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.

Drug-Free Prisons Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to have an opportunity to speak on Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. That is the official name of it. Of course, the Conservatives, in their usual way, have called it something else that does not relate to it at all. This act may be cited as the drug-free prisons act.

As I will explain shortly, there is nothing in the act that contributes to or is about drug-free prisons at all. However, that is the Conservatives' way of using legislation as some sort of public relations gesture. Some have suggested that it is fundraising. Someone else has called it, quite rightly, “bumper sticker” legislation. It really has nothing to do with the bill at all.

I was just listening to my colleague, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, and I want to say what a great job he is doing as the official opposition critic for public safety. He brings his intelligence and his good sense. I will not say common sense because it is not that common, certainly around here. He brings his good sense, experience and articulateness, as well as his great commitment to social justice to this file. This is something that requires all of those things, because it is easy to have slogans.

The Conservatives like slogans. They like using them for fundraising. They like keeping things very short, and in some cases, they think it is meaningful to their supporters or the people who they would like to be their supporters. However, when we look just slightly below the surface, and we do not have to look very far, we find out that these slogans and sloganeering are really just a sham.

This is true of Bill C-12 as well, when we start with the act being the drug-free prisons act and then find out what it is really about. The Corrections and Conditional Release Act is about how we run our prisons, and in this particular case, how people are granted parole.

There are only two or three provisions in this act. In fact, there are five clauses, one of which is the one with the short title, which is clearly irrelevant to the rest of the act. Clause 2 would basically allow an offender to be granted parole. I am talking about someone who has been granted parole but has not yet been released. The clause would give the parole board the right to consider the results of a urine sample or the fact that someone has refused to grant a urine sample. It says that this could be taken into consideration. It would be reported to the parole board and it could be taken into consideration. If the drug urinalysis is positive, it would be reported to the board. That is number one. If a urine drug sample is positive, it would be reported to the board.

The second would allow the parole board, if it was going to grant parole, to either cancel it or impose conditions on it. That makes up the next two sections. The big “if” here is provided that the board is of the opinion that the parolee or prospective parolee no longer meets the conditions of the criteria set out for parole.

Those conditions are relatively straightforward. They would apply to all parolees or potential parolees. They are no different in this case. They would ask, based on the results of the urinalysis, if the opinion of the parole board is that the offender would not, by reoffending, present an undue risk to society before the expiration of the sentence that he or she is serving, and that the release of the offender would contribute to the protection of society by facilitating the reintegration of the offender as a law-abiding citizen.

These are the general principles of parole anyway. This is why parole is granted, and it is very important. Parole is granted, first of all, if there will not be an undue risk to society, and second, if the release will contribute to the protection of society by facilitating the reintegration of the offender into society.

These are basic principles of parole. We are not changing those. The Conservatives appear to support those and they are not changing the legislation. All they are saying is that if the results of the urinalysis cancel out those matters, then the person will not be granted parole.

I do not know what that has to do with the notion of drug-free prisons. In fact, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the notion of drug-free prisons. What we are doing here, as previous speakers have noted, is something the parole board already takes into consideration. It already takes into consideration the results of a urinalysis or the refusal. There is some question as to whether it is appropriate for them to do it, and this would clarify it. It is already being done and this would clarify this power.

We support it. We are here to support it, and I think every speaker from this side of the House, certainly in our party, has stated that we support the principle of the bill to clarify the right of corrections officers to do this and for a parole board to take it into consideration.

What we do not support is the notion that somehow or another this would deal with the problem of drugs in prison. What we do not support is the current government's general attitude toward corrections and what it is doing to our prison system and how, in fact, it is making things worse for prisoners, for the society and for victims or potential victims of crime. The Conservatives talk a lot about victims, that they are on the side of victims and the other side is not.

Victims of crime, yesterday, today and tomorrow, are falling victim to people who commit crimes for whatever reasons. If the criminals are caught and imprisoned and if they are subject to rehabilitation while in prison, they are less likely to commit crimes in the future. One of the biggest problems of criminal activity in this country has to do with drug addiction. The percentage of prisoners who are addicted to drugs is remarkably high. I think the number is 69% for women and 45% for men. Am I quoting those correctly? I read the numbers earlier today. Sixty-nine per cent of women in prisons are addicted to drugs, and 45% of men.

What do we do to make our streets safer? We try to ensure that when these people are federal prisoners, and are in jail for two years or more, they have some program available to them so that when they are released they have a chance of no longer being addicted or of being on the road to recovery. If I were running the prisons, my number one priority for the protection of society would be to ensure that as many people as possible who go out of prison after their sentences are drug free and on the road to recovery. If I could do that, I could say to people in society that they would be safer because these people would have access to a rehabilitation program in prison and a better chance of not being a harm to society.

We have been steadfast as a party in our support for measures to make prisons safer, yet we have the Conservatives ignoring all the recommendations. That in fact makes prisons less safe, not only for correctional staff but for prisoners and for those in society who are going to be subjected to these individuals when they get out, if they are not better off.

We have measures that have been proposed by the correctional investigator who is a watchdog on behalf of the public and by corrections staff who have encounters with the prisoners day in and day out. They have made recommendations that would decrease violence, gang activity and drug use in our prisons, yet we do not see the government acting on these recommendations. We do not even see the Conservatives acting on recommendations that they themselves have made.

The public safety committee did a study in 2010 and produced a report. Their report, and I say their report, because the majority were Conservatives on that committee, was titled “Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol Addiction in the Federal Correctional System”.

These are the two main problems among prisoners: drug addiction and mental health problems. There were 14 recommendations from that committee, from the majority, which sits on the other side, the Government of Canada.

The Conservatives have had three years to come up with legislation or to do things to implement those recommendations. Not one appears in the bill before us, and not one has been implemented by the Conservative government. How serious are they when it comes to being committed to solving the problems of mental health and drug and alcohol addictions in our correctional system? The answer: not at all.

Instead, the Conservatives are focused on some sort of public relations campaign. They are calling something that basically clarifies an existing practice something else and are carrying out a campaign that claims that they are solving problems by reducing the crime rate.

Well, as my colleague for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca pointed out, the crime rate has been going down for 40 years. Yet in 2012, the highest number of persons incarcerated in Canada was achieved. It was the highest number ever in Canada. The all-time high was in July 2012, with 15,000 inmates in federal prisons.

What is the government's response to the lowering crime rate and the highest level of incarceration? It has done two things. The Conservatives have brought in a whole bunch of legislation that would actually increase the number of prisoners. In fact, the Correctional Investigator says that by March 2014, there is going to be an increase of persons in our prisons to over 18,000. Between 2012 and 2014, there will be a 20% increase in the number of federal prisoners from the all-time high of 2012, as the crime rate is going down. What are we achieving here?

By the way, we are also taking $295 million out of the Correctional Service budget. We have less money, 20% less, on top of the highest rate of incarceration ever in our history and a crime rate that has been going down for 40 years. We have a situation where prisons are getting overcrowded, and there is no money left for programming.

The Correctional Service of Canada devotes approximately 2% to 2.7% of its total operating budget on core correctional programs. That includes substance abuse programs. That means that funding for addictions treatment in prison is even less as a result of this $295 million decrease in its budget over two years. No wonder they are being criticized by anyone who has knowledge of the circumstances and the situation, such as the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

Let us look at somebody who should be seen as objective, the Correctional Investigator, who has been working on this for many years and is an expert in the area. He has been in our prisons, has talked to people in the programs, and has talked to all the stakeholders. He has issued reports about what goes in our prisons and the problems that have occurred as a result of the policies of the Conservative government. Mr. Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator, has listed several Conservative initiatives that he says have undermined the idea that prisoners can be rehabilitated.

The rehabilitation of prisoners is done for two reasons. Obviously, it is the humanitarian thing to do. People can end up in prison for all kinds of reasons, and rehabilitation gives them an opportunity to come out the other end less likely to offend and hopefully, able to contribute to society and to have an opportunity to overcome some of their difficulties, such as addictions, psychological problems, or whatever issue they may have. Hopefully they may learn something that would help them make a living when they are outside so that they can become contributing members of society.

The other reason is that we do not want people getting out of prisons angry, frustrated, with chips on their shoulders, more determined than ever to see themselves as separated from and outside of society. Instead, we want them to be able to contribute to society. We do not want people going out with a propensity to commit crimes, because we will create more victims.

The people on the other side of the House who claim to be in favour of supporting victims should realize that one of the best ways to support victims is to make sure that people who come out of prison have actually rehabilitated so they will not inflict harm on other members of society.

What we have instead is tougher sentencing rules, an end to automatic early release for serious repeat criminals and tough-on-inmate policies, as he calls them. These include charging for telephone calls, increasing room and board charges, eliminating incentive pay for work in prison industries, reducing access to prison libraries. What is gained by that? Do we want to make people who go to prison into hardened criminals, living in unsafe conditions, double-bunking, overcrowding, subject to gang violence, unable to learn by not having access to a library, unable to use the telephone to talk to their relatives and keep in touch with their loved ones so that they have some connection to outside society?

