Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for sharing this with us and for his very good question, which brings me to the following two comments: first of all, the member seems to be asking whether prison itself is not a good school for crime. Clearly, those who proposed in 1996 that sentences be served in the community had concerns similar to those described by the Bloc member for Brome—Missisquoi, which will remain a Bloc Québécois riding.
Furthermore, there are others, such as Professor Marie-Ève Sylvestre at the University of Ottawa who is doing her doctoral thesis on such matters. Who ends up in prison? Often, it is the most marginalized groups. Unfortunately, aboriginals are often over-represented in prison compared to their numbers in the general population. This is also true for the less privileged.
The member is entirely right to say that, apart from this general use of incarceration, there are social concerns that must be considered before adopting bills such as the one proposed by the Conservative government.