Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to the committee, Minister Blaney, and all of the other guests as well. It's nice to see you. Most of you I've met before.
I'm going to start, Minister Blaney, with some questions regarding our prison population. There's been quite a lot of attention paid to the issue of population growth in our prisons. The issue of double bunking has come up time and time again. If I'm not mistaken, some people out there, groups, or even opposition parties, thought the prison population would actually increase by 300% and 400%. In fact, I don't think that's correct.
I'm wondering if you could give us your comments on that. We've even heard that our government, because of our tough on crime legislation, would end up having to build these billion-dollar prisons to accommodate all the prisoners we're going to throw in jail.
Have those estimates actually materialized? Have we built new prisons? Could you comment on that, please, for the record?