Good morning, everyone. This is meeting number nine of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, October 27, 2011.
Today we're going to continue our study on drugs and alcohol in prisons. We are examining how drugs and alcohol enter prisons and the impacts they have on the rehabilitation of offenders, the safety of correctional officials, and on crime within the institutions.
For the listening audience, I will state that on Tuesday of this week, our committee traveled to Kingston to inspect the institutions of Collins Bay and Joyceville. I'm certain that all members benefited from that experience and from what we learned there in regards to our study—and probably a little more than just in regards to our study. It was informative just being able to hear some of the concerns of both offenders and correctional officers, and management as well.
We have one panel of witnesses appearing before us today via teleconference from Edmonton, Alberta. We have Andrea Markowski, the warden at the Edmonton Institution for Women; and from my constituency of Crowfoot, we have Darcy Thompson, security intelligence officer at the Drumheller Institution.
On behalf of our committee, I want to thank both of our witnesses for their time and effort in helping us with our study. We appreciate very much having your input. We apologize that we couldn't have you here today and couldn't have it via video conferencing. It was a matter of the resources at this end, I think, that let us down.
We also apologize for being a little late today. We had a vote in the House of Commons. It was a quick vote dealing with the long-gun registry, which for some of us was fairly important.
I invite both of you now, Mr. Thompson, and Ms. Markowski, to give some opening comments, and then we will move into a couple rounds of questions that we may have for you. We look forward to your comments.
Thank you for joining us via teleconference.