Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Yukon must be a good lawyer; he only asks questions to which he already knows the answer. The answer is yes. The money would obviously be better invested in crime prevention and in education.
In fact, as I said earlier, the U.S. homicide rate is four times higher than that of Quebec, and three times higher than that of Canada as a whole. In Quebec, we have taken the Young Offenders Act very seriously. Our attitude was that the young offenders should be reformed rather than punished. We had already achieved quite spectacular results, with a crime rate 50% lower, or rather with Canada's crime rate being 50% higher than that of Quebec. I am talking about youth crime. This rate is then reflected in the various cohorts as offenders grow older.
My colleague raised two important points in his question. First, prison is crime school. I know very few people who received a harsh sentence and who managed to take control of their life—I know a few of them. Generally, the risk is very high that those who are incarcerated will be worse criminals when they get out than they were when they were sent to prison. Moreover, imprisonment is very expensive compared to other measures. According to the latest statistics, I believe that the present cost of keeping someone in prison in Canada in $88,000 a year. Imagine how much we could invest. That is what the Supreme Court indicated, very intelligently, when commenting on sentences to be served in the community.
However, provincial governments must invest in monitoring. I understand that this may be difficult. Nevertheless, I tried to do it in Quebec when I was public safety minister. It is true that many of our colleagues are opposed to that idea. When making budget cuts, we always cut funding for monitoring, but I always said that we must invest in monitoring. Many convicted criminals could serve their sentence in the community, with proper monitoring to ensure that they do not reoffend, at a much lower cost than $88,000 a year.
So, prison is less effective, more dangerous and a lot more expensive. With that money, we could do a lot more in the area of prevention and be successful, as we were in the case of impaired driving.