stage.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

moved that the bill be concurred in at report stage.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

When shall the bill be read a third time? By leave, now?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak this afternoon to Bill C-12, which seeks to eradicate drugs from our federal penitentiaries.

From the outset, I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for studying and adopting this legislative measure. It is an important measure for fighting the use and presence of illicit drugs in our federal penitentiaries and holding offenders responsible for their actions. I am pleased to see that the committee recognized the importance of moving forward with this legislative measure.

Drug use and abuse in our federal prisons is a serious and pervasive problem, one that cannot be solved overnight. It may seem logical that prisons ought to be free from drugs, but unfortunately this is not the case. The reality is that 75% of offenders are entering Canadian federal prisons with a substance abuse problem. Moreover, almost half of all federal offenders are serving sentences for crimes that are directly related to their substance abuse, so the reality is that when offenders enter our federal penitentiaries, they have a serious drug addiction problem. Rehabilitation helps those offenders to get rid of their drug addictions. That is why Correctional Service of Canada launched a program to eliminate and eradicate drugs in prisons. It has been in place since in 2008.

When Correctional Service Canada launched its transformation program in 2008, one of its priorities was to eliminate drugs in its institutions.

The goal is simple: put an end to drug smuggling in federal penitentiaries. There are two benefits to getting drugs out of our federal penitentiaries: It will make penitentiaries safer for the staff and, of course, it will help our inmates in their rehabilitation.

Drugs and other contraband in our federal prisons cause a serious security problem for our correctional officers. Offenders who are often under the influence of drugs are more erratic, unpredictable, and often violent toward correctional officers, themselves, and other inmates. This destabilizes the institutions and puts the men and women on the front lines at risk.

Drug paraphernalia causes another layer of risk. Needles in the hands of prisoners simply give another weapon to prisoners seeking to harm our front-line personnel. If I may digress for a moment, this shows just how foolhardy an approach the NDP has taken by seeking to establish a needle exchange in prisons. Is it naïveté or hubris that the NDP believes these easily concealed needles would not cause a risk to front-line staff?

Our correctional officers play a key role in the correctional system. They maintain the safety of our federal penitentiaries while monitoring the offenders, supervising them and interacting with them. Regardless of the nature of their clients, the inmates, and their place of work, correctional officers deserve to work in a safe place where their integrity will not be not adversely affected and where they will feel safe.

Removing drugs from our federal prisons contributes to that goal and by so doing, we are also helping offenders successfully reintegrate into society. Some of them have to take a drug treatment program as part of their correctional plan. If they do not have access to drugs when they are incarcerated, their chances of success are greatly increased. This helps reduce the demand for drugs and ensures that these offenders are making progress toward a successful rehabilitation.

As in a legitimate economy, when demand drops, so does supply. Supply adapts to demand. This formula also works in our federal prisons. By putting an end to drug smuggling in these institutions, we can ensure that offenders are successful in their drug treatment program. Success in these programs will result in a lower demand for drugs and, therefore, a drop in supply.

Ultimately, removing drugs from our federal prisons will help keep Canadians safe. With this goal in mind, our Conservative government has implemented a number of measures to directly target drugs inside our prison walls. We have seen great progress on a number of fronts, progress that has been recognized by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in its report following its 2012 study on drugs in federal prisons.

For example, Correctional Service Canada adopted a consistent approach to manage all of the main entrances and vehicle service entrances, which provide access to penitentiaries.

Correctional Service Canada has increased the number of teams of sniffer dogs. We have also brought in new equipment to improve scanning for visitors and other people who go in and out of federal prisons every day.

Correctional Service Canada has also developed a national database for monitoring and tracking visitors. These are practical tools to control the movement of people and goods entering penitentiaries to keep drugs out.

Correctional Service of Canada has also expanded its random urinalysis testing of offenders to reduce the availability and consumption of drugs inside institutions. In fact, since 2013 CSC has been carrying out random urinalysis testing on 10% of offenders every month, increasing the chances that all offenders will be subject to a random test each year.

All of these measures directly support the efforts made to make prisons a secure environment in which corrections staff are safer and in which offenders can focus on rehabilitation. The Drug-Free Prisons Act is another step towards achieving that objective.

Earlier I mentioned that Correctional Service Canada was increasingly using random urine sample screenings to effectively target offenders over the course of a year. The measure we are implementing is based on that work. It will amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to give Correctional Service Canada and the Parole Board of Canada new powers so that they can use data taken from the urine sample screenings to hold offenders responsible for their actions.

Essentially, if an inmate's urine sample tests positive for the presence of drugs, there will be consequences with both Correctional Service Canada and the parole process, since this inmate is clearly not ready to reintegrate into society.

Under the legislation, the Parole Board would have the explicit authority to cancel an offender's parole if the offender fails a urine test between the time at which he or she is granted parole and the time he or she physically leaves the penitentiary.

It is important to note that any offender who refuses to take a urine test during this time is considered to have failed the test. In this way, there is no loophole that an offender could slip through. The onus falls fully on the shoulders of the offender to ensure that he or she stays clear of drugs in order to be released on parole.

The bill would also stipulate the Parole Board's authority to set specific conditions for an offender as part of his or her parole in relation to an offender's use of drugs or alcohol. In other words, it could impose a condition that the offender must completely abstain from all drug or alcohol use while on parole.

These two amendments will strongly encourage inmates and former inmates to make better decisions and to abstain from drugs over the course of their incarceration and parole. This is all part of the objective of making Canadians safer.

Ultimately, the concept of the bill is simple. By providing drug-free prisons, we would be helping offenders work toward successful paroles and reducing recidivism, and ultimately there would be fewer drugs on our streets.

I appeared in front of the committee on public safety and was pleased to see the bill receive positive support, so I hope the bill can proceed quickly at report stage and pass without further amendment so that we can take another step towards freeing our penitentiaries of drugs by providing tools to the Correctional Service of Canada so that it can move in that direction.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his remarks. It is true that the NDP has supported the bill.

I want to ask the minister if he will admit that the only thing the bill would really do is put into law the practices of the Parole Board of removing parole from those who fail drug tests and of applying conditions about drug use to parole. In other words, there would be no real change here. In fact, the discretion would remain with the Parole Board.

In addition to the fact that there would be no real change, although it is positive to make things explicit, what else is there in this bill about drug-free prisons? It is actually a false title on the bill. It is really a bill about entrenching Parole Board practices for dealing with failed drug tests and setting parole conditions. It really has nothing to do with drug-free prisons.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is one fundamental principle underlying the bill, which is that we want to empower offenders to take responsibility for their behaviour both in prison and during their statutory release.

One has to note that almost 95% of offenders who are seeking rehabilitation in our facilities are being provided with services. Correctional Service of Canada has also implemented an early detection system, so that whenever an offender is entering a facility, CSC is able to evaluate if there is a need to provide some support resources.

In that sense, the bill would provide more tools for offenders to be responsible for their behaviour so that they can free themselves of their addiction. The tools are provided within the facilities and are part of a successful rehabilitation.

One thing the bill would help prevent is offenders continuing to have a drug addiction while serving a sentence. We believe this is not the ideal condition for these individuals, and it also represents a threat to society, since these drug addictions may encourage criminal behaviour.

We are proud to bring forward a bill that would impose consequences on offenders who are not drug-free and who are still using drugs, whether in prison or during their statutory release.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, like the critic from the NDP, I too wondered if the minister was really talking about a different bill than Bill C-12, in the way he basically painted it all out of proportion. The bill's title shows the kind of deception that comes forth from the government. The drug-free prisons bill is not going to make prisons drug free.

The minister, in answer to a question, said that the bill was to empower the offender to get free of drugs. The Correctional Investigator, in his 2011-12 annual report, said the following, which I think is the way one empowers an offender:

...a comprehensive and integrated drug strategy should include a balance of measures— prevention, treatment, harm reduction and interdiction.

Will the minister come forward with a program in this area? Does the minister not agree that to really make prisons drug free, these are the kinds of programs that we need, rather than just more punishment, that we really need a drug strategy in prisons to assist people to get off drugs, rather than just penalties?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the member that the bill is part of an ongoing strategy brought forward by our government over the course of the last year, in which we have invested more than $100 million. We have invested in stopping the revolving door of drugs into our prisons. This is an issue that all modern countries are facing, but we are dealing with the issue by including drug detector dogs, security intelligence capacity, and perimeter security.

We have to go to great lengths to prevent drugs from entering our facilities, but at the same time, I would be remiss if I did not mention the excellent programming for substance abuse offered to offenders in our penitentiaries. Correctional Service Canada provides a range of internationally accredited substance abuse programs to offenders whose substance dependence is related to their criminal behaviour. If the member may recall, in my opening remarks I noted that there are many offenders who enter our penitentiaries with drug addiction related problems. They have an opportunity to take advantage of the great program offered by Correctional Service Canada to get rid of their drug addiction.

In the meantime, we will not tolerate the use of drugs in our facilities. That is why we need to be efficient in the measures we are putting forward to make sure that those who are found using drugs in our facilities will have to face the consequences.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, when we studied Bill C-12 in committee, witnesses noted that many individuals who find themselves incarcerated have committed serious crimes, in many cases connected to serious drug addiction and other types of illicit drug abuse. The minister mentioned this at the start of his speech.

In committee, we also heard that it was important that the bill would put the onus back on the offender to really take advantage of some of those programs available, and to ensure that when they are eligible for parole, they leave prison and go back into the community drug free. I think most Canadians would agree that someone who finds himself in jail as a result of crimes or drug addictions should leave the penitentiary, or that system, drug free.

Therefore, my question for the minister is two-fold. The bill would ensure that offenders know that these tests are being done. First, does he feel that informing inmates of the ramifications of continuing use of illicit drugs would change their decisions so they would be eligible for parole and be able to be integrated into society?

Second, if we did not pass legislation like this, if we did not have programs in place but simply turned a blind eye to this type of problem in our penitentiaries, what would be the success rate of offenders being reintegrated into society and capable of holding down jobs and contributing to the economic prosperity of the country?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for her excellent question. She has given me an opportunity to describe the three-tier approach we have taken in our drug-free prison strategy.

The first tier is controlling and stopping the access to drugs in our facilities. We have invested massively in this area.

In the second tier, we are sending strong signals of deterrence to increase offender accountability and penalties. We want to make sure that we put the onus on the offenders to quit their drug addiction if they want to get back into society more quickly.

The third tier is prevention and treatment. I have interesting statistics here regarding the investment in treatment, which is massive. I also have some statistics here that show that our strategy is working.

Let me just give an example. In 2013-14, 16,500 urine analysis tests were given in penitentiaries, of which 1,000 tested positive for intoxicants and 1,000 tests were refused. That amounts to 6% that tested positive and 7% that were refused. It means that more than 85% of inmates were drug-free.

There is still room for improvement, but when we look at the statistics of those who went into our penitentiaries with a drug addiction, we can see that we are on the right path in helping inmates to get free of their drug addictions. By doing so, they are more successful in their correctional plan for rehabilitation.

This is a demonstration of, and I would say reinforces, the fact that when they go back into society, they will contribute to society and not pose a threat. The increases the safety of Canadians. That is our first and most important objective.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by saying that we are supporting this bill at third reading because of its narrowness.

That is not something people would recognize from looking at the title. They would think this bill had sweeping and miraculous provisions allowing Correctional Service Canada to attain drug-free prisons, something that no corrections system anywhere in the world has ever been able to achieve.

Instead, all it includes is a very narrow amendment to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that makes it clear in law that the Parole Board may use the positive results from drug tests or refusals to take drug tests in making its decision on parole eligibility, something that is already the practice of the Parole Board. It also makes clear that the Parole Board can impose conditions about drug and alcohol use as a condition of parole, which of course the Parole Board already does.

The discretion, when there is a failed drug test, or a failure when someone on parole gets involved with drugs, remains where it should be, with the Parole Board. For that reason, we support the provisions.

However, what we have trouble with is the misleading title of this bill. I really think the government has engaged in a kind of propaganda exercise here where it wants to go to the public and say that it passed a drug-free prison bill, as if that had some impact on the real world.

What we really need here is something more than the narrow scope of this bill, something that would actually attack the real problem, which is the addiction problem in society in general, particularly among those who end up in the corrections system.

The independent Parole Board is still best placed to judge the individual cases and the consequences of failures of drug tests or failures to meet conditions of parole. Again, we do support this bill because it does not interfere with that.

Let us talk about the Conservatives' real approach here. When they talk about drug-free prisons, we all know that like all zero tolerance policies, these are not policies at all but simply aspirations. A policy has actions that are taken to achieve an objective. The objective here might be drug-free prisons, but what is missing is a policy specifying how we would actually get there.

As I said, no correctional system in the world has ever achieved a drug-free prison system. I heard an hon. parliamentary secretary on the Conservative side posing this as some kind of dichotomy, where we choose either to have drug-free prisons or to do nothing about drugs in prison. I submit, of course, that that is a completely false dichotomy. No one is suggesting that we do nothing to attack the problems of drugs in prisons.

If we look to those who have some expertise in the area, the Correctional Investigator, the John Howard Society, and the Union of Correctional Officers, they all have said that aiming for drug-free prisons is not a realistic goal. In fact, let us have a look at some of the very specific things they have said. I will just quote from the annual report of the Correctional Investigator:

A “zerotolerance” stance to drugs in prison, while perhaps serving as an effective deterrent posted at the entry point of a penitentiary, simply does not accord with the facts of crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world. Harm reduction measures within a public health and treatment orientation offer a far more promising, cost-effective and sustainable approach to reducing subsequent crime and victimization.

Again, that is from the Correctional Investigator's 2011-12 report.

The ministers' remark toward the end of his speech that drug offenders have to choose to end their addiction really sets this in a moralistic kind of vein, rather than a health vein. We all know that addiction is a health problem; it is not a choice problem. People may make bad choices in life that lead to addiction, but once they are an addict, it is a health problem. It is not a moral failing. I think the government quite often reverts to talking about addiction as if were somehow a matter of simple choice for those who have become addicts.

The real problem that we have, of course, is that almost 80% of those who end up in the Canadian prison system come in with a substance abuse problem, either with drugs or alcohol. What is more interesting, again, as the Correctional Investigator has pointed out in numerous reports, is the fact that most of those who have committed crimes—close to two-thirds of offenders, according to his 2011-12 report—were under the influence of an intoxicant when they committed the offence leading to their incarceration. Four out of five offenders, as I mentioned, arrive at that federal institution with that same substance abuse problem.

Therefore, if we are tackling the problem as a drug problem in prison, our focus is far too narrow, because it skips over the reason that most of those people ended up prison and that their offences were committed while they were under the influence of their addiction.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives' tough on crime approach has actually made this problem worse. By instituting a lot of mandatory minimum sentences, they have ensured that people whose basic problem is addiction and not violence or criminal intent would end up caught in the net that makes sure they are incarcerated. However, if discretion had been left to a judge, in an individual case, the judge might have been able to see that the addiction was the problem and get the individual into diversion programs, such as treatment, which are far more effective than incarceration and cost far less than putting people in prison.

When we are spending more than $100,000 a year to keep a person in prison, and addiction treatment, yes, can sometimes be very expensive, costing up to $10,000, we are still talking about something that is 90% cheaper than putting people in jail. Again, this failure to think clearly about what the real problem is here in terms of addiction, and instead responding with punishment to those who have addictions, means that we end up dealing with that problem in our prisons instead of in the community where people can get better treatment programs and better support from their family and communities and where ultimately they would then end up posing much less of a threat to the community as a whole.

As part of the current government's punishment approach and its zero tolerance approach, the government spent over $122 million on improving drug interdiction in prisons. I think this was over a period of three years, but the amount is significant.

The minister liked to talk about numbers. He mentioned the number of people who failed the test, indicating that 85% of the prisoners were drug free. However, what he forgot to mention was that, before the interdiction program, he had the same numbers. Therefore, before we spent $122 million in our prisons trying to have better interdiction of drugs coming in, 85% of the prisoners were drug free, and at the end of that $122 million expenditure, 85% of the prisoners were drug free. That is a lot of money being spent for what I would call ideological reasons with very little to show for it in the end.

As well, the minister likes to focus on the fear factor by always talking about injection drugs and by making up policies for the opposition as he goes along. However, in doing so, when he talks about injection drugs, what he fails to mention is that by far the vast majority of those failures of drug tests were for marijuana and not for injection drugs. The minister exaggerates the problem of injection drugs within our prisons to create a climate of fear. Now, I will not minimize at all the threat to the correctional staff of needles in prison, and I think we share on all sides of this House the desire for a safe work environment for correctional officers.

However, this interdiction program had some unintended consequences. When one goes to interdiction, as a result of that, much tougher and stringent policies apply to family visits. We heard from witnesses in the public safety committee that families oftentimes have been intimidated into bringing drugs into prison and therefore chose not to make any prison visits to their family member rather than face the intimidation and the much higher search levels from the interdiction process. In fact, as an unintended consequence, this higher level of interdiction has actually interfered with family visits, which are extremely important in having people successfully kick addictions and successfully reintegrate into their communities.

The other thing that has happened is that it has resulted in far more lockdowns within the prisons as searches are done for drugs and drug paraphernalia within the prison. Now, how could that be a bad thing? Well, lockdowns in a prison take a significant amount of time, and when they take place, rehabilitation programming is suspended for that day. Therefore, this higher level of interdiction, this higher level of searches through the prisons, actually interferes with the very rehabilitation programming that is central to reduce the demand for drugs in prisons.

Again, looking at the real record of the Conservative government when it comes to corrections, what we see is a record of budget cuts. In 2012, the government announced that it intended to cut $295 million from the corrections budget by 2015, and it has done that. More than 10% of the whole budget of corrections has been cut at a time when the prison population has grown by more than 1,000; from 14,000 to 15,000.

Again, the minister likes to talk about the fact that the prison population did not grow to the extent people projected. That is true. Those projections were wrong. They were not my projections, but they were wrong. In fact, the prison population continued to grow at a time when the budget was shrinking.

As a result of some new construction that had been started earlier, we have had a net addition of 1,600 beds to the prison system, barely enough to keep up with the growth in prison population after the closures of some facilities. When we barely keep pace with growth, it means that we have continued with this very negative situation of extensive double bunking in the prison system. I will come back to that in just a second.

What we have is an increased number of people in the corrections system and less money for programming. I have the exact figures here, but I know that less than 3% of the total budget for Correctional Service Canada is actually spent on programming. Therefore, 97% is spent on warehousing—housing, food, and security of prisons—and less than 3% is spent on programming. What the cuts have meant, along with the increased prison population, is that there is less money per capita for each of those in our system, for things like addiction treatment and training.

This has forced Correctional Service Canada to adopt some new strategies. It has abandoned the very long-standing and proven addiction treatment programs that were offered in Correctional Service Canada. These are programs that were considered models around the world. Members of the public safety committee in the previous Parliament told me many times that when they travelled internationally, particularly to Norway and Britain, people complimented Canada on the model and had adopted the model being used for addiction treatment in Canadian prisons. What the constraint on budgets has done is cause Correctional Service Canada to eliminate that programming and go to a program that offers general treatment for a number of problems in a single program. It has added addictions to things like anger management and life planning, all wrapped together in one course.

I have to say that I sincerely hope this new combined course is as successful as the old addiction treatment program. We have no evidence yet and I have no reason to draw the conclusion it will not be, but I fear it will not be as successful. The reason it was brought about was the government's excessive focus on cutting expenditures in a corrections system that has been growing.

I will now come back to the issue of double bunking that I mentioned a minute ago. We all know that one of the impacts of double bunking is that it increases what we call the temperature in correctional institutions. There have been many examples from across the country. It means there is more conflict within institutions, there is more violence within institutions, and they are less safe for corrections officers.

Double bunking also means space has been lost for programming. Classrooms have been converted for other uses because of the extreme overcrowding in many prisons. Because of the increased temperature, there have been more lockdowns and, just as with the increased drug interdiction activity going on, more lockdowns that are a result of double bunking disrupt programming, including addiction treatment programming.

What should we be doing instead? The bill is called the drug-free prisons bill. The first thing that was said in committee was that it should not really be called that. It should be called the failure of drug tests and Parole Board bill. That is what it is really about. Instead, it is still called the drug-free prisons bill. In a previous Parliament in 2010, the public safety committee, which I serve on in this Parliament, produced a report, which I have with me today. That report is called “Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol Addiction in the Federal Correctional System: Report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security”. This was tabled in December of 2010.

In this report, there are 71 recommendations on how to attack the problem of drugs in prison. What did the government do? It decided on an interdiction program instead of the 71 recommendations from the committee. Very few of these have been implemented. Why is that? I submit it is because the recommendations actually treat addiction as a health problem instead of a moral crisis or a moral failure of those who are addicts. Instead of promising more punishment for addicts, these 71 recommendations made practical suggestions on how the demand for drugs in prison could be reduced.

Human ingenuity being what it is, we probably can never eliminate drugs from prisons, no matter how much interdiction we do. However, if we applied the health model in which addictions are treated, we would reduce the demand for drugs in prisons. Of course, successful treatment means more successful rehabilitation and more success when people return to the community.

I want to focus on one of these 71 recommendations, and that is recommendation 11. It says:

That Correctional Services Canada (CSC) review its current mental health and addictions programming to ensure that it meets the cultural and religious needs of Aboriginal offenders, who make up a disproportionate percentage of the Canadian inmate population, and a disproportionate percentage of inmates facing mental health and addiction issues; that CSC implement, together with local Aboriginal communities, more mental health and addiction programs addressing the specific needs of Aboriginal offenders. In addition to contributing to the development of these programs, local Aboriginal communities should also contribute to the delivery of these programs [within prisons] to ensure maximum success.

That is the end of that very long recommendation. Nothing has happened to it. We do not have more programs dealing with addiction from an aboriginal cultural perspective. We do not have more aboriginal communities involved in the prison system, offering culturally appropriate programming to meet the addiction problems. Instead what we have is more mandatory minimum sentences that result in more people with addictions, from aboriginal communities, ending up with longer prison sentences. The government has taken exactly the wrong approach. Even its own members on the public safety committee in the previous Parliament recommended a different approach to this addiction problem than the one adopted by the current government.

I just want to go back and summarize where we are with the Conservatives on the corrections system. What we have, again, is a relentless emphasis on punishment as the solution to our crime and addiction problems in this country, when we all know that is not the approach that works.

The NDP has long called for better addiction treatment programs, more money for programming, and in particular, again with the increase in the prison population, more worthwhile things for people to do in prison. The head of Correctional Service told us today in committee that CSC does not actually keep statistics on wait lists, that everybody is accommodated for programming. However, when we talked to people from the John Howard Society and the Elizabeth Fry Society and to correctional officers, they all told us that is simply not true. They said that many people have significant delays in accessing the program they need, whether it is addiction programming, anger management, or life skills; and that many of those people get to the end of their sentences without completing the correction plan, through no fault of their own but through a lack of resources and opportunity within the corrections system.

Do I say this because I think we are failing the inmates? Yes, I do. However, I also think we are failing Canadians in general, because all of these people will come out of the corrections system where they have failed to complete the corrections plan through no fault or personal decision of their own, and they then will have a much lower possibility of successfully reintegrating into society, getting a job, supporting their families, and being a success in the same manner that all Canadians would like to be. It is a fundamentally flawed approach again from the government.

In this bill we have a propagandistic title, drug-free prisons, and the Conservatives will announce to Canadians after this bill passes that we now have drug-free prisons because they passed a law.

In fact, going back to the reason we are supporting the bill, what we would have done is preserve the discretion of the Parole Board in dealing with those who fail drug tests in prison just before they are paroled or who fail conditions of parole. We are putting this into law. There is nothing wrong with that at all. That is why we are voting for this bill.

We did make an attempt to get the title changed to something more appropriate, but as anyone who listened to the minister's speech can see, there was no interest in actually talking about what happens in the bill; there is an interest in saying that the Conservatives have done something to create drug-free prisons and have done that through tough laws, through interdiction, and through all the things that we know, if we actually look at the evidence, have not worked in our prison system and will not work in our prison system.

What we need is an approach that recognizes addiction as a health problem and provides the addiction treatment that is needed within our prisons. That is the way we will get closer to drug-free prisons.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for those remarks. However, there was a hodgepodge of comments not necessarily related to the bill at hand, a number of which I wrote down as not completely the truth. There were a couple I wrote down explicitly. One was the double-bunking issue—

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. The hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the rules of the House are clear with respect to not casting aspersions on whether other members are being truthful in their presentations to the House, and I would ask the parliamentary secretary to withdraw those remarks.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. I thank the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca for his intervention. Indeed, when we characterize other commentary in the House as being untruthful, or as I think the parliamentary secretary referenced, not completely the truth, it gets into an area of speech that is really considered unparliamentary. I wonder if the parliamentary secretary might wish to rephrase her comments in that respect.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will retract that particular comment and rephrase it slightly differently.

The member seemed to imply that double-bunking was somewhat responsible for violent acts occurring in prisons. That is absolutely not the case. Don Head, the commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, has stated that. There was a thorough study on it. There is absolutely no correlation between double-bunking and violence in prisons. That just goes to speak to the fact that the NDP fails to recognize that federal penitentiaries do not make offenders violent, but certainly violent criminals do end up in them.

The member opposite talked specifically about the question I asked the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. He seemed to imply that when I talked about turning a blind eye to drug problems within our prisons I was somehow inferring that the opposition does that, and that is not the case.

It is interesting to note that the member opposite and the opposition parties voted against investments of over $100 million to beef up detection measures in our institutions. The member opposite said that those investments have done absolutely no good, or similar terms. Can I say that this is not the truth? In 2013 and 2014 we saw over 2,400 drug-related seizures in our federal prisons. That number has gone up and continues to grow under our Conservative government. We are stopping the illicit drugs from getting into our prisons.

The member also mentioned that certain family members may choose not to visit their incarcerated family members for fear of being searched. I take the plane quite often to come to Ottawa. I have to put my bags through the scanner. Sometimes I have had to go into the X-ray machine. I do that, because I have nothing to hide. I am not quite sure why the member thinks we should simply turn a blind eye to family members who refuse to have that type of search done before entering the prison system.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with respect, I disagree with the hon. member on double-bunking. If she looked at any of the independent evidence, not the government's own evaluations of itself on double-bunking but those from experts in corrections, it will show that double-bunking has a negative impact on levels of violence and conflict in prisons. That is 100% without dispute, except for the government's own reports on itself. It is the same thing if one talks to corrections officers. If one actually talks to the people who work in the institutions, they will talk very clearly about the impact of double-bunking.

When the member talks about families not wanting to come in because of the interdiction methods and being placed under severe pressure by those outside, she should talk to the families of inmates. They will tell her how they feel. It is not about how she feels about flying. It is about how they feel about the obstacles that are being set up and the pressure they are under that sometimes interferes with their family visits.

I will tell members another story. I met with an aboriginal elder who travelled several hundred miles to appear at a federal prison and was turned away because of a lockdown over a prison search because of the interdiction measures that were going on. He was unable to provide the counselling he wished to provide because of the interdiction lockdown. He was not compensated in any way for the hundreds of miles he travelled or for his time. He was unable to make his positive contribution within the institution specifically because of the increased interdiction measures.

The member talked about the great success and how many people they find and how many things they seize. What I was talking about, which she calls untrue, is the fact that the rate of positive tests and refusals has not changed since the beginning of the interdiction program.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca on his remarks. I think they were honest and to the point. One thing I have found about the member is that his research is good. It is evidence-based research, not the kind of lines we get from the government. There is good research there.

