Thank you.
First of all, I want to thank you all for being here today. Mr. Cannavino, I see you have not changed and that you are quite able to defend your positions.
I will start with a brief introduction and then I will ask a question of Mr. Cusson and Mr. Altimas, who will undoubtedly be able to answer.
I am certain you saw as well as I did yesterday on TV that the Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport in Montreal is literally a funnel for drugs and that personnel there, police officers and civilians, are being bribed. They are afraid of drug pushers. You seem to have a positive view of conditional sentences. We know that airport staff are afraid of drug traffickers.
Could you explain to me why correctional services officers who on a daily basis are responsible for supervising people involved in the drug trade, hard drugs and otherwise, are being bribed? Perhaps they are afraid. You have no statistics on that.
The only thing we do know is that it costs approximately 20¢ an hour to monitor drug traffickers outside of jail. Drugs, on the face of it, are not dangerous, but let us not forget that in Columbia and Afghanistan, growers are gunned down with machine guns because we buy drugs. That is the “not in my backyard“ effect. We must put an end to it. It is not because the issue is not serious here that it is not elsewhere. Today, in Venezuela and in Afghanistan, people are getting killed because we are buying their drugs. That is just not right.
I learned one thing from my practice, which I would like to share with you. In Mr. Elliott's brief, which was read earlier on, we see that 40% more drugs are making their way into the jails. Imagine what it is like when you are not in jail! When you are not in jail, how many drugs are getting in? That is what I would like to know from you.
We are close to our constituents, we work for good honest people, people like you and me, and for the victims, because we all have family members who were victims. Is it normal to imagine that for serious crimes, when someone is behind bars... There is already a 40%t higher probability that drugs are going to get in, but it is not 100% more, because the people who are monitoring these offenders, that we have been referring to from the beginning, do $1,792 worth of monitoring per year, in other words 20¢ per hour. If you think that these people are not afraid of drug dealers and that there is no chance of their being bought, you are living in some alternate reality. At the Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, they make approximately $30,000 per year, they have a few duties to carry out, they are being bribed and they are afraid.
I would like to know your position on this. How can you try to convince me to accept your position rather than that which is set out in Bill C-9?