Thank you, Dr. Zinger and Madame Miron.
You were talking about the ingenuity of some of these individuals in terms of getting drugs into the prisons. I'll point out that Mr. MacGregor and I had a visit on a very hot, 40-degree summer day outside of Vancouver, to Kent, and the staff there told us about drones, people trying to use drones—this would be interesting to Mr. Shipley. Despite everything the prison guards were trying to do, folks were trying to use drones to drop drugs, and the staff there successfully interdicted them.
We appreciate, I think, that it's quite a difficult task to keep these things out.
One of the things you mentioned was something that—again, I don't want to speak for Mr. MacGregor—I think both of us were struck by. This was issues related to nutrition and food. The fact that cuts were made and a number of policy changes were made under previous governments—and that is not to cast aspersions on the previous government; it's what we were told—made it impossible for local prisons to access locally sourced food and things that would be less expensive. They were forced into a model of, “This is the food you must serve on this date, and it must come from a central facility,” which, of course, led to nutrition issues, which led to some of the other challenges you've talked about.
One of the things that struck me was the impact of the poor conditions in what we saw, as well as these types of factors, on staff—staff morale, staff's ability to do their jobs well. There were also the concerns they had about the well-being of the prisoners, so that they would be able to improve and hopefully one day enter society.
When we talk about things like dry cells and about issues like mental health supports, in your estimation, what are some of the things you have seen that have been mandated by the minister on CSC and others that are some of the easy wins that we should really be focusing on and looking at to ensure that these conditions improve in prisons, not just for prisoners but also, by extension, for staff and hopefully, by extension, for better outcomes on re-entry?