Thank you, Minister and Mr. Chair.
As the minister has pointed out, our projections, which were based on remand data that was three to four years old, from 2005, originally projected a population growth much higher than what we've seen. The actual growth is only about one-third.
In March 2010, when Bill C-25 came into effect, we started at a population level of 14,027. As the minister has pointed out, our count today is 14,973, so around a 950 increase, as opposed to the 3,000 that was originally projected.
The 2,752 new cells that will be coming on line over the next two to three years are going to give us exactly what the minister pointed out, the opportunity to address some of the levels of double-bunking that we have in some of our institutions across the country and to deal with some of the aging infrastructure we have. The average age of our infrastructure is 40 years old, and as this committee has learned in the past, it's an infrastructure that's used 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can imagine the wear and tear that's there.
So we have aging infrastructure and we have some double-bunking issues to address. Any new growth that we're predicting, which is much less than the original projections, will be able to be accommodated in the capacity we have across the country, including the 2,752 cells.