He said:

...making prisons more austere, more crowded, more unsafe and ultimately less effective.... We seem to be abandoning...individualized responses in favour of retribution and reprisal.

That is what the correctional investigator says, and he is saying that because it is less effective as a prison in terms of rehabilitating people.

My colleague from Halifax mentioned the issue of the prison population. Mr. Sapers said that the entire increase in our prison population over the last little while has been made up of aboriginals and members of visible minorities. Aboriginals now make up 23% of federal prisoners, though they are just 4% of Canadians. They are overrepresented in prisons by five and a half times their population. Something is wrong with this picture. Where are the programs that are available for these individuals?

The problem is that only about 12% of prisoners have access to these broad rehabilitation programs. There are wait lists of 35% of prisoners, waiting to get into programs. Their sentence is over before they get a chance to get any access to rehabilitation, and we have this revolving door phenomenon. The other side would call them repeat offenders. Yes, they are repeat offenders, and why? Because they do not get rehabilitated and they do not get access to programs while they are there.

We have a situation that Howard Sapers sums up this way:

You cannot reasonably claim to have a just society with incarceration rates like these. And most troubling, the growth in the custody population appears to be policy, not crime, driven. After all, crime rates are down while incarceration rates grow.

We have a serious problem in our prisons. We are making it tougher on inmates, and some people like that. They have committed crimes. They deserve to be treated harshly. There are a few out there who do. However, if we scratch the surface, we say that these are human beings who deserve to go to jail because they are sentenced for a crime, and the old saying is, “You do the crime, you've get to be prepared to do the time”, so they do the time, but what happens then? Do they go out better off and less likely to commit a crime, or do they come out a hardened criminal and more likely?

If we want to protect society, we have to ensure that criminals are rehabilitated. We have to ensure that people in prisons have access to programs, including drug rehabilitation programs. We do that by paying attention to these issues, by listening to people who know what is going on and having a better prison system, not by having phony bills that are called drug-free prisons when they are really just implementing something that is accomplished already in our Parole Board.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, or the Drug-Free Prisons Act.

The bill would add to the act a provision confirming that, when deciding whether someone is eligible for parole, the parole board may take into account the fact that the offender tested positive in a urinalysis or refused to provide a urine sample for a drug test. The new provision would give clear legal validity to a practice that we support and is already in place.

Bill C-12's title is misleading. Indeed, apart from giving legal validity to urine tests, it does not offer any real strategy to make prisons drug-free. Rather than providing a concrete solution, for example by investing in inmate rehabilitation, Bill C-12 simply enshrines in law what is already the current practice.

The NDP has always supported measures aimed at making prisons safer. However, it is a shame to see that, in this bill as in so many other government bills, the Conservatives keep ignoring recommendations. In this specific case, they are ignoring recommendations from corrections staff and the correctional investigator that would really help curb violence, gang activity and drug use in the prison system.

The fact is that the Conservatives are making prisons less safe, since they keep reducing investments in key corrections programs like drug addiction treatment, as well as increasing double-bunking, which leads to more prison violence.

Our role as parliamentarians is to worry about the safety of our communities first, by promoting the reintegration of offenders and preparing them to become part of the community again by helping them become free from drugs and taking preventive measures to reduce the risk of recidivism.

None of this is included in Bill C-12, and in my opinion this is a serious shortcoming. To be clear, the stakeholders agree that this bill will have virtually no impact on drug use in prison.

Like so many other government bills, Bill C-12 is just a dog and pony show that plays well to the Conservative base, but offers no actual solution to the problems caused by drugs and gangs in prisons.

However, we must give credit where credit is due. The Conservatives are excellent illusionists. They would make Criss Angel and David Copperfield green with envy. In today's episode, entitled Bill C-12, they are still trying to hide the emptiness of their bills by giving them misleading titles that play well to diehard Conservatives. However, behind this legislation there is a complete vacuum that only worsens the problems they want to address.

In this case, Bill C-12 misses another important problem. Indeed, the Conservatives' misguided approach to public safety, which we also saw with Bill C-2, will significantly increase the collateral harm from addiction, instead of reducing it, as the bill claims to do.

Any government with the least bit of sense, vision and compassion would invest, through Bill C-12, in programs providing support to offenders with drug problems.

This may be hard to believe, but under this government, the budget allocated to the Correctional Service of Canada to be used for basic correctional programs, such as drug treatment, was reduced, while some treatment centres for inmates with mental health disorders were even closed.

The ideological inconsistencies that guide the course of this government are frightening. As an example of such an inconsistency, note that the government passed legislation imposing mandatory minimums, while at the same time it closed numerous prisons.

That leads to the very controversial and dubious policy of double-bunking, which inevitably results in a substantial increase in the number of violent incidents and puts prisoners' lives in danger. It also put the lives of the prison staff in danger.

If the government really wants to address the issue of drug addiction in prison, instead of making a lot of noise and getting terrible results, it must allow Correctional Service Canada to develop an intake assessment process that would allow CSC to correctly determine how many prisoners have addiction issues and offer adequate programs to offenders in need who want to get off drugs. Otherwise, without addiction treatment, education and an appropriate reintegration process on their release, prisoners run a high risk of returning to a life of crime and victimizing other individuals when they get out of prison.

Clearly, the term “prevention” is not part of the Conservatives' vocabulary. That is too bad. The government claims to be tough on crime, but the best way to reduce crime in society is through prevention and awareness, not wishful thinking.

Despite all the bill's flaws or, rather, its lack of content and solutions and its very limited scope, the NDP will support Bill C-12. The NDP is committed to supporting cost-effective measures that are designed to punish criminals and improve prison safety.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of this government, which governs from an ideological standpoint instead of relying on facts and reality. As we can see with this bill and Bill C-2, where the government did not even bother to have someone try to explain their indefensible legislation, we need to move towards a corrections system that offers effective rehabilitation programs such as addiction treatment and support programs so that it is easier to reintegrate prisoners into society upon their release. That is the only way to lower the recidivism rate and really address the issue of repeat offenders.

Even the Correctional Investigator has said—in not one report, but multiple ones—that it could have some unintended consequences on the correctional system if simplistic and narrow solutions are used to address the very complex problem of drug addiction in prison. He suggests taking meaningful action, such as conducting an initial assessment of detainees when they are integrated into correctional programs, in order to curb their drug addiction problem and give them better access to detox programs, which would help reduce drug consumption and gang activity in prison.

Those are the kinds of proactive prevention measures the NDP believes are necessary to truly fix the problem of drug addiction in our prisons.

In conclusion, we will support Bill C-12, since it essentially reinforces the legal significance of a practice that already exists in our prisons. However, we believe that Bill C-12 lacks teeth and substance. We believe that this kind of bill must include solutions to prevent drug addiction and treat drug addicts in our prisons if we truly want to help detainees reintegrate into society and not just find an easy way to please voters.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, how exciting.

At the outset, I would like to mention that I will be sharing my time with my friend and colleague, the wonderful member for Laval—Les Îles.

Mr. Speaker, I like the phrase “bumper sticker justice” that my colleague from Gatineau came up with. That is exactly what we have here. I will support the bill because it does clarify an existing practice of the Parole Board, but it is such a narrow bill that it is hard to wrap one's head around it.

I have two concerns with it, and first is the title. We have been talking about the “bumper sticker” title. The bill is not going to make our prisons drug free. I think there has to be some kind of procedural way to prevent having bills named in a way that is clearly not in line with what the bill actually does. I would look to you, Mr. Speaker, for an answer on that.

It is an extremely misleading name for the bill. As my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca pointed out earlier, the title is there for political reasons rather than for sound policy.

The second problem I have with the bill is that it has profoundly little impact in the scheme of things. While it does formalize existing practices, it is not actually going to do anything about drugs or addictions in the prison system. It is not exactly a revolutionary idea that we are dealing with here; it is standard practice. Do I think that prisons will be drug free once the bill is passed? No. Do I think we are going to see a reduction in drug use? No. Do I think we are going to see safer prisons or reduced crime? No.

I am not alone in thinking this. First of all, when we look at zero-tolerance drug policy, we have heard my colleagues say this is an aspirational policy rather than an effective policy response to improved prison safety. If we look at the annual report of the Correctional Investigator for 2011-2012, the report said, “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 bill does nothing to deal with drugs in prisons in real terms and it also does not deal with the myriad of other problems we have in the prison system, such as overcrowding or the fact that we are not engaging in real, substantive rehabilitation anymore.

