I'm delighted to hear that, Mr. Jean. At least the public has access to it. But I guess it's like the administrative segregation areas we were talking about earlier: if they're not available, people don't have a chance to have access to them. Unfortunately in this case, a lot of people watch things through television. If they can only hear the audio, they either don't look at a blank screen or they find other ways of doing it. But it's unfortunate. Nevertheless, we are where we are and we shall continue.
I want to speak in favour of clause 68. It's a very interesting clause, which might come as a bit of a surprise to the public and also to some of us legislators, to say that there's a possibility that people actually would want to stay in prison longer than their sentence. It sounds a bit ironic, but once one thinks about it, it's easy to understand why. There could be a variety of reasons.
I'll read the clause out. It says:
At the request of a person who...is entitled to be released from a penitentiary on parole or statutory release, the institutional head may allow them to stay temporarily in the penitentiary in order to assist their rehabilitation, but the temporary stay may not extend beyond the expiration of their sentence.
Now, if someone is on parole, they're usually out before the end of their sentence. Statutory release is before the end of their actual sentence. That means they'd be on the street. Some people may not have any place to go immediately. If they have a place to go in three weeks but not today, they might be on the street for three weeks.
Some inmate might be in a situation in which they are in immediate preparation for some significant event, such as a graduate education exam that allows you to get your grade 11 without going to grade 11—you can write an exam and you study inside the penitentiary as you're doing this qualification. Next week or the week after, you don't want to be out on the street in a situation in which you might not have the resources or systems to finish that, and it may be eminently desirable to stay in the penitentiary for another week or ten days to conduct a particular examination or qualification that would assist in your rehabilitation.
Despite the irony of this particular provision, it is actually something that can be of substantial assistance to an inmate in his or her course of rehabilitation. So we wish to support it wholeheartedly and would expect fully that the institutional head would take the reasons into consideration, “in order”, as it says here, “to assist their rehabilitation”. It is at their request that this takes place.
I think it's a positive thing.
Those are my remarks.