There are many concerns. I hear them too. They are about double bunking and about families fearful of the kind of search they may have to go through when visiting prisons. There are lots of problems the government fails to recognize, so I appreciate it when the member puts those concerns forward. A government that was doing its job instead of attacking those with concerns would try to learn from them.

The bill is called the drug-free prisons act. What would the member recommend we do to make prisons drug free? What needs to be done? We know this act will not do it. It is an act of deception. What really needs to happen to assist inmates to become more drug free?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy sitting parallel with the hon. member as the Liberal critic at the public safety committee. I think he is as committed as I am to looking at the actual evidence when it comes to the problem of drug addition within prisons.

As I said in my remarks and will say again, the first thing that has to happen is that there has to be a recognition of addiction as a health problem and not a moral failing. Once we recognize addiction as a health problem, we have to provide people with the opportunities to get treatment for that addiction problem. What we have now is an increasing prison population, a shrinking budget, and extremely narrow opportunities being presented to people to actually deal with their addictions while they are in prison. Unfortunately, too many return to the community without adequate supports and end up in their old lifestyles, where addiction drove their criminal behaviour.

How do we do it? It is a health problem. We provide adequate treatment and support when people return to the community so that they can once again become productive members of society.

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is often said that prisons are like universities where you could go and get a master's degree or a doctorate in crime and where you become an even worse criminal. Why send people to prison if they are becoming even worse offenders?

The goal is to reintegrate these people into society once they are released. However, achieving this requires certain conditions. It is not enough to lock people up and pay for guards or big machines to detect drugs. Are there really educators who will take charge of these people to help them enjoy life again and help them understand that they can become useful members of society? Will there be the resources required to allow social services to treat addiction as an illness and to help these people really get their lives in order and become productive members of society again?

If the only thing we do is set up controls to see if drugs are being smuggled into prison, we are not really doing a proper job. In fact, on the inside, they are still going to use drugs; they are going to manage one way or another.

What we are not doing here, but what is being done in Quebec, is reintegrating people and giving them a chance to return to the workforce after five or seven years in prison. They need to be able to say that they have a trade, that they are going to be able to work and that they can become good citizens.

I do not know whether my colleague agrees with that.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question reminds me of two things I need to say. One is that nothing in our remarks about family visits and the addiction problem was meant to imply that families are the main source of drugs in prison. They are not. The second is the question of mandatory minimum sentences, which the government has pursued with a vengeance.

We on this side support mandatory minimums only for the most severe crimes. They are appropriate for those, but the result has been that many more people whose basic problem was addiction end up with a long prison sentence, and as the member said, they become perhaps better criminals as a result of that rather than having their addiction treated while they are in custody.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-12, the drug-free prisons act. The place to begin is to acknowledge a straightforward fact, which is that the bill will have hardly any consequence in ensuring that prisons are drug free. It is a much bigger issue than that. Even one of the members, one of the backbench Conservative members who was there for one meeting, in discussing the bill at committee, indicated as much himself. It is a name; it is not action in terms of this particular bill.

I am always amazed, and I have said this before, at the deception of the government. They think that if it can name a bill a certain way, it will happen. It will leave the perception in the public that the Conservatives are actually doing something, but they are not. What is really required is action.

The government somehow believes that if we can treat addictions by threatening those who suffer from addiction we are actually doing something. Research has shown that on the drug issue, threats alone are not enough.

The previous member who spoke talked about drug addiction as being a health problem. Somewhere around 75% to 80% of the people who go into prison actually go in with either a drug or alcohol addiction, and many of them have mental issues as well, so there has to be treatment beyond the penalties the government is talking about imposing.

The government somehow believes that it will achieve drug-free prisons if it coerces even further those offenders about to qualify for parole. There will be some people who do not achieve parole as a result of this decision. Is that the right thing to do? Is there a better way of handling that? Those are issues that need to be looked at.

Somehow the public is to believe that this legislation will actually accomplish something new. It really will not, and that became clear from the evidence presented at committee.

The title of the bill is misleading in the extreme, while the contents of the legislation actually add little, if anything, to the situation relative to those inmates on parole. I will come to that in a little bit.

Bill C-12 is another in a long line of government legislation, some of it private members' bills from the Conservative side as well, that use victims and offenders for their ideological ends.

The first point is this: Does the bill actually bring forward new policy related to the issue of drug use and those applying for parole? The answer is a simple no. Bill C-12 actually adds nothing to the parole process that does not already exist.

In direct answer to a question I posed to the chair of the Parole Board with respect to the Parole Board being able to exercise its full discretion as it has so far, the chair responded, “That is right”. Let me rephrase that. What I was really asking the chair of the Parole Board was whether this bill would take discretion away from the chair, and it does not. The Parole Board would still have the discretion it has always had, although the bill tries to make it look otherwise.

The Conservatives have said that there was a substantial change in that regard. The fact is, Bill C-12 does not alter the ability of the Parole Board to do the job it has been doing all along. The chair of the Parole Board actually went even further when asked whether any new requirements in this legislation will add anything to the current practices of the board.

I will quote his answer. He stated:

The new information that will be provided with the legislation will trigger a review by the board, as is currently the case when any new information regarding an offender is provided to the Parole Board of Canada prior to an offender's release, which we obtain from CSC.

Again, what is contained in Bill C-12 is already in practice. It has been the practice of the Parole Board.

That is why the bill is more perception. In my view, it is not just perception, but the way the government named this bill, the drug-free prisons act, is deception to the very core when it has very little to do with that and does not deal with the real issue of drugs in prisons.

If we are to stop drugs in prisons, we have to stop the market. If we are to get people off drugs, penalties are will not do it alone. It requires programming, treatment and constant follow up. That is the only way to get people off these addictions. There is no question that people face drug and alcohol addictions. Some people do small break and enters and some get into greater crimes as they get hooked on drugs. It is a serious problem and we have to reduce the market both in prisons and in Canadian society.

I will tell a story about the correctional system. I will give the government some credit for maintaining some of the programs that were started years ago to get people off drugs.

A constituent of mine had a son who was terribly addicted to drugs, got caught doing a small crime, and was going to be sentenced to two years less a day. That parent came to me to see if I could advise her in any way on how to get her son committed to a federal institution, which is a very tough place to spend time. Of course, there was nothing I could do.

Her concern was that her son would go into a provincial institution for a small crime. Because he was so addicted to drugs, he would commit bigger crimes over time. She felt if she could get him committed to a federal institution for two years or more, maybe her son would be able to take part in the programming to get him off drugs and become a better contributor to Canadian society.

I raise that point to indicate how serious the drug issue is and just imposing penalties, as this bill would try to do based on a urine sample, is certainly not in any way going to make prisons drug free.

When the Correctional Investigator testified before the committee, he too expressed his observation that Bill C-12 added nothing to the process and procedures currently in use with respect to the parole of offenders. He stated:

The window of opportunity targeted by this bill is very narrow....As members might be aware, the parole board already takes into consideration positive urinalysis results or refusal to provide a sample when making parole eligibility decisions. The board also frequently imposes a “do not consume” or “abstain from drugs and alcohol” prohibition on those on parole or statutory release and temporary absences. Bill C-12 would simply put these practices into legislation.

The Office of the Correctional Investigator, whose specific role is the environment within which federal offenders are maintained and hopefully rehabilitated, has issued report after report with direct reference to the issue of drug use within our federal institutions.

Again, with respect to Bill C-12, the Correctional Investigator was clear about the obvious intent motivating the legislation. He said:

—Bill C-12 contemplates cancelling a parole grant on the basis of a positive drug test regardless of when the drug was ingested. Without condoning drug use, we should be clear-sighted about the consequences of proposed legal measures. This is not about making federal prisons drug-free or treating substance abuse. It is about punishing illicit drug use in prison.

That is a pretty serious charge from the Correctional Investigator. It is about punishment; it is not about cure. We will not make prisons drug-free unless we find ways to establish a cure.

I would remind the government that the objective of drug-free prisons is not something that the legislation before us would even faintly achieve.

In its 2011-12 annual report, the Office of the Correctional Investigator made the following observation with respect to the prevalence of drugs within our federal prisons. It reads:

A “zerotolerance” stance to drugs in prison, while perhaps serving as an effective deterrent posted at the entry point of a penitentiary, simply does not accord with the facts of crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

According to that same annual report of the Correctional Investigator, “Almost two-thirds of federal offenders report being under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants when they committed the offence that led to their incarceration”. The current population is about 15,000, so that would mean about 10,000 people. However, what is more disturbing is that a very high percentage of the offender population that abuses drugs is also concurrently struggling with mental illness.

My point in raising these facts is that it is a much bigger issue than urine testing. As the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca said earlier, it is a health issue. It is a huge issue in our society and in our prisons. We have to use programming that actually deals with the addiction problem to get to the bottom of this issue.

Yes, these people in prison have committed a crime, but in most cases, they will come out and be on our streets again. How do we give them the best opportunity to become good citizens and contribute to our economy, raise families and live in communities? That is what we should focus on here and not just the punishment aspect that the bill tries to portray.

The Correctional Investigator in his 2013-14 annual report was critical of the government's continued refusal to develop a comprehensive program to respond to continued drug use in penitentiaries and to undermining a key program within Correctional Services Canada, CSC, to address the addiction program

With respect to the former, the report found that:

Interdiction and suppression in the absence of a more comprehensive range of treatment, prevention and harm reduction measures will not eliminate the demand (or supply) of contraband drugs or alcohol.

According to the evidence provided to the public safety committee by the commissioner for CSC, upon admission, “about 80% of offenders arrive with a serious substance abuse problem”. He went on to inform the committee that anywhere up to 90% of a standing prison population would have a lifetime problem of substance misuse or dependence and that “this dependency does not magically disappear when they arrive at our gates”, meaning the prison gates.

Members can see how big the issue really is.

The critical issue then is that of therapy for those incarcerated with substance abuse problems. On this point, the record is clear. Again, the Correctional Investigator confirmed in his testimony before the committee that “We've seen a decrease in the actual dollars being spent on substance abuse programming this year over last year”. I want to emphasize that quote because it is something the parliamentary secretary earlier indicated might have been untruthful.

Let us call the bill for what it is. Unless the addiction issue is addressed, a problem acknowledged by public safety itself, titling a bill a drug-free prison act is really an act of fraud. It is deception, deception to the core. A drug-free prison act means nothing. The only way to get drug-free prisons is if we do the programming inside prisons. CSC admits 80% of the people have a drug or alcohol addiction before they come into the prison. That may have been part of the reason why they did the crime that put them there in the first place, or there may have been other background issues.

Yes, they have to do their time and pay the penalty and pay the price to society for the crime that they undertook, but if we are to have a better society as a country, we have to make prisons places of rehabilitation, not universities for crime. Make them places of rehabilitation that these individuals can come out, be gainfully employed and contribute to our society.

I am running out of time, but let me make one last point. I want to emphasize the fact that we will support the bill. The bill will not do any harm because the Parole Board still has discretion at the end of the day, although there will be some pressure on the Parole Board as a result of the legislation maybe to deny parole where it otherwise might not have. However, the bill will not do a whole lot of harm, but it sure as heck will not do a whole lot of good either.

I would encourage the government to do this. Instead of giving bills fancy titles and taking up House and committee time with a bill that really would do very little, it would be better off to come in with rehabilitation programs for individuals, stronger programs, to get off drug and alcohol addiction so when they have done their time, they can contribute to society in a way that will help our economy and communities. The objective ought to be that.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, through Corrections Canada, exactly $9 million were spent on addiction treatment programs in 2014 alone. When I hear the member opposite say that we have not spent money in this area, that is absolutely false.

Also the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, who delivered remarks earlier, talked about the government's three-tier approach that included: limiting access to drugs or stopping it from getting into prisons; deterrence for offenders and making them be accountable for their actions; and also prevention and treatment. I would like to have that figure on the record.

At committee and in debate now, we have heard that the reasons why offenders were committing crimes may be related to serious drug addictions. It is the Conservative government that passed laws against selling marijuana near schools and moved to end grow ops in residential neighbourhoods. Yet the leader of the Liberal Party wants to make smoking marijuana a normal, everyday activity for Canadians.

Does the Liberal member believe that only law-abiding Canadians outside of the penitentiary system should be able to smoke marijuana, or should we also give it to offenders?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, is the parliamentary secretary ever into deception today. We hear that all the time from government backbench members. I make the mistake of calling them “government backbenchers”; the government is really those members who sit in the front row. The others are members of the governing party, but they seem to take their direction from the front row, if we could say that, and their talking points from the PMO.

In any event, the leader of the Liberal Party is not, absolutely not, promoting marijuana. He is not promoting that at all. That is the deception they try to go with over there.

The fact of the matter is that our current drug laws is working in this country. Are marijuana laws is working in this country. Does it make sense to arrest somebody who smokes one toke and then cannot cross the border to the United States? Are police authorities today arresting people they find with marijuana? No, they are not, because they know the current law does not make any sense.

In my view, we should legalize the product, as was done with alcohol; put in place programming to keep people from consuming too much alcohol, drugs, and marijuana; and establish a program whereby marijuana is sold legally and appropriately, rather than, as the current government is doing, ensuring that all the profits go to the criminal trade and not doing anything about addictions.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this last exchange really illustrates to me the problem with these wild titles that are assigned for essentially propagandistic purposes and lead us to debate a topic that is really irrelevant to what is before us in the House today instead of talking about what is actually in the bill.

I was pleased to hear the member point out that while the government likes to cite large numbers like $9 million and get us to agree that it is a big number, in fact it does not tell us anything about what has happened with drug programming. The Correctional Investigator pointed out that because of the change in programming, it is very difficult to see whether there has been an increase or a decrease, but his conclusion was that there has been a decrease both in the amount being spent and in the availability of drug treatment programs.

I would like to know if that is also the conclusion of the member for Malpeque.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the $9 million figure that the parliamentary secretary indicated they are spending on these issues is, I would expect, correct, but $9 million of what? How does it relate to the year before?

We cannot get any real numbers from the government, no matter how hard we try. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer cannot get the numbers from the current government, because if there is anything it does not want to believe, whether it is about marijuana or prisons or anything else, it does not want to get into evidence-based research that might tell the real facts. I will re-quote what the Correctional Investigator said in his testimony:

We've seen a decrease in the actual dollars being spent on substance abuse programming this year over last year.

That is what is important. The Correctional Investigator is telling us that the Conservative government is not spending the dollars it ought to be in dealing with the drug addiction problems within our prison system.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the core of all this is the refusal by the government to accept scientific evidence.

We all witnessed, over the years, how the current government got rid of the long form census, despite the fact that hundreds of organizations have said this census provides useful scientific evidence upon which to base policy. We have seen how the current government muzzles scientists when they may say something the government does not want to listen to. We have seen the current government get rid of its responsibility with respect to the Experimental Lakes Area. We have seen the current government get rid of the PEARL facility in the high Arctic, which is responsible for doing research, among other things, on the depleting ozone layer above our country.

In the case of this particular bill, we are talking about the fact that the current government, because of its ideology, does not want to recognize that treating the addiction while the person is serving his or her sentence is an essential element in trying to reduce the incidence of drug addiction.

I would like to hear my colleague on that particular subject.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. He made the point himself that in so many areas that the government operates in, it really does not look at evidence-based research in its approach to policy. It has an ideology and goes with that. It will cost us substantially down the road.

In fact, when we compare the Conservatives' tough-on-crime agenda with being smart on crime, we are seeing them going in the opposite direction from some of the states in the United States. They realized that punishment and penalties alone are not the answer and that they have to get offenders into rehabilitation.

In direct answer to the member's question, the Correctional Investigator has said time and time again that there needs to be money for programming, but the money has been reduced. Research shows that it is programming, not penalties, that actually gets people off their addictions and makes the prison population safer as a result. It also gives those people a better opportunity to become contributors to Canadian society when they get out of prison.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. However, I clearly heard him state that the title of the bill had nothing to do with its content and that it was misleading Canadians.

Everyone agrees that this bill is a step in the right direction. However, it has a fundamental flaw: it does not provide for care for people with mental health issues. This problem, which was brought to my attention in committee, also existed when the member was in government.

Why is it so difficult to deal with this issue?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, prisons are certainly not the place to deal with serious mental illnesses or mental problems. There is always a cause and effect aspect to alcohol and drug addictions. They add to the problem. It is an issue that has come up increasingly in recent years, and that is a good thing. There has to be a really comprehensive strategy to deal with mental health issues across the country, a strategy that incorporates policy from the federal and provincial levels. It is a health care issue.

There is no question that if people commit a crime, they have to pay a penalty for having committed that crime, but we have to recognize in all reality that there are mental health issues out there and that too many of these people end up in prison. We have to do a better job as a society of assisting those people with mental health issues of any kind. Number one, we need to prevent them from getting into prison in the first place. Number two, we need to assist them in becoming happy and productive citizens in our society.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Before we resume debate, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina, Intergovernmental Affairs.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to this bill. I have heard my hon. colleagues from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and Malpeque, and I agree with much of what they said. I will try to avoid repeating the good points that they made and focus in on why I agree that this bill is so very lacking.

The essential difficulty goes beyond the fact that the bill does not address the serious problems within our prisons or the issue of drugs and addiction in any way that would make a meaningful difference. The essential difficulty—and this is something that bears repeating—is that as with so many bills in this place, the legislation coming at us has not been designed through the lens of someone who wants to improve public policy in an area for which the federal government has jurisdiction but rather through the lens of someone designing a brochure for the next election campaign. The titles are whiz-bang, the claims are extravagant, and the bills themselves are, in some cases, wide-ranging and disastrous, as in the case of the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38.

In the case of this bill, it has an overreaching title. Of course, who would not agree that it would be a good thing to have drug-free prisons? The title of the bill is the drug-free prisons act. In a grand total of five clauses, one of which is “This Act may be cited as the Drug-Free Prisons Act” , we have a regime that would require an offender who has already been granted parole to be subjected to a request for a urine analysis. If they refuse or test positive, the bill would then have this information referred to the Parole Board to determine whether the parole should still be granted.

There are a lot of things wrong with this idea just as a practical matter. For one thing, the Parole Board already has the power to take into consideration whether an offender is currently drug-addicted or has substance abuse issues that would affect whether they will reoffend.

The nature of urinalysis testing is that some drugs will be detected for quite a long time after the offender's use of that drug, whereas other drugs could be in and out of the offender's system rather quickly. For instance, we could have an offender in prison who was a cannabis user. That drug would still show up a long time after the last use. However, if the offender had been using cocaine, it would disappear within two days. The bill does not actually address the question of whether we are releasing someone who has a drug addiction onto the streets; rather, it answers the question of particular drugs.

As it has been pointed out by witnesses before the committee, the bill would certainly do nothing about someone with an alcohol abuse problem. In terms of the percentage of dangerous offences committed by somebody misusing alcohol versus using cannabis, I cannot tell members how often I have talked to RCMP officers who tend to relax when they approach a house and are told to be very careful because someone in there has been smoking marijuana. I have heard this story from so many of them. However, if they are told to be careful because someone in the house has been drinking heavily, they worry, because the tendency is a violent reaction.

I am not encouraging marijuana use, but when we talk about violent criminal acts, alcohol is a serious problem. This bill would do absolutely nothing to determine if this is someone who might reoffend because of a substance abuse issue that relates to alcohol.

Let us talk about the state of our prisons. We have had some claims made so far in the debate today, but I found statistics online from the Correctional Service of Canada and from the Correctional Investigator's report that were not in recent evidence before the committee, and they indicate that between 1997 and 2008, the percentage of offenders in Canadian prisons who were dealing with mental health issues doubled. The issue of mental health in the prison population is more prevalent today than it was in 1997.

Substance abuse issues are often linked to mental health issues. This point has been made, including in the debate today. The problem with substance abuse and people with mental health issues who self-medicate to try to deal with their own demons in the absence of counselling and help is that they turn to drug addiction.

Quite a significant proportion of people in the prison system were really in need of mental health assistance, support, counselling, and treatment before they entered the prison population, and are still in need of it as they leave the prison population. Some of those people are also, as an aspect of their mental health issues, dealing with substance abuse and addiction.

We have heard it claimed here today by the parliamentary secretary that we should be extremely satisfied to hear that $9 million was spent this year on addiction counselling for substance abuse in Canadian prisons. I am happy to accept the $9 million figure, but if we go online and look up Correctional Service Canada, we see that $11 million was spent on substance abuse in 2008-09. From the testimony of Conservative members of Parliament, we know that $2 million less is being spent this year than four years ago, and we also know that the prison population has been growing in that time. We also know from earlier statistics that the trend lines show that more offenders in our prison system have mental health and addiction issues than a decade ago.

I could speculate as to why that is. We do know that cutbacks, which I lament and which I know a lot of Conservative members of Parliament have raised while I have been here as a member of Parliament, to kill the deficit back in the 1990s, the cuts to transfers to provinces, downloaded a lot of problems on provincial governments, including cuts to a lot of mental health services. We transferred a lot of social problems from mental health services at the provincial level to the people who were essentially living on the streets, which I think has contributed to the fact that the offender population with mental health issues has gone up.

What on earth would this bill do to improve the situation? The answer is absolutely nothing. Not one more dime will go to mental health treatment or addiction counselling. Nothing will improve the situation for either the offender population or public safety under this bill. This bill pretends that we are doing something about drugs in prison, because it will make a good brochure for the next election campaign. It does nothing for the prison population. It does nothing for public safety.

To confirm that point, I turn to the evidence of Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I know that some of Mr. Sapers' testimony has already been referenced by members of the official opposition and the Liberal Party, but I do want to draw attention to a number of his conclusions. He points out the following:

Four out of five offenders arrive at a federal institution with a past history of substance abuse and dependancy. The use of alcohol and drugs is a criminal risk factor for a significant proportion of the offender population; however, urinalysis testing is ineffectual in monitoring or reducing the risk linked to alcohol use and dependency.

I want to underscore this. This remedy this bill puts forward will not create drug-free prisons—and the text of the bill in fact makes no pretence to having anything to do with drug-free prisons but rather punishing someone at the point of parole who might test positive—and will do nothing about one of the largest criminal risk factors, which is alcohol dependency.

When looking at this issue, we know that we need an integrated, coordinated program throughout Correctional Service Canada to redouble our efforts. This ties into another issue that has been raised recently, that some of the prison population can be radicalized to terrorist ideology when they are in prison. These are people in desperate need of mental health services and addiction counselling.

Specifically, the shooter who broke in here on October 22 had earlier begged a judge back in 2012 in a Vancouver courtroom to send him for addiction counselling, to send him to a place that could help him with mental health counselling. I believe that if we had had those services in place, we might have saved two lives on that day. Most particularly and most importantly, we could have saved the life of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, had his attacker received the help he desperately needed.

We cannot second guess these things but should be investing in mental health treatment, counselling, addiction services, and in making sure that offenders in our prison system are treated in ways that would allow them to re-enter society as contributing citizens. We should not be finding ways to deny them parole at the last minute.

I close with these words of Howard Sapers:

A better and more cost-effective way to prevent crime is to put more of our limited resources into addiction treatment and prevention programs. Zero-tolerance or punitive-based approaches to drug use and abuse and addiction simply do not work in prison.

Let us be smart. Let us do what needs to be done. Drug-free prisons are a fine goal, but the bill is a fraud on the goals the Canadian public will be told that the bill serves.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I reject some of what the member said.

Specifically, I would like to talk for a moment about the $9 million that is spent in substance abuse programs. Commissioner Don Head has spoken at our committee many times. He talked about the actual programming and the fact that 95% of offenders, before they reintegrate into society, have completed one nationally accepted program, if not two or three, before they actually leave the system. We are doing that. We have talked about a multi-prong approach to dealing with this.

I reject the comments the member opposite made with regard to our pulling the rug out from underneath an offender. She feels that in the final hour before someone is released on parole, we are somehow pulling the rug out from underneath that individual and then forcing him or her to stay behind bars. That is not the case. As I indicated, we do offer programs and we expect offenders in federal penitentiaries to participate in those programs, whether they be for substance abuse or whatever.

If someone were to test positive, someone who has maybe not participated in some of the programs available, is the member insinuating that we should just release the individual on parole and turn the other cheek?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I think “turn the other cheek” is an interesting current phrase, Mr. Speaker. We were told to turn the other cheek by a source of advice that some of us accept.

In any event, regarding what the parliamentary secretary put forward, it is clear from the evidence given at committee. I look at the evidence of Catherine Latimer from the John Howard Society. She pointed to the risk of keeping people with addiction problems in custody until their warrant expiry without benefit of the graduated and supported release programs that offenders get with parole programs and supported re-entry programs. She pointed out the following:

If you have someone with an addiction, and if the response to that is simply punitive and you're keeping them in correctional facilities until the end of their sentences, they may not get the support they would need, which might ultimately reduce community risk.

As I said before, from the evidence given before committee, urine analysis is completely ineffective. It does not help someone who has an alcohol addiction problem. It does not help people who are using drugs such as crack cocaine, which is associated with more violent behaviour than, say, the THC that stays longer in the system of someone within the prison walls who smokes marijuana.

Addiction problems are serious and when combined with mental health issues, they are even more serious. In this case, deciding not to grant someone parole because of residual THC in their system is one factor among many for consideration. The important thing is to reintegrate people who have served their time and to help them, through support programs, to be accepted in Canadian society as contributing citizens.

In answer to the member's question, under certain circumstances people should absolutely still get parole even if they have residuals of some substances in their system. The urine analysis is irrelevant to determining far more dangerous substances.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her remarks on Bill C-12, a Conservative government bill.

The parliamentary secretary indicated that 95% of inmates complete at least one program during their time in prison. That is what we heard at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. However, I want to pick up on that, because she forgot to mention that these were general programs, not drug treatment programs, a subject that Bill C-12 does not really address. I hope that she will set the record straight when she has the opportunity to speak again in the House. I will come back to this point, when I have the opportunity to give a speech.

I would just like to make an observation regarding the speech given by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. I really appreciated her speech since I share many of her views. As she said, as a society, we do not want people to be constantly returning to prison and reoffending. I agree. That is why we need to give them the right tools.

Could my colleague give a few examples of the right tools that we could provide to our correctional system in order to help drug addicts and people struggling with mental health problems successfully reintegrate and become good citizens, and put a stop to this cycle of returning to the prison system?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for giving me the opportunity to provide examples of other programs that work for the common good.

One thing I wish we had not lost was the prison farm system. It made a real difference for offenders, and helped them restore—and not just restore, but for some offenders, made them feel for the first time in their lives—the belief that they could perform a meaningful role in society and gave them a sense of well-being and value.

In the fight to keep the prison farm in Kingston, Ontario, I became much better acquainted with how many offenders for the first time were working outdoors, planting something and letting it grow. A lot of my friends on the Conservative benches have experience as farmers. There are some things that actually change lives in a meaningful way.

We know that a lot of people who were offenders sometimes found religion within the prison walls, but anything that allows an individual who has never felt worthy in their whole life to find a reason to believe that they can contribute to society is useful, and one of the most proven beneficial programs Canada had, which this Conservative administration killed, was the prison farm system. I wish we would bring it back.

We need drug addiction counselling, yes. We need mental health programs, yes, but people who are lost to us in society, everyone who is lost, must have a chance to be found. I will not break into Amazing Grace, Mr. Speaker, but I think you see where I am going.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know the exact percentage, but I understand that somewhere just over 50% of individuals going into our federal penitentiaries have serious addiction issues. It begs the question of how important it is that we have effective programs.