The Conservative tough-on-crime agenda is not working. It is not tough on crime; it is pretty stupid on crime. If we are going to seriously tackle crime in our communities and safety in prisons, we need to leave behind this outdated tough-on-crime mantra and mentality. We need to look at smart justice and abandoning that old way of thinking, which is about applying simplistic solutions to really complex issues. It has not brought us very far.

We have heard in the House that since 2008 the Conservative government has spent $122 million on tools to try to stop drugs from entering the Canadian prison system. Members have heard it before, but it is worth pointing out again: this is vastly more money than exists for addiction and treatment services, and I would look to my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. I think it is at around half. It is incredible that we are spending that much more money than we are spending on addiction and treatment services.

That $122 million is a lot of money, and it also sounds impressive, so we have to ask ourselves whether it is working. Is it actually doing anything? I do not think so. I think this continues the failed approach to justice.

We are seeing our prison population grow by about 5% a year. By March 2014, the Correctional Investigator estimates that with new legislation there will be over 18,600 inmates in our prisons. This is the highest number in Canadian history. It is unbelievable that we keep adding to the number of people we are putting in prison, when at the same time, looking at Statistics Canada numbers, in 2012 we reported the lowest crime rate in our country since 1972.

The former minister of public safety said that unreported crime was increasing. How do we know that? It is unreported. That is ridiculous. The crime rate and the severity of crime have been falling since 1991, but the number of people incarcerated—I am not talking about people charged or going through diversion programs, but incarcerated—and the length of incarceration are increasing with mandatory minimum sentencing and other government initiatives.

More people in our prisons obviously leads to increased double-bunking, which frankly leads to increased violence and increased gang activity. I know I would be angry if I were double-bunked. In addition, the majority of these people who are incarcerated suffer from mental illness and addiction. To add to that, we have lists of at least several thousand people who are waiting in line for addiction treatment rather than receiving it. We have had cuts to funding for support and treatment programs. It is backward logic.

We need to start looking at a smart justice approach on how we deal with these issues. Putting more people in prison while overcrowding them and cutting funding for harm reduction programs does not make any sense. These measures are damaging for rehabilitating people who have been incarcerated.

An article in The Kingston Whig-Standard in 2012, entitled “Sentenced to suffering”, said, “Addiction to drugs or alcohol, a history of physical or sexual abuse and previous attempts to harm themselves often follow inmates through the doors of a penitentiary”.

Why would we not act on those issues? Why would we not have a bill that does something to deal with these issues versus bumper sticker justice, saying that we are keeping drugs out of prisons when in fact we are not? The reality of the situation is that we can lock people up, but we cannot close the doors on these social issues that will inevitably affect individuals during the time they are incarcerated and afterward if they do not get the treatment and support they need.

The focus is on punishment and not on rehabilitation, which is overall more costly. When we do not focus on rehabilitation, it is also more dangerous for our communities. The key has to be rehabilitation. However, punishment is a much more splashy title than rehabilitation. It helps the Conservatives with their fundraising, and that is really what this is all about, is it not? Why else would they take a practice that is already happening, turn it into a bill that has nothing else in it, and wrap it up in a fuzzy title called “drug-free prisons act” when it will not actually lead to drug-free prisons?

Not one person on the other side could stand up in the House with a straight face and say that the bill would lead to drug-free prisons. That could be why we have seen such total and utter silence from the other side of the House. They are not standing up to defend the bill, to speak to it, to talk about whether it is good or bad. They are silent because they cannot stand up and say that this will lead to drug-free prisons, or even stand up and say that this will lead to slightly less drugs in prisons. It is enshrining a practice that already exists.

It is about scaring Canadians because I think fear is a powerful tool for keeping citizens in line. They are trying to scare us into Conservative submission. They are trying to scare us into donating to their fundraising campaigns.

We saw the same thing with Bill C-2, a bill limiting supervised injection sites. It flies in the face of a recent Supreme Court of Canada case. On that same day we saw a website launch saying “keep heroin out of our backyards”, showing an empty street and a needle and scary black and white photography.

It is not a call to action. It is not a call for the community to come together and solve the problem of intravenous drug use. It is to raise money. That is what this Bill C-12 is all about. That is why we have bumper sticker justice these days. It is a fundraising campaign.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I will get on with the business at hand and get to the bill. However, I will say this about what went on here today. If the Speaker is accusing me of using unparliamentary language and unparliamentary antics, then I would ask the Speaker to go back and look at what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister was saying in this House.

I am one of the individuals he attacked. I would tell the parliamentary secretary to say it out there. That is why I am on my feet on this point. I will leave it at that, but this has to stop, these kinds of antics by this parliamentary secretary in attacking individuals and smearing their names, with no basis in fact.

I will get back to Bill C-12. As I said, the title of the bill, drug-free prisons act, is little more than a rhetorical statement when one examines the contents of the bill itself.

In his 2011-2012 annual report, the Correctional Investigator made the following observation with respect to the prevalence of drugs within our federal prisons:

A “zero-tolerance” stance to drugs in prisons, 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.

That quote is on page 17 of his report.

Bill C-12 targets individual offenders by imposing requirements for the provision of urine tests subsequent to having obtained parole, statutory release, or an unescorted temporary absence.

This legislation makes no reference to, nor in any respect addresses, the problem of offenders with drug and alcohol addiction problems or in any manner addresses the access and prevalence of drugs within federal institutions.

Currently, under the act, when staff or authorities have grounds to suspect a violation by an offender with respect to drug use while on parole, work release, temporary absences, or statutory release, they can order a urinalysis test. These tests are conducted to ensure that the conditions upon which release was granted are respected and adhered to. Within institutions, such tests can be ordered on a random and collective basis if individuals are, again, on reasonable grounds, suspected of the use of illegal drugs.

Bill C-12 does little to contribute to what the Office of the Correctional Investigator called for in his most recent annual report:

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

That was in the annual report, 2011-2012, page 17.

While the Liberal Party is supportive of initiatives that will enhance a drug-free prison environment, the issue is with respect to the methods adopted to achieve this objective.

Bill C-12 is taking an exclusively punitive course of action that targets individual offenders who have been granted parole and those being granted statutory release or an unescorted temporary absence. The requirement is that prior to release, the offender, having been approved for release in the case of parole, must provide a urine sample, and in the case of statutory release or an unescorted temporary absence, could be so required.

There is nothing in this legislation related to what appears to be a wider systematic problem of drugs within federal institutions, their prevalence, and their access. Certainly there is nothing in this bill, and I believe other speakers have brought this point up as well, that talks about the cost of these decisions. Will it mean more time in prison? Will it mean more expense? The government always fails in these justice bills to bring in the cost factor along with the bill so that we can see a cost-benefit analysis.

In any event, we know that the Conservatives' whole approach to law and order is punishment, punishment, punishment. Bill C-12 is a measure that at best can be said to address the symptoms of a serious Correctional Service problem without contributing anything of substance to resolving the problem.

I will move away from the bill for a moment and talk about an institution in the private sector, in Guelph, called the Stonehenge Therapeutic Community. It is one of Canada's longest-serving substance abuse treatment programs, with separate facilities for men and women with chronic or acute substance abuse issues. It provides a full spectrum of addiction treatment programs to clients and their families as well as to those involved in provincial and federal corrections. Its services range from what it calls “Let's Grow Together Day” to support groups for pregnant and parenting women in the community, to the long-term residential programs it offers men and women from across Ontario and throughout the country. It has become a benchmark in addiction treatment and prevention, empowering clients with the skills to choose a healthy lifestyle and to thrive within their communities. It is a well-run institution, with quite a history, that has done well with drug abuse and substance problems.

The government's proposed drug-free prisons act really does nothing along those lines. It does nothing in terms of building a strategy to effectively deal with the problem.

The objective of government policy should be to ensure that offenders, when in the process of assessing parole or other forms of release, are less likely to have been exposed to the use of contraband drugs within the institutions. Bill C-12 in no respect aims to address this issue. In fairness to the Correctional Service, and even in fairness to the minister, preventing drugs in prison is not an easy endeavour.

I would suggest that if one were to walk into a prison, pull out a wallet, and take out five twenty dollar bills—I say five, but you, Mr. Speaker, would probably have twenty in yours—as long as they were not brand new, and put it through the machine that tests for drug residue, one would find that a good number of the bills would, in fact, have drug residue on them. It is unbelievable.

I have been in those institutions. I have talked to inmates and Correctional Service workers. In fairness to the government, it is not an easy endeavour to prevent drugs from entering prisons. That is why it is much more important to try to address the issue in a holistic sense.

This legislation would target those who have been granted parole, statutory release, or an unescorted temporary absence. What has to be considered is that a great proportion of the people in federal prison have serious substance abuse problems. They had them before they went in, and sometimes their substance abuse within the institution, sad to say, even with everything that is done, gets worse.

According to the 2011-2012 annual report of the Correctional Investigator, “Almost two-thirds of federal offenders”, keeping in mind that the current population is approximately 15,000, which means an estimated 10,000 offenders are involved, “report being under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants when they committed the offence that led to their incarceration”.

