Do not get too angry? What do these people think we are talking about here? Good old Wayne
went into an apartment and injected Angela Richards with cocaine. Is this familiar? He stabbed her 20 times, killing her.
When I was sitting in court during the sentencing I thought there was something missing in the courtroom besides the 50 of us who were allowed in crying. Where was the parole board that let him out early? Angela Richards would be alive today. The board should have been sitting there listening to the rest of us cry. Then there should have been a mandatory review. Those responsible should have been fired and taken out the door as fast as Wayne Perkin was when he was let out of prison.
What do we ask for in the bill? We would have required a mandatory review of parole board decisions when a violent offender is released early and commits another violent offence during release time. Is that too much to ask? The answer over there is no, we do not need that.
Perhaps the Wayne Perkin case was an isolated incident. The members across know it was not. For the life of me I do not understand why these backbenchers do not get on the cabinet to get its members to change their minds on some of these things.
It is like digging holes on a beach; the water keeps coming and the sand keeps filling the hole. How do we make this government listen? How many people does it take out in front of the House of Commons to put some sense into a Liberal government? Is it that it just wants a really good fight in the next election? We will see who comes out on top on this issue.
What I talked about the other night bears repeating, the mentality we are dealing with in corrections today. If I can recall all 23 reasons why it pays to be a criminal in this country I will riddle them off. We are talking about charging an inmate 30 per cent for room and board. It is not 70 per cent, not 100 per cent, but 30 per cent. They cannot have very much behind closed doors in prison.
Let us see what an inmate gets in prison and what our senior citizens or those with little or no income get on the outside. We know they get room and board. We know they get counselling, which is good. Anger management courses always work, they say. They have the right to refuse to work. They get free condoms, let us not forget that. They have the right to call their legal aid lawyer when they want. It is ironic that we have a government today that had to serve an injunction to Clifford Olson to stop him from filing lawsuits against the crown. At last count he had 30.
They have bleach for their needles; project bleach, as it is called in my riding. They get a one ounce bottle of bleach to prevent the spread of HIV. They sterilize their needles for cocaine intake.
Wait a minute, something tells me this is the same kind of logic we are dealing with for the parole board. There is a better way. Stop the drugs from coming into the prison. They are not allowed alcohol in prisons so perhaps they would allow the prisoners to have Diet Coke and ice cubes in the event they bring in booze. This is the convoluted logic we see.
Let us not forget any additional income an inmate may have. They get old age security. I found one individual, a double murderer, getting old age security. My grandmother would be less than pleased about that. They get the Canada pension plan, the guaranteed income supplement and GST rebates.
It is so frustrating to drive by Ferndale penitentiary, a couple of miles from my house, and see a nine hole golf course. It is frustrating when the law-abiding citizen has to go up the road and pay $30 or $40. I asked the warden why there was a nine hold golf course. The answer was for rehabilitation. They have to learn to get along on the outside. There is a difference. Many of us do not golf today. It is expensive. All of us have to pay for it.
If the government is trying to rehabilitate them I suggest it is going about it the wrong way. If members think this is Reform rhetoric, ask the employees of corrections. They will say some of this is a waste of time. It is not right.
When we compare people on the outside to people on the inside we wonder who is getting punished. They offer lots of taxes. They offer frustration. When we checked to see how much smokes are inside a prison compared with outside, they run anywhere from 42 cents to $1.62 cheaper per pack.
With Bill C-45 the government is out to lunch.