Often, when we hear about these effective programs, people instantly think of the prisoner, quite understandably. I would think of the prisoner too, but there are also safety elements that are a part of having good, solid, effective programs. One only needs to talk to some of our correctional officers. They have a much better understanding of the need for solid programs that will assist our prisoners to have the opportunity to stay away from the medications or the drugs.

The hon. member might want to provide some comment on our making sure that we have the resources necessary to support effective programs that would make a difference.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the cost of the prison system for Canada is not cheap. It is up to about $3 billion a year. It has been going up for the last number of years. We are now seeing overcrowding in prisons and problems with double bunking. The tendency of the current Conservative administration to pass legislation that includes mandatory minimums is creating some overcrowding problems.

The advice from the Canadian Criminal Justice Association to the committee is worth referencing. It said that when an offender has a mental health issue combined with a drug addiction issue, it is primarily a public health issue. The criminal response, of course, is that people who commit crimes should be punished, but in some cases the Canadian Criminal Justice Association suggests there would be better protection for public safety in providing addiction counselling right away, putting people into programs where they could get off drugs and immediately become more useful members of society.

Parole helps do that. Getting people into parole helps them begin to get back on that road. Each case is going to be different. Although the bill, I have to admit, does not tie the hands of the Parole Board, it would require it to take a second look at someone who is about to be released on parole.

If we want to find solutions, we have to look at the fact that 80% of the inmate population enters prison with addiction problems. There is no evidence that the use of drugs in Canadian prisons is going up. That is also in committee evidence. We need to address problems where they exist and be much more creative in allocating funds. Since we are spending $3 billion on prisons, would it not be a good idea to spend it on keeping people out of prison?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I find the short title of the bill slightly more interesting. The Conservative government chose to call it the drug-free prisons act.

Clearly, when we saw that title, we were very curious to find out what this promised drug-free prisons act was going to contain.

I was relatively surprised in one sense, but not in another, to see that the bill had nothing to do with drug-free prisons. Bill C-12 adds a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that makes clear that, when deciding whether someone is eligible for parole, the Parole Board can take into account the fact that the offender tested positive for drugs in a urinalysis or refused to provide a urine sample for a drug test. That is already happening. The Parole Board has already been using this practice for quite some time.

We support this provision, but we realize that it has to do with the Parole Board. It has nothing to do with the inmates in our federal prisons right now.

Therefore, this title is unfortunately a bit flawed. It is sad that the government is trying to make Canadians believe that it wants to address the drug addiction problem in our federal prisons, when it is actually trying to use this bill to simply say that what the Parole Board is doing is fine and that it needs to keep doing it.

Bill C-12 therefore has a relatively misleading title. We tried to amend it at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The NDP introduced an amendment to change the short title to better describe Bill C-12. The title we proposed was the drug test failures and parole act, which I think better reflects the bill.

I point this out because many witnesses said that Bill C-12 was not really doing what the short title suggested. The bill is not bad. I would like to tell that to everyone in the House. In committee, we all agreed that this is not a bad bill as such. However, the title was really an irritant whenever we had to discuss this bill. The short title has nothing to do with the bill. The bill is not bad, but it will not lead to drug-free prisons.

I would like to quote the member for Yukon. Replacing the parliamentary secretary, he attended the meetings of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Bill C-12. He himself admitted that the short title was probably going a bit too far. We were able to see that, even among the Conservatives, not everyone was really comfortable with the short title of this bill.

I hope that the Conservatives will do their homework next time and present us with a bill whose short title will actually reflect its content.

That being said, I will not dwell on the fact that the Conservatives often play politics with their short titles or bills. The titles do not always reflect the bills they go with, but they seem very nice when they are presented to the public and Canadians see them without reading the actual bills.

We in the NDP have very clear positions when it comes to the prison population, prisons and the eradication of drug addiction. We have always supported measures that seek to make our prisons safer. However, the Conservative government continues to ignore the recommendations of correctional staff and the Correctional Investigator, in particular, that would help reduce violence, street gang activities and drug use in our prisons. Virtually all stakeholders agree that this bill will have little impact on drug use in our prisons. Almost all of us agree that there will be no impact on drug use in our prisons.

Once again, the government is going to use this bill as an opportunity to cater to the wishes of its base, without actually proposing real solutions to the problems of drugs and gangs in prisons. I am enormously disappointed in this aspect of the Conservative government's strategy on such an important issue.

As I said, Bill C-12 is not necessarily a solution to a real problem and we are all—especially the members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security—aware of that. Members of the House, who have examined a number of bills, are at least partly aware of the situation in our prisons. We know that there are mental health, addiction and gang-related problems. There are therefore a number of problems and things to fix in our correctional system. Again, this bill could have been a good example of the sort of work we can do together as parliamentarians, but unfortunately we were not able to do it.

I would like to talk about what the bill should perhaps have included and about the eradication of addiction in our prisons. In 2012, a Public Safety Canada study confirmed that it is not very realistic to think that drug-free prisons can be created. I know that may be a shocking thing to hear, but the problem of eliminating drugs in prisons is extremely complex, for a number of reasons. The government should take a leadership role in this matter but, as parliamentarians, our work is to ensure that drugs are reduced as much as possible and to take steps in that direction.

The government, however, is reacting to sensational headlines in the media and trying to say that such a thing is possible. Correctional Service Canada has invested a great deal of money. Since 2008 the Conservatives have spent, for example, $112 million on purchasing technology to stop the entry of drugs into prisons. Nevertheless, this has not reduced drug use in prison. Therefore, the Conservatives' approach is not working at all.

First, the government has a clearly unrealistic goal, but one we all strive toward—we can agree on that—and second, it is not using its money appropriately. It has invested in technology and not solved the problem at all. I have some details and figures to give you later, but I can say that the Conservative government has made deep cuts to the budgets of many departments. It has reduced Correctional Service Canada's budget by 10% and made cuts in many programs, although the prison population is currently growing. It has reduced the money set aside for programming, particularly addiction programs. The government's explanation is all doublespeak.

Correctional Service Canada's funding for basic correctional programs such as addiction treatment has been reduced. Moreover, the Conservative government has closed the treatment centres for inmates with serious mental health problems. We cannot ignore the fact that mental health issues are very common in our prisons. That is one of the main points to keep in mind. Many witnesses told us that people who have addiction problems often have mental health issues as well, and we must not forget that.

In order to really tackle the addiction problem in our prisons, we believe that Correctional Service Canada must create an initial assessment system that would make it possible to correctly measure an inmate's degree of addiction so that suitable programs could be offered to the offenders who need them. If the addiction is not treated, it is more difficult to educate and return the individual to society, which is what our society chooses to do with inmates. At Correctional Service Canada, the system works in levels. An offender comes into the system at the maximum or medium level and makes his way down through the levels as part of the prison population until, at the end of his sentence, he is in a minimum security institution. Still within the correctional system, he will have contact with the general public. The offender will begin working and visiting outside the prison, and will begin his return to society.

If we do not want prisons to have revolving doors, we must provide good programs for education and social rehabilitation. That is a societal choice we have made and we must take it seriously.

Taking this choice seriously will be much less costly to taxpayers in the end, in terms of public safety, hospitals and society in general.

Inmates who are neglected in terms of education and social reinsertion are liable to reoffend and fall back into a life of crime. Many studies have proven this. The correctional investigator has mentioned it often in his reports and appearances before the committee. The experts know what is happening on the ground. They include the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the John Howard Society of Canada. I should also mention the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers whose members see former inmates returning to prison. I talked with Mr. Grabowsky, the union's national president, last week. I will not mention his age, but he has over 35 years of experience at Correctional Service Canada. He told me that during his career he has seen many former inmates return, as if prisons had revolving doors, because there are no social reintegration programs or other suitable programs for inmates. That is a sad state of affairs.

As a society, seeking to make our communities extremely safe is a wise choice. When I am walking down the street, I want to be safe, I want my daughter to be safe, and I want my friends and colleagues to be safe. For that to happen, we have to make sure that these offenders do not fall back into the cycle of crime. We must try to eradicate as much crime as possible from our society. Both sides of the House would probably agree that that is a very difficult thing to do. However, we have radically differing visions of how to do it. I will have more to say about that later in my speech.

A number of stakeholders support our position. One of them is the Correctional Investigator, who stated in numerous reports that the corrections system could face unintended consequences when simplistic solutions are applied to complex problems, such as addiction, in our penitentiaries. He suggested measures such as assessment of prisoners at intake into correctional programs to identify their addiction problems. The NDP fully supports that. He also suggested giving prisoners better access to rehabilitation programs, which would help reduce drug use and gang activity in prison.

When I was asking my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands a question earlier, I said that I would come back to what the parliamentary secretary said. She quoted something that, if I am not mistaken, was said by Don Head, the Commissioner of Correctional Service Canada, before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and that is that 95% of offenders complete at least one program while they are in prison. It is true that 95% of offenders participate in a program at some point in their correctional plan. What the Conservatives failed to mention—and we have spoken about this at length during the debate on Bill C-12—is that this percentage pertains to all programs in general. It could be an anger management program, a program to deal with aggression, Alcoholics Anonymous or a drug treatment program. A variety of programs are offered to inmates. The government seems to be lumping all of these programs together and saying that 95% of inmates participate in a program, implying that these inmates are participating in a drug treatment program. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I want members of the House to be aware of this in the coming debates.

It would be a good idea to give all offenders who need it access to a drug treatment program while they are in prison. That is not currently the case. Four out of five offenders arrive at a federal institution with a past history of substance abuse. As of July 2011, there were 775 inmates enrolled in opiate substitute treatment, representing approximately 5.4% of the total inmate population. That means that only 5.4% of the total inmate population is receiving treatment, when four out of five inmates have a substance abuse problem when they enter the prison system. Unfortunately, a balance has not been reached. That is rather sad.

In the 2012 federal budget, the government made $295 million in cuts to Correctional Service Canada over two years, which represents about 10% of its budget.

Correctional Service Canada currently spends 2% to 2.7% of its operating budget on basic correctional programs. This includes substance abuse programs, but they do not receive all of that funding.

According to the Office of the Correctional Investigator—I always look forward to its annual reports—the CSC budget for substance abuse programming dropped from $11 million in 2008-09 to $9 million in 2010-11, even though the prisoner population continues to grow. Thus, funding for substance abuse programs and access to them is decreasing while the inmate population is increasing. That is sad.

That brings me to the position of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, which works directly in our prisons to ensure our safety. It does fantastic work. I visited a number of prisons in several provinces and we were always well received. The correctional officers clearly explained the work that they do, and they work miracles with very few resources.

Their budgets are cut every year and because of Conservative bills that amended the Canada Labour Code, their safety has also been affected. Take for example the bill that amended the definition of danger, which directly affects correctional officers working on the ground. That is extremely serious for them.

The Conservatives do not have the same vision. I would not say that their policies are harmful, but they are not the right policies for our penitentiaries. For example, as a result of cuts, the Conservatives promised to increase the number of beds and inmates in our prisons. I think it was 2,700 new beds, which is a net addition of about 1,655 beds.

At the same time, the Conservatives closed two extremely important penitentiaries—one in Kingston, Ontario, and the other in Leclerc, Quebec. The latter is in my riding and is now a provincial penitentiary. As a result of these closures, a cell designed for a single person often holds two or three inmates.

According to their assessment on the ground, despite a decrease in double bunking, corrections officers are currently seeing the potential for an increase in double bunking, which creates a serious problem in terms of drug addiction and the safety of corrections officers. These officers never know what will happen when there are several inmates in a single cell. Furthermore, it can be dangerous for the prison population, not to mention the fact that problems with street gangs and drug addiction can get worse if strict corrections plans are not followed.

The Conservatives should have a look at the studies that show what happens when you put several people in a cell designed for a single person. We often hear that it helps save money, but it creates many more problems in the long term.

The NDP wants to ensure that prisons are safe working environments for our corrections officers. That is extremely important. We will not make these workplaces safer by merely giving fancy titles, like the title of Bill C-12, to relatively simple measures without directly addressing the problem of drug addiction. This will only guarantee that inmates will end up back in the prison system.

I hope that the Conservatives will take note of all of this and of what the witnesses told the committee, so that the next time they introduce a bill called the drug-free prisons act, it will actually address the problem it claims to fix.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member across the way who sits on the public safety committee, as I do, gave some reports as to what was said at committee. Without going line by line as to where she was wrong and turning it in the opposite direction from where it was, I am going to ask the people out there who count, the people of Canada, to go to the blues of the public safety committee and read what was actually said. It will be remarkably different from what the member said.

The member also says she does not like the title. They wanted to change the title, and that was ruled out of order, just as in the House when something is ruled out of order. They think, if we cannot play the game their way, it is all bad.

She says some of the drug addiction programming was cut back. The evidence was that it was not cut from $11 million to $9 million, but that there is actually some $20 million. We are verifying that. Therefore, Canadians out there should go to the blues. They should not believe any of the talking-head politicians in here. They should go to the blues and read what the witnesses actually said.

The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands was mentioning it. In a previous Parliament, the public safety committee went to other countries. They said Canada has some of the best programs available. We went to Norway. Sixty per cent of the programming in its prisons is from Canada. I ask the hon. member from across the way to read the study into drug addiction and mental illness in our prisons, and she will find some of that evidence.

The member went on and on about the short title. She mentioned double bunking. Actually, the evidence before our committee was that the additional beds going in were reducing the amount of double bunking. She needs to get her story straight.

Therefore, I am just going to suggest to Canadians out there that they go to the blues and actually read them. They will be remarkably different from what she said.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think that my hon. colleague attended the same committee meetings as I did. I would also suggest that people go check the blues to see what happened in committee.

Sadly, they realize that sometimes the Conservatives are trying to mislead the House and maybe the public at the same time. Therefore, yes, they should go and read the blues. It would actually be a really good thing.

With respect to the reports I mentioned, many of them are directly from the Department of Public Safety. If my colleague wants, he can go read them now. I will give him the titles. The things I mentioned are in the “2011-12 Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator”, “Drugs and Alcohol in Federal Penitentiaries: an Alarming Problem”, and “Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol Addiction in the Federal Correctional System”, which was published in 2010. I also have here another report by the Correctional Investigator, as well as a report by Public Safety Canada and Correctional Service Canada.

All of these reports, these facts and these numbers are real, but the government would have me believe that closing prisons and adding beds will not result in double bunking.

There is a penitentiary in my hon. colleague's riding. I think he should go for a visit and have a chat with the corrections officers who work there. They will tell him about double bunking.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate my colleague. I know she works very hard and is doing great work on the public safety file, so I commend her. She has my full confidence, when it comes to public safety studies.

The Conservatives often present us with nice, shiny solutions that apply to all kinds of situations. However, the situation in the correctional setting is extremely complex. Everyone knows this.

In fact, the Correctional Investigator has said in numerous reports that a simplistic solution would never work, because the problem is so complex.

Some of the reports my colleague mentioned indicate that the best system would have nothing to do with parole—since parole has nothing to do with the inmate population, and my colleague mentioned that—but rather an intake assessment system that would help ensure that programs were adapted to the needs of the people incarcerated in federal institutions.

Could my colleague talk about those kinds of customized solutions, rather than the Conservative solutions—

[An hon. member]

One size fits all.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Yes, the Conservatives' one-size-fits-all solutions.

Would she like to comment on this kind of customized solution, rather than the one-size-fits-all solutions that are supposedly going to solve all the problems in our penitentiaries? That kind of solution does not work.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île for her question.

If only it was a one-size-fits-all solution, it would already at least be something. However, the solution that Bill C-12 proposes does not even directly affect the drug addiction problem in our current prison populations. It is quite simply something that already exists and is already being applied by the Parole Board of Canada.

I would even have been happier if we were trying to apply a one-size-fits-all solution to see what the Conservative government would have proposed to really tackle this problem, instead of pretending to addressing the problem and simply telling the Parole Board of Canada that what it is doing is very good and giving the board the opportunity to continue doing the same thing. It is relatively good because the Parole Board of Canada is doing very good work. What is interesting about what was proposed in this bill, and what has already been proposed, is that we are not giving the Parole Board the benefit of the doubt, but rather the choice of whether or not to apply the measures.

At least the Parole Board is not necessarily being required to apply the measures that are presented here, depending on the results of the urinalyses, but they have the possibility of playing with them. It is good that the Parole Board is already doing this. Still, we should not kid ourselves. This is a bill aimed at eradicating drugs in prisons, but nothing here covers that.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to join the hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île in congratulating my colleague.

We can see that she is well-versed in this subject and very comfortable with it. She is very thorough. Honestly, I must also say that I very much appreciate her optimism in wanting to co-operate with the government on this bill. There must be a true desire to work together in order to be so positive about this bill, which does not have any real substance but is more about the title and the effect of the first page.

I heard my colleague opposite show utter bad faith when he said that the issue with the title being inappropriate was ruled out of order. That does not make the title an appropriate one. That is the truth. This may have been ruled out of order, but that does not mean that the title is acceptable. It is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, I know the reality of partisan politics, which is to constantly point out what this government has done and the laws it has passed, not to mention this famous drug-free prison act, which is going to work wonders for our prisons.

I am wondering how my colleague can be so optimistic about working with these people when the introduction of this bill once again demonstrates how narrow-minded they are.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, who also speaks very eloquently in the House.

I would like to come back to something mentioned by my colleague on the other side of the House who, like me, is also a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I must say that, as parliamentarians, it is truly a privilege for us to sit in the House, but it is also a privilege to sit on a committee.

Although we do not always agree on everything, there is nevertheless some degree of collegiality. One might expect the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to be extremely rigorous, but we are all human beings. We have extremely different views on some topics, and that is normal. That is the beauty of Parliament.

This brings me to co-operation. I will always believe that co-operation is possible with this government, no matter what bill we are talking about. I will never give up on that. It is my job as a parliamentarian to present my views and those of the experts we try to meet, the people who appear before committees and the people I represent. It is our job as parliamentarians to try to work together. I am trying to play along, and I wish the Conservatives would try it more often.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Before I recognize the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in resuming debate, I will let her know that there about seven minutes remaining in the time provided for government orders this afternoon. We will get started with her seven minutes, but of course, she will have the remaining time when the House next resumes debate on the question, the remaining 13 minutes or so, to take her up to her full time allocation.

Resuming debate, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I would absolutely love to speak for the remaining seven minutes.

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to join this debate on the drug-free prisons act. Let me begin by looking at the scope of the actual problem.

Today we know that upon admission for federal custody, approximately 75% of federal offenders report having engaged in drug or alcohol abuse one year prior to their incarceration. It is clear that tackling drug use and the drug trade in federal prisons can help offender rehabilitation. We actually heard about this at committee. Creating a more positive environment that better encourages positive behavioural change will ensure that prisoners have the opportunity to get the help they need so that they can rejoin society as productive members, often for the first time in their lives. It can also help improve the safety of penitentiaries for both inmates and correctional staff as well as the community as a whole.

Certainly Canada is not alone in facing this particular challenge. Our federal penitentiary system shares the same challenges as other prison systems in addressing drug use and the drug trade. That is why Canada works closely with other jurisdictions to identify and share tools and best practices. These include partners from the correctional front lines, the policing community and research communities, local and federal legislators, and volunteers who actually work in that community.

Taking into consideration the current research and the strategies being employed in prison systems domestically and internationally, our government has moved ahead with an approach to combatting drugs in federal prisons that includes a well balanced mix of treatment and programming, interdiction, offender accountability, and penalties.

Much of the direction for our actions comes from an independent review panel we struck in 2007 to explore ways to improve our federal correctional system and to enhance public safety. Based on the recommendations of that review panel, the Correctional Service of Canada has moved forward with a transformation agenda to help maximize its contributions to public safety over the long term. That progress is rather quite impressive.

The Correctional Service of Canada has implemented many of the recommendations of that review panel, both in terms of addressing the presence of drugs in institutions and in improving many other aspects of the way our correctional system operates. Those efforts and progress are noted in the second report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, entitled “Drugs and Alcohol in Federal Penitentiaries: An Alarming Problem”. Released in April 2012, that report noted that while we are making good strides, more work remains and needs to be done.

We continue to face an ever-changing and growing challenge to stop the smuggling of illicit drugs and other prohibited substances into federal correctional institutions. As such, the problem is complex, multi-dimensional, and very difficult to resolve. Efforts to tackle the issue must be multi-dimensional and involve an array of interventions including interdiction, prevention, treatment, and community-based initiatives.

On the interdiction side, our Conservative government invested $122 million over five years to increase efforts to stop drugs or other contraband products from entering institutions in the first place. These have included increasing the number of drug detector dogs and enhancing the security intelligence capacity and perimeter security at our federal prisons. We are also working to deter drug use through increased offender accountability and penalties.

Through the Safe Streets and Communities Act, we changed the law to include mandatory minimum penalties for trafficking or possession of drugs in a prison or on prison grounds. Further, the Correctional Service of Canada has over the years implemented a number of initiatives to help reduce both violence and illicit drugs in federal correctional institutions. It has put in place routine and random searching by correctional officers of prisoners and the grounds of the prisons, searching of visitors, X-ray baggage scanners, walk-through metal detectors, and body cavity metal detectors.

The commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, Don Head, noted at the public safety and national security committee that in 2010 there were more than 1,200 drug seizures made in federal institutions. Testing among inmates is now showing fewer positive results for the presence of drugs.

The latest statistics show that in the fiscal year 2013-14, some 2,400 drug-related seizures were made in federal prisons. It is worth noting here as well that the percentage of positive urinalysis tests and refusals has declined.

These indicators show that efforts around seizing drugs are working, and they point to the overall effectiveness of interdiction measures. We believe that this is progress, and it is one reason our government is moving forward to enhance treatment and programming offered to offenders in correctional facilities.

CSC has also made significant recent investments in streamlining the offender intake process so that they can begin treatment sooner. For example, as of 2012, more correctional plans must be in place within the first 70 or 90 days of when the offender arrives at the institution, depending on the length of his or her sentence. The correctional plan is an essential element in the rehabilitation of federal offenders as it is the tool by which the needs of each offender for substance abuse counselling can be identified and then addressed through enrolment in treatment programs.

A couple of amendments have been proposed in the drug-free prisons act. The bill would create an exclusive authority in law for the Parole Board of Canada to cancel an offender's parole, after being granted parole but prior to release into the community, based on failed or refused testing. It would also give specific authority to the Parole Board to impose a special abstinence condition. Simply put, these amendments would give the Parole Board more legislative teeth to fulfill its mission. This would strengthen the board's ability to make decisions regarding conditional releases, and we believe that this is simply what Canadians want.

I can assure members that our Conservative government remains committed to tackling the issue of drugs in institutions and ensuring that offenders can get the help they need to rejoin society as law-abiding citizens. I ask all members to support the passage of this bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. parliamentary secretary will have 13 minutes remaining in her time allowed for her remarks when the House next returns to debate on the question.

The House resumed from February 17 consideration of the motion that Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, be read the third time and passed.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure, today, to rise to speak in support of Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, as it has been labelled, the drug-free prisons act, though I am often confused how the bill would make our prisons drug free. However, at the same time, we are supporting it.

At this time, I would like to take a minute to acknowledge the amazing work being done by the critic in this area; that is, the member of Parliament for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, who has done an absolutely thorough and very detailed analysis of this piece of legislation, and the work done at the committee to try to strengthen the legislation so that it would actually do what it purports it would. As we know, our colleagues across the way are not really up to listening to any experts or advice as to how to improve bills. In any event, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, on this whole file of public safety, has put in, I would say, a gargantuan amount of work in order to deal with real issues for Canadians and to ensure Canadians' safety in a real way.

It is interesting that we are debating the bill on the day the budget will be presented. We know that the budget has been delayed. I do not know if it has been delayed because the minister just did not know what to put in the budget or whether they were busy developing their communications or free advertising plan on the tax dollars, but the budget has been delayed. In any event, we look forward to seeing it today. I really hope that when we look at the budget today we will see a significant investment in what the current government purports its agenda to be.

My colleagues across the way often like to see themselves as the champions of public safety but often what we have is a lot of rhetoric with very little funding that goes along with the programs they announced, or lack thereof, or has often been accompanied by cuts as well.

This particular piece of legislation, despite its title, “drug-free prisons act”, I would say is a baby step that we do support. Let me tell members that it would not have the kind of impact that my colleagues across the way seem to think it would because this particular bill would not tackle the real issues that our prisons are facing.

Bill C-12 would add a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that would make it clear that the Parole Board may use positive results from urine tests, or refusals to take urine tests for drugs, in making its decisions on parole eligibility.

Let me assure members that my understanding is this is already being done. Therefore, what we would do is take a practice that is already in play into legislation, and that is a good thing. What it would do is give clear authority to an existing practice, a practice that we do support, but this practice by itself and on its own would not address the serious issues we do have to tackle, which are drug addictions, mental illness and the very fundamentals that lead to more and more people ending up in prisons rather than in treatment.

The title of Bill C-12, as I have mentioned a few times, is misleading. We know the current government has a penchant for coming up with some pretty outrageous, all-encompassing titles for bills, but when we actually dig into the bill we find there is very little substance. That is what we are finding with this bill. The title sounds great but when we get into the bill, all we have is the government codifying a current practice of the Parole Board.

The Parole Board right now retains its discretion as to what use it makes of this information, which is actually how it would remain.

It always makes me proud to sit on this side of the House with my colleagues, because we have been steadfast in our support for measures that will make our prisons safe, while the Conservative government has ignored recommendations from corrections staff and the Correctional Investigator that would decrease violence, gang activity, and drug use in our prisons.

We are not the only ones. We know that the current government is allergic to data and experts. However, most of us know that when we are dealing with the complexities of drug addiction, we have to pay attention to what we know and to the knowledge acquired by the experts in this area. The stakeholders agree with the NDP that this bill would have a minimal impact on drugs in prisons.

This bill is about granting parole and what the Parole Board would take into consideration. It has very little to do with what is actually going to be happening inside the prisons. Once again, the Conservative government is using legislation to create an opportunity to pander to its base and to pretend that it is doing something with no real solutions to the issue of drugs and gangs in our prisons. I would go so far as to say that the government is actually making our prisons less safe by cutting funding to correctional programs, such as for substance abuse, and by increasing the use of double-bunking, which leads to more violence. Our priority as parliamentarians should be ensuring community safety by preparing ex-offenders to reintegrate into society once released, addiction-free and less likely to reoffend.

I looked very carefully at this legislation, because as a mother and now a grandmother and as a life-long teacher and counsellor in a high school and for the school district, I know what a difficult task we have ahead of us as a society as we try to tackle drug addictions. There are no simple solutions.

In my city of Surrey, in beautiful British Columbia, in the last 38 days we have had 23 shootings. On Sunday, what we all feared happened: a fatality, with a 22-year-old losing his life. People in my community of Surrey, like in other communities across Canada, care very deeply about addressing the issues of violence, gangs and drugs. No parents out there want to see their young daughter or sons engaged in the use of drugs or involved in any kind of criminal activity. When these kinds of tragedies happen in our communities, it shakes us to the core and makes us want to hug those around us. Right now, my heart goes out to the family—the parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters—but also to the whole community as it deals with this latest round of gun violence.

It is because we want real solutions that we want to tackle the real issues. We want to starting looking at the underlying issues.

We need a real strategy and action on mental health, not just talk, that happens in a multi-faceted way. Many people will say that it has nothing to do with this topic. We know that the majority of people in our prisons are there because they were convicted of crimes related to drugs and many of them because they suffer from mental health issues. Unless we start tackling mental health issues in a serious way, I do not think this baby step is going to help us achieve a safer society or make our prisons any safer.