What is more disturbing is that on page 15 of that report, it states that “A very high percentage of the offender population that abuses drugs is also concurrently struggling with mental illness”.

According to evidence provided to the public safety committee by the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, “Upon admission, 80% of offenders have 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 “This dependency does not magically disappear when they arrive at our gates”, meaning at the prison gates.

I quote those statistics because it speaks to the seriousness of the problem. Just presenting a drug-free prison bill to the House is not going to solve the problem in any way. It is much bigger than that.

Because the minister may go out there and say, “Look what I've done”, the government cannot take a bumper sticker approach stating that the minister has said that we will have drug-free prisons. The reality is far from that. How does one invoke a strategy about drugs in prisons, one that will work with offenders to get them off drugs and substances, get them back into society and contributing to it in a positive way to the economy of the country and to raising families, rather than costing over $100,000 a year? The government should be looking at that.

The issue of drug prevalence and use within federal institutions is a complex problem. The Correctional Investigator has acknowledged that the presence of intoxicants and contraband substances is difficult to measure and monitor. While a number of seizures under the interdiction initiatives of the Correctional Service of Canada has increased, there is no way of yet determining if “the service is on top of the problem or simply scratching the surface”.

I will give the minister credit for this. In August, the Minister of Public Safety announced a five-year, $120-million investment into CSC's anti-drug strategy. The investment contained the following four components: expansion of drug detector dog teams, hiring of new security intelligence officers, new detection equipment, and more stringent search standards. According to the Correctional Investigator, the results of these measures, although done with good intent and a heck of a lot stronger intent than this bill, appear mixed and somewhat distorted.

For example, while there has been an increase in the amount of drugs seized, the scope of the problem is difficult to determine. With respect to the results of the random urinalysis tests administered, there has been a decline within institutions. However, after correcting for the removal of prescription drugs, the rate of positive random urinalysis tests has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade, despite increased interdiction efforts. Don Head, Commissioner of Correctional Service of Canada, confirmed this conclusion in testimony before the public safety committee in December 2011.

Correctional Service of Canada's current anti-drug strategy, according to the Correctional Investigator, lacks three key elements. I do not see any of these three key elements in this bill, but let us name them. What does the Correctional Investigator claim are the three key elements to deal with an anti-drug strategy within prison? What are they?

First is an integrated link between interdiction and prevention, treatment and harm reduction. Second is a comprehensive public reporting mechanism. Third is a well-defined evaluation, review, and performance plan to measure the effectiveness of investments.

None of that is happening in this bill. What might have been of value prior to Bill C-12 is that these elements would have been addressed by CSC to determine the efficacy of the programs currently in place and upon which Bill C-12 is building.

In my view, it does not bode well that CSC's substance abuse programming budget fell from $11 million in 2008-09 to $9 million in 2010-11. The way to deal with this problem is not by taking money from the very programs that are in effect to deal with the problem itself.

Bill C-12, without the appropriate in-facility measures and assistance, is merely a punitive measure. It may prevent some people from getting out, it will add costs to the system and still, in effect, it will really do nothing about the drug problem at the end of the day.

We will be recommending that the legislation be approved at second reading for further study before committee. I believe there is a lot the government has to answer for in terms of what it has not done to really deal effectively with the drug problems in our prisons.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

It is something like the bumper sticker approach the previous member talked about. The title of the bill, the drug-free prisons act, is really little more than a rhetorical statement when one examines the content of the bill itself. I will get to that.

First I want to say, after listening to today's question period and the antics of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, that it is quite a contradiction. When we, here in this House, are constantly dealing with so-called tough-on-crime bills, we are actually looking across the aisle at a Conservative government that has to be the most crooked and corrupt government this country has ever seen. There is no question about it. The parliamentary secretary gets up and fires attacks at others, with no basis for those comments. The ones who are heckling over there at the moment stand to support the parliament secretary in those kinds of antics. That is wrong.

I will say it again. This is the most crooked and corrupt government this country has ever seen. Bribes coming out of the Prime Minister's Office—

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with the provisions my colleague read.

Here are my thoughts on the non-essential nature of this bill. According to the information my colleague mentioned, it is still up to the boards to take into account the additional factor of refusing to provide a urine sample or failing the test. Even if the person does not pass the test, Bill C-12 does not say that he or she would lose parole because the other factors could be enough.

Perhaps the board will find that the person needs a program. Statistics show that most crimes are committed by people who already have serious drug use problems. That is why eliminating prison programs that can help people stop using that crap leaves them ill-equipped to deal with their addiction after they leave prison.

Still, for reasons like those my colleague listed, the board may decide to let that person go because the board and provincial boards can authorize parole if they believe that the likelihood the offender will commit another crime before the sentence is up does not present an unacceptable risk to society and that parole will help protect society.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for giving me the chance to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act or, to use the much more impressive-sounding title chosen by the Conservatives, the Drug-Free Prisons Act. I will come back to it in a moment.

First, I would like to say that, when it comes to justice, crime or prison, I always think about the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and about the 12 days to end violence against women campaign. I always feel somewhat sad as I talk about this year after year because it clearly means that we are not progressing as quickly as we might hope on this issue.

Those who are here in our beautiful nation's capital may be interested to know that I have agreed to sponsor a Théâtre Parminou play, entitled Coup de foudre, along with two women's shelters, Unies-Vers-Femmes and Centre Actu-Elle. The play will take place tomorrow in the Desjardins room of Polyvalente Hormisdas-Gamelin, which is located at 580 Maclaren Street East in Buckingham. The play is very important in raising awareness of violence against women. I extend an invitation to anyone who has the opportunity to attend to do so.

We have to move forward on this issue so that we do not have to keep calling attention to it year after year. We know that every year these 12 days culminate with the end of the campaign, the commemoration of the massacre at the Polytechnique, on December 6. This is always a very sad time.

First, I rise to address Bill C-12 and to pay tribute to my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, including the public safety critic, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, for their exceptional work. It is not always easy to stand up to this government.

I see it at the meetings of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, as the justice critic. When you dare question certain provisions, you get it all thrown back in your face, as if you sided with criminals, or inmates in this case, and you had a lot of nerve to question any of the provisions.

However, I was listening to the questions members asked my colleague from Newton—North Delta after her speech, which I really liked, and I was saying to myself that something was missing from the Conservative side, since the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca had clearly stated that we were going to support this bill at second reading. We really have to put an end to the hostilities until we have finished with Bill C-12 and do what we have been asked to do, which is pass it at second reading and send it to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to see if it is flawless or if it needs to be improved and amended. It is the committee that will have to do that.

Earlier, I spoke about its grandiose title. The Conservatives are often criticized for having bumper sticker policy, or legislation based on prominent news stories. That is their specialty. The Conservatives think that you do not always have to have good public policies. Instead you should have something that is “in your face”, something that attracts the attention of their voter base, preferably, sometimes something that brings prejudices into play.

When I see a title like the one given to Bill C-12, the Drug-Free Prisons Act, I want to be sure right from the start that I have really understood the words that it uses. According to this title, the bill is not trying to improve anything, but to completely eradicate drugs from prisons. I told myself that this bill must be really good and that its approach must be extraordinary, so I read it.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety roundly criticized my colleagues for not talking about the bill and asked them to go and read it.

I really can talk about this bill.

Clause 1 announces that this bill will make our prisons drug free. How wonderful. Then we see the title of the act: “Corrections and Conditional Release Act”.

Clause 2 states:

2. The Corrections and Conditional Release Act is amended by adding the following after section 123:

I take this to mean that this is how we are going to make our prisons drug free, so I start reading, anxious to see what is going to happen and how we will manage to make prisons drug free, since drugs are one of the biggest problems. The bill states:

123.1 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 want to make prisons drug free, but someone who has taken drugs or is taking drugs could refuse to take a urine test that would prove whether they are on drugs or not. The 308 Members of Parliament in this House, including the Speaker, all agree with making prisons drug free, but that is easier said than done.

I will continue. Clause 3 states:

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 [which I just read, about when someone who fails or refuses to provide a urine sample] and the offender has still not yet been released, the Board shall cancel the parole if [a big “if” right in the middle of the clause], 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.

I wondered what section 102 of the act was about, so I looked it up:

102. The Board or a provincial parole board may grant parole to an offender if, in its opinion,

(a) the offender will not, by reoffending, present an undue risk to society before the expiration according to law of the sentence the offender is serving; and

(b) the release of the offender will contribute to the protection of society by facilitating the reintegration of the offender into society as a law-abiding citizen.

Up until now, our Conservative friends have not touched that. This means that they believe that someone can be rehabilitated inside, that we can free the evil criminals one day and reintegrate them into society, “if, in its opinion...the offender will not, by reoffending, present an undue risk to society before the expiration...of the sentence...”

