Madam Speaker, actually I ran out of time. I was just getting to that point in my remarks.
There are plenty of creative ideas in this recommendation to make a meaningful impact on the unacceptable incidence of petty crimes and nuisance crimes. The most nuisance crimes in my community are things like property crime, break and enter, vandalism, et cetera. We have had some terrible incidents with more serious crimes.
We must recognize that currently the penal and criminal justice system is being starved for funding. We give judges an 8% raise. Yet people who work in the system, whose job it is to get dirty every day and deal with some of the people on the street, have not had any kind of budgetary increase or raise in pay for eight years. They are demoralized.
I heard from a delegation from Stony Mountain penitentiary recently where people are being asked to go on open range walks alone. That is a real problem. They go on open range walks in a ward where the doors are open and people can circulate. The only reason this is happening is that the whole system is stressed or maxed to the point where it is almost dysfunctional.
I do not say that spending more money on the criminal justice system is the answer. However I know it is more costly to rehabilitate than it is to punish. When dealing with 10 and 11 year old kids surely to God the objective is rehabilitation, turning them back into productive citizens and not strictly punishing them. That costs money. Meaningful social work to turn kids' lives around costs money. I would argue it would cost us less in the long run. Every soul we save will be a net saving in the end.
They are predictable consequences of the tight money policy we have been going through. The economy was ground to a halt. Unemployment went higher. Many people are saying that U.S. cities are showing a real drop in the incidence of violent crime. In actual fact it is not more prisons. It is the fact that the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since the second world war—