It is like the current government wants to see how many more people it can put into prisons, even if it has to double-bunk them, and the mandatory sentencing has led to more people being sent to prison. I absolutely believe that we need policies that mete out punishments that fit the crimes, but we also need to make sure that there is rehabilitation.

Before we even talk about crimes and people ending up in prison, we need to look at our communities, school systems, and the kind of programming needed. When I look at the public school system, I would say that it has been under attack for many years. When I look specifically at British Columbia, a lot of the preventive work that used to be done on drug addictions in high schools is very difficult to do today, because a number of counsellors have been removed and a lot of the money that used to be available for prevention is no longer there. I look at Surrey and the kind of support system for youth in our community. I look at how many students per counsellor there are today compared to when I came to B.C., when there were 250 students to a counsellor in my district Nanaimo. Now I am hearing that the number can be as high as 800 to 1,000 per counsellor.

If we look at all the pressures on our children through social media and the Internet, and we know, because we have dealt with many pieces of legislation in the House, at the very same time that is happening, they are cutting a lot of the support systems that used to be available. In my school district in B.C., we used to have some of the most progressive, stellar programs to engage youth in a positive way. One was called action Nanaimo. There was also a steps to maturity program, which actually dealt with kids' self-esteem, communication skills, and the issue of bullying and how to deal with that. None of those programs exist today.

This is where we have to have all levels of government and communities working together to provide young people with the kind of supports they need so that they do not end up getting into trouble, whether it is due to mental health or drugs, and do not end up joining gangs and engaging in trafficking drugs. We need to make sure that youth have the scaffolding they need to steer through the many challenges they face in our society today.

I would say that the same is true of those people who are in our prisons today. It is very easy to sentence people to prison, but if once they are in prison we do not provide them with rehabilitation, we are not doing a service to society.

Let me throw out a figure that will be absolutely shocking to most people. The cost to send a person to prison and keep him or her in confinement has risen to about $80,000 to $90,000 a year. We are prepared to spend that as a society. On the other hand, we are not prepared to put even 10% or 20% of that money into education and prevention programs so that our young people do not end up in prison.

If mandatory sentences and putting more people into prisons would get rid of drugs and crime, then the U.S. would have no crime and no drug problem. What we are good at, under the government across the way, is following examples that we know are not good. Instead of looking at evidence, we would rather just blindly copy the U.S. and keep putting people in prison, while the U.S. is sending experts up here to learn about rehabilitation from us.

Once people are in prison, we do not provide them with the resources they need to not reoffend. I find it quite outrageous to sit in this House and listen to the rhetoric of the government across the way when it has failed. It has not only failed to increase funding, it has cut funding to programs that would provide support for those in prison, and in hospitals too. I have a 90-year-old mother who I was recently visiting in hospital. Despite the amazing work being done by the staff at the hospital, I would say that they are facing major challenges as well.

To truly address the issue of drug use in prisons, we need to do a proper intake assessment of an inmate's addiction and then provide the proper correctional programming for that offender. Without treatment, education, and proper integration upon release, a prisoner will likely return to a criminal lifestyle and possibly create more victims. What we have then is what has come to be known as the revolving door.

With mandatory minimums, our prison population is increasing while at the same time both federal and provincial governments are closing institutions. It is quite disconcerting how mental health services are being impacted.

Correctional Service Canada's directive 55, which establishes procedures to normalize double-bunking, is kind of weird to me. When I was young and I went to youth hostels, double-bunking was kind of fun, but I cannot imagine double-bunking in prison.

Let me once again say that we support this. It is a baby step. However, without investments in prevention, education, treatment, and rehabilitation, all we have are words. Our communities deserve far more. I hope that in the budget presented today we will see a real infusion of funds to address prevention, education, mental health issues, rehabilitation, and real support for an effective reintegration policy that will make a real difference and lead to safer communities.

I would say there is no better investment than in the education of our children. I urge governments at the provincial level to please make it a top priority, because our children are our future and they are worth every penny we invest.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will focus my question on the member's priority throughout her speech, which is education.

I agree in many ways how important education is. The leader of the Liberal Party, a teacher by profession, has talked a great deal about the importance of education. For example, he talked about the importance of looking at how we fund first nations education, and that we need to provide a lot more resources.

Earlier today I met with representatives, including Paul Olson, the president of the Manitoba Teachers' Society. We talked about the importance of education. If we do not recognize how important education is to the children of our country, then we will sell short their potential. Many will end up on the wrong side of the law if we are not more proactive in encouraging our provinces, which have the administrative responsibility for education. We also need to recognize the important role that the national government can play. We need to ensure there is a sense of equity across the country in dealing with education as well as issues such as mental health. We need to ensure there is programming that allows for the nutritional well-being of young children even before they enter the education system.

If we had a proactive national government dealing with those types of issues, we could actually prevent more people from going into prisons.

Perhaps the member could comment on those points.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are areas in which the federal government plays a key role in education, such as in the education for our first nations people and aboriginal communities. A very large percentage of the people in prison are from our aboriginal communities.

There is a lot of preventative initiatives that could be happening, such as investing in early childhood education, quality education, nutrition, prevention and education programs, and truly in strong and inclusive community building. It is always easy to say that this is not our mandate, as I have sometimes heard my colleagues across the way say. However, once people are in prison, it is our mandate.

Here is an amazing figure from seven institutions surveyed in February 2012: only 12.5% of the total offenders were enrolled in a core correctional program, and there is a waiting list to access these programs exceeding 35%.

They say we should start at home and fix what we can fix, but we have a government that has made cut after cut to services in rehabilitation and education. What we are seeing now is that only 12.5% access services, and there is a wait list for people in prison who want to get away from drugs and take the rehabilitation and education programs, but the Conservative government has made so many cuts that they are being denied rehabilitation. That is disgraceful.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the member has pointed out, the NDP is supporting Bill C-12.

However, there is a misnomer in the title. The short title is “drug-free prisons act”, but in the annual report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator for 2011-12, it was pointed out that a zero tolerance stance to drugs in prison is an aspiration rather than an effective policy. It simply does not accord with the facts on crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world. As the report states. “Harm reduction measures within a public health and treatment orientation offer a far more promising, cost-effective and sustainable approach to reducing subsequent crime and victimization.”

The member raised the issues around the need for rehabilitation in her speech. I wonder if she could comment on that statement.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I always like to relate some of the big issues to what happens in our families and how we raise our kids. If parents telling their kids that they must do not do drugs would alone get rid of the drug problem in the world, we would not have that issue in Canada today. I know how hard parents work, and zero tolerance is a great aspiration to have, but until we achieve that, we have to have real expert advice from those who deal with these issues, based on the research and what works. We have to have a multifaceted approach.

Just telling people not to do drugs, hitting them on the head with a baseball bat and sending them to prison is not going to get rid of the drug problem. What is going to get rid of the drug problem is investment in education, rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Newton—North Delta for her very sensitive speech that got right to the heart of the problem: how to prevent and address the challenges of incarceration. The important thing is not to create more problems, which is what the government is doing, unfortunately.

During the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security's brief study, the Correctional Investigator was very critical. He condemned the lack of resources to prevent drug use in our prisons. We can try to limit supply, but all of the credible witnesses said that focusing solely on supply is unrealistic. We also need to tackle demand.

That means we have to support inmates coping with addiction. We have to identify them at intake and provide good programs so they can progress and make choices with comprehensive support.

Would my colleague like to comment further on the Correctional Investigator's recommendation?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, whenever I talk about drugs in our communities or our prisons, I am always amazed how people want simplistic solutions. It is as if all of us are looking for a magic pill that would suddenly get rid of the impact of drugs on our families, our communities and our society as a whole.

The Correctional Investigator has stated and there have been numerous reports that the corrections system risks unintended consequences when simplistic solutions are applied to the complex issue of drugs in prisons. They talk about the need for a proper assessment of prisoners on intake. For instance, when someone has gotten into problems and has been sentenced to prison, let us do an assessment of what got them there. Do they have mental health issues? Are drugs involved? When did the drugs kick in? We have to take into account all of those things.

We have to start looking at some of the causes at that time. Our prison system is not a one-way street. It is supposed to be one where we believe in rehabilitation. That is the kind of penal system we have. There has to be a proper assessment. Then we have to identify the specific problems that can be targeted. Then we need to have rehabilitation programs so that people can be better reintegrated into society. Once they are released from prison we need to have a reintegration process that is scaffolded with a multitude of services so that the likelihood to reoffend is reduced.

Once again, there is no simple pill. This is a complex issue. It is going to take investment and resources. Every dollar we invest will bring us back thousands of dollars in savings.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Beauport—Limoilou.

As the House has heard from other members of the official opposition, we will support Bill C-12. We will support it because the measures in this bill are not bad. Nonetheless, will this bill really change anything? Some doubt remains in that regard. We will support it, in any case, but I really do not believe this bill will have the desired effect.

The bill's short title refers to making prisons drug-free. This title is a little misleading, however, because it is rather unrealistic to think that a bill that contains just five clauses, the first of which is the short title, and fits on a single double-sided sheet of paper could successfully eliminate drugs from prisons with four clauses to amend Canada's laws.

Moreover, this bill is rather redundant, and it legally confirms the common practice and what already exists in Canada's laws. When members of the Parole Board of Canada are deciding whether an inmate can be released on parole, they already have the discretion to take into account the results of urine testing or the fact that an inmate refuses to provide a urine sample.

Parole board members already have the power, albeit discretionary, to consider those factors in their decisions. Even if those members do eventually take drug testing into account, that is not how we are going to eliminate drugs from prisons.

It is important to understand that in order to be effective, the government needs to invest money and act on the reports that the Correctional Investigator and the federal ombudsman have published over the years. However, there is nothing in the bill to suggest that the government is listening to the experts. I highly doubt that this afternoon's budget will contain any additional funds to tackle addiction problems in prisons.

In summary, the bill just legally confirms rules that are already in use. The member for Victoria clearly pointed that out in his speech last December when he referred to the National Parole Board document entitled “Decision-Making Policy Manual for Board Members”.

Section 8 of that manual, “Assessing Criminal, Social and Conditional Release History”, reads:

8. Information considered when assessing criminal, social and conditional release history includes:...

e. any documented occurrence of drug use, positive urinalysis results or failures or refusals to provide a sample while on conditional release;

Clearly, these factors are already being considered in the decision-making process. The crisis in our prisons involves substance abuse, rampant gang activity and the recruitment of gang members within the prison population. Some of these problems could be eradicated if we were to apply the measures that were proposed by some of the witnesses when this bill was examined in committee.

In short, resources for rehabilitation are wanting, and the budgets of correctional organizations and the many cuts the Conservatives have made over the years are not at all consistent with the logic they are trying to establish in this bill.

If we want to eliminate drugs in prisons, we need to combat drug addiction there with the help of resources and stakeholders, which we do not have right now.

Even though drug addicts are well aware that they risk delaying their parole by taking drugs in prison, they will continue to do so because addictions are difficult to overcome. We therefore need to take action on the ground and establish real substance abuse treatment programs.

In the civilian world, people can get help and services from professionals. However, in prison, inmates who admit that they have a drug addiction are shooting themselves in the foot. It is better for them to hide their addiction in order to avoid the consequences.

This is a complex issue. We need specialized addictions counsellors who understand the prison system to help on the ground. However, these counsellors need the government to invest in prisons.

The Correctional Service of Canada has admitted that $122 million of Conservative spending on interdiction tools and technology to stop drugs from entering prisons since 2008 has not produced any results. How come nothing has been done in light of that shocking statistic? Why have there been no policy reviews or the like? We know that a very high percentage of Canada's offender population abuses drugs.

The report entitled “Substance abuse—The perspective of a National Parole Board member”, by Michael Crowley, an NPB member from Ontario, begins as follows:

It is clear that alcohol and other drug problems constitute a major problem for both incarcerated offenders and those who are on some form of conditional release. It is estimated that about 70% of offenders have substance abuse problems that are in need of treatment, and that more than 50% of their crimes are linked with substance use and abuse.

We know that the vast majority of offenders, unfortunately, abuse drugs and that criminals often have a history of substance abuse. Inmates who are added to the prison system often already have substance abuse problems.

These figures are rather shocking and indicative of the government's dire lack of investment in rehabilitation programs for inmates that would address this problem. Furthermore, the prison population in Canada has skyrocketed because of the infamous minimum mandatory sentences, even though the crime rate has been steadily declining.

In closing, I would like to say that mental health issues are also part of the problem. This is a growing problem that, together with inmates' addictions, exacerbates the situation. Inmates with mental health problems sometimes tend to self-medicate with drugs available on the prison market. That is a rather explosive combination.

If we really want to eliminate drugs in prison, we have to be realistic. We have to be prepared to make the required investments, put resources in place and understand that the drug problem in prisons will not be fixed by a bill with four clauses.

Yes, we support these clauses, because they confirm an existing informal practice. We realize and openly admit that Bill C-12 does little to make prisons drug-free, and it is going to take a lot more than that to solve this problem.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech on Bill C-12. As is the case with many bills, this bill's title is surprising because it is an impressive title about fixing a serious problem. I have a hard time believing that the clauses in this bill will truly do what the title implies they will, which is to make our prisons drug-free.

Could the member tell us what she thinks about the titles this government loves to give its bills? The titles are misleading, because at the end of the day the bills do not achieve what the titles imply they will. Could she give us her opinion on how the Conservative government gives its bills nice titles that do not pan out?

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, the Conservatives have a habit of always trying to fool the public. They talk about a bill with a title that implies it will fix everything, when in fact that is not the case, since the bill is missing a lot of clauses or it will create other problems. The government often tries to make Canadians believe that it has managed a problem by introducing a bill—in this case on drug-free prisons—but in fact, the bill is not comprehensive enough to fix the problem. People who may not be able to understand the bill, read through the legal terminology and understand its impact will think that the Conservatives took action, when in reality that is not the case. This government has a bad habit of trying to fool Canadians. It is being intellectually dishonest with the people it is supposed to represent.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have a government that is willing to spend $80,000 to $90,000 a year incarcerating prisoners. We see that it spent over $100 million already in trying to stop drugs getting into prisons and has failed. The problem is a lack of vision in terms of how to deal with the serious issue of drugs that are affecting our communities.

In the city of Timmins we have set up a fentanyl task force to deal with the heavy impacts of the abuse of fentanyl, and one of the key things that has come forward is the need to be able to track the fentanyl patches. These are opiate patches. My colleague is a nurse, so she would know very well about fentanyl, but without a bar code or a serial number put on by Health Canada, the police are unable to track the source of the patches.

If we have patches of 100 mcg coming into the city of Timmins, these are very lucrative for gangs, but we need to be able to take the preventive approach to stop this kind of heavy duty opiate being brought into our communities and then affecting people who may not have otherwise gotten into drugs. I know some wonderful young people who had their lives ahead of them who have been affected by fentanyl, and people who have died from it.

What does my colleague think about the need for these coherent, grass roots, preventive approaches, first, to prevent these kinds of drugs coming into our communities and keep people from getting involved in the drug trade, and also to be able to stop it by going after the gangs who are trading in fentanyl patches?

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, illicit drug use certainly exists, but many people abuse prescription drugs. Unfortunately, sometimes people go through grandma's medicine cabinet looking for interesting things. Those are tragic situations. In many cases, community approaches are more successful than criminalization and repression.

Keeping people from engaging in these bad habits by making positive activities available often has an impact on drug use among youth. When they have access to leisure spaces and opportunities to participate in these activities, that has a positive impact in terms of drug use. Drug use drops when there is better support for the community and people have opportunities to do things other than use drugs.

Drug addiction is a complex issue. We have to take a community-based approach and conduct broad consultations with all stakeholders if we want to eliminate this problem or reduce its impact.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue for sharing her precious speaking time with me so that I can express my views on Bill C-12 on behalf of the people of Beauport—Limoilou.

The title of the bill is “An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act”. This bill amends a law. The title sends a fairly disturbing message, one that I would call misleading. I would also like to quote the short title, which the Conservatives liked to trot out all the time. It is the “drug-free prisons act”.

Like many people, I have tried to get dandelions out of my lawn. Everyone knows that is one tough slog. I am not saying it is a lost cause, but those dandelions often come back from the other side of the fence when you least expect it.

First of all, I want to emphasize how unrealistic this bill is, which was also pointed out by the very few witnesses we managed to squeeze into the meetings of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Those witnesses, who were not from the department, pointed out that the bill unfortunately did not introduce anything new, despite its value and the fact that it should be supported. Like my NDP colleagues, I support the bill in principle. This bill will confirm a practice that is already established, but it does not solve the underlying problem.

I want to touch upon the Conservatives' message. It is quite ironic that they have not said a thing since this debate began. I should add that the debate only began about an hour ago, and yet there they sit, firmly rooted in their chairs, refusing to listen to the strong objections and, more importantly, the concerns we are raising in relation to the problem of drug use in our prisons. That problem will not be resolved, not really, by passing this bill.

This title, the drug-free prisons act, and these five clauses send a clear message to inmates with drug problems. If they ever want to be released, they will have to satisfy certain conditions. As far as their substance abuse problem is concerned, they know that they cannot count on getting any help and that they will have to face their problem alone.

That has been precisely the Conservatives' approach for years. Repression above all else is what they promise their base. People who are plagued by a problem they often cannot control are told that they cannot count on the Conservatives to spend any money on supporting them and helping them break free them from their addiction to drugs.

It is really too bad. In addition to ignoring the offender population that is facing very serious problems that might prevent early parole and completely undermining reintegration, once again the Conservatives are refusing to listen to experts directly affected by this, namely staff and the Correctional Investigator. These stakeholders are making recommendations to deal with the substance abuse problems in our prisons and other very serious problems that lead to substance abuse, such as mental health problems, a scourge that affects a large segment of the population.

I have some very disturbing statistics, which clearly illustrate the extent of the current problem in Canada's prisons and penitentiaries.

In 2011, 69% of female inmates and 45% of male inmates were treated for mental health issues. That already speaks to the extent of the problem. However, a certain number of mental health cases may not even be treated. This gives us an idea of how this problem cannot be addressed by the pure and simple repression that the Conservatives defend so vigorously. I am going to tell it like it is: it is easy for the Conservatives to score political points on the backs of our inmates while ignoring mental health problems of this magnitude.

I learned about the position of senior RCMP officials concerning the fight against terrorism. The Standing Committee on Finance, which I am pleased to be a member of, is currently carrying out a valuable study of the financing of terrorism. However, what is troubling is that the RCMP is robbing Peter to pay Paul. We had already heard this at the Standing Committee on Finance, but it was confirmed at a meeting of a Senate committee on public safety, if I am not mistaken. The RCMP is transferring investigators from the fight against organized crime to the fight against terrorism. In the funding approved by the House, $1.5 billion allocated to the RCMP was not spent, but instead returned to the public treasury. Everyone knew it, starting with the Conservatives. However, once again they chose to ignore this. In the end, the RCMP and our correctional services do not have the means to address the enormous challenge of fighting terrorism and organized crime. Similarly, correctional officers are increasingly ill-prepared to address mental health issues, the violence in our prisons and drug use. These budgets are unfortunately being cut.

Ultimately, the claim made by the department and especially by the government that the drug problem in prisons is being adequately addressed rings hollow. I hope that my colleagues will speak up in the House and participate in an important debate. Despite the fancy titles the Conservatives give their bills and the claims they make when they are boasting to their voter base, this once again shows that—I am going to say it again—the victims of crime are collateral victims of the Conservatives' decision to abandon the fight against drugs at every level. We need to focus on prevention.

When people are struggling with addiction and mental health problems and when nothing is done to help them deal with those issues or to prevent them in the first place, they get more and more out of control and their condition deteriorates. It then becomes very difficult for them to deal with these problems by themselves. A correctional officer told me very clearly that, for most of these people, there is life after prison. If their mental health deteriorates and their drug addiction leads them down a dead-end street, their reintegration into society and their ability to find a place in it obviously becomes an enormous obstacle that could lead them to reoffend.

Once again, the Conservatives are not facing the problem and are abandoning the victims of crime in this regard. I would like to end on that note, and I look forward to questions from my colleagues in the House.

I would like to repeat that I support this bill, but I hope that the means will follow. However, I have been saying that in the House and in committee for the past four years, and I no longer expect results from this dying government.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou for his speech on a rather important bill that conveys a specific vision of public safety.

My colleague gave us a good analysis of the Conservative way of doing things. I would like to hear him talk about his vision and the NDP's vision of public safety issues. Could he tell us about prevention and about investments in social programs?

What can we do to address this issue? We need to protect public safety in Canada, but how does the NDP propose that we better protect the public?

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I sincerely thank my colleague from Brossard—La Prairie for his question.

I do not want to repeat all of the very sensible points made by our highly esteemed colleague from Newton—North Delta, who spoke in favour of education and of the hopes that could be raised when we invest in the future of our young people and the public in general by providing them with opportunities.

I will pick up where she left off and talk about the upcoming budget. As I already mentioned, I am a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. Unfortunately, as with the nine previous budgets, this 10th budget will once again represent negativity and lost opportunities for a large segment of our population. It will cause problems that could escalate and cause people to lose all hope in improving their future or the future of their loved ones.

That is truly disappointing, since the Conservatives have always sought to punish people who stay away from drugs but who do not yet have a good job for their bad behaviour and bad choices. Instead of providing them with opportunities, to be as inclusive as possible and enable people to make real choices, the Conservatives have always limited these choices, and they will continue to do so in this budget.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for telling it like it is. He had no qualms about saying that the Conservatives are politicizing issues at the expense of certain segments of the population, inmates in this case.

When offenders with addiction problems enter prison, no emphasis is put on treating their addiction and no program is offered to help them overcome their addiction while they are there. They are given no resources. They are told they have to figure out how to overcome their addiction themselves if they want to get early parole. Those who do not manage to do so will eventually leave prison with the same addiction problems.

What does my colleague think will happen if we stay on this same path, if we do not change this policy and if inmates keep getting released with the same addiction problems?

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sherbrooke for his question.

At the beginning of my mandate, when I was taking my first steps as an MP, I talked to a correctional officer about the reality in our penitentiaries. He said that it was characteristic of this Conservative government to ignore the fact that there is life after prison.

Many people leave our prisons abandoned because they were not guided. They were not given the chance to rehabilitate. The Correctional Investigator and correctional officers are deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation, which unfortunately will only get worse in the coming years.

Again, the Conservatives should be ashamed of keeping silent in this debate. Not one of their MPs has risen to speak. I am really looking forward to the upcoming election. When the Conservatives are called on to defend their sorry record, words will fail them again because they will not have spent enough time practising their speeches.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to seize this opportunity. Actually, I have lots to say about the government's silence.

That said, let me first deal with the positive. I want to thank the NDP members on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, because, especially over these past few months, they have had an enormous amount of work to tackle. I thank the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, the member for Alfred-Pellan and the member for Compton—Stanstead. I congratulate them on their hard work. I understand the frustration that can set in when you have to deal with bills like Bill C-12.

It can be frustrating to know that, clearly, we could do so much better. It can also be frustrating—as my colleagues have said before me—to see grandiose titles like drug-free prisons act, as we can see written in the bill itself under “Short Title”:

This act may be cited as the drug-free prisons act.

This raises so much hope. People read that and think that that would be wonderful. Then, reality sinks in. After seeing such a grandiose title, I was expecting a rather lengthy, comprehensive bill, since it deals with such a complex issue. Ultimately, with one clause on the bill's short title and just four substantive clauses, the Conservatives are claiming they can eliminate drugs from prisons. This reminds me of the time that they studied the issue of prostitution following the Supreme Court ruling. That bill also had a grandiose title, indicating that, with that bill, the government was going to put an end to prostitution and abolish it in Canada. Well done. There will never be any prostitution ever again. Only, that is not what I am hearing in the street. It remains a thriving industry. It may be done differently, but it still exists.

As I was soaking up my colleagues' speeches—thank goodness they are here to speak in the House—I was reminded of what I dealt with over the past two weeks in my riding. Being in my riding is a much more positive experience than being in the House. Those watching us must be as disheartened as we ourselves can be. Sometimes we get the feeling we are howling in the wilderness, and this is one of those times because we really get the sense that just one side of the House is talking about this, and people are noticing that.

We all know, because lots of people were talking about it, that last week was National Volunteer Week. I made a lot of contacts and met with lots of people in Gatineau who are doing amazing work on all kinds of issues, such as helping people with drug addictions and helping former inmates reintegrate into society.

I sat down with these people and talked to them about the Conservative agenda. I explained to them that I would be giving a speech this week on the fact that the government says it will eradicate drugs from prisons. Mr. Speaker, you cannot imagine how much people laughed at that. They did not take me seriously. They asked me just how the government planned to do that.

I replied by reading clause 2:

If an offender has been granted parole under section 122 or 123 but has not yet been released and the offender fails or refuses to provide a urine sample when demanded to provide one under section 54, or provides under that section a urine sample for which the result of the urinalysis is positive, as that term is defined in the regulations, then the Service shall inform the Board of the failure or refusal or the test result.

They said, “All right, and then what?” I told them about clause 3:

Section 124 of the Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (3):

(3.1) If the Board is informed of the matters under section 123.1 and the offender has still not yet been released, the Board shall cancel the parole if, in its opinion, based on the information received under that section, the criteria set out in paragraphs 102(a) and (b) are no longer met.

They said, “All right, and then what?” I told them about clause 4:

The releasing authority may impose any conditions on the parole, statutory release or unescorted temporary absence of an offender that it considers reasonable and necessary in order to protect society and to facilitate the offender’s successful reintegration into society. For greater certainty, the conditions may include any condition regarding the offender’s use of drugs or alcohol, including in cases when that use has been identified as a risk factor in the offender’s criminal behaviour.

They said, “And then what?” I told them about clause 5:

The Governor in Council may make regulations providing for anything that by this Part is to be provided for by regulation,...

Members will understand that they laughed because they wondered how this would make prisons drug-free. They asked me to explain how that would happen.

They asked me to explain how that would happen. I told them that there was no explanation. This bill does absolutely nothing, aside from cancelling someone's parole. No one can be against virtue, which is why there is unanimity on Bill C-12. However, this government is once again missing an opportunity to do something good.

For four years now, the government has been giving us bills with fancy titles that sound great but actually accomplish very little. I think that people are starting to realize this. The best example may be Bill C-51. All of the polls showed how the New Democratic Party was seen to be on the wrong side of the fence: we supported terrorists, we were not to be taken seriously when it comes to security, and the government was right.

Those who are a bit more timid, such as the third party, the Bloc Québécois and others, jumped on the Conservative bandwagon. Everyone was unanimous because they thought it was the right thing to do. When the members opposite and the third party remain silent on a bill like this, I tell myself that the NDP is doing the right thing. At report stage and third reading, we should have something to say on behalf of our constituents. I am not saying that that is necessary for all bills, but when it comes to a bill about eradicating drugs in prisons, I cannot believe that the members of the House, who represent Canadians, have nothing to say about their respective ridings.

All of us, or almost all of us, have detention centres, prisons or penitentiaries in our ridings. We can talk to our constituents, our street outreach workers, the people who take care of those with drug addictions and those who take care of inmates. If we really want to make our communities safe, we need to know what we are talking about. We have to be able to read a bill to our constituents without having them laugh at us and ask us if we are serious and if we really believe that a bill will solve the problem. Where is the money for rehabilitation? Where is the money for programs? The Conservatives cut that funding over the past few years. We are constantly being told that we cannot be serious.

