I thank you for your question. While I am pleased to answer, I respectfully and totally disagree with your comments and question.
It is not because we don't want to see a problem that there is no problem. It is not because you are not getting the tools to see the magnitude of the issue that there is no problem. That's the position this government has taken.
We have a French expression:
“Take the bull by the horns”. This means that we recognize the challenge of the presence of illegal drugs in our penitentiaries. We recognize that 75% of inmates serving a sentence in our prisons have addiction issues.
As I said this morning, we have implemented measures in order to systematically administer drug tests. This will help us identify individuals with drug use problems and provide them with approved therapy that has been tailored to their condition. We could be talking about addiction to opioids or the famous methadone treatment.
Correctional Service Canada has really developed an expertise so that it can provide treatments for inmates with addiction problems. Those treatments have positive effects. They reduce the risk of recidivism among those inmates while increasing their chances of being released.
What we are proposing this morning is not punishment. The goal is to let inmates with addiction issues know that they are not ready to be released because they still have a substance abuse problem and could end up back in prison. We want to keep the inmate in the system and provide them with access to therapy, which produces rather dramatic results.