Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said about this as a debate about policy and not individuals. Unfortunately, a lot of the debate I have heard zeros right in on the individuals themselves and it makes it very difficult for the government to respond. In some cases the individuals have their cases at the Supreme Court.
Why were these grievances and problems not anticipated? The federal Liberal government decided to have a detention facility. I believe the decision to take it out of the main inmate population and to have a separate facility was correct. It was a prudent thing to do.
That facility, being largely governed under the Canada Border Services Agency, has a number of overseers, not only their own particular protocol officers, who have to oversee it and report on every instance and every grievance, but the Privacy Commissioner has access to it as does the Auditor General. As well, most of the senior officers of Parliament have access to concerns within their particular area that would relate to this.
On grievances, the filing of grievances is a very common thing within not just the prison system but in the detention system. I am not saying it is right or wrong. Nor am I saying it is abused. I was at a facility about three weeks ago, which housed a few hundred individuals. The number of grievances brought forward in a year were 1,300. I think close to 800 had been dealt with and 500 had not. That is 500 grievances that people on one side of the equation said should have been dealt with and people on the other side said they had been dealt with.
Grievances are a common process in the field labour management and collective bargaining. I met with a union leader only a few days ago. I was surprised at the number of grievances brought forward by members of the union. It was in the hundreds. I was also surprised by the numbers that had been resolved, but the unresolved ones were still in the hundreds.
The fact a grievance is brought forward shows that the person has the right to grieve. They are all reported. There is a protocol in place as to which ones are addressed, which ones are not addressed and why.