We are taking a stand. We are doing the work in committee. We are unequivocally telling the government that this does not make sense and that it is ridiculous to insult people by trying to sell them this. I am sure that this afternoon we will see even more rhetoric about what they are doing. I cannot wait to see what kind of budget the government will allocate to public safety and justice. Why? Because I still think—and I will be surprised if the government proves me wrong—that this government spends more on ads saying how wonderful and extraordinary it is than on programs that could help drug addicts in prison. It is one thing to be able to prove that someone consumed drugs, with a blood and urine test, and to cancel that person's parole, but do we simply want to punish that person or do we want to ensure that he will not continue to have drug problems after he is released? That is what we should be looking at.

This government has little interest in such things. That is ironic, because at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, one of the first bills that came to us from the Conservative benches, Bill C-583, covered the problems related to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. It was a meaningful bill that showed it was possible to do something other than punish. It looked at a disorder, one from which many people in prisons suffer, and tried to find solutions tailored to their needs and their problems. There was unanimity, which was nice, but what did the government do? It withdrew the bill. It forced the MP who introduced it to withdraw it for further study. We took a close look at it in the time we were given. Everyone knows that the Conservatives do not give us much time for thorough study. The study will probably produce some conclusions. I am eager to see the final recommendations that will be submitted to the House.

Considering our past experiences with our colleagues across the aisle, I would be willing to bet that the recommendations will simply encourage a more thorough study and therefore do absolutely nothing. This is really just like what the Liberals used to do before them. It is mind-boggling how similar they are; there is no difference. It is astounding.

It is extremely frustrating because, actually, what is happening here today is a perfect example of what is leading the people of Gatineau to ask, when I meet them, what the point of Parliament is. People here do not even have five minutes to stand up in the House and at least explain how the four little clauses I read earlier are going to achieve what the title says, that is, ensuring that prisons are drug-free. Instead of telling us how wonderful and perfect they are, the Conservatives could simply tell us how they believe these clauses will be so successful, when everything else has failed. It is very frustrating.

Fortunately, things are balanced in Canada. Our democracy has an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a judicial branch. At present, unfortunately, Canadian democracy has to rely too heavily on the judicial branch to rebalance the principles of law, which those on the Conservative benches should be familiar with. The Conservative MPs all have the advantages of the Department of Justice: they can consult people ad nauseam and get legal opinions from the top legal minds in Canada. They do not even take advantage of that. They keep passing bill after bill that gets hammered in the courts all the way to the Supreme Court.

Some denigrate the Supreme Court by claiming that it is engaging in legislative activism. That is not the case at all. The Supreme Court tells us legislators that we cannot do certain things, and reminds us that there are laws in this country and that we have a Constitution and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It tells us that we can go ahead and pass the legislation that we want, that it is our highest prerogative, but that there is still a framework to be respected. If people are not satisfied with this framework, then it is up to us as legislators to change that. However, we have to work within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution. This is not about judicial activism.

I will digress for a moment to talk about Edgar Schmidt, a former public servant who is involved in a case against the Attorney General of Canada that is currently before the Federal Court. He said that he received orders not to follow the charter at all or to just aim for 5%. A 5% chance of winning was enough to move forward. That is ridiculous. This government does not take its role as the executive and as a legislator seriously. That leads to the results we get when we end up before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Bill C-12 will not end up before the Supreme Court of Canada. That is clear. We would not support it if that were the case. Nevertheless, in my opinion, this bill will not accomplish what it is supposed to. Unfortunately, the bill will only delay the action that could be taken to do much better. If only the government would listen to the heartfelt pleas of the people who told us in committee what the government should do instead of cutting rehabilitation and support programs for people with serious drug addictions, then we might achieve better results.

As the Commissioner of Penitentiaries told us, given all the bills with longer and longer mandatory minimum sentences, prisons have no incentive to place these people in rehabilitation programs until just a few years before they are released on parole. Take for example someone who is serving a sentence of seven or 10 years. That individual will not necessarily be placed in a rehabilitation program immediately. The prison might wait until that person has been incarcerated for five years or until he has only one or two years left before he is eligible for parole. What kind of hardened individual have we created in the meantime?

If we claim to want safer communities, what is our responsibility as legislators? When it is time for these people to leave prison, I would like them to be able to reintegrate into society. What will happen if we do nothing to help them? This is not about being a bleeding heart. I would say that there is a certain measure of self-interest. I want to make sure that these people will not be a threat to my family, my friends, my community or me. We must implement the kinds of measures that will achieve these results. This government does not see it like that and, after four years, we are familiar with their approach. We were not born yesterday. This government likes to use grand titles.

This afternoon, we will probably hear about tons of budget measures that earned us the Conservatives' ridicule just for mentioning them. The Conservatives are going to appropriate them to further their interests and to strut around in the next few months, in a manner that I will not even describe, simply to boast about their magnificent agenda, as though this was the best government Canada ever had. They will want to make everyone forget all those years in the past when they were unable to bring forward a balanced budget.

All the Conservatives have done, in fact, like the good economists they are, is to add to the national debt, after everyone had tightened their belts under the Liberal government of the 1990s. That will not stop them from having a splendidly grand title for their budget, as they did for BillC-12.That is unfortunate. I do not know whether this is what the Conservatives are looking for, or whether it just reaches a portion of the population that is on their side. However, even for those who claim they are tough on crime and believe what the government says, I would tell them to go and read the bill. It is worth doing. I was able to read the bill designed to get drugs out of our prisons in exactly one minute. That gives you a good idea.

If someone listening to me believes that Bill C-12 will help solve the problem, I take issue with that. We should talk because, seriously, no one in their right mind will believe that Bill C-12 will help eliminate drugs from prisons. This is what I call misleading the public.

In my opinion, it is shameful for a government that otherwise proclaims itself to be serious to think it will succeed in slipping this “quick fix” past Canadians. Again, it is unfortunate that when bills have some appeal, like Bill C-583 and others, the government succeeds, through all kinds of procedural tactics, in derailing it.

Moreover, when the Conservatives do not want us to talk too long about something, they bring in time allocation motions. People are no longer fooled, and I saw that firsthand on the ground over the last two weeks. People are aware of this. I am comfortable with that, because the message I am sending to the government is what we have succeeded in doing with BillC-51. That bill had a fairly strong measure of support when tabled in the House, but that is no longer the case. People are not fooled. They understand, because we explain it to them. We are doing our job as the official opposition. We do not do so just on the basis of polls. We do so on principle. We have stood firm.

Some parties may have changed their ideas along the way when they saw they were perhaps on the wrong side of the fence, like the Bloc Québécois. Others, like the Liberal party, decided to persist in their error and continue to support the Conservatives. That is not surprising, because they are much alike.

That said, people are not easily fooled. We too will have the time to explain what is going on, although we perhaps do not have the same budget as the Conservative government, which will spend millions of dollars, not to say hundreds of millions of dollars, on advertising during our hockey games, for example, to tell us how great its budget is.

However, people are not fooled, and they will be able to tell this government that the time has come to stop mocking them and making them believe it is doing things that it does not do at all.

[Maria Mourani, Independent, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her excellent speech. She really zeroed in on a number of important points, particularly the uselessness of this bill with respect to stopping drugs from entering our prisons.

Because I worked for a long time in our prisons, I can say that it is a daily struggle to prevent drugs from being brought in in all kinds of inventive ways. Also, we should not forget that drug use is strongly associated with many other problems. Therefore, if we want to eliminate drugs from prisons, we should first and foremost help people to stop using them.

However, as my colleague put it so well, that is almost impossible, because it involves a multitude of variables that the bill does not take into account.

Does my colleague not find that this bill is not only useless, but it also includes things that are already carried out on the ground, such as drug testing and the suspension of parole for offenders who use?

When I read this bill, I had the impression not only that it was useless, but also that the measures it provides for were already being applied on the ground. Did she note the same thing about this bill?

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is precisely the case. I wish to thank my colleague from Ahuntsic for her question. I will take the opportunity to congratulate her on the work she is doing. As a criminologist, she has inside knowledge that is absolutely invaluable and very much appreciated when the time comes to make informed decisions. I am therefore happy to hear her speak.

I would have liked to hear from other members. I have some colleagues who were police officers and others who worked in detention centres. That is the beauty of being in a parliament where there are 308 voices representing personal and individual experiences that are widely diverse, as well as people who are dealing with situations on the ground.

Much like my colleague from Ahuntsic, I was surprised when I read the bill, because its provisions are in fact already being applied. By putting questions to my colleagues who are more knowledgeable in matters of public safety, I learned that we should not take parole officers for idiots. This bill merely states what is already being done. It is as simple as that.

If there is one thing that should be taken from my speech, it is that the Conservatives only wanted to introduce a bill with a grandiose title like “drug-free prisons act”. The Conservatives are touring around their ridings and saying they have introduced BillC-12 to make prisons drug-free and they are taking serious measures to make prisons drug-free.

People are not going to read the bill. I made a point of reading it in the House because then it will be on the record in Hansard. We will be able to use it and tell people this is it, the vaunted bill in question. The Conservatives have to stop treating people like fools. I advise people to look deeper than the grandiose titles and the smoke and mirrors that the Conservatives have been trying to get us used to for four years.

The fact is that the Conservatives have suffered a series of defeats in the courts and the crime rate for sexual offences against children has risen by 6% in the last two years. Their program is a monumental failure. It is just ink on paper, an excuse to hold press conferences where they can pat themselves on the back. It fixes absolutely nothing.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Gatineaufor her speech. She too has not hesitated to tell it like it is.

Can she confirm what I think I understood from her speech: when the bill has received royal assent, it will change nothing in the existing prison system or in how the Parole Board of Canada does things? If that is the case, what actual point is there to this bill?

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my colleague from Sherbrooke sees me as someone who tells it like it is. I think so too.

Obviously, the message in my speech is to watch out for people who tell it like it is. Do not be afraid to go deeper than what they say. Even when I speak—and I am saying this to my constituents in Gatineau—people should not simply accept what I say; they should verify the information I give. Do not fall for a catchy slogan, like the one that says the government is going to make prisons drug-free.

In fact, the day after it comes into force, this bill will have an effect in the range of 0% to 5% and not much more than that. That is unfortunate. I will say it again: it could have been much more than that.

As is the case for many justice or public safety bills, if, beyond the title, we saw real efforts on the part of the government in power to create programs that match these absolutely huge announcements, and if we saw financial and human resources in them too, perhaps then the grandiose title would be slightly more credible. As I was just saying, however, they are merely words on paper that are not followed by any concrete actions.

The first ones to laugh at this kind of thing are people who work in the field, but they are too polite to do it to our faces. The volunteers can do it because they are not paid by the government. They do volunteer work with inmates in the penitentiaries, with people who have substance abuse problems and others. Those people see it right in front of them. They think to themselves that they are doing all this volunteer work when the government has enormous resources it could use to make our communities safer. What it comes up with, however, is rubbish like this. That is what they call it.

This amounts to laughing at people, and that is why people are increasingly stepping away from politics, and that is unfortunate. If that is the goal the government is aiming for, well done! Mission accomplished, if the goal is to upset people, so they will lose interest in all of it and go back home.

However, when I see the reactions to Bill C-51or to other bills, I tell the government to pay attention, because at some point it is going to break something that is going to make Canadians stand up as one and say enough is enough. I think that is going to happen, probably sometime around October 19.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague has a lot of experience in this area. Could she give us more of an explanation on the legal aspects of how the bill may or may not help reintegrate folks who have been in prison back into society?

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is an interesting question. When I read the clauses in Bill C-12, it is all about the possibility for the Parole Board to test people before they are let out on the probation and if they have drugs in their system, it would hold a deliberation. It would do absolutely nothing to ensure they do not take drugs. That is the problem.

As the member for Ahuntsic said, how do we ensure that no drugs go into the prisons? How do we ensure that a person who has a drug problem can get out of that problem? There is nothing, but the Conservatives call it a drug-free prisons act. If that is not laughing at people, I do not know what it is.

So many aspects surrounding drugs in prisons would not be addressed with Bill C-12. It is an insult to anybody's intelligence to claim that it would create drug-free prisons.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of my constituents from Surrey North, in this case to Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the so-called drug-free prisons act.

The member before me was saying that the title was almost laughable. In fact, I was laughing when she pointed that out, because there is nothing in this bill that would take any concrete steps to prevent drugs entering prisons or to help those in prison to get off drugs.

There is only one small aspect to the bill, and it is a small bill of three or four pages. It is not detailed. The only thing this bill would really change is that it would add a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that would make it clear to the Parole Board that it would use a positive result from a urine test or a refusal to take a urine test for drugs in making its decision on parole eligibility. That is all it would do. Basically, it would give legal authority to the Parole Board to use drug tests or urine tests of prisoners to determine eligibility for parole. Here is the kicker. The practice is already in place. The Parole Board already does this. The only thing the bill would do is give it the legal authority, so nothing else would change. That is why the title of this bill is laughable. It is called the drug-free prisons act.

I have yet to hear any Conservative get up in this House and explain it to this House. None of the Conservatives, or the Liberals for that matter, are getting up to explain to us how this would prevent drugs in our prisons. If the Conservatives were really concerned about preventing drugs, there would be a more concrete effort made to address the demand for drugs in prisons, rehabilitation, and those kinds of initiatives. However, there is nothing in this bill that would lead us to hope that one day we will have drug-free prisons, although it is a great aspiration to go toward drug-free prisons. The Conservatives come up with hollow titles for bills that somehow pretend that things are going to happen.

Yesterday, on the opposition day motion, we were talking about the oil spill in English Bay. The Conservatives have been throwing around the idea of a world-class response. We saw what happened in English Bay when the toxic oil was spilled, and it was not a world-class response. It took six hours to reach the spill. Is that world-class? The Conservatives frame things with fancy titles. I have to give them one thing; they are very good at coming up with fancy names for their bills.

The problem is that the legislation itself is hollow. It does not address what we need to address. If they were really concerned about addressing drugs in prisons, they would bring more concrete proposals to this House, and we would be happy. We have always supported having concrete initiatives to ensure that we have safe prisons, drug-free prisons, and prisons that have a good work environment for the people who work in those difficult situations.

I have visited a prison. I was on the public safety committee, and we were studying this very issue of drugs in prisons.

We had a number of hearings. We heard from Corrections Canada staff, experts and many stakeholders throughout Canada. I can say that the majority of those people at committee were of the opinion that we need more rehabilitation in prison to curb this menace in prisons.

I know that Conservatives do not like facts and figures, and they even have trouble with business and economics when it comes to supply and demand. I will get into that in a minute, but I want to go back to the amount of money the current government has spent trying to prevent drugs from getting into prisons and what the result has been.

In 2008, the Conservatives decided to invest, over three years, $122 million to bring in sniffer dogs and ion machines to prevent drugs from getting into prisons. The result of that three years of spending a substantial amount of money was that random urine tests done at the beginning and random tests done at the end did not show any difference. Basically, the amount of drugs in prisons before was still present afterward, even after spending $122 million on interdiction. At the same time, the programs to help these individuals get off drugs were being cut.

In terms of supply and demand, the Conservatives are trying to cut the supply, yet on the demand side, they are not helping those individuals get off the drugs. Sometimes I wonder if the Conservatives actually understand what economics is all about or if they understand the law of diminishing returns.

I had a chance to visit two medium-security prisons in Kingston, the Kent Institution in the Harrison Lake area, and the Matsqui Institution in Abbotsford. I had a chance to sit down with the prisoners, and I asked the warden to step outside. Some of the prisoners were on a committee representing other prisoners. I asked them point blank what had changed in the last three years since the government had started the interdiction program and had spent $122 million of taxpayers' money. I asked if I could get drugs in the prison. They said, yes, sure I could, and then asked what type of drug I would like. When I asked what had changed, they said the only thing that had changed was that the price of drugs had gone up to five or six times what it was before. They could still get the drugs, but the price had skyrocketed. That was the result of the effort by the Conservative government to stop drugs from entering prisons.

Then I asked if they wanted to get off drugs. I said that surely they wanted to get off this stuff and be clean when they got out. I asked what was needed for them to be off drugs. They told me that they needed rehabilitation programs to help them get off these drugs.

The majority of people going into prison, 80% or 90%, have some form of addiction. This is well documented. However, if there are no rehabilitation services or programs to get into when they get to prison, how are they supposed to manage?

This was what the prisoners were asking for. They wanted programs available to them when they got to prison so that they could access those services and get off these drugs. There would be less demand for these drugs, and we could reduce the supply of drugs coming into prisons.

One way or another, once prisoners do their time, they will be out in society. We have a captive audience where we can provide rehabilitative services and programs that will help them get off of these drugs and reintegrate into society when they are released from prison. It becomes much easier to reintegrate if they are off of any substances they were taking before they went to prison. As I said, a high percentage of prisoners are addicted to drugs or alcohol when they get to prison. That is the record.

If we are really serious about curbing the use of drugs in prisons, we also have to look at the demand side and at helping those individuals get off drugs. However, the Conservative government has made cuts to rehabilitation services and programs that would help curb drugs in prisons.

Today is budget day. I know that this is going to be the last budget for the Conservative government, because it will not be presenting a budget next year. I can assure the House of that, because I have heard from my constituents and people from across the country that this is the Conservatives' last budget. If the Conservatives are really concerned about curbing drugs in prisons, they have a last opportunity. Let us make an impact. Talk to the Minister of Finance. Talk to the Prime Minister. Talk to cabinet colleagues. Let us make this real. Let us make that investment in this budget to ensure that we have rehabilitation programs not only in prisons but in our communities.

There have been over 20 shootings in my hometown of Surrey over the last 35 days or so. That is very disturbing to me as a father and as a representative from Surrey North. This is happening in my backyard. There is a gang war going on. There are drug deals going on. There is a turf war going on. Unfortunately, what we had feared happened just the other day. One young man was killed, and there are fears that the violence will escalate because of this tragedy on the weekend.

I urge the government to invest in the very programs that are going to make our communities safer instead of coming up with these hollow, laughable names for bills that do nothing to make our communities safe. Let us make real investments in our communities. Let us fund programs.

I have a motion in the House asking for long-term, sustainable funding for youth gang crime prevention programs. I have talked to service providers in my community that help youth and provide services to at-risk youth. What they have been telling me is that the programs that have been funded through the Canadian government have been cut by the Conservatives over the last number of years. If we are going to make investments in our youth and in safer communities, it is these kinds of programs we need to make investments in.

I have talked to the individuals who provide programs to these at-risk kids, and the results are fabulous. There has been about an 80%-85% success rate in these youths being able to graduate from high school. However, I have seen in my own community that the Conservative government has made cuts to the very programs that help our youth get on the right path and that help make our communities safer.

If the Conservatives were concerned about making our communities safer, instead of presenting hollow, laughable bills in this House, they have an opportunity, their last opportunity, because they will not get that opportunity next year, to commit to making that very investment. When they formed government in 2006, they said they were going to do things differently than the party in the corner over there, the Liberal Party, yet they have failed to do that. They are basically doing the same thing. They are shuffling chairs at a table on the Titanic. It is not helping. If they were really concerned about ensuring the safety in our communities, they would be making investments.

The bill has a very narrow scope that simply gives direction to the Parole Board to legally use the fact that a prisoner failed to provide a urine sample as a tool to deny parole. As I have said before, the Parole Board has been using this practice. There is nothing concrete in this bill, the drug-free prisons act, that would actually enhance or provide for safer working conditions, safer prisons, drug-free prisons.

There is absolutely nothing in the bill, yet the Conservatives have come up with a fancy name to have people believe that somehow, magically, out of the sky there will be drug-free prisons. Frankly speaking, this is their 10th year in government and I think they are running out of new ideas on how to provide for Canadians, whether it is safer communities, providing services, enhancing our health care, or whether it is working toward having a pharmacare program and a day care program.

The Liberals promised a day care program, a child care program, back in 1972. They did not deliver on that. The Conservatives said that they would make hundreds of thousands of spaces available, yet they have not delivered. We have an idea. We will be bringing in child care programs throughout this country once we form the government in 2015.

[An hon. member]

Dream on.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I see the member cheering. He can be sure that we will be forming the government in 2015.

There is one issue that comes up often, and we heard it when we were doing the study into drug-free prisons. If the Conservatives were truly interested in drug-free prisons, they would provide tools and investments for the CSC to have a proper intake assessment of inmates' addictions, and then provide the proper correctional program required.

Without addiction treatment, education and proper reintegration upon release, a prisoner will likely return to the criminal lifestyle and possibly create more victims. It is common knowledge that when a young person is brought into the prison system, it is a university for higher learning from other gangsters with respect to crime. Gangsters are a problem, as I have said, not only in my part of town, but also in prisons.

This is an issue we need to address. If the government were serious about addressing this issue, it would be looking at rehabilitation, looking at investing in our communities across this country, yet the government comes up with hollow titles and tries to pretend that somehow it is actually doing something.

This is a very small step which, yes, I will support, but at the end of the day, what the government is proposing is already being practised by the Parole Board.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Surrey North for his excellent speech and for sharing his experience in his riding and the experience he had when he visited a penitentiary.

He touched on this, but I would like him to elaborate on the subject: does he think this is a real missed opportunity on the part of the Conservatives, to have a bill with this title but with only four clauses that ultimately only reiterate a practice that already exists at the Parole Board? Is this an opportunity that the Conservatives have missed to put new measures in place, real, concrete measures, to prevent the spread of drugs in our prisons? They could have done so much more.

With a title like this, it truly is a missed opportunity. As other colleagues have said, the bill will not have the planned effects, as stated in its title. Is this a missed opportunity? And with this being budget day, would there be other opportunities that the government might offer in order to genuinely address this very real and well documented problem?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the short title of the bill is very misleading in the sense that we all aspire to have drug-free prisons, but there is nothing in the bill that is going to help us have drug-free prisons. The bill allows the Parole Board to use drug tests on prisoners to deny them parole. That is already happening. That practice is being used by the Parole Board.

This is a missed opportunity. The member is absolutely right. Today is budget day. The government has run out of new ideas for some concrete ways to make prisons a safer place for correctional workers and for the reintegration of individuals into society. Instead, the Conservatives have come up with a fancy name for a bill that has no impact whatsoever on the actual workings of the prisons or any sort of elimination of drugs.

The official opposition has always advocated for ways to reduce harm and reduce drug use in prisons. We will continue to do that. In 2015, we will bring in real concrete action, real concrete proposals to ensure that our prisons are safe not only for the workers, but also for the prisoners.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. There are so many people working on making safer streets, dealing with recidivism, making sure that we actually get people out of the drug trade and making sure that people do not get involved in drugs. Then we have the Conservative government.

This is a perfect Conservative bill. It meets the three criteria: one, it has a ridiculous title that means nothing; two, it will not change anything because what it is claiming to do is already within the Parole Board; and three, the big kicker, the Conservatives have already wasted $122 million and have not changed anything. They are going to stand again and bang their heads against a brick wall that they created in their prison attitudes without ever bringing forward in the House one coherent, reasonable response that would actually cut down the drug trade and bring down the rates of recidivism.

With the member's experience in Surrey and what he knows in dealing with drug issues through his portfolio in the House, why does my colleague think the government continues to present such tired, out-of-touch ideas? Maybe it is time that Canadians finally did throw those guys out.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I could not have summed it up better than the member for Timmins—James Bay did. This bill has a fancy title and yet it has no meat. It pretends to do something that it will not really do. That is what has been happening with the Conservative government over the last four years that I have been here. The government pretends to be doing something, but actually does not do anything.

The member is absolutely right. The government spent $122 million over a three-year period to eradicate drugs from prisons. What was the result? The result was zero change. In the Correctional Service annual reports, I checked the random drug testing that was done and after this $122 million was spent, the rate of drugs in prisons was the same as before. There was no significant change.

Experts have been telling the government that if it is looking at the supply side, it also has to look at the demand side, which involves prevention and rehabilitation. The government put a chunk of money on the supply side, which had no effect on the amount of drugs getting into prisons, but on the demand side, it cut the preventive and rehabilitation programs that would cut the supply if there was no demand. I know it is hard for the Conservatives to comprehend something as simple as supply and demand.

The member is absolutely right. The government has run out of ideas. I think Canadians will show the Conservatives the door come October 19, 2015.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, crime is a big issue for many Canadians, I would say in particular in his part of Canada, in Surrey. It is a top-of-mind issue for many voters and yet in dealing with this issue, it is important to bring our best intelligence and thoughtfulness around what to do about crime, be it crime that is committed in prisons or leading in.

My question for the member is about this particularly annoying statistic for the Conservatives, which should not be annoying because it is good news. For a number of years now, 15 or 20 years or more, crime rates in Canada have been steadily dropping. Violent crimes, property crimes, murder and whatnot have steadily dropped, all statistics across the board. At the same time, since the Conservatives have been in government, and I would argue it was more for political reasons that they needed to make crime an issue, the incarceration rate has gone up. Before any of the measures that the Conservatives brought in, the crime rate was dropping and continues to drop even though they bring in these new laws and they are supposed to change this, that, and the other. The one thing that has changed is incarceration, which is an incredibly expensive thing. It runs up to more than $100,000 a year per prisoner. My friend tells me it is $150,000 for a federal maximum prison. However, the government is unconcerned with whether its measures are actually working, but just wants to spend money and lock up more people.

If crime is dropping, let us look at the things that actually work. If incarceration rates are going up, let us look at who is being incarcerated and try to find out how to prevent the crime in the first place. Would that not be the most ideal crime-fighting tactic any government could take on?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley hit the nail on the head. Absolutely, we need to take proactive approaches to crime in today's society, and prevention is the best investment any government and any society could make.

There have been a number of shootings in the town of Surrey over the last month. There have been over 20 shootings. A young person was killed over the weekend. There are fears in my community that this will further escalate. Not only do we need more police, which the government promised back in 2006, but we also need additional preventive programs, preventive investment in communities, to ensure that young people are not getting into these types of activities. Unfortunately, I have talked to many organizations on the ground and the Conservatives have failed to make these vital investments in communities that would make them safe.

Many studies have been done. These are not Kijiji facts. These are academic studies from the United States and Canada where a minimal investment in crime prevention programs provides a huge return at the end. As the member pointed out, it costs a lot of money to keep someone in prison. Up to $150,000 is being spent per prisoner per year, but a fraction of that invested early on in gang-prevention programs in communities would make Canada a better place for all Canadians.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to play a role in this debate. It is an important debate.

Although the bill itself is rather modest in scope it is rather expansive in title. It claims to be the drug-free prisons act, but it would actually amend a practice that is currently being carried out by the Parole Board, which is to take into account either a failure to take a drug sample or the results of a drug sample testing for someone who is about to be released on parole. Therefore, it would not actually change very much, except to put into law a practice that already exists. However, it is an opportunity for New Democrats to spend some time to talk about the approach the government has taken not only for legislation in general, but in particular, legislation as it relates to crime and punishment and the treatment of offenders.

We can be magnanimous today and say everyone in the House would like to have a safer society. We would like to have safer streets and communities. The question is, how do we go about that and is the government's approach one that works and actually creates safer communities or is it not? We on this side of the House, in particular New Democrats, believe that the government is an absolute failure when it comes to this issue. It is great at the rhetoric. We have one here today. “The act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act” is the long title. The short title, the inaccurate propaganda title, is “the drug-free prisons act”. The government is good at propaganda. It actually puts propaganda into the names of legislation.

I do not know if this is unique to this particular government. Maybe the Liberals did it too. I do not remember that far back. I was not here then. I was here back in 1987 when the Progressive Conservatives were in power but I was not here during the Liberal regime.

