Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's explanation of the position the Bloc has taken on Bill C-23. I agree with her that it is a very technical bill, so I am certainly not going to get into the specifics of the numerous recommendations that have been brought forward.
I was interested in the discussion on treatment programs because in another life I worked with people coming out of jail who were living on the street. My wife and I lived with them in the city. We dealt with the issue of recidivism all the time. I have to say that many of the criminals we dealt with were not particularly malignant people but they repeated dumb crimes time and time again.
We found they fell into a number of classic categories. There was the issue of mental illness, people who were basically unstable, and there was a lack of treatment programs for people who needed treatment for various addictions. An issue that we found much more prevalent was the lack of community support. Many who were basically free falling through life ended up repeating criminal acts because they knew it. There were even people who ended up back in jail because when they got out onto the streets they did not know any community, home or family.
What we tried to do in our community was provide some kind of support structure. Time and time again there was the issue of the need for treatment. Once people received treatment, especially for addictions, the ability for them to become participating citizens suddenly became a reality in a way that it could not matter how many times they returned to jail.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague what her thoughts are. If we are going to be dealing with people coming through the criminal justice system, we have to ensure that we deal with the need for community support in order to deal with them and their treatment problems, so that we can stop recidivism and turn them into citizens in our society.