Mr. Speaker, I sincerely wonder why my colleague does not consult the same statistics that we are being provided with. We do make these figures up. Why does he not go to the sources, the official sources which prove without a doubt that everything he has just said is far removed from reality?
In that area, the crime rate is going down. It is not rising, it is decreasing. When I say that this government wants to incarcerate more people, it means that from the moment an individual is sentenced to life imprisonment, he will have to serve at least 25 years behind bars unless the judge takes into consideration other circumstances or unless the individual benefits from conditional release after a certain time, perhaps 10 years.
Currently, the average length of imprisonment is about two years and even less. We all know that individuals sentenced to two years plus one day are sent to a federal rather than a provincial institution. We know very well what the results are at the end of the day. Individuals come out of federal prisons worst than before their incarceration because the federal government does not focus on rehabilitation or re-education, but on punishment and revenge. Those are not the values which guide Quebecers.
We have been trying as hard as possible to rehabilitate people who have committed crimes, even young offenders. Our level of success is staggering. Some people who were involved in well-known situations, for example the FLQ, were able to study in prison and they became university professors. Today, they are unknown to anyone who has not seen their snapshots at the time of the FLQ crisis.
We do not want this kind of prison system. For us, Quebecers, Canada may be turning into a jail. Most of all, we do not want more Quebecers incarcerated by the federal government than we have now.