Thank you very much for being here. I'd like to congratulate everyone for their presentations.
I was especially pleased, Mr. Delva, that you dwelt on youth at risk and the importance of that particular issue. Having spent 15 years as a high school principal and a junior high principal before coming here, I recognize how serious that situation is. Thank you for that.
I also thank Mr. Ouellette for pointing out the need for getting this disorganized system organized through communication between police forces throughout the country, and noting how disorganized it is.
And to all of you, thank you for your comments on the red tape you have to go through. The red tape in this country is just phenomenal, and I just don't quite understand why it's all that necessary.
To the correctional service, Mr. Toller, I've been to many penitentiaries and I've had presentations from the SIO, special intelligence officers, who do an excellent job. I would recommend that every politician, particularly members of this body, go to a penitentiary and visit with the special intelligence officers to become very informed. They do a very good job about the gangs that exist in our penitentiaries, and I commend them for their work.
But I'm extremely puzzled about something that I can't seem to get the answer to. In our penitentiaries we have what we used to call “solitary confinement”; now they call it “segregation”. Because I'm so old, I'll use the old term. Solitary confinement was always there to punish people for misbehaving, in most cases. Now it's filled with people—in every unit that I was in—who need protection from the gangs that exist within the penitentiary. I visited these individuals and asked, why are you in here? They responded, I owe a drug debt or I owe rent. But I'd say, wait a minute, you're in a penitentiary; how could you possibly have those kinds of debts that you're fearful of your life in a penitentiary in Canada?
The answers I get from some frontline officers are, well it's a pretty simple answer, Mr. Thompson: they are running the show and we're just following along. The officers are very frustrated. And the answer from these people in the segregation units or solitary confinement is, I'd be a dead man if I didn't stay where I am, because of the gangs and because I owe rent.
If you told taxpayers across the country that a whole bunch of people are in solitary confinement or segregation because they don't pay their rent when they're in prison or they haven't paid for their drugs, people would say that you've got to be kidding.
Has anybody got any explanation for why this is out of control within the penitentiaries? I'd like to hear it.