Take, for example, someone who was given a prison sentence of two years less a day and is released earlier. He behaved well, there is no reason to believe he will reoffend before the expiration of his sentence, he presents no undue risk to society, and his release will contribute to protecting society. This is important: releasing a prisoner can be a way of helping society. It can help by facilitating the reintegration of the offender into society as a law-abiding citizen. Those are the basic concepts involved in granting release.

All the bill does is say the following:

4. Subsection 133(3) of the Act is replaced by the following:

(3) The releasing authority may impose [I repeat “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.

Then it is a question of when the bill will come into effect.

That is the Conservatives' glorious, incredible Drug-Free Prisons Act. At least, that is what it would seem to anyone who reads it. I had planned an interview with someone who told me they were anxious to hear our thoughts on what it means to have drug-free prisons. The interview will be quite short. This bill has what I would describe as an overly inflated title. Every time the Conservatives introduce a bill, I picture the Michelin man in my head.

It is so inflated.

So much so that ultimately, it is no longer believable. Then the Conservatives ask us such ridiculous questions that we have to wonder if they are mocking us. Probably not. Seriously, we have often been accused of not reading things, but now we have proved the opposite, because I have read the bill from cover to cover. So then everyone has read Bill C-12. If they had not before, well they have now.

I sometimes have the impression that the members opposite read from nicely prepared notes. They accuse us of not reading material, but in truth, they are the ones who are not reading. It is incredible. They rise and try to have us believe that they will succeed in making prisons drug-free.

Since I felt like reading today, I would like to read to you an amazing article written by justice reporter Sean Fine. It appeared in this morning’s edition of the Globe and Mail.

This article is dated November 25, 2013. I will read it in its entirety because in my view, it is right on the mark. It focuses on the real problems that the Conservatives are not even addressing, not the kind of thing you can put on bumper stickers to give people the impression that the Conservatives are solving all of society’s problems. If it cannot be summed up in a short phrase, such as “Death to so and so” or “We are the good guys and they are the bad guys”, then the Conservatives will not make the issue into a major public policy.

Here is what Sean Fine had to say this morning in the Globe and Mail:

Canada’s ombudsman for federal inmates says prisons have become more crowded, violent and worse at rehabilitation under the Conservative government, despite a budget increase of 40 per cent in the past five years. In a speech heavily critical of the Conservative government’s tough-on-crime policies, Howard Sapers criticized “mass incarceration,” “arbitrary and abusive conditions of detention,” and the victims’ rights agenda that Justice Minister Peter MacKay has placed at the centre of his program. The idea that “punishment with no apparent limits is justified stands many of the principles underlying our democracy and our criminal-justice system on their head,” Mr. Sapers told 150 people at a Toronto church on Sunday. Between March, 2003, and March, 2013, the number of federal prisoners—a federal sentence is one of two years or more—rose by 2,100, or 16.5 per cent, even as crime rates declined sharply. The overall corrections budget is now $2.6-billion a year, but even though 2,700 new cells have been or are about to be added to the system, more than 20 per cent of inmates are double-bunked—two in a cell designed for one. Mr. Sapers, whose mandate is to report to Parliament on individual and systemic concerns of offenders, said the government has been clear about its agenda and he hopes his comments “reflect a fair analysis of the impact of that agenda on the mandate of my office.” He warned that many of the explosive conditions that fuelled a deadly riot at the Kingston Penitentiary in 1971, riots that led the government to establish the ombudsman’s office as a watchdog over prison conditions, are still in play. “As penitentiaries become more crowded, they also become more dangerous and unpredictable places.” Violent incidents and the use of restraints, pepper spray and segregation have risen, he said. The government responded by stressing the importance of victims’ rights.

We all agree with that.

“We make no apologies for standing up for victims’ rights, and ensuring their voices are heard in our Justice system,” Paloma Aguilar, [the Minister of Justice’s] press secretary, said in an e-mail.

In parentheses for me, what the hell does that answer have in relation to what Mr. Sapers was describing? Absolutely zero.

This is precisely the type of response the Conservatives always give when they have absolutely nothing to say. For example, if I ask them what colour the sky is and they do not have an answer, they will say that they are standing up for victims of crime.

We are all in agreement. We all support victims. However, we need to take steps to ensure that there will not be any more victims of crime. We need actions and laws in place so that we can say to the public that their safety is our priority, not merely a concept. It is not enough to say that we have locked someone away in prison and that is the end of it. The offender would remain locked up for a long time and when he is released, anything might happen.

Jean-Christophe de Le Rue, spokesman for Public Safety Minister...said being tough on crime has produced positive results.

Another brilliant answer.

With all due respect, I must say that the answers we hear from both these people bring to mind an expression we often hear from the two-, three-, five- or seven-year-old kids from my area: it is not related. It is not related to the question or issue that was raised.

“Being tough on crime has produced positive results.”

I do not know. As we have already seen in another context, statistics show that crime rate is going down.

Can anyone claim, like the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness like to do, that these lower numbers are a result of the tough on crime agenda? I believe that a few years from now, we will suddenly wake up and realize our prisons are a nightmare. Indeed, the situation there is already a nightmare.

Instead of pursuing photo ops across the country, the minister should go to courtrooms and speak with his former colleagues—crown prosecutors, defence attorneys and judges—and ask them about the impact of these wonderful, mammoth bills focused on crime and public safety. He should ask them about the impact these bills have in the field. Alberta and Quebec are complaining loud and clear about a lack of judges. There is a very basic problem.

However, the government responds, “We make no apologies for standing up for victims’ rights”. I hope so; we all do. However, that does not make our penitentiary system more secure.

Measures like this one do not make correctional workers safer. A fancy bill title is not enough to make prisons drug-free or create a better system for everyone. Who would believe such a thing?

Mr. Sapers listed several Conservative initiatives that he said have undermined the idea that prisoners can be rehabilitated -- from tougher sentencing rules such as new mandatory minimums and an end to automatic early release for serious repeat criminals, to tough-on-inmate policies. These include charging more for making telephone calls, increasing room and board charges, eliminating incentive pay for work in prison industries and reducing access to prison libraries.

I do not have enough time to cover all of the details, so I encourage everyone to read what Mr. Sapers wrote. He is more informed than I about what is going on in penitentiaries and in terms of public safety.

He is Canada's ombudsman for federal inmates.

Under the circumstances, some might wonder why we care about prisoners.

First of all, they are human beings.

I do not think that Canada has chosen to believe that a human being is no longer a human being. I would suggest they talk to their backbench colleagues, who are always making all kinds of statements about what a human being is.

I think it is important to treat people as humans even while they are being punished for what they have done. The government should not try to convince the public that a bill just a couple of clauses long will eradicate drugs from prisons. They should not take us for fools.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

The House resumed from November 22 consideration of the motion that Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech I want to take the liberty of answering the question that was posed by a Conservative member to another Conservative member.

The bottom line here is that no one in the House wants to see drugs inside or outside of prisons. That is the reality.

There is an economic law called the “law of diminishing returns”. At a certain point, if enough money is spent on a particular investment, the return is less than the money spent on it, so one has to look at other ways to allocate that funding.

I am talking about the $122 million that the government allocated for the prevention of drugs in prison. The result of that $122 million, and I want Canadians to know because this is taxpayers' money, was zero. Basically the Conservatives put some gimmicks in place to prevent drugs from coming into the prisons. There were ion machines that gave false positives a higher than usual number of times. There were sniffer dogs and other gimmicks that the Conservatives brought in.

However, the result of that $122 million that we spent on preventing drugs from getting into prisons was zero. There was a zero result, which the head of correctional services, Don Head, pointed out in a study done a year ago by the committee. He pointed out that the urinalysis rate of prisoners' testing positive for drugs in the prison system before the $122 million was spent was the same rate as after three years.

In other words, it did not reduce the number of people taking drugs in the prison system. What it did do was shortchange taxpayers in the amount of $122 million.

That is the supply side when I talk about the “law of diminishing returns”, and it is maxed out. We spent an extra $122 million trying to prevent drugs from getting into the prisons, and it did not have any effect.

However, we have a waiting list on the other side of the economics. I know my friends do not believe in facts and figures. In fact, the member for Newton—North Delta often points out the Conservatives are allergic to data, research and facts.

The facts are that if we look at the demand side in prisons, we have a waiting list of 2,400 prisoners waiting to be treated. They want to get into a program. They want to rehabilitate. They want to get rid of the addiction they have so they can move into our communities and live a normal life.

What does corrections mean? Corrections means that we correct our behaviour. We correct the behaviour in prison. When people commit crimes, they go to prison and become part of a captive audience. Believe it or not these people are going to return to our communities. How can the government make sure these people are able to integrate into our communities? It could provide those rehabilitation services and apprenticeship opportunities, so when the prisoners get out into our communities they are better able to integrate into our society. That is how it works. That is the demand side of it.