To call this act “the drug-free prisons act” is an attempt to fool people. There is an old saying that is common enough, but we do not hear it that often these days as it is a bit of an old-fashioned saying. It is, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” In fact, one cannot fool the majority of the people all of the time and the government is going to find that out in September of this year.

Let me go back to the first part of that saying, “You can fool all of the people some of the time”. The government believes it can get away with titles like this. It believes it can fool all of the people some of the time. By calling a bill “the drug-free prisons act”, it believes it can make people think the bill will remove drugs from prisons.

The government has spent $122 million on interdiction programs over a three-year period from 2012 on, the same period it took $295 million out of the corrections system. What was the result? Did it create drug-free prisons? It absolutely did not. In fact, there are just as many drugs in prisons these days as there were then. Therefore, is the government's approach working? No, it is not.

I would like to quote from the office of the correctional investigator, Howard Sapers, a very renowned expert on this matter. He is so renowned that the government decided not to renew his appointment after serving the position for some eight years or more and doing a magnificent job providing dispassionate, fact-based, evidence-based advice to government. In his 2011-12 annual report he said that a zero tolerance stance to drugs in prison is an aspiration rather than an effective policy that:

...simply does not accord with the facts of crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world. Harm reduction measures within a public health and treatment orientation offer a far more promising, cost-effective and sustainable approach to reducing subsequent crime and victimization.

The John Howard Society is working very hard at this but this is basically saying that it is not a realistic goal to even have. Therefore, the government really has the question put wrongly and it has the wrong answer.

What we are really trying to do to create a safer society and safer communities is to reduce the number of victims of crime. We know that the crime rates are going down, although we would not know that from the emphasis that the government is placing on it. Prisons are becoming more filled. The conditions in prison are getting worse with double-bunking and so forth. One of the consequences of that is we will not have safer communities. If we have people in prison longer without programs to assist with issues such as drug addiction and substance abuse, many of those prisoners will eventually be released into society once they have served their sentence. If they go out into those communities without those problems having been solved or tackled they will pose a bigger danger to society and there will be more victims of crime. That is just plain logic. I know that interferes with the views of some of the members opposite with respect to humankind and how we should deal with criminals.

I practised law for many years and practised criminal law for a number of those years. I understand the system. There are principles of sentencing. The idea of sentencing is to fit the sentence to the crime. There are a number of factors taken into consideration. We need to deter and punish crime but we also need to rehabilitate the offenders so that we have safer communities. Those factors are taken into consideration. Once they get into a prison those factors should be put to work. Once they are removed from society, as best we can we want to reduce the rate of recidivism, which is a complicated word for a simple thing. It means that we do not want these people who are in prison to commit crimes when they get out. How do we do that? By spending $122 million over a period to try to interdict and prevent drugs from getting into prisons, totally without serious effect, and then spend I think it was $9 million to $11 million over the same period on substance abuse programs in our prisons. That does not make sense. At the point in time when this bill was going through committee it was estimated that 2,400 prisoners in our corrections system were waiting to get access to a substance abuse program. One would ask what happened. One aspect is that they are in prison with no access to a substance abuse program and have access to drugs, because we know that there are drugs in the system. When those prisoners eventually come out of prison without having had an opportunity to deal with their drug addiction and without having an opportunity to move forward they will go back into the streets without the ability or the opportunity to be better serving members of society. That is really what we are dealing with.

One of the comments that was made by representatives of the John Howard Society was that this bill will not eliminate drugs from prisons and merely seems to be a tactic to ignore some of the real issues in prison, such as mental illness, double-bunking and prisoner self-harm. Prisoner self-harm is one aspect that we are reminded of as a result of the very tragic story of Ashley Smith, a young woman who died in prison at the age of 19. She was first arrested at the age of 14 for I believe throwing crabapples at a letter carrier, which was what got her in trouble with the law. She ended up in what turned out to be a death spiral from the ages of 14 to 19, which led her to desperation and maltreatment by the prison system. There have been reports on this. It is a tragic case.

It was well investigated, well reported on, but tragic nonetheless. She ended up killing herself under the watchful eye of corrections officials who were told not to interfere while she was strangling herself in prison. That is what it came to in that particular case. It was a sense of desperation that cried out for reform, cried out for change, and change is still required to take place. We are not getting it from the government. What we are getting instead is increased crowding in prisons and the closing down of some special facilities that dealt with mental health cases in prisons.

We do know that when we are talking about drugs in prison, a very high percentage of the offender population who abuses drugs is also currently struggling with mental illness as well. We do not have adequate programs in the prisons for that.

The Conservative government is closing down treatment centres for inmates dealing with serious mental illness. This is a very serious problem. Many times drug abuse and substance abuse occur with mental health problems. There are some figures that show the size of this issue. In 2011, it was estimated that 45% of male offenders and 69% of female offenders had received a mental health care intervention prior to going into prison.

That shows a level of serious need within prisons to provide access to care and access to programs. Prison can, in fact, be a positive experience for some people who are in desperate circumstances if the programs are available.

We need to have an attitude that recognizes that there is individual responsibility, and nobody is suggesting that everybody in prison is there because they have somehow been wronged. However, we do know there are socio-economic factors. We do know there are people with serious needs that are not being met in society, whether it be drug addictions that they have no way of dealing with or whether it be mental health issues that are improperly or inadequately addressed in society.

We do know there is high unemployment in many parts of this country. We have significant problems in the aboriginal communities as a result of many factors which I will not go into here. There is a whole series of issues that have led to that situation.

We cannot say the answer is to just increase the sentences, which we have often heard from the government. Putting in mandatory minimum sentences as a deterrent to people committing crimes is something we know does not work and has even been recognized very recently by the Supreme Court of Canada. The research shows, and has been confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada, accepted by the highest court in the land in a recent decision, that mandatory minimum sentences as such do not in fact deter crimes.

The government is anxious to continue to make prison a situation which is negative, not only for the prisoner, obviously, but also for corrections guards. When the government starts talking about zero opportunities for parole forever, what will that do for the safety of corrections officers? What will it do if a prisoner has no hope whatsoever of ever getting out and nothing to lose? Even if there is a faint hope, it is still some sort of hope.

It the metrics of that are changed and we say to the prisoners that no matter what happens, no matter what they do, they are not getting out ever and the circumstances are going to be worse, will that help the safety of corrections officers? I think the answer is pretty obvious. It does not at all.

We have to do something different from what the government is doing, because what the government is doing, frankly, does not work.

We support the bill because it would in fact put to place in legislation a practice that already exists. We are okay with the legislation. We are happy to see it pass, but we do not want to let his opportunity go when we pass legislation that has a short title of drug-free prisons act, which is clearly a misnomer, is clearly a propaganda title and is clearly wrong. The long title of the bill An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which is fine.

In fact, a motion was made in committee to amend the legislation and, of course, the motion was not allowed. We tried to fix it. I want Canadians to know that even though we support the actual terms of the legislation, what it stands for and what it says, we do not like the title. We tried to change it and it was ruled out of order because there was no amendment to the bill that would lead to a change in the title being required.

What do we have? As of March 14, 2012, the national penitentiary population was 15,000. If 20% of them, nearly 2,400 people, are waiting for a program for drug abuse and substance abuse, then we have a serious problem. If this legislation is followed through, those people would stay in prison longer, they still would not get the programs they need and eventually they would have to be released when their sentences ended. When that happens and they did not have access to the programs, we will have a continued problem for our society, despite the government's claim that it cares about victims. I think we all care about victims. In fact, we care about victims to the point that we want to see fewer of them. One way to do that is to ensure that people who are incarcerated get the rehabilitation programs and support they need to allow them a greater chance of living a life of less crime when they get out and to participate better in society.

Let us talk about some of our other programs. When we talk about a mandatory $15-a-hour minimum wage, that is really designed as well to allow people to have a decent opportunity to make a living and support themselves. When we talk about other programs we are promoting, that is also about ensuring that prisoners who get out of jail and want to be productive members of society can have proper rehabilitation programs so they have those opportunities and a better chance of not reoffending.

There was a lot of talk about supporting victims and victims' bills of rights, but the current government has done nothing to help the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board program that has existed in our country for many years. When it was established, the federal government support was based on the dollar formula of 90/10. It provided victims of crime with compensation for losses they incurred as a result of crime. The government has done nothing about that. It brought in its so-called victims' bill of rights, but it did nothing on the plus side to provide something that would help with their problems associated with the crimes against them.

We want prisons to be a safe workplace for correctional staff. We want prisoners to be rehabilitated. We want to have them access government programs so when they are released, they are in a better position to lead a crime-free life. If part of their problem is mental health or drug addiction and rehabilitation programs can help fix that, we need to put more money into prison programs to make that possible.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

Although we support the bill, I would like to take this opportunity to point out just how much the Conservatives’ approach does not work, even though they say they are the best ones to handle law and order issues. My colleague gave an excellent example of this in his speech: mandatory minimum sentences. In the United States, even the Republicans, who are often hand in glove with the Conservatives ideologically, are rejecting that idea as a way of reducing crime rates in our communities.

When it comes to drugs in the prison system, we also have to consider health and prevention. Of course, people have addiction problems, and I do not understand why we would not be considering solutions to address that.

As my colleague said in his speech, we could offer programs within the prison system to start reducing the incidence of these problems and healing these people and then, as he put it so well, avoid crimes being repeated. The best way to protect victims is to make sure that people are not in a position where they want to commit crimes, and I think we can do that by focusing on rehabilitation.

On that point, would my colleague like to say more about the fact that in spite of the new laws being enacted, very little is being done to offer more resources? We see cuts being made and a lack of financial resources in the prisons.

What does my colleague think?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for reminding the House of the fact that the government is bucking the trend. In the United States for example, the trend had been to be far more harsh on prisoners, with more use of mandatory minimum sentences, solitary confinement and other methods. The Americans have recognized that this does not work. Some of the more right-wing states that had a tradition of being so-called tough on crime, as the Conservatives like to call themselves, are recognizing that some of the measures they have chosen lead to greater crime in their communities and to less safe communities. It is a bit of an enlightened approach even for those who take that ideological point of view.

The Conservatives government does not seem to get it. However, I hope that when the government changes in the fall, we will have an opportunity to put more resources into ensuring that rehabilitation programs are available and that prison conditions are more conducive to rehabilitation. That way, when people leave prisons, they will be better citizens and less likely to commit crimes.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is always intelligent when he helps people.

The NDP has been steadfast in our support for measures that will make our prisons safe. Meanwhile, the Conservative government has ignored recommendations from Correctional Service staff and the correctional investigator that would decrease violence, gang activity and drug use in our prisons. Multiple stakeholders across the country agree that this bill would have a minimal impact on the drugs in our prison system.

Recently the Conservatives cut $295 million to the operating budget of Correctional Service Canada, which likely has impacted the already small portion of the funding that is dedicated to core correctional programming. Meanwhile, they have invested $122 million into failed interdiction tools, even after the stakeholders and experts in the field have said that drug-free prisons are not achievable. Experts have said that we need to invest in rehabilitation programs for our prisoners and the Conservatives have shown that is not something they are interested in doing.

My colleague said that we needed to invest in more programming to support our prisoners, so when they left the prison system recidivism would be lowered rather than maintained at the same rate. Could my colleague comment on that?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is a serious situation when the government makes things worse and less safe for our communities by taking the money out of the prison program that could be used for substance abuse programs or other programs that would help to rehabilitate offenders, help them with mental health issues and to provide substance abuse programs. It would leave us all in a situation where, when they came out of prison, they would be in better shape than when they were when they went in. We do not want them in the same frame of mind with the same problems if they can be addressed inside prison. We want it to be a positive experience. Instead, what we have is money taken out of the system and conditions becoming worse, and that is not good for society.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have been in the House since this morning and I have listened to the debate very carefully. It is almost deafening that the government and Liberal members are not participating in this debate. Why? Surely, if the government is presenting a bill, it would want to defend it and root for it.

Is it because it is an indefensible bill? The title of the bill would not really address the real issue of drugs in prisons. It would just provide a legal avenue for the Parole Board to use urine samples to deny parole, which is already a practice. One would think that for a bill like this, the government would be getting up, cheering and defending it, letting Canadians know what is happening in the House of Commons.

Would the member care to comment on that?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Surrey North makes an interesting point. I see members opposite, apparently unwilling to get up and talk about this. I suspect there is one reason why. I do not really believe that anybody over there is happy to get up to try to defend the fact that they have called this bill the drug-free prisons act when it would do nothing of the kind. In fact, it has no relation to having drug-free prisons at all. I think the member for Yukon and the committee recognized as much by acknowledging that the title was a bit of an overreach. That is a pretty big admission from the other side.

In fact, it is more than an overreach. It is something that is really indefensible and that is why we do not see anybody on the other side getting up trying to defend it.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, following in a similar vein to my previous question, we know that mental health is a significant problem in our communities across the country. In the intake interviews with prisoners, there is quite a significant number of prisoners who go into our prison system with identified mental health issues.

Instead of complaining, I would like to hear proposals or propositions of how we could make changes. What should we do as responsible legislators to ensure that the occurrences of mental health issues and concerns with our prisoners as they exit the prison system can be reduced, rather than increase or stay the same. According to many studies, mental health continues to be a problem, rather than being resolved or worked on while our prisoners are in the system.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I will quote Catherine Latimer, the executive director of the John Howard Society, who talked about what we could do for people who were out on parole. She said:

We want to enhance the likelihood that communities would be safer. We do that by a supported, targeted parole reintegration scheme that looks at the needs of the individual and how to support those needs.

On the way in to prison, when individuals are taken in and assessed at the beginning, there has to be a program that assesses the addiction problem and provides a proper correctional program for that offender. Without addiction treatment, education and proper reintegration upon release, a prisoner will likely return to a criminal lifestyle and possibly create more victims. That is what we are trying to prevent.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, and as others have pointed out, the short title is the drug-free prisons act.

Other New Democrats have indicated today that we are supporting this very narrow bill, and people might wonder why we are rising to speak to the bill if we are supporting it. Part of the reason we are rising to speak comes down to the short title, the drug-free prisons act. Nothing in the bill would contribute toward a goal of drug-free prisons.

One would think, given the Conservatives' approach to being tough on crime, that part of their interests would be that any legislation they bring forward would actually have a goal of keeping our communities safer. So part of that goal would be that, when people are incarcerated, when the justice system has found them guilty and they are incarcerated for whatever their misdeeds were—we would presume the Conservative goal would be to ensure that prisoners are rehabilitated so that they can be reintegrated back into the community in a safe way and thus keep our communities safer.

I think all of us in the House would argue that one of our roles is to ensure that federal employees have a safe workplace. We would assume that any legislation we bring forward would consider whether or not the workplace for correctional officers, men and women who serve in the federal penitentiary system, is safe. I would argue that nothing in the bill would achieve those ends.

I am turning to the legislative summary because it is important to highlight what exactly the bill would do and presumably why the bill came about. The legislative summary says:

The bill requires the Parole Board of Canada (PBC) (or a provincial parole board, if applicable) to cancel the parole of an offender who has not yet been released if the offender tests positive in a urinalysis or fails to provide a urine sample and the Board is of the opinion that the criteria for granting parole are no longer met.

The bill also clarifies the legislative intent underlying section 133(3) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act 1 (CCRA)—which authorizes a releasing authority to set conditions on an offender's parole, statutory release or unescorted temporary absence—to provide that conditions may be set regarding the offender's use of drugs or alcohol, including when that use has been identified as a risk factor in the offender's criminal behaviour.

There is a long history of drug use within the penitentiary system, and the legislative summary quotes some of that background. Under a section called “The Presence of Drugs in the Federal Penitentiary System”, it says:

Prevalence rates of substance abuse for persons involved in the criminal justice system are “much higher” than those in the general population. According to the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), “in Canada, 80% of offenders entering the federal prison system are identified as having a substance abuse problem.”

I am going to repeat that number: 80% of people of entering the system have a substance abuse problem. That should be setting all kinds of warning bells off for everybody in the House who is considering legislation.

The summary goes on to say:

The presence of drugs within the federal penitentiary system is not a recent phenomenon. Problems associated with drugs in the penitentiary system were noted in 1990 by the Federal Court of Canada in Jackson v. Joyceville Penitentiary (T.D.), when the Court found that the evidence clearly indicated that:

unauthorized intoxicants in the prison setting create very serious problems including a greater risk and level of violence that affects the safety and security of prison institutions for both staff and inmates.

In 2000, the Sub-committee on the Corrections and Conditional Release Act of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights tabled a report entitled A Work in Progress: The Corrections and Conditional Release Act, in which it noted:

One of the issues that arose in virtually every correctional facility visited by the Sub-committee was the entry, presence and use of drugs in an environment where they are not supposed to be found. The Sub-committee also learned that the brewing, distribution and consumption of alcohol are serious problems in many correctional institutions. The consequences of the presence of alcohol and drugs in correctional facilities can be devastating to both the correctional environment and to what corrections personnel are trying to achieve in working with offenders.

Probably people who have listened to this debate would presume that the collection of a urine analysis for drug testing is something new, when in fact, it has existed within the penitentiary system for a number of years.

I will not go over all the history, but the mandatory urine analysis within the penitentiary system began in the mid-1980s, and so it has been going on for decades. There have been some changes to it because of some court challenges and human rights issues, but essentially the collection of urine for analysis and drug testing has been within the penitentiary system for a number of years.

What currently exists? According to the legislative summary, under the heading “Authority to Collect Urine Samples” it says, “Today, the CCRA authorizes the collection of urine samples within the institutional setting in the following prescribed circumstances.”

I will read the prescribed conditions without the explanation, but a number of things have to be present: reasonable grounds; random selection; when required for program activity involving community contact or a treatment program; testing to monitor compliance with conditions to abstain from the consumption of drugs or alcohol; consequences of a positive result or a refusal to provide a sample; and consequences for offenders on conditional release. This is the current situation from before we had Bill C-12 before us.

Therefore, we already have this method. However, in terms of drug-free prisons, I will talk a little later about how effective the programs have been, or have not been, and how little the bill would contribute to it.

On the changes to the legislation, clause 2 of Bill C-12 would amend the CCRA by creating a new section, 123.1, which states that the CSC is required to inform the Parole Board when an offender has been granted day or full parole but has not yet been released, has failed or refused to provide a urine sample or has had a positive urine analysis test.

Clause 3 of the bill would add a new section that states that if the Parole Board has been informed of an offender's failure or refusal to provide a urine sample or positive urine analysis result, and the offender has not yet been released, it must cancel the offender's parole, but only if, in its opinion, the criteria for granting parole provided in section 102 of the CCRA are no longer met.

Clause 4 of the bill would modify section 133(3) of the CCRA to direct the consideration of a condition regarding the offender's use of drugs or alcohol following an offender's failure or refusal to provide a urine sample, and Bill C-12 would give the Parole Board clear legal authority for the imposition of a condition regarding the use of drugs or alcohol by adding that:

For greater certainty, the conditions may include any condition regarding the offender’s use of drugs or alcohol, including in cases when that use has been identified as a risk factor in the offender’s criminal behaviour.

Therefore, what we have currently is a situation where the Correctional Service of Canada already does the urine sampling and drug analysis, and now we have this communication link with the Parole Board so that it may be considered when granting parole. However, members will notice that nowhere in there does it talk about rehabilitation or treatment while offenders are within the correctional system. Therefore, how this would contribute to a drug-free prison escapes me. I cannot find anything in the legislation that would create an environment that would reduce the use of drugs in prisons, that would presumably lead to better reintegration into society and more safety for prison staff who have to deal with these inmates who may be intoxicated or under the influence of some sort of drug.

It is interesting that this issue has been raised in any number of venues, and I am going to quote from an April 2012 report called “Drugs and Alcohol in Federal Penitentiaries: An Alarming Problem”. This is a report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. In that report, there is a section entitled “The Impact of Drugs and Alcohol in Federal Correctional Facilities”. The report states that:

Upon admission, 80% of offenders have a serious substance abuse problem, and over half of them reported that alcohol and drug use was a factor in the commission of their offence.

Mental health problems are also highly prevalent among inmates in the correctional system. Experts note that drug addicts and inmates with mental health issues generally have complex problems to contend with, such as concurrent mental health issues, drug addiction and alcoholism.

Dr. Sandy Simpson, Clinical Director of the Law and Mental Health Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said that substance abuse “is a driver of mental ill health and it is also a barrier to recovery, wellness, and reducing recidivism.” This is all the more alarming since “anywhere up to 90% of a standing prison population will have a lifetime problem of substance misuse or dependence.” The Commissioner also raised this point with the Committee, noting that “[t]his dependency does not magically disappear when they arrive at our gates.”

Anybody who has studied the corrections system is well aware that these substances are illegally available within the correctional system. I think there is a theory out there that when people go to prison, they will go cold turkey and somehow magically be relieved of needing or wanting the substance, but of course, these substances are illegally available in the system, which does not help with reintegration into society.

With regard to that report, New Democrats actually filed a dissenting opinion because, despite all of the testimony that was heard, the report only came down on one part of a proposed solution. In the dissenting report, New Democrats said:

The report: Drugs and Alcohol in Federal Penitentiaries: an Alarming Problem, is fundamentally flawed and fails to adequately represent the testimony heard at committee in a fair manner. Critical information is missing and as a result many of the conclusions and recommendations are incomplete or insufficient, for this reason New Democrat members of the Public Safety Committee have submitted this dissenting opinion....

The most startling example of the information missing from this report is the failure to note evidence that clearly demonstrated $122 million dollars [sic] of Conservative spending on interdiction tools and technology since 2008 has not led to any reduction in drug use in prisons. The Commissioner of Correctional Services Canada...Mr. Don Head, admitted at meeting number 16 on December 1, 2011, that this spending has been largely ineffective according to the CSC's own report on drug-testing, but this information is not reflected anywhere in the committee's report.

Of significant concern is the appearance that the Committee's report reached a pre-determined conclusion that the solution to the problems of drugs and alcohol in prison is increasing interdiction measures. This conclusion does not reflect the testimony that the Committee heard describing the complexity of the problem of drug and alcohol in federal prisons. As many witnesses affirmed, a narrow focus on interdiction measures alone will not serve the purpose of reducing the use of drugs and alcohol....

New Democrats believe that the problems facing Canadian prisons, including mental illness, drug use and the spread of disease, including HIV and hepatitis, are complex and interrelated. Violence and increased population pressures, gangs and drug trafficking in prisons are as interrelated as well. In order to move towards real solutions targeting the issue of drugs and alcohol in prisons, a balanced approach that is based on a complete understanding of the problems that exist is required.

Unfortunately, that report was another example of where the Conservative majority on the committee used the majority to actually subvert the recommendations and witness testimony so that it came out with a very narrow conclusion that simply did not reflect the other work that was done.

I want to turn for a moment to the Correctional Investigator, who provides annual reports that talk about the state of prisons in Canada. In a report from 2012 on the previous fiscal years, he indicated a number of problems, and I would like to take a few moments to raise that. In his report, he stated:

More offenders are admitted to federal penitentiaries more addicted and mentally ill than ever before. 36% have been identified at admission as requiring some form of psychiatric or psychological follow-up. 63% of offenders report using either alcohol or drugs on the day of their current offence. With a changing and more complex offender profile come accumulating pressure points and needs—provide for safe and secure custody, meet growing mental health and physical health care demands, and respond to the special needs of aging, minority and Aboriginal offenders. This is a compromised population which presents some very complex mental health, physical health and criminogenic issues. As I report here, these needs often run ahead of the system's capacity to meet them.

He provided some numbers. People love to talk numbers in the House, as they should. He indicated that the annual cost of keeping a federal inmate behind bars has increased from $88,000 in 2005-06 to more than $113,000 in 2009-10. In contrast, the annual average cost to keep an offender in the community is about $29,500. At a time of widespread budgetary restraint, it seems prudent to use prison sparingly and as a last resort, as it was intended to be.

Later on in the report, the Correctional Investigator outlined some challenges with mental health because, as noted, mental health and substance abuse often go hand in hand.

Again, quoting some statistics, he said:

CSC data indicates that the proportion of offenders with mental health needs identified at intake has doubled in the period between 1997 and 2008. 13% of male inmates and 29% of women were identified at admission as presenting mental health problems. 30.1% of women offenders compared to 14.5% of male offenders had previously been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons.

CSC's use of computerized mental health screening at admission indicates that 62% of offenders entering a federal penitentiary are “flagged” as requiring a follow-up mental health assessment or service.

Offenders diagnosed with a mental illness are typically afflicted by more than one disorder, often a substance abuse problem, which affects 4 out of 5 offenders in federal custody.

That is four out of five. That is 80% in custody.

50% of federally sentenced women self-report histories of self-harm, over half identify a current or previous addiction to drugs, 85% report a history of physical abuse and 68% experienced sexual abuse at some point in their lives.

He reviewed the progress with regard to dealing with some of these matters, and the Correctional Investigator indicated the following:

In a series of reports and investigations over the last three years, the Office has identified gaps in CSC's mental health framework and has further recommended a series of measures where progress is necessary. The following are among the most urgent needs in the federal system that speak to capacity and resource issues and raise questions of purpose, priority and direction:

1. Create intermediate mental health care units.

2. Recruit and retain more mental health professionals.

3. Treat self-injurious behaviour as a mental health, not security, issue.

4. Increase capacity at the Regional Treatment Centres.

5. Prohibit the use of long-term segregation of offenders at risk of suicide or serious self-injury as well as offenders with acute mental health issues.

6. Expand the range of alternative mental health service delivery partnerships with the provinces and territories.

7. Provide for 24/7 health care coverage at all maximum, medium and multi-level institutions.

With regard to drugs in prison, he indicated that there is no question that the presence of illegal substances is a major safety and security challenge. He said:

The smuggling and trafficking of illicit substances and the diversion of legal drugs inside federal penitentiaries present inherent risks that ultimately jeopardize the safety and security of institutions and the people that live and work inside them. Almost two-thirds of federal offenders report being under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants when they committed the offence.... A very high percentage of the offender population that abuses drugs is also concurrently struggling with mental illness. The interplay between addiction, substance abuse and mental health functioning is complex and dynamic. Living with addiction or managing a substance abuse problem in a prison setting creates its own laws of supply and demand, which in turn is influenced by gang activity and other pressures.

We can see that there is a very serious problem within the prison system. We have had a number of experts who have testified to that in a variety of circumstances, yet the bill does nothing to deal with that problem.

He recommended the following:

a comprehensive and integrated drug strategy should include a balance of measures—prevention, treatment, harm reduction and interdiction. The Office's analysis suggests that CSC's current anti-drug strategy lacks three key elements:

1. An integrated and cohesive link between interdiction and suppression activities and prevention, treatment and harm reduction measures.

2. A comprehensive public reporting mechanism, and;

3. A well-defined evaluation, review and performance plan to measure the overall effectiveness of its investments.

With respect to performance indicators and public reporting, a more balanced score sheet might include consideration of these measures:

Decreased gang activity linked to the institutional drug trade.

Reduction in the number of major security incidents....

It goes on. I know I am running out of time, so I want to conclude by indicating that the Correctional Investigator said this:

On balance, the facts surrounding and impacts of substance abuse and addiction in federal prisons suggest a different approach. A "zerotolerance" stance to drugs in prison, while perhaps serving as an effective deterrent posted at the entry point of a penitentiary, simply does not accord with the facts of crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world. Harm reduction measures within a public health and treatment orientation offer a far more promising, cost-effective and sustainable approach to reducing subsequent crime and victimization.

