Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do want to speak against this motion.
Wayne, I have experience with prison farms because there is one in my riding. I do spend some time there talking to CORCAN, talking to inmates, talking to Correctional Services management.
There are a number of issues surrounding the prison farm in my riding. One is employability skills that the individuals are getting off the farm. There's no doubt they have had a great experience working on the prison farm. The prison farm in Stoney Mountain includes a very good dairy farm, and it used to have a hog operation, a 2,000-head feedlot, and an extensive grain farm. Unfortunately, the inmates coming out of there, when they go back into the public, are having difficulty finding employment. There are only so many jobs out there in the agriculture sector that they can apply for, and many of them want to return to their home communities where a farming job is not an option.
If we want to have a proper transition of inmates back into society, so they are productive participants in society, we have to give them employable jobs back in their home situations, where they'll have family support, where they can take pride in having a job and earning an income and not having to look at criminal ways to generate revenue.
I think it's important. I know from my discussions with CORCAN that they want to make sure these guys do have some marketable skills. They can pick up some of the things from a farm, like welding skills and things of that nature, but we need to do more in skilled trades and education and maybe changing the business way CORCAN operates. That's what they're looking at: how do they teach inmates on a prison farm like Stoney Mountain with more skills in heavy equipment operations, how do they get them doing more in fabricating, specific machining skills, and so on? That's where they're headed.
I think we have to support that because it's about making sure the inmates, when they go back into society, have skills they can offer to their local community. That's the big reason for doing this. It has nothing to do with what Mr. Easter has been alluding to. I think all of us have seen the benefit of the prison farms in our communities, although with respect to Stoney Mountain, the surrounding area is changing as well. One reason they don't have a hog operation anymore is because of the nuisance of odour and flies and everything else that's associated with that, when the town borders the prison. It's the same thing with the dairy herd; it has been cut back, and the feedlot has been reduced almost in half because of the issue of nuisance odours and flies. So we have to be cognizant of the communities surrounding the prison farms as well.
For those reasons, I think we have to support the decision by CORCAN management at Correctional Services. I think we have to support them in knowing what's best for the inmates and getting them better established for returning into society.