Thank you, Mr. Chair
And thank you to the commissioner and our guest from Stony Mountain for being here today.
I want to go back to our preamble, the usual preamble, that we, as New Democrats, believe we need to take a balanced approach, that being prevention, treatment, and also interdiction. We've heard over the last number of meetings how the urinalysis rate has gone down from 13% to 7% over the last decade. I believe Mr. Head has stated in his previous testimony that over the last decade the urinalysis results having gone down is proof that interdiction is working.
I'm looking at a Correctional Service performance report from 2008-09, and I just want to read this:
The percentage of offenders testing positive during random urinalysis tests has decreased from 13.0%...in 2007-2008 to 7.9%...in 2008-2009.
That's around when we injected the $122 million into interdiction programs in the prisons. The reason for the drop from 13% to 7.9% is, and this CSC performance report says:
This reflects removal of legitimate prescription drugs from the test results. Without this change, the results remain at 13%.
In other words, Mr. Head, would you agree that the change from 2007-08, the reduction from 13% to 7.9%, is a result of the prescription drugs not being tested? If the prescription drugs were part of the test, the rate would remain at 13%.
I'm looking at the performance report from 2010-11: in 2008-09 the urinalysis rate remained around 7.16%; in 2009-10 it remained at 7.36%; and in 2010-11 it was 7.43%.
Given that this information is from your own correctional report, can you explain to us how one could come to a logical conclusion that the new investment in interdiction is the actual explanation for a reduction in the urinalysis?