On the demand side of the equation, we need to reduce the demand of people wanting to take drugs. The best way to do that is to treat the people who are taking drugs. We were able to spend $122 million on the interdiction side, which showed no result, yet we are cutting programs that have shown to be effective.

The corrections investigation officer has, time after time, pointed out that we need additional funds and resources to provide services to people who want to be rehabilitated. We have experts from our communities. There have been many peer studies done around the world that very clearly point out that we also need to work on the demand side to reduce drugs in prisons. However, facts, figures and research do not really work with the Conservatives.

Earlier today, one of the members from the Conservative side pointed out that some members somehow want drugs in our prisons, or they do not care how many drugs are in prisons. That is absolutely incorrect. I am perplexed. I do not usually get mad, but I do not think there are any members in the chamber who want more drugs, let alone in prisons. We do not want any drugs in our society.

How do we deal with it? The best way to deal with it is by helping those individuals who have addictions.

We heard the figures earlier; 80% of the people coming into our prisons have some sort of drug or alcohol addiction. That tells me that there are not enough resources in our communities to help these people and to get them off drugs and alcohol. If we can do that in our communities before they commit crimes, we would not have victims. We would be helping them by eliminating the victim side of it.

The member also talked about how we are going to bring in a charter for victims and help them. I have been in this place for two and a half years. I have not seen a single piece of legislation from the other side of the House to help victims.

The Conservatives will talk about the veterans and how they are the champions for veterans' rights. I know of a number of cases in my own constituency and I hear from veterans across the country that the government has failed. These are our heroes. These are people who have served our country. These are the people who have given us the right to speak here and outside the House in a free and democratic society.

Going back to the bill, I look at the title, the drug-free prisons act. The correctional investigation officer wants zero tolerance for drugs in prisons. I agree with that. We should strive to do our best, but that is an aspiration. It is not the reality in our society.

We talk about spending $122 million on the interdiction of drugs in prisons. We have seen no results. The results that the experts have given us are from the rehabilitation and prevention side. That is where the results are. That is where we can still have economies of scale. We can get more prisoners off drugs. Those are real facts. That is science. Those are economic models.

The Conservatives will tell us that they are great economic managers, but they have been in government for seven years. In seven years, how many surplus budgets have they had? Can someone tell me from the Conservative side how many surplus budgets they have had? They have all gone quiet, because they have had none. The budgets have all been deficits. Not only that, the Conservatives have had the largest deficit for any government in the history of our country, yet they call themselves good managers of our money.

Here is another example. When the Conservatives formed government, we had $26 billion in a current account trade surplus. Under their management we have somehow turned a $26 billion surplus into a $62 billion deficit. That is their record.

When we are talking about real records, facts and figures, science and economics, economics tells us that the $122 million did not have the impact that the government was hoping for. We, along with experts, were telling the Conservatives that they needed to spend money on the other side.

Going back to the title of the bill, this is just like the title for Bill C-2 with regard to InSite in Vancouver, making our communities safe. Their talking points are that they want to hear from the communities when this is decided. In 2003, when InSite was being put in place, the community decided. The City of Vancouver met with stakeholders, whether they were public safety officials, police officers, public health officials, medical officers, doctors, nurses or community organizers, and they came up with a plan to set up InSite in Vancouver. It has been highly successful in regard to reducing crime rates and reducing needles in the area.

Conservatives say the opposition parties want the needles out in the community or that we want our kids to have access to these needles. That is not true. In fact, the needles that were in the alleys and in front of businesses are no longer there. That has been reduced because of InSite, which was put in place to deal with heroin addicts in Vancouver.

A process was in place that was working well. However, what do the Conservatives do? They said they want to consult the community. In 2008, they took it to the court in B.C. and then to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court clearly told them that under the charter people have the right to access these particular services. Well, we know the Conservative ideology. They were not satisfied with the Supreme Court decision. What did they do? They came up with this fancy name that the bill is protecting our communities, yet it does exactly the opposite.

It is the same with Bill C-12, the drug-free prisons act. There is nothing in the act that gives facts and figures or how it is going to reduce drugs in our prisons. In fact, Bill C-12 basically adds a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that makes it clear that the Parole Board may use positive results from urine tests or refusals to take urine tests for drugs in making decisions on parole eligibility.

This gives clear authority to an existing practice of the Parole Board, which we support. In other words, the practice is already in place if a prisoner has a positive test for drugs, that information is taken into consideration by the Parole Board before parole eligibility is decided.

Bill C-12 has a misleading title, “drug-free prisons act”. Maybe the Conservatives are hoping to send a letter to their base or maybe they have already, because they did that when C-2 came to the House. They fired off a letter to their Conservative base asking for money based on how they were protecting the community. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. The bill does not protect the community. It puts roadblocks for communities to make local decisions. The bill is basically Ottawa telling our municipalities what they can or cannot do in their neighbourhoods. The communities can decide for themselves.

I do not see any facts or figures for some sort of program or plan that would show us how this measure would make our prisons drug-free.

I would certainly like that, but I am also pragmatic. We have had laws for hundreds of years prohibiting drugs in our society. The United States raised a war on drugs and said they were going to get rid of them. Did they get rid of them?

We have spent billions of dollars trying to. There are the times when we have to keep going back to this law of diminishing returns.

However, we have to look at the other side, which I have also talked about. That is the rehabilitation side, but there are shortages of space for people who want to get into these programs. The title of the bill has nothing to do with trying to make our prisons safer and rehabilitating and correcting the behaviour of prisoners.

Bill C-12 has a misleading title, as the bill would do little to eliminate all drugs from our federal prison system. An investment in rehabilitation is required if we are serious about rehabilitating prisoners and integrating them back into the community.

I think all people in this House believe that the prison sentence has to fit the crime. There is no doubt that if somebody commits a crime, we put him or in prison. I think all Canadians agree with that. The bottom line is that in two years, three years, four years, 10 years, or whatever the sentence is, these people are going to come back into our communities, so how do we deal with them?

Well, we try to rehabilitate them. We try to correct them in our system. They are a captive audience, and we have seen that when people have taken programs in prison, the recidivism rate for those individuals goes down quite low. Would it not make sense for the Conservatives to provide those resources, instead of wasting money on fancy titles for a bill or sending letters out to their base saying that they are actually doing something here and asking for money?

That is wrong. It is not going to help us in the long run.

The NDP has been very steadfast in its support for measures that would make our prisons safe, while Conservative governments have ignored recommendations from correctional staff and the Correctional Investigator that would decrease violence, gang activity, and drugs in our prisons.

I have had the chance to visit a number of prisons. I had the chance to visit a couple of prisons in Kingston. I had a chance to visit prisons in British Columbia, my province. I visited Kent prison and I also visited Matsqui prison. I talked to the prisoners. I talked to the correctional staff. Overwhelmingly, the response from those individuals was that, first, they do not have enough rehabilitation programs to rehabilitate the drug addict. In addition, money for apprenticeship programs is being cut.

To sum up, we certainly need more investment . There is a long list of people who are waiting to get into drug rehabilitation programs. That is the correct way to go forward: to prevent these individuals coming into our communities without any treatment in the correctional system.

New Democrats will support the bill at this stage, but the title does not reflect the true intent of this bill.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Prince Edward—Hastings for his insight into this important bill. As the chair of the public safety committee, he has some very important views to add and his comments earlier, being a former police officer.

It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak about this issue of grave concern to our Conservative government and to all Canadians: the use of drugs in our federal prisons.

As hon. members know, our government has a robust agenda in place to strengthen the laws so offenders are held accountable for their actions and to increase the voice of victims in the criminal justice system. To this end, since 2006 we have supported significant crime prevention programs and invested in a wide range of support services for victims of crimes and passed laws to ensure that sentences match the severity of the crime. We have also committed to bringing forward legislation and a victims bill of rights that would enshrine the rights of victims in law. The legislation before us, the drug-free prisons act, would build on this work.

Notably, it brings back to us one of the key parts of our crime and public safety agenda; that of increasing offender accountability. This push to hold offenders accountable for their crimes forms the basis of much of our correctional programming. This is apparent in the many bills we have introduced and passed.

Offender accountability is a prominent feature in many elements of the Safe Streets and Communities Act, which received royal assent in March 2012. In that comprehensive bill, our government made a number of changes to increase penalties and to place the onus on offenders to succeed in their own rehabilitation and reintegration into the community.

We introduced measures ensuring violent and repeat youth offenders would be held accountable for their actions and that the protection of society would be of paramount consideration.

We ended the use of house arrest and conditional sentences for those offenders convicted of serious and violent crimes. We made it the law that federal offenders would have expectations for their behaviours and objectives for meeting court ordered obligations, such as restitution to victims or child support.

We modernized the disciplinary system, creating new offences for offenders who had disrespectful and intimidating behaviours toward correctional staff.