Although we are supporting the bill, I would urge the Conservative government to take a more detailed and complex look at the problem of substance abuse within the prison system.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been here all morning. It is now a little after one o'clock. I would like to go through the process. The bill was introduced by the minister. There was second reading debate. Everyone in the House agreed, and it went to committee. There was a discussion at committee and witnesses. It came back here.

There have been comments about why the Conservatives have not been up to speak to this. The fact of the matter is that the whole House agrees with the bill. What opposition members are arguing about today is the short title. They do not like the short title. One party is carrying the debate from ten o'clock until two, is my understanding. Then on another date, we will hear about not having enough time to debate issues.

There is other legislation we could have introduced that the opposition members may actually disagree with, and we could have a real debate in the House.

Based on the respect I have for the member who just spoke, would it not have been a better use of the time of the House to deal with legislation and actually have a debate on other than the short title?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chair of the justice committee for that question. I know that he was listening intently to my speech. As I pointed out in my speech earlier, the reason we are here debating this is that we have so few avenues in this House, because of the lack of democratic process, to raise valid concerns about legislation.

What we know about this particular piece of legislation is that, yes, it was referred to committee. There were only a couple of meetings allocated for it.

We have clearly stated in this House that we are supporting this very narrow bill, and we are raising concerns about the fact that the Conservative government has been in power since 2006 and has had nine years to deal with the very serious problems in the Correctional Service system with regard to drug and alcohol abuse, and it has done nothing about it.

The Conservatives introduced interdiction techniques, for $122 million, around security measures that have not looked at prevention, harm reduction, and treatment. What are they doing to make sure that when prisoners are released they are reintegrated into a community in a way that keeps the community safe. What are they doing to keep the staff who work within Correctional Service Canada safe? We know that trafficking in illegal substances makes a workplace unsafe for staff and makes the living arrangements unsafe for the prisoners.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, following the comment my colleague just made and her speech, does she think it was a missed opportunity for the Conservatives to find real solutions, and not just the appearance of a solution?

As she quite rightly said, it is just a title, but in reality as in the bill itself, there is no solution that will really eradicate drugs from our prisons.

Does she believe the Conservatives have missed a good opportunity to really deal with the problem and find practical ways of solving it? Could today’s budget also provide a practical and genuine opportunity to attack the problem? Does she think the Conservatives have let a good opportunity go by?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will start with the tail end of the question on the budget.

I am under no illusion that the government is actually going to take some of its responsibility for some of the most disadvantaged people in this country seriously and put the resources in to work with offenders with a view to keeping our communities safer. I did not get an opportunity to talk about aboriginal offenders, who are seriously over-represented in the federal correction system.

Everyone has to remember what the ultimate goal is. It is to keep our communities safer and to reduce recidivism. I have no confidence that the government is going to put any resources into the Correctional Service that will help us, as a country, meet that goal.

With regard to the bill as a missed opportunity, what is unfortunate is that this is not new information about drug use within the prison system. Correctional Service Canada itself has information that suggests that it is a serious problem. The office of the investigator actually took a look at the stats, and although they claim that there has a been a slight reduction in the number of urinalysis that are showing positive results for drugs, in fact when some other things are removed, like legitimate prescription drug use, they plateau. Their methods are not affecting drug use within the prison system.

Correctional Service Canada, the Office of the Correctional Investigator, mental health professionals, the John Howard Society, the Elizabeth Fry Society, and the list goes on and on, all talk about the serious problem around substance abuse within the prisons, with people both entering and exiting the system with mental health and substance abuse problems.

This was an opportunity to actually do something meaningful instead of putting forward a bill that misleads the Canadian public about what the Conservative government is actually doing to create a drug-free prison system. It is a missed opportunity.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, carrying on with the theme of the budget that is coming up this afternoon, I know a lot of seniors are concerned about the pensions they are getting. This is another topic I have heard about many times in my community, where seniors are living in poverty. However, I am going to stick to the topic at hand, Bill C-12.

I was glad to see a Conservative member get up to actually ask a question. However, rather than asking a question, the member went on a rant about the title. He did not provide the answer to the question we have been asking all morning: How does the title relate to the actual content of the bill? The title includes the words “drug-free prisons”. However, what we have heard in the House from member after member of the official opposition is that the bill will actually do very little, if anything at all, to curb drugs in our prison system.

The government has an opportunity to invest in rehabilitation and treatment programs in the prison system. I know that most are not very optimistic that the government will take any sort of leadership role, which it has failed to do in the last nine years.

My question is to the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan. Is this a trend with the government in regard to fancy titles for hollow legislation that does not actually address some of the very issues we need to address in this House?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very troubling trend. I cannot speak for the government. It is unfortunate that the Conservative government will not get up and explain how this piece of legislation actually contributes to drug-free prisons.

As I noted in my speech, the legislative summary clearly pointed out that drug testing has been going on in the prisons since the 1980s, and we have not seen a decrease in the use of drugs. Again, I need to point out that a lot of these drugs are smuggled in or brewed on site. Testing has not led to a decrease in the use of those illegal substances. They are illegal within the prison context.

There is nothing in this bill that indicates that simply continuing to do the drug testing they have already been doing since the 1980s and simply informing the Parole Board will change anything. The Parole Board still has the option of granting release, depending on the conditions.

It is not clear to me from this piece of legislation, or from any analysis I have seen on it, how this is going to contribute to a drug-free prison. The Conservative government has not stood up in this House and explained it to us.

The government wonders why we want to debate this. It is because it is asking us to roll over on a piece of legislation that does not do what the title says it is going to do. We have a responsibility to the Canadian public to raise concerns when legislation is brought forward. That is simply what we are doing here. We are exercising our democratic right to highlight concerns with a piece of legislation. I want to reiterate that we are supporting it, but we believe that much more needs to be done in order to keep our communities safer.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to rise in the House today to talk about Bill C-12.

I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Timmins—James Bay. I will therefore be speaking rather more briefly, but there is no harm done, as I will be leaving the floor to others.

As my colleagues have pointed out, we are going to support this bill. However, we see it as a little piece of paper that does not really solve the problem. It is a little something, but the drug problem in the prisons is a very large one. What is before us today is only a small part of the solution.

This bill provides for ineligibility for parole following a positive test or a refusal to provide a sample. I emphasize that this is already common practice. Drug tests and the refusal to provide a sample are already taken into consideration. That does not change much. It is nevertheless a step in the right direction. At least we are talking about the problem, which is a start. However, we believe the important thing is to create a safer environment for correctional staff, and one in which inmates or ex-inmates can be reintegrated into society and into the community. We have to create an environment in which they can take part in detoxification programs, one with programs and resources for inmates who are unfortunately drug-dependent.

It is also important that we address the problem of street gangs in prisons. It is often street gangs that produce drugs or alcohol inside prisons or arrange for drugs to be smuggled in. Obviously, the result is that the problem spreads and proliferates.

Street gangs and drugs can increase violence in prisons. This concerns me greatly because in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, in the riding of Terrebonne—Blainville, there are three federal prisons. Many of my constituents work in one or other of the three. I have spoken to prison workers who are extremely concerned, because their working conditions are unsafe. The environment is not safe because we are not dealing with the problems of violence and street gangs. We are cutting budgets, resources and detoxification programs. We are also increasing the number of prisoners in the cells, with double-bunking, which can increase violence and the spread of gangs within prisons.

Ultimately, it creates a more dangerous work environment for corrections officers. We need to think of those people. They do an extremely difficult job. Not just anyone can do this job in a pressure-filled environment. These people work with prisoners and help protect society. As parliamentarians, we have a duty to do our best to ensure that our prisons are free of drugs and violence. We have a duty to reduce the presence of—if not eliminate—street gangs in prison.

This bill may have started with good intentions, but the government made our prisons less safe by reducing the budget for drug addiction programs by $295 million, which is 10% of the total budget. This will obviously affect the programs, which are often the first targets of cuts to public safety.

However, these programs are essential to helping prisoners rehabilitate. If we want them to become productive members of society, we need to give them a chance to take part in drug treatment programs and free themselves of their addiction. If they have mental health problems, we need to give them the opportunity to participate in proper programs in order to receive care and get their condition under control. Unfortunately these programs fell victim to the Conservatives' budgets.

The government invested $112 million in tools and technology to tackle the problem of drugs in prisons, but failed to achieve the hoped-for results. Now the Conservatives are trying something else. That seems logical to me. This bill might be part of that, but it lacks substance. All it does is reiterate what is already being done, such as screening.

To get to the root of the problem, we need to look at the big picture. If these people have addictions, we need to treat them. If drugs are available in prison, we have to tackle that problem. If drugs are banned in prison, why are they there? If it is because of street gangs, we need to go after street gangs. That seems logical to me, but unfortunately, that is not what is being done.

I talked about the importance of having programs that meet inmates' needs so that they can be reintegrated into the community and become productive members of society. However, the government reduced funding for these programs from $11 million to $9 million even as the prison population grew. That is not enough.

Another thing I wanted to point out, which the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers also pointed out, is that we all want to get rid of drugs in prisons. That is a sincere objective shared by us all. However, we need to be realistic. The union and many other witnesses said that completely ridding prisons of drugs is not a realistic goal. That is important to remember.

The bill's short title is the “drug-free prisons act”. We all want to get rid of drugs in prisons. That is not the issue here. However, we have to wonder if that is realistic. The experts say that it is not. Once again, we need to reframe the debate. Maybe that way we could achieve something.

I want to talk about programs again. I talked about how the budget for drug addiction programs and anti-gang programs was cut from $11 million to $9 million. In seven institutions surveyed in February 2012, only 12.5% of offenders were enrolled in a core correctional program, while 35% were on the waiting lists to access these programs. The waiting lists continue to grow, but institutions do not have the resources needed. It is critical that we address these problems.

In closing, I wish to reiterate our support for the idea of eliminating drugs from prisons, but I want to emphasize the need for resources and programs so that correctional officers can work in a safe environment.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if my colleague would indulge me, I wonder if she could put herself in the minister's shoes for a moment and answer the following question: if she had been asked to try to eliminate drugs from prisons, would she have come up with a bill that has only five clauses or would she have presented a much more comprehensive solution?

What kind of action might she have taken to come up with a comprehensive solution to the problem of drugs in prisons?

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

I believe that as a rule, MPs do not usually respond to hypothetical questions.

Nonetheless, in this case, I am being asked whether I, as minister, would introduce a bill with just five clauses to get rid of drugs in prisons, which is no small feat, and the answer is no. It takes a lot more than that.

We need to invest in programs and provide resources. There needs to be a serious commitment to the programs that the inmates have to have access to. There needs to be mental health care. This calls for a multi-faceted solution.

This bill is a piece of paper that may indeed have an impact, but it addresses just a small part of the problem and provides a small offering of potential solutions. What we really need is a greater commitment if we want drug-free prisons.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to ask a second question.

I wonder if my colleague would indulge me in another hypothetical question. Does she think it is worth talking to provincial stakeholders to get the provinces' support when it comes to addiction services?

As we know, addicts are more likely to commit crimes in order to pay for their drugs, among other things. That is how they end up in prison.

In the member's opinion, is it also worth talking to provincial stakeholders to address the issue of addiction and mental health?

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague once again.

Yes, we must always work with the provinces, especially on such a broad issue as drug addiction. This problem affects many people. When someone has an addiction, they might do something they would not ordinarily do.

The keyword here is prevention. It would be fantastic if there were no more crime and if there were no more prisons because there were no more offenders. It would be fantastic if there were no addicts in Canada.

However, to make that happen we have to work on prevention. Prevention is vital. We need to consult the provinces and different organizations working in the community in order to come up with a proper prevention action plan. There must be consultation.

Unfortunately, on many occasions, we have seen that this government consulted no one. The Conservatives do their homework in their little corner, and if we do not agree with their decision they just brush us off and do not consult us. They do not consider our point of view and they move forward without consulting. That is unfortunate because there are opportunities to be seized, and we can can work together on prevention.

Prevention is central to a discussion of public safety issues.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise in this House to represent the people of Timmins—James Bay.

The bill we are debating today, Bill C-12, the so-called drug-free prisons act, is a perfect bill for a Conservative government in the last tired dying months of its senile reign. It meets the three main criteria of a Conservative crime bill.

It has a bogus title that they would somehow create drug-free prisons, when their own studies say they are never going to deal with that and they need to come up with other solutions.

As a classic Conservative bill, it would not change anything. It is a windmill that the Conservatives are going to run at with their fake spears because the provisions already exist. They are saying they are going to ensure that the drug tests are brought before the Parole Board to stop these bad people from getting out. The Parole Board already has those powers. They are tying up more time in the House of Commons.

However, there is a third element that makes it a definitive Conservative crime bill, because these guys are not tough on crime, they are dumb on crime. It is more wasted money. Do members know, and the folks back home, the terrible financial record of the current government that will blow money on anything that suits its ideology, like the F-35s that it was going to spend incredible amounts on?

The Conservatives have spent $122 million on this program already, claiming that they are going to stop the drugs in prison. “We're going to get tough on those prisoners”. After $122 million, they have come up with nada, zero, doughnuts. They have not delivered on anything. Rather than going back and figuring out what they are doing wrong, they will just come up with another fake bill, with another fake title, offering very little.

Why this is of concern is that this is a government that has run on its so-called tough on crime agenda with one bill after another without ever coming forward with focused, coherent legislation that, number one, can meet the test of the charter and is not a waste of money. Our present justice minister has had more recalls than the Ford Pinto, in terms of his legislation. It costs Canadian taxpayers about $100,000 a year to incarcerate a prisoner. That is an enormous amount of money that is being wasted in prisons.

I am not saying that we do not need prisons to hold people. However, if we are going to spend up to $100,000 a year holding each of them, we could certainly divert a lot of that money toward smart crime prevention, which is to keep people out of the prison system. The fact that we do not factor in is the enormous financial, emotional and psychological damage that happens to our society when someone gets into the system in the first place.

We need to look at where solutions exist, where good grassroots solutions exist, so that we can actually find ways to cut the recidivism rates and ensure that we are pulling people out of the prison system and out of the nightmare of drug addiction and drug trading.

I have seen a few really good models at the grassroots level of how we could actually be smart on crime. For example, just recently in Timmins we launched a fentanyl task force. Fentanyl has become a major problem. It has replaced what was the OxyContin epidemic. I have noticed, in many of the communities that had never dealt with opiate addictions before Oxy became very street available, that a lot of people got caught up in Oxy who would not normally have got caught up in Oxy. It created a market for heroin synthetic opiates. Now, with the Oxy market being squeezed off, fentanyl has become the new drug of choice. Fentanyl is extremely dangerous. It is a patch that is meant to deliver a synthetic heroin over a three-day period. If people cut it up and smoke it, they might end up getting the full shot in one go, which will stop the heart. I have seen young people who have died from fentanyl, and these were good young people. These were people with their whole lives ahead of them who thought this was a party drug, and it is not.

In the city of Timmins, as they have done in so many other communities, we have started a grassroots response of bringing people together, asking, “How do we learn from each other? How do we start dealing with the trade in fentanyl?” However, we obviously need the federal government involved because we need a way of tracking the fentanyl patches. It is not simply a matter of someone taking their uncle's or their grandmother's patch off them when they are getting cancer treatment; there is a trade that is going on in fentanyl that is much bigger.

The impact here is that we have the demand of people who are being brought into addiction, thinking that it is a party drug and this drug could actually kill them. We have to do the public awareness on that, but there is the supply issue. If it is a lucrative enough market, we are going to get into the gangs and a very illegal trade by people who do need to be put away. However, we need a way of tracking them and working with police.

At the grassroots level, what we have done in the Timmins area with the fentanyl task force is try to find ways to come up with smart solutions from the grassroots up so that we are, first of all, preventing the casualties, deaths and overdoses that are costing our families terrible emotional strain, as well as costing the medical and prison systems. We are also trying to find a way to track these patches back to the source so that we can cut off that trade. We need the federal government to show some leadership on this. That is one important element.

I was at a very fascinating conference just this past week in Timmins, led by Brent Kalinowski, who spent 27 years on the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, police force. Brent was bringing to Timmins a program that is working very well in North Bay, and it is working in Saskatchewan and some other communities, where they create a community hub. Brent explained this really well when he talked about the years that he had spent in policing, going after the bad guys after the fact, after the damage had been done, and after the families' lives had been ruined. At that point, what can we do with these characters except put them in jail?

We are dealing with enormous costs to the medical system, to the prison system, and to families who might never recover if it is an act of violence. Brent said that after 25 years of doing this, he felt that there needed to be a smarter way of getting people before they get too far into the system. That is a really important issue. There is nothing soft or namby-pamby about diverting people out of the prison system. When we put someone into the prison system, we are putting them into a university of humiliation and a university of crime. That is not where we want our graduates coming from, so whoever we can divert from that, we are making smart, grassroots responses.

The hub response that is working very well in North Bay and that we have talked about bringing into Timmins is one where we bring the key organizations together, including the school boards, the addiction experts and the police, and identify individuals. We do not give the person's name, but we could say that we have a 13-year-old female who overdosed twice and was in the emergency ward, and we think that this may be the scene of a need for greater intervention. The school would say that it has her and that she has been missing school five, six, or seven days in a row. One of the counsellors would say that they have been dealing with her and what is actually happening is that a boyfriend has moved in and it has become an abusive situation.

All of the little pieces of the puzzle around this hub become identified. We have a problem here. This could end up flaming into a much more serious condition. They put a team together to go and meet the family, the mother and daughter, and say “How can we help?” It might seem like an extremely simple solution, and it might seem that it would not work, but it is amazing, they say, how quickly people are willing to open their door and say “Thank God. Come in. Can we make you a coffee? How can we divert our child from this crisis?”

It goes all the way up through various issues. We start to see the symptoms in someone who is starting to miss school when they are young, starting to get in trouble, or starting to appear again and again in the emergency ward. These are people who either become victims of violence or victims of crime, or become criminals themselves. Once they have identified someone who has had months of skipping school, certain schools would say that they will just suspend them permanently. They are suspended, they are out there and they are not being helped. The emergency ward just puts them back out on the streets.

We need a smarter way. If we are going to get them to the prison system and waste $100,000 a year, plus all of the other costs that the system incurs, and then spend $122 million to stop them doing drugs in prison, there has to be a smarter way of doing this. We are seeing some really good grassroots models coming from police and community organizations. That is where the House of Commons needs to start working to say that we can be a lot smarter on crime, rather than always spending the enormous amounts of money after the fact and after it is too late.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague across the way. Certainly, we have a lot of differences on many of these issues, but one thing that we do agree on is the importance of investing in programs that will help to reduce recidivism. During the break weeks, I had the honour of announcing some large funds for a group in my riding that is doing work in that area, helping prisoners who have been released to re-enter society in a way that will help them to not reoffend.

It is important to note that currently, there are 1,500 drug seizures each year in the prisons. It would seem like common sense that we should not have drugs in our prisons, but the reality is that we do.

I have one simple question for my colleague. If inmates are doing drugs in prison, what does he think the likelihood is of them successfully staying off drugs after their release from prison or when they are on parole? What is the likelihood of that happening if we are actually providing drugs for them while they are in prison?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. colleague would agree with me that if prisoners are doing drugs in prison, it is a problem, but there is certainly a huge problem when the government spent $122 million trying to stop drugs from getting into prisons, they are still in there, and the solution in this bill is to allow the Parole Board to look at drug tests, when it already has that power. We need to look at other options.

The concern I have if there are people dealing with drugs in prison, and there is a high percentage of people with mental illness, where are the plans in place to make sure they are getting training? People in prison need to be re-educated. If they are doing drugs in prison, they are going to come out doing drugs and are going to carry on the cycle of violence. The fact is that simply naming a bill the drug-free prisons act will not stop this problem. We need to look at the smart solutions, and the smart solutions will deal with the prison population and making sure that there are ways of retraining them out of this destructive lifestyle.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know, in the opinion of my colleague, what the best objectives are if we want to stop someone's addiction. We are talking about people in jail, but in communities what is the best treatment? Is it just to say drugs are illegal and people should not take them or provide professional resources that they will benefit from and maybe stop their addictions?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as a nurse, my colleague certainly knows the impacts of misusing fentanyl. We do not want people playing with these drugs because they are killers. This is the differentiation from people going to a party and smoking pot. When people smoke a synthetic opioid, they can die as soon as they do it.

Number one is that we need to work with our communities for public awareness, to say these are not party drugs we are talking about. We need to make sure that the supply is not going into the communities. What we are seeing in rural areas, which is surprising us, is the rise of hard drugs. Before we knew of cocaine and other drugs, but heroine coming in is going to bring gangs. When gang violence comes in, heavy organized crime comes in. We need to get back to the source. Again, on the issue of fentanyl, we need to find out where these patches are coming from and cut off the source, because we do not want that kind of organized gang violence coming into our communities.

At the end of the day, we have to go back to the model that I talked about, the hub approach, where we start to identify people when they are young and getting themselves into trouble. If we can divert any of them from the system, it will save us enormous amounts of money, the emotional heartache that it brings to families, and the lost opportunities that we are seeing in our communities when people fall into this and end up losing or ruining their lives.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do with respect to Bill C-12 is go over the summary of the bill, provide a few specific quotes, and then give some observations.

The summary of Bill C-12 states:

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to require the Parole Board of Canada (or a provincial parole board, if applicable) to cancel parole granted to an offender if, before the offender’s release, the offender tests positive in a urinalysis, or fails or refuses to provide a urine sample, and the Board considers that the criteria for granting parole are no longer met. It also amends that Act to clarify that any conditions set by a releasing authority on an offender’s parole, statutory release or unescorted temporary absence may include conditions regarding the offender’s use of drugs or alcohol, including in cases when that use has been identified as a risk factor in the offender’s criminal behaviour.

In reading the summary, it is obvious why the bill will likely receive support for its passage from all parties in the chamber.

I would like to take a different approach to debating Bill C-12. Let me start off by talking about the short title. I have often talked about where these short titles come from. I have suggested in the past and will continue to maintain today that when the government comes up with legislation, it goes directly to the Prime Minister's Office where the individuals there come up with the short title. The short title of this bill is the drug-free prisons act. If we think in terms of the implications of making a title of a bill, what sort of impression are we giving to Canadians?

I would like to focus on the 2011-12 annual report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, which made the following observation with respect to the prevalence of drugs within our federal prisons:

A “zerotolerance” stance to drugs in prison, while perhaps serving as an effective deterrent posted at the entry point of a penitentiary, simply does not accord with the facts of crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

One of the biggest issues I have with the Conservative government is the type of propaganda and political spin it puts on the legislation it brings to the House of Commons. We see this yet again with Bill C-12. The Government of Canada and the Prime Minister are trying to give the impression that if we pass this legislation there will be drug-free prisons. If the Conservatives were honest with Canadians, which is a rarity with this government, they would acknowledge that achieving a drug-free prison is not as easy as just saying it in the title of a bill and then having 308 members of Parliament voting in favour of the legislation.

I have had the responsibility of being the justice critic at the provincial level. As a justice critic, I had the opportunity to tour a number of prisons in the province of Manitoba, such as the remand centre, where individuals will often be brought to stay overnight or while awaiting trial, and the Headingley Correctional Centre, which is a provincial jail where prisoners with sentences under two years are sent. I have also had the opportunity to visit federal penitentiaries such as Stony Mountain. I believe that the government has not done its homework with respect to dealing with our correctional institutions, jails and prisons. I suspect Manitoba is not that unique and that the issues I am referring to with respect to the province of Manitoba are applicable no matter where one goes in Canada, and even beyond Canada's borders, as we have been told by our professionals, which is that drugs are a reality in our prisons and that there is a need for the government to do more.

The Office of the Correctional Investigator said that a comprehensive and integrated drug strategy should include a balance of measures: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and interdiction. That is in the 2011-12 annual report. The information is actually there. If the government really wants to deal with the issue, there is plenty of information to assist it in bringing forward legislation.

Also, especially today, when we are talking about crime and prisons, things which Canadians are very much concerned about, the budget will be released in a few hours from now and the government is going to set its priorities. Would it not be wonderful if we saw a government that had the common sense to understand that it takes more than just the Prime Minister and his minister who is responsible to wave a wand and to improve the system. There is an obligation to meet with the different stakeholders. There is an obligation to work with the provinces and the provincial ministers who are responsible for the administration of justice in those jurisdictions.

We need to look at how we can work with our correctional officers. I would suggest that our correctional officers are one of the greatest assets we have as legislators in terms of being able to deal with the issues in our prisons. When we ignore the potential of consulting and working with those correctional officers, we set ourselves up for what I would suggest is a situation that could ultimately cost lives.

When I was an MLA, there was a riot in the Headingley jail. A number of factors were involved. I cannot say 100%, but I would be surprised if drugs were not involved in one fashion or another in terms of what took place in that riot. I suspect if we took the time to meet with our correctional officers, we would get a better understanding of why drugs continue to be such a significant factor in our prisons today.

We have not seen that. We have not seen this goodwill from the majority government. It comes right from the Prime Minister's Office. Many times we have been critical of the Prime Minister because he does even recognize the need to have first ministers' conferences. What message does that send to his ministers about having ministerial conferences? To what degree has the Minister of Public Safety met with the attorneys general or ministers of justice in different provinces? After all, the Prime Minister feels he does not have to meet with the premiers on a regular basis. He is the first Prime Minister in a generation plus that has ignored the need for a meeting with first ministers. I suspect that has a lot to do with the same attitudes that the ministers across the way have.

The Minister of Public Safety is not working with our provincial ministers. If he worked and consulted with the different stakeholders, including the provincial ministers, I would suggest that we would be debating better legislation than what we have today. We are getting close to an election. The Prime Minister's motivation for a number of years has been how to get re-elected. It is all about power, but at the end of the day, what we want to see is good governance.

The Prime Minister more than his predecessors has been found wanting in being able to deliver to Canadians solid programs that will make a difference. The Conservatives want to talk about drugs in jails. Yes, we and our constituents are concerned about drugs in jails, but the Liberal caucus is concerned about what is being done to prevent crimes in the first place. These are the types of issues which I believe Canadians want us to debate in the chamber, as opposed to a piece of legislation that is meant to do one thing alone, which is to make a couple of modifications. The PMO has come up with a wonderful short title, the drug-free prisons act, to give the impression that the Conservatives are really tough on crime, tough on convicts and that they are going to get rid of drugs in prisons.

I have news for the Prime Minister. His plan is not going to work. Canadians are seeing more and more the degree to which the Conservatives talk a lot but their actions have been found wanting. Canadians have a higher expectation of government. They want government to deliver on the issues that are important to them. We will get a very good sense of that today when the budget comes down. Where is the government's emphasis going to be?

The other day I was here and we were talking about the exploitation of children. Cybertechnology was the issue. The Internet's impact on the exploitation of children in Canada continues to grow. The Conservatives again had a piece of legislation which tried to give the impression that they were actually doing something on the issue, but the reality is that the RCMP that was tasked with the responsibility of dealing with the issue was underspending its budget by 10%. Millions of dollars were not being spent in order to create a false impression that there will be a balanced budget.

It is the same principle here as it was there. On the one hand, we have legislation that talks tough, but the actions in the budget will say something entirely different. What was so horrendous about that private member's bill is that we were talking about children who were being exploited through the Internet, and the government was underspending on the RCMP which was investigating and trying to lock up individuals who were doing that exploitation.

On the legislation before us, to what degree have the Conservatives done their homework?

