Madam Chair, I'm happy to address this.
I can say that we really do applaud the government for introducing these changes to conditional sentences. I think they're going to make a huge difference.
It takes $330 a day, in fact, on average, about $100,000 a year, to house an inmate in custody. That $100,000 a year could be used for education programs, for addressing at-risk youth or even for hiring a prosecutor to get through some of these other cases. There is absolutely no reason not to bring these types of things back and to allow more people to simply resolve their cases without having to go to trial, to avoid these mandatory harsh jail sentences.