We made certain that if authorized to be outside of an institution before the end of their sentence, offenders would be expected to continue on the right path. We did this by providing police officers with the power of arrest without warrant of an offender who appeared to be in breach of any condition related to the condition of his or her release.

We made it the law that offenders who received a new custodial sentence would automatically have their parole or statutory release suspended.

We changed the laws so those who committed serious crimes, like sexual offences related to a minor, would be no longer eligible to apply for a record suspension.

We ensured that the Parole Board of Canada could proceed with a parole review, even if the offender requested to withdraw his or her application within 14 days without a valid reason, thereby ensuring that the process would be serious and respectful of victims who planned to attend the hearing.

These are common sense measures that Canadians want and commitments that we are delivering on.

In the last session, a private member's bill put forward by my hon. colleague, the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, was introduced to ensure that offenders would be held responsible for paying their debts to creditors, such as victims with restitution orders, when they received payment from the Crown.

We recently saw the coming into force of the Increasing Offenders' Accountability for Victims Act which would double the victims' surcharge that offenders must pay and would ensure that the surcharge was automatically applied in all cases.

It is clear that we have made progress in increasing offender accountability for a wide range of crimes and in a wide range of situations.

The importance of offender accountability applies equally to the topic at hand: drug use in federal prisons. Our government has taken decisive steps to remove drugs from our federal penitentiaries. In 2007, the Correctional Service Canada, or CSC, adopted a transformation agenda to address areas of concern within our correctional system. Among those areas was that of eliminating drugs from institutions. A consistent national approach was implemented to manage who and what was entering our institutions. New search and surveillance technology, including additional drug protection dog teams, allows for better screening and detection.

Furthermore, the national anti-drug strategy of CSC works within a zero tolerance policy that takes a multi-prong approach to tackling drug and alcohol use, including urine testing, administrative consequences and disciplinary actions.

In particular, urinalysis has been a key focus of the CSC and plays a role in the legislation before us. The use of random and required urine testing is seen as a critical tool in an institutional setting. It holds offenders to account, providing a strong deterrent to drug use.

Of course there are well-defined circumstances in which the CSC can use these tests. First, there are the reasonable grounds for testing, such as finding drugs or drug paraphernalia in a cell. Second, the offender must undergo drug testing in order to participate in a particular institutional program. Third, it is part of a random drug testing program used by the CSC.

Random resting is both fair and effective and an excellent method to helping keep offenders accountable for their actions in prison. The test is random and an inmate who is using drugs cannot plan ahead to ensure he or she is clean the day of the test. Furthermore, if offenders refuse to take the test, they can be subject to the same sanctions or infractions they would receive if they had failed the test.

CSC has recently increased its random monthly testing to help ensure every offender is tested every year and now tests 10% of the offender population every month, up from 5%. With this increase in random testing, the CSC will have more information at its fingertips to monitor an offender's progress and to measure our efforts to create penitentiaries free of drugs.

The legislation before us proposes two amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which will empower the CSC and the Parole Board of Canada to use this urine test data to ensure offenders are held to account. Bill C-12 would stipulate in law that the Parole Board could cancel an offender's parole if the offender failed the test or refused to take a urine test in the same period between being granted parole and physically leaving the penitentiary. It would also emphasize in law the Parole Board's ability to set specific abstinence conditions on offenders as part of their parole conditions. Any evidence of drug use could result in the Parole Board cancelling an offender's parole.

We believe these are reasonable expectations of offenders to take responsibility for their actions and be held accountable for those actions. We believe this legislation can help us create a safer environment in our prisons. While many members seem to support more drugs in prisons, Canadians are not fooled. Canadians elected a Conservative majority government that was tough on crime, and we will crack down on drugs in our communities. That is exactly what we are doing, and we will continue to do that.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today I am going to be sharing my time with the hon. member, a very capable member, I might add, for Medicine Hat.

I rise today as a former police officer and as a person with five institutions in my proximity: Millhaven, the former Kingston Penitentiary, Joyceville, Warkworth, and Pittsburgh. Today I rise with some personal knowledge about the very challenging issue of drugs in federal prisons.

Our government has worked diligently to establish Canada as a country where those who break the law are held accountable for their actions and where the rights of victims are respected. This ensures that we have a strong correctional system that actually rehabilitates prisoners. To this end, we have taken strong action to tackle the problem of drugs in prison, which is, obviously, a significant roadblock to correcting the behaviour of prisoners and to the safety, of course, of correctional officers.

The reality is that prisoners should not have access to illegal drugs or substances while serving their sentences. While the NDP seems to disagree, unfortunately, and would have us provide needles to prisoners, Canadians agree that drugs have absolutely no place behind bars.

The Correctional Service of Canada has a wide range of interdiction measures in place to search out, seize, and detect drugs in institutions, and it has had some successes. However, we can certainly always improve, and that is why our government is drawing a firm line with this bill.

Almost 1,500 drug seizures take place in prisons each year, and more than 1,700 institutional sanctions have been imposed on prisoners for positive drug tests or a refusal to take drug tests. These numbers underscore the drug problem in prisons. It cannot be underestimated. Not only does the sale and use of drugs in prisons adversely affect our chance of correcting criminal behaviour, it certainly poses a threat to the safety of the staff. That is why our government, in its 2011 election platform, made a strong commitment to do even more about this problem.

We set the bar very high when we made three key promises. Number one was that every federal inmate would undergo drug testing once yearly. Is that too much to ask? Number two was that prisoners in possession of illegal substances would face additional and appropriate charges. Is that too much to ask? Number three was that parole applicants who failed these drug tests would be denied parole. They should not be rewarded for illicit, illegal actions.

We have moved forward with these measures to help us achieve these ambitious goals. We have made much progress, particularly with respect to addressing the first two promises.

We have invested heavily in broader interdiction measures. In 2008, we provided $122 million over five years for interdiction efforts, efforts that included drug detector dogs, security intelligence capacity, and perimeter security. Obviously, institutions are less safe and secure when there are drugs and other contraband, so this has turned out to be a very smart investment.

More recently, we complemented this investment with important changes under the Safe Streets and Communities Act that enshrined in law the role of the prisoners' correctional plans. The Safe Streets and Communities Act also introduced two-year mandatory minimum penalties for trafficking drugs in prisons or on prison grounds.

The CSC has recently brought in a number of vital institutional measures that are under way at present. It has increased random monthly urinalysis testing of prisoners. That is amazing. That is one of our most effective detection measures, by the way, and it has increased from 5% to 10%.

CSC is improving data collection on drug use in prisons. It is preparing regulatory amendments to increase fines for inmates possessing or using illicit drugs, with further increases for repeat prisoners. It has also introduced mandatory reporting of all serious incidents of drug possession to the appropriate law enforcement agencies in those jurisdictions.

In an effort to augment CSC's interdiction efforts, Bill C-12, the drug-free prisons act, proposes an important legislative change, another step in our improvement, one that will allow us to fulfill the third of our 2011 platform commitments, which is to deny parole to those prisoners who fail drug tests.We want to provide members of the Parole Board of Canada with additional legislative tools to deny prisoners parole in cases involving failed or refused urinalysis tests. Two changes are required to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act in this regard.

The first is an amendment to add specific authority to cancel parole based on failed or refused urinalysis tests. This means that between the time a prisoner has been granted parole and is released, the CSC would be required to get information on urinalysis to the Parole Board. The Parole Board would then have an opportunity to change or modify its decision and to change or cancel the parole should the new information alter its assessment of the prisoner's risk to the community.

The second is an amendment to include specific authority for the board to impose a special condition requiring the prisoner to abstain from drugs and alcohol. This would apply to prisoners for whom substance abuse had been long identified as the leading factor in that prisoner's criminal behaviour. This would focus the board's attention on this factor, and when the condition was applied, it would create an opportunity for parole to be revoked if the condition was violated.

By striving toward a drug-free environment, we hope to create a number of beneficial outcomes that contribute to successful rehabilitation, that ensure the safety and security of Canadian institutions and communities, and that further support our commitment to hold prisoners accountable for their actions.

We are taking the necessary steps to equip the Correctional Service of Canada and the Parole Board of Canada with the tools they need to tackle drug use in our prisons. We are proud of the substantial progress we have made in respect of our 2011 commitments. We are confident that the drug-free prisons act would take us another step even further down the road in addressing this significant societal problem.

While members of the other parties have pushed for relaxed laws on drugs, on needles in prisons, and promoting drugs in schools to our youth, we will continue with these common-sense measures. Canadians expect absolutely nothing less.

I am thankful for the opportunity today to express what is not only a platform and a party policy but a personal passion. I live and work in the areas where these kinds of illegal activities certainly contribute to the decline of what it means to be a respected Canadian who respects our laws, our challenges, our traditions, and the health and safety of our citizens.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise to address issues inside the House of Commons, and it is a privilege to do so.

