Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Minister, I would like to thank you and your officials for being here today to answer our questions. We greatly appreciate it.
My questions have to do mainly with the Correctional Service of Canada.
First, I would like to get the numbers straight. You spoke about a decrease in the prison population. However, in the past five years, there has been a 10% increase in this population. There are approximately 15,200 inmates a day in our prisons.
One other thing has increased, and that is double-bunking in the cells. There has been a rising trend in this respect in the past five years. There has been a 93% increase, which is huge. In the past five years, we have also seen a 17% increase in cases of assault and fights among inmates and a 6.7% increase in incidents of the use of force.
There are these incidents and problems among the inmates. This is of great concern to the officers from the Correctional Service of Canada and the Office of the Correctional Investigator, who submitted a report to that end.
Are you going to continue to let these numbers rise? Are you going to continue to use double-bunking, knowing that it is not solving the problems in our federal prisons?