Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here. As well, I want to thank each one of the directors here today. Looking across the table, we can see the vast amount of work that is covered under Public Safety. I think each one of us serving on this committee are privileged that we can.... It remains a very interesting portfolio to work on.
Minister, I don't know about you, but over the last year and a half or two years, I have consistently heard from the opposition—all of us on the government side have heard—that we were going to be building new prisons. We were accused time and again of having plans to build new prisons. Then we announced we wouldn't be building any new prisons, and the opposition didn't like no for an answer. Then we told them we were going to be able to close prisons because the population that had been projected to grow didn't materialize.
I'm wondering if you could speak directly to what the prison population was a year ago, what that growth has been, and how we are able to accommodate.... In dealing with prison closures—I'm thinking specifically of Kingston, where there has been so much misinformation and so many inaccurate numbers—can you give us some of the accurate numbers and tell us what has happened with the population growth and what has not happened, and where these offenders are going to be going?