In the legislation we have before us today, I started by talking about the name of the bill and the impression it is attempting to leave with people. I find it difficult to accept it at face value. What is the real motive behind the government bringing forward this legislation?

I represent a wonderful riding, as all MPs no doubt proclaim they do. However, there are many different challenges that our country faces as a nation. One of the greatest challenges we have is related to the issue of addictions. Addictions are very serious. Because we are not aggressively pursuing ways we could deal with that issue in a very proactive way, I believe we are doing a disservice.

Given the very nature and the seriousness of addictions, I believe there is a need for strong federal national leadership to work with the different stakeholders, in particular the provinces, to come up with some solutions to those problems. I do not believe there is anything within this legislation that would do that. It is not addressing the problem of addictions.

I have a great deal of respect for my colleague, the Liberal Party critic for health care. She is exceptionally knowledgeable about the issue of addictions. I have had the opportunity to listen to her on numerous occasions as she has described the issues surrounding addiction.

I am nowhere near as knowledgeable as she is on this addictions file. I want to bring it to the table from a constituency level, from the average person who is working and quite often has a difficult time managing, the middle class. We have not talked enough about the impact that policies and discussions have on our middle class and whether we can do more. I believe we can and we should be doing more.

Bill C-12 is all about addictions and what we are doing for a prisoner who is released from a penitentiary and returning to a public environment. The legislation talks about instituting some requirements, testing to find out whether there is substance abuse prior to release. There will be a lot of debate about that. Whether it is a justice critic or a health critic, both of them will contribute to that aspect of the debate at great length.

My frustration is that I do not believe we are doing enough outside of our prisons to deal with this issue. I would challenge the government on that. It needs to take a more holistic approach to dealing with abuse of drugs and the negative consequences.

Our prisons have literally thousands of people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol prior to their entering those institutions. Many would argue that it might even be the cause of them being in those institutions. That is just a small percentage of what is in our communities.

From what I can tell when I look at the legislation, it would do nothing to deal with the issue of addiction. That is what is so disappointing. If the Conservatives are serious, they should develop the necessary programs so that when people are leaving our federal or provincial detention institutions they go into an environment that is going to assist them in staying away from these addictive drugs. I see the consequences and the impact it has on our communities far too often.

We were talking earlier about other legislation regarding safe injection sites. Here is a good example of where government says there is a problem and it is going to attempt to deal with the problem. It is that approach that the Conservatives need to start considering in terms of resolving many different issues that face our society, whether it is in prison or outside of prison.

What has happened in terms of the injection site is to first identify the problem. In prisons, there is a great deal of alcohol and drug abuse. We know that. It is a high percentage. I will go through some of the numbers shortly, but well above 50% of the prison population experience some form of abuse of alcohol, drugs or other chemicals. That abuse does not necessarily originate from within the prison walls. It comes, in most cases I would suggest, from the communities prior to the inmate entering prison. What are we doing in regards to that?

Let us use the example of another piece of legislation. Remember the injection site? Canada has one injection site. That is not something that was thought of out of the blue, to establish it and put it up in Vancouver. That was not the case. There were numerous individuals who recognized that Vancouver had serious issues surrounding addiction and that if they could have a safe injection site they would be able to assist in preventing crimes, assist addicted individuals, and ultimately make a safer community for people to live.

I was very sympathetic to that. I would rather see the paraphernalia that comes with some of these heroin injections in a controlled environment, as opposed to inner city back lanes or schoolyards. It is not just inner city; it even happens in the suburbs. I have seen what I believe were exchanges of drugs in parking lots, which I have been told by constituents to watch out for. There is proper notification that it is prevalent, and not just in the inner cities.

The damage that is caused is horrendous, not only to the individuals who are using the drugs, but also to the environment in which they are injecting these chemicals into their systems. That is not to even mention what might be happening in order for them to acquire the drug itself.

We have these stakeholders who identify an issue and then they work on the problem with the different levels of government, including Ottawa, the Province, the city and different stakeholders. I am suggesting that we need to use that mentality of co-operation in working with the stakeholders, including the provinces, to try to deal with problems.

I would point out that this was a specific problem outside the prison system and we saw a solution. We had great co-operation, and something was put into place as a direct result. In speaking with the critic for health, she took great pride in this. Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and others, as I said the provincial and municipal leaders and many different stakeholders, turned it into a reality. They addressed the problem.

I would suggest that is what we should be doing in dealing with our prisons. We need to identify what the problem truly is. We already have a good sense of that. There have been many reports and many debates.

I do not think anything I am saying this afternoon is earth-shattering. A lot of it is common sense. The people I represent apply common sense to a lot of the issues we have. We might need to start talking a lot more in terms of common sense inside the House of Commons.

We need to start recognizing that there are some simple things, along with some fairly complicated things, that need to happen within our prison systems. It is not just that someone has been found guilty and that because the person has some sort of addiction issue by putting him or her in jail the issue disappears.

If we believe that is the case, we should start talking to some of the correctional officers. These are people on the front line who have not broken any laws. They are protecting our communities and providing a service to all Canadians, even people within the institutions. If we took the time to talk to the correctional officers, they would acknowledge up front that there are serious issues in dealing with drugs and alcohol within our prison system.

I started my comments before question period on this issue about the title of the bill. It makes me wonder why the government has chosen to bring forward the legislation. It is Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. It sounds like a reasonable name for a bill. Of course, the Conservatives brand their legislation. I call it the stamp of approval from the PMO.

The stamp of approval on this piece of legislation is the drug-free prisons act. It builds up this huge expectation and causes a great deal of concern in terms of how the government might attempt to do this.

We probably have stakeholders from around the world who would say it is not possible to make a prison completely drug-free or alcohol-free. It would be interesting to hear witnesses who come before committee provide their input as to why they think that might be possible. We do not think it is.

I believe what we want is a government that is proactive or aggressive at dealing with the issues of addiction within our prisons. That is really what we want. I am all for protecting potential future victims from crime. Trust me, I would debate that issue any day with anyone, outside or inside the House. However, I am also interested in debating the issue of substance with regard to drug and alcohol addictions.

If we can come up with programs that are solid and sound and that we can deliver within our prison system, I tell the House that we will have less crime on the streets of our cities and municipalities of all sizes. The challenge is to come up with the right types of programs to make a difference. It might not get us the headlines we want, but it will have a real, tangible impact in terms of decreasing crime in our communities.

That is what I am interested in. That is what the Liberal Party of Canada wants. We want fewer victims, and the best way to achieve that goal is by ensuring that we have programs that will have an impact.

Where, in Bill C-12, is there any movement toward a program that is going to deal with that issue? That is not something we see in the government's legislation. One would ultimately ask, why not? However, the direction the government is taking is moving us away from that.

Again, I will emphasize that I sympathize with and I will fight for victims of crime, but I am also going to fight to prevent victims. With good, strong, healthy programs, we can make a difference. This is something on which the Government of Canada needs to be challenged to start producing, because it has fallen short in providing substantial programs that will make a difference in the communities we live in and represent and make them safer places to be. That is the challenge.

We have the name of the bill. We will see what happens when it goes to committee. I look forward to getting feedback from our health critic and our public safety critic. I look forward to what ultimately happens with the bill.

The House resumed from consideration of the motion that Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting bill that we have before us. It is something the Conservative Party is fairly good at. They have someone working in the Prime Minister's Office whose job is quite simple: come up with creative names for bills to make the Conservatives look good in the eyes of the public. Whether it is reflected in the bill or the substance of the legislation is somewhat irrelevant; the PMO staffer's primary goal is to get that communication piece out.

So what has the PMO said today on Bill C-12?

Well, the message it wants to get out to Canadians is “drug-free prisons”. This is what it wants to achieve. Some on that side might actually applaud, but one questions if it is possible to achieve what the government is trying to give the impression to Canadians that it is going to achieve. I do not believe it is possible.

I believe that if one were to canvass individuals who have the expertise, which obviously is lacking on the government benches, one would find out that in fact it is not achievable. However, do not let that confuse the member who came up with the idea in the Prime Minister's Office, because that conflicts with the message the Conservatives are hoping to give Canadians, albeit somewhat false.

That said, interestingly, there was an observation made in the 2011-2012 annual report from the Correctional Investigator with respect to the prevalence of drugs within our prisons, and I quote:

A “zero-tolerance” stance to drugs in prison, while perhaps serving 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.

This is not coming from a member of the Liberal caucus, but from stakeholders out there in the real world, and that is part of the problem. We need to get more of the staff inside the PMO to get out into the real world to get a better understanding of reality.

I had the opportunity to tour many of Canada's penitentiaries and retention centres, and I believe there is plenty of room for improvement. Let there be no doubt that there is a lot of room for improvement. I for one will not object to moving forward, but I think we have to take the issue of addiction—