I am only making an assumption, but sometimes that could be a big mistake in itself especially if it is related to the Conservative government, but have there been any members other than the Minister of Justice who have visited the prisons? To what degree have the Conservatives visited some of our prisons in Canada? They could gain a lot by going out and taking the time to get a better understanding of what is actually taking place in the real world. That applies to more than just prisons.

I have had the opportunity to talk to Correctional Service officers. They are very much concerned about the issue of safety, not only the safety of the prisoners but equally, and in the minds of many, more importantly, the safety of the institution and the guards themselves.

We have seen double-bunking and triple-bunking take place. To what degree is the government bringing in programs that will take some of the pressure off convicts who are taking drugs in prison?

What kind of action is the government prepared to take? Do we, for example, have drug detection dogs going through prisons? What about new detection equipment? If we talk to correctional officers, they tell us about the need for searches and how important they are. However, they will also tell us about the importance of being able to look at the issue in a holistic approach.

When I think of a holistic approach to deal with our prisons and jails, it is not just Ottawa that is responsible. The administration of justice goes beyond Ottawa and incorporates our provinces as well. They play a vital, critical role with regard to what happens in our jails, as do other stakeholders, whether it is law enforcement officers or the different groups out there.

The message I have for the government is that it is great to see this bill, but I question the motives of the naming of the bill. I would sure love to see some resources allocated that will make a real difference for Canadians in dealing with—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The Chair regrets having to interrupt the hon. member for Winnipeg North at this point. He will have three minutes remaining when this matter next returns before the House. The time for government orders has expired.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, be read the third time and passed.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Winnipeg North has three minutes left to conclude his remarks.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, with only three minutes, it puts a lot of limitations on what I can say. It is important to highlight an aspect of the legislation that I believe speaks volumes about the way in which the government approaches legislation. It is something that I have made reference to with other legislation, and that is the way in which the government determines how to name its legislation.

In naming legislation, the government's attitude seems to be more about political spin than anything. That no doubt is its first priority. It is much like how we see a government that will introduce a budget in about an hour's time. It will want to promote it by spending millions of public tax dollars to tell Canadians how wonderful its budget is, and there will be many misgivings in that budget. However, the government is more concerned about promotion, self-preservation and trying to communicate a message than it is about substance and content. This is yet another bill where we see a great example of that.

The Conservatives have titled the bill the drug-free prisons act, trying to give the impression to Canadians that they have a mechanism or a way in which they can ensure prisons across Canada are drug-free. If they consult or look in a mirror behind a closed door where no one else will see, I am sure they will find that no one could legitimately suggest that it is achievable to get prisons 100% drug free.

As it has been suggested by our correctional officers, we need to strive to do what we can to ensure we minimize the amount of drug abuse that takes place in our prisons, and I am all for that. There is some merit and value to the substance of the legislation. That is why the Liberal caucus will vote in favour of it.

However, it fails to deal with the broader issues. It does not necessarily deal with the issue of how we would prevent, for example, crimes from taking place in the first place. It does not give us any reason to believe the government has done its homework on the legislation. To what degree did it work with the provincial governments, for example, and the ministries of justice and safety in the different provinces? After all, it is a joint responsibility in the sense that it is not only Ottawa that deals with justice-related issues, but also our provinces. Yet the government, through the leadership of the Prime Minister's Office, never sees the merit in having a first ministers conference.

The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has not done his homework in terms of consultation. If he had, I suspect we would see better legislation than what we have before us.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

The distressing situation we are seeing right now in our prisons is partly the legacy of the Liberal government. The Liberals were in power for 13 years. During their reign, or rather, under their yoke, inmates complained about long waiting lists for drug treatment programs. It was already a problem back then. When I ran my first election campaign in 2006, long waiting lists for unemployed workers were already a problem too. The employment insurance program was already full of holes.

I would like my colleague to explain why the Liberal government of the day, the party he represents, did not take steps to fix the problem. I am not interested in hearing about how that was another time and he was not around then.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, had the member been listening, he would have caught the end of my comments where I was talking about the need to work with the provinces. That is very important. I started my speech by talking about being the justice critic when I was a provincial MLA. We should not underestimate the role that provinces have to play. If the member wants to make partisan shots about the former Liberal government, I can tell him that when I was a critic, it was an NDP provincial government and there is not enough time in the rest of the day between now and the budge, for me to give examples of just how bad the provincial New Democratic government was. It was unable to deal with the issues facing our prisons. In fact, one of the issues I highlighted earlier was in regard to the Headingley riot, which in part was because of the provincial government.

The bottom line is we need to see a higher sense of co-operation in dealing with our prisons. That is the way to deal with some of those core issues that need to be developed. That means having to work with different levels of government and different political parties.

I do not believe the New Democrats are any holier than any other political party in trying to achieve justice and making sure we have safe prisons for our correctional officers and others.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about the way the government names these bills, this one being the drug-free prisons act. It really is more impression than reality in terms of getting to results and having the prisons drug-free. There are some elements of the bill that would actually prevent some use of drugs in the prison system.

My question is a little broader. What about crime prevention strategies that need to go beyond the bill that would actually keep people out of prisons so they do not really fall under that act? What about a crime prevention strategy itself?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague. That is the type of attitude we need to be bringing into the House in dealing with justice issues.

Prisons and jails are an absolute in modern day society, but there is so much more we could be doing and so much more emphasis could be placed on how we could be preventing crimes from taking place in the first place.

Let me give a very specific example. In the city of Winnipeg and many other municipalities across Canada, we have seen an increase in the number of individuals getting involved in gang activities. Ultimately, that activity will lead them to incarceration. Why not have more resources, or a government that is more progressive in taking action that is necessary to provide other programs? Youth need to be engaged so there is more of a challenge to their abilities, as opposed to having our young people being challenged by gang opportunities and ending up in jail, which creates all sorts of other social issues.

We need to be much more proactive. Hopefully, we will see something on that in the upcoming budget. Something the Liberal Party would like to see is a more proactive approach in dealing with—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Ahuntsic.

[Maria Mourani, Independent, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as you know, several studies have shown that marijuana seriously impairs concentration and decision making capacity. Marijuana is extremely harmful to young people's brains, especially adolescents and young adults. When it comes to medical marijuana, that is one thing, for as we all know, all medications can have side effects. Recreational use, however, is another thing altogether.

More and more studies are showing this. We know that the Liberal Party wants to legalize marijuana; it wants to make money by collecting taxes on marijuana, just as many dealers do.

I have a question for my colleague. Given that his party wants to legalize marijuana, does that mean that his party also plans to give it to inmates, since that is the most common drug used in prisons?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as for the political party that the member will be running for in the next election, all one has to do is maybe do a little search on Google to find some interesting comments from its former leader, Jack Layton, in regard to the issue of legalization of marijuana. The member might find that quite interesting if she takes the time to investigate it.

In relation to Bill C-12, the drug-free prisons act, I will read a specific quote, which I made reference to earlier, from the 2011-12 annual report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator. The following observation was made with respect to the prevalence of drugs within our federal prisons:

A “zerotolerance” stance to drugs in prison, while perhaps serving as an effective deterrent posted at the entry point of a penitentiary, simply does not accord with the facts of crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

I think that the bill might make a modest move forward, but at the end of the day, we need a much more comprehensive approach to deal with drugs in our jails and prisons.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is really unfortunate to see the member spewing this rhetoric rather than having the courage to respond directly to the questions he is asked. My colleague from Ahuntsic asked him a very interesting question.

I want to talk about another issue, though, because any time we talk about drug use in prisons, we have to talk about mental health issues. There is a link between the two. The member will have to defend this record under the Liberals, in light of the upcoming election campaign, so he can practice by answering our questions directly.

The number of inmates with mental disorders doubled under the Liberal government. In my speech this morning, I indicated that over half of all inmates have been treated for mental health issues. This is huge, and it is a serious problem that is directly related to the problem of drug use and trafficking in prisons.

How can he justify this Liberal record from the time they were in power?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member might not like the answer, but that does not necessarily mean it does not answer in good part the question that has been posed.

The member just made reference to mental health. The budget for mental health is administered through our provinces, and many individuals who are not getting the mental health attention they need at the provincial level ultimately will end up in our prison system. This is why I said that if we want to look at governments, all one needs to do is look in my own backyard in the province of Manitoba. Whether under Gary Doer or Greg Selinger, one will find that the whole issue of mental health has not been dealt with to the degree in which it could have had a more positive impact within our prisons.

I would suggest to members that we need to see a higher sense of co-operation between the federal government and the provincial governments, because both have a role to play in terms of improving the conditions in our prisons. That should be our first goal. It is something which the leader of the Liberal Party and Liberal caucus is committed to doing.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to be able to rise today to discuss Bill C-12.I would also like to respond to a few comments by my honourable colleague fromWinnipeg-Centre, who talked about co-operation between the Liberal party and the provinces.

In 1995, the Liberal federal government decided to cut millions of dollars in transfer payments to the provinces in order to balance its budget. That is exactly what the Conservatives are doing. In matters of federal-provincial co-operation, therefore, I am not sure we can count on the Liberals to work with the provinces and offer more services to Canadians and to Quebeckers.

We are talking here about a bill that my Conservative colleagues consider crucially important. In general terms, the bill seeks to introduce a practice that is already in common use. Some government members would like to tell Canadians that this bill is going to work miracles, but that is untrue. This bill merely adds to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act the possibility for the Parole Board to base its decisions respecting parole eligibility on positive drug tests or the refusal to provide a sample.

Yet the board has been doing that for years. Writing it into law is a good objective, but I doubt very much whether this bill will succeed in eliminating drugs from our prisons, as the Conservatives claim. Are they implying that there is a problem with the board itself? That is another question. However, this bill covers only a page and a half. Accordingly, as far as details are concerned, they will get back to you.

The bill is therefore misleading, because it will not do much to eliminate drugs in the correctional system. The solution it proposes is a practice that has been carried out for years, and unfortunately has not solved the problem. I therefore do not see how writing it into law will make it possible to solve mental health problems and eliminate drugs from our federal penitentiaries.

In my speech, I will be giving some ideas for a solution, but I will also raise a few priorities that the Conservatives refuse to consider, preferring to invest elsewhere and put money in the pockets of the wealthiest or the large corporations.

All the witnesses who spoke in committee told us that the bill would have little or no effect on drug use in prisons. We know that the government is using this legislation to cater to the wishes of its electoral base or do some election campaigning, instead of proposing real solutions to a real problem.

The situation is very different in our federal prisons. In connection with the study we are concluding in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, the Correctional Investigator of Canada came to tell us that over 45% of the federal prison population is dealing with mental health or neurological problems. That is nearly 50% of the population.

In general, unfortunately, these people use drugs. Therefore, is requiring them to take a urine test in order to be eligible for parole going to solve problems at the source, including their mental health disorders? I repeat that nearly 50%, not just 1% or 5%, of all offenders in federal institutions have mental health problems.

We have a problem here and Bill C-12 will do absolutely nothing to help these people. The bill offers them no tangible support. Instead, it cuts the budgets for programs to treat addiction and to provide support for people with mental health problems.

However, they say that enshrining in legislation that someone will or will not be eligible for parole is going to prevent that individual from taking drugs. That is ridiculous. I will give an example: many of my colleagues here have children. When you want a child not to do something, you educate the child, you offer them support, and you talk to them. You do not leave the child with no support and then tell them that unfortunately they have made a mistake and it is their problem. That is not how you solve a problem at its root. If we do that, we have failed in our role as legislators and as a society: to help the most vulnerable people, for example, people who unfortunately have mental health problems or neurological problems.

This is very interesting because the mistaken perspective adopted by the Conservative government when it comes to public safety has multiplied the prison sentences imposed on people with addiction or mental health problems, for example, through mandatory minimum sentencing. I will come back to this later in my speech. Many individuals who are addicts or are dealing with mental health problems find themselves in prisons. The Correctional Investigator of Canada has told us that the correctional service unfortunately can no longer offer specialized services tailored to these people because the Correctional Service of Canada does not necessarily have the resources to detect and diagnose these problems.

At the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, we are doing a study on FASD, or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. There are no precise statistics because these individuals cannot be diagnosed, but for the moment it is said that they represent about 5% of the federal prison population. According to testimony we have heard at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, 55% of people who have problems caused by fetal alcohol exposure have addiction problems. What is specific to FASD is that these people have a low capacity for understanding the consequences of their actions, a low capacity for analyzing situations and a low capacity for learning from their mistakes. It has been proven that these people should not be in the prison system because they are not necessarily responsible for their situation. What do we do with these people? Is Bill C-12 going to help them? Is the fact that the government has decided to put it in the bill that they will or will not be eligible for parole going to help them? No. On its face, these people will not receive the help and support they need to overcome their addiction problems.

I would like to talk about the fact that the Conservatives have never acted on the many reports from the CSC in 2006 and 2011 and from the Correctional Investigator of Canada in 2008. Those reports could be used, for example, to tackle the problem of gangs in prisons. The Conservatives are closing down prisons and there is double-bunking in the cells. It has been shown that this leads to more crime and more gang activity, and so to more drug trafficking.

To solve the drug problem at the source, we have to offer support to people who are incarcerated and to correctional officers, so that they are able to do their job properly.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her excellent and very passionate speech. She has touched on a fundamental aspect of the issue we are discussing today: rehabilitation. That also includes treating people for the various illnesses and pathologies that are found in the prisons. This is crucial because if we could do that, we could prevent the unfortunate consequences and, most importantly, ensure that many of these individuals can be better reintegrated into our society.

Why would it be in the interests of society to rehabilitate these people more effectively and, most importantly, to provide the Correctional Service of Canada with the necessary resources, both human and financial?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

It is fundamental. All the experts agree that the source of the problem is the fact that nearly half the people in our federal institutions have mental health problems. What is more, most of these people also have substance abuse problems.

We have to provide correctional officers with resources to offer programs and support to help people overcome their addictions, so that when these people are released one day, they can return to society in a positive way.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add that most of our institutions lack not only resources, but also planning. What do we do with these people? If we want to prevent crime, then we have to have a public safety plan, a national safety plan. We also need to pass a number of bills in order to prevent different types of crimes. We were talking earlier about criminal gangs. That too takes prevention and resources on the ground.

I would like to ask my colleague what type of resources should be put in place in our prisons in order to prevent various types of crime and especially recidivism?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a relatively broad and very complex question. The justice system and the prison system form a whole. For example, mandatory minimum sentences will send people to jail and, unfortunately, those people often have mental health or addiction problems. With the increase in mandatory minimum sentences, we have seen an increase in people suffering from mental health and addiction problems. What is being done about this? The Conservatives' response is to write into the conditional release act that inmates do not have the right to take drugs. That is really an insult to our intelligence. It will not solve the problem.

To solve the problem the government must invest in systems and an intervention plan. For instance, when people go to jail, they should be diagnosed and receive tailored services; we need to know what we are dealing with. Correctional officers currently do not have the resources or the capacity to provide services to inmates. Therefore, not only are correctional officers at risk, but so are inmates. There is more violence.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating at third reading Bill C-12, which adds a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act enabling the Correctional Service of Canada to eliminate drugs from prisons. I must say that this is quite ambitious given that we know that there is not one correctional service in the world that has been able to do this.

This title, which again is reminiscent of a newspaper headline, does not reflect the content of this bill, which actually makes an amendment that is very narrow in scope to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

This amendment makes it clear in law that the Parole Board of Canada may use the positive results from drug tests or refusals to take drug tests in making its decision on parole eligibility. Note that the board already does this.

The amendment also makes clear that the Parole Board can impose conditions on the use of drugs or alcohol, once again a practice that is already in place.

In the case of a positive drug test when an individual is on parole, the discretion remains where it should be, with the Parole Board of Canada.

That is why we support the bill. The Parole Board of Canada is independent and is in the best position to judge individual cases and determine the consequences when someone fails a drug test or violates the conditions of parole.

Let us talk a little about the Conservative government's approach and its zero-tolerance approach to drugs. The Conservative government has dedicated a lot of time and resources to eliminating drugs in prison, with little success.

Correctional Service Canada has admitted that the $122 million spent on tools and technologies to eradicate drugs in prisons has not led to any reduction in drug use in our prisons.

According to a 2012 Public Safety study, we know that drug-free prisons are unlikely to be achieved in the real world, yet the Conservative government continues to pander to their base, as always, by investing money with the aim of achieving this unrealistic goal.

The Conservative government's faulty approach to public safety has resulted in more prisoners with addictions and mental illness in our prison system.

The NDP has been steadfast in our support for measures that will make our prisons safe, while the Conservative government has ignored—yes, you heard me correctly, ignored—recommendations from corrections staff, corrections unions and the Correctional Investigator that would decrease violence, gang activity and drug use in our prisons. The government has not only ignored these recommendations but it has also made budget cuts.

In 2012, the government announced that it planned to cut the budget of Correctional Service Canada by $295 million by 2015, and that is what it did. The budget for Correctional Service Canada was cut by over 10%, while during that same period, the prison population grew from 14,000 to 15,000 inmates.

The consequences of these cuts include more double-bunking and the closure of treatment centres for inmates with serious mental problems. This has resulted in increased violence. The Conservative government has also failed to address the growing problem of inmates with addictions and mental illness.

In 2011, 45% of male offenders and 69% of female offenders received a mental health care intervention. Despite this staggering data, the Conservative government still has not asked for a report from Correctional Service Canada, or CSC, on the implementation of recommendations to improve handling of prisoners with mental illness.

Rather than focusing its efforts on a narrow bill, the government needs to invest in rehabilitation programs to limit violence and the use of drugs in our prisons. Our priority should be a corrections system that can deliver effective rehabilitation programs, such as continuing education, addiction treatment and support programs to assist in reintegration. That is the only way to reduce recidivism rates and effectively tackle the issue of repeat offenders.

To truly address the issue of drug use in prison, CSC must have a proper intake assessment of an inmate’s addiction and then provide the proper correctional programming for that offender. Our priority must be to keep communities safe by preparing ex-inmates for reintegration into society once freed from their addiction and thus less likely to reoffend. Without addiction treatment and proper reintegration upon release, a prisoner will likely return to a criminal lifestyle and possible create more victims.

Before I conclude, I would like to say that committee work is not just for kicks. Our mandate is to examine, analyze and legislate to improve our society. I think that the Conservative government is being disingenuous by introducing a bill that does not take into account witnesses' recommendations even though they are the people on the ground. Several witnesses have said that Bill C-12 will not do what the short title says, so the Conservative government should show some common sense and stop its electoral propaganda.

The NDP is the party that listens to constituents, experts and the people on the ground. This bill, like so many of the Conservative government's bills, ignores the real needs on the ground.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is all very interesting, and I would like to thank my colleague for her speech.

I talked about this in my speech. The basic problem is clear. Everyone says so. I do not understand why the Conservatives do not get it. CSC has produced a number of reports about how inmates with mental health issues make up close to 50% of Canada's federal prison population.

Right now, there is no plan, no budget, no system to adapt the programs and support services available. Bill C-12 is a drop in the bucket compared to everything that needs to be done.

Can my colleague tell us about some of her solutions to this problem?

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her relevant question.

As I mentioned, what this Conservative government is doing is cutting funding in a system that is already struggling. Consider what the the CSC Commissioner said at the time of the coroner's inquest into the death of Ashley Smith. He said that his organization did not have the resources needed in that regard. The Correctional Investigator's report on women who self-harm or commit suicide stated that Correctional Service Canada remains ill-equipped to manage offenders who chronically injure themselves.

That is why we in the NDP believe that there has to be a greater focus on drug treatment programs, education and the reintegration of people who are victims of their drug addictions. We know that most people who are in prison, up to two-thirds of the prison population, suffer from mental illness, which is why substance abuse treatment is needed.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. She is a doctor. She has a health care background and therefore feels empathy for these people.

I have seen figures estimating that over 2,000 or 2,400 inmates are currently on waiting lists for drug treatment programs. If I were to say that that bothers me, I know the members opposite would say that I support criminals, more or less like grade school children.

I am actually thinking of the consequences. If these people are treated like animals in prison, it is much more likely that they will reoffend and we will have more victims. This is a complex, long-term problem.

What are my colleague's thoughts on this aspect of the problem, which requires long-term reflection, specifically to avoid creating more victims in Canada?

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.

As we said, every program requires money and human resources. However, this government is not using common sense.

The only way to address the problem of recidivism is to treat drug addictions. In the past, this involved methadone treatment, but now it involves opiate substitute treatment. Unfortunately, not all inmates have access to treatment and here again there are waiting lists. Some people serve their sentence and leave prison with the same problems they had when they arrived or worse. With the Conservatives' zero tolerance policy, people leave prison more hardened and will likely victimize more people. The government's policy does not work.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-12 seeks to add a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that makes it clear that the Parole Board of Canada may use positive results from urine tests or refusals to take urine tests for drugs in making its decisions on parole eligibility.

This gives clear legal authority to an existing practice of the Parole Board. I support that and so I support this bill, since it simply places something that already happens in practice into the act.

Since we are talking about a provision that is rather straightforward and relatively uncontroversial, I want to take the time to talk about related issues that I believe need to be addressed, so I will take the time that has been allotted me to do so.

The government is making our prisons less safe by cutting funding to correctional programming, such as substance abuse treatment, and increasing the use of double bunking, which leads to more violence. That is not only dangerous for inmates but also for those who work in correctional institutions. It also does not promote rehabilitation. This is an issue that we all need to be concerned about.

Our priority should be ensuring community safety by preparing former offenders to reintegrate back into society, and by helping them overcome their addictions and become less inclined to reoffend.

A report from Correctional Service Canada in 2011 states that there ought to be improved access to medical professionals and medical health services and a continued focus on the role of substance use and self-harming behaviours as coping mechanisms, and that there are several issues regarding the implementation of programming specifically related to the availability and accessibility of programs, the frequency with which programs are offered, and the wait lists of these programs.

The prison population is increasing at the same time as the Conservative government is closing institutions, and this has resulted in directive 55, which I am sure all of my colleagues are aware of, from Correctional Service Canada, which establishes a procedure to normalize double bunking. In my province of Quebec, that has led to double bunking at 10%. Staff and the Correctional Investigator have repeatedly stated that this leads to increased violence and gang activity.

Further, I want to underline that according to Kim Pate from the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, the rise in women serving federal sentences is directly related to cuts in social services, social programs, health care, education—all the programs that traditionally help level the playing field for those who are most impacted. By “those”, we often mean, of course, indigenous peoples, women, poor people, and those with mental health issues.

According to Correctional Service Canada data published in 2011, 27% of women incarcerated were convicted of a drug-related offence.

According to the Office of the Correctional Investigator's 2011-12 report, almost two-thirds of inmates were under the influence of an intoxicant when they committed the offence leading to their incarceration.

I want to raise the fact that we are looking at people being incarcerated who need to deal with this issue.

I also want to state that the majority of women incarcerated—86%, to be specific—report having been physically abused at some point in their lives, with two-thirds of the women, 68%, reporting that they had been sexually abused throughout their lives. When we talk about using drugs as a coping mechanism, especially when incarcerated, we need to keep this in mind.

A zero tolerance stance on drugs in prison is proving to be a completely ineffective policy. Meanwhile, harm-reduction measures within a public health system and treatment orientation offer a far more promising, cost-effective, and sustainable approach to reducing subsequent crime and re-victimization. That is from the report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator in 2011-12.

According to a report looking at policy for offenders with mental illness published in 2010, compared to the general population, the rate of mental illnesses among jail detainees is almost twice as high for women, and detainees with a serious mental illness have co-occurring substance abuse disorder.

That is why we are talking about both these things right now. We are talking about mental health and drug use as being correlated and as being major issues that need to be dealt with within the incarceration system, not only for the betterment of the detainees and their reintegration into society, but also to reduce violence in the future, to reduce violence within prisons, and also to make correction officers' workplaces safer ones.

Individuals with mental illnesses are not only disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, but they are also disproportionately likely to fail under correctional supervision. In 2011, 69% of female offenders received a mental health care intervention. When we are talking about their being more likely to fail, we are talking about 70% of the women who are currently incarcerated being those who are more likely to fail. Those are staggering numbers.

To really tackle this problem, we must also tackle the problem of substance abuse in prison. To that end, we must first implement an intake assessment process to accurately measure the level of drug use by inmates, and then provide adequate programs for offenders in need. We talked a lot about that today. We have to ensure that these women have access to these programs and services because, as I mentioned, a large percentage of incarcerated women suffer from mental health or substance abuse problems, as do these men. Without drug addiction treatment, education and proper reintegration upon release, offenders run the risk of returning to a life of crime and claiming new victims. We want to avoid that at all costs.

We should strive to have a correctional system that provides effective rehabilitation programs such as ongoing education, substance abuse treatment and support programs, in order to foster the social reintegration of offenders when they are released. That is the only way to reduce the rate of recidivism.

The last point I would like to make is the following: we want to ensure that prisons are a safe workplace for the people who work there. As I mentioned earlier, we can start by eliminating the practice of double-bunking and ensuring that resources are allocated to the treatment of inmates with substance abuse or mental health problems.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. Although we support the idea and the principle behind this bill because it represents something positive, there is no denying that we are very concerned about how the Conservative government plans on addressing the scourge of drugs.

As my colleague indicated, problems have escalated in our prisons and the situation is almost unmanageable in some respects. Drug addiction prevention programs at Correctional Service Canada have undergone significant cuts. The situation is so serious that the Correctional Investigator made some very important recommendations. One of the recommendations was an assessment of prisoners at intake into correctional programs to identify their addiction problems and to help meet their needs to reduce their dependency on drugs.

Could my colleague comment on how the government will help—or likely not help—prisoners who are struggling with addiction?

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for asking this question.

Just the cuts to Corrections Canada have dramatically affected the availability of services and programs that do help inmates. Unfortunately, we can see them going down the path of making those cuts and also increasing prison sentences, and therefore, the number of people who are incarcerated. This is a very dangerous situation where now, for just services such as dealing with mental health, dealing with drug addiction, the waiting lists are so long that inmates can wait their entire prison sentence before getting the services. Therefore, they go back into society without the rehabilitation that was needed. These individuals have a much higher recidivism rate.

As I mentioned earlier, 70% of incarcerated women have mental health issues. This means that these services are extremely important and we need to strengthen them. Unfortunately, the government does not really appear to be ensuring that these services are provided.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel for her excellent speech on Bill C-12. Today I would like to share some thoughts about this bill in particular with the House of Commons.

First, I would like to say that the title of Bill C-12 is misleading, considering the content. It is misleading to say that Bill C-12 will eradicate drugs from our prisons. Unfortunately, nothing in this bill will address the problem of drug addiction in our prisons.

I expected better from the federal government. I wish it had handled this issue with greater respect. Unfortunately, it did not. As my colleague pointed out in her speech, that is always the problem whenever it comes to issues associated with drug addiction and mental health. Nothing in this bill tackles the problem directly. There is nothing here that will help the men, women and first nations people coping with drug addiction, which, sadly, is so widespread in our prisons.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

I also want to thank the member for Alfred-Pellan for all the hard work she does as the NDP deputy critic for public safety. She is doing a truly fantastic job and we really admire her for that. She raised a very good point.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, basically, this bill just puts into law something that is already a common practice. It does nothing to tackle the problem. I did not spend my whole speech listing all the problems and explaining why it is dangerous, not only for those who are incarcerated, but also for those who work in correctional institutions.

This issue must be considered a priority and it really needs to be dealt with through mental health services and drug treatment programs.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The time for questions and comments has expired.

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed)

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. The House will now proceed to the consideration of Ways and Means Proceedings No. 18 concerning the budget presentation.