Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to conclude.
As a final point, I would like to look at the government's wrong-headed approach to crime and justice. On one hand, we have the eradication of the prison farms that contribute in a great way to employment skills, to the local food economy, to rehabilitation, the value of which we cannot quantify. On the other hand, by getting rid of that, we are taking away contributions in values of money that we cannot even begin to assess. We compare that to the commitments that the government is making in building new prisons and the kind of money that going to bricks and mortar to house more people in prisons, which clearly will not have the needed rehabilitation programming.
We have heard figures of $9 billion to $10 billions to be spent on building new prisons. That money could be spent on extending programming that would serve to rehabilitate people and build healthier communities. Instead, billions of dollars are being applied toward crimes that we cannot imagine or cannot calculate.
A statement was made in recent months that without responding to figures of criminality, when we know crime has gone down, really speaks to the lack of information or fact that is behind the government's policy when it comes to the correctional system and everything that goes with it. It speaks to the failure of putting real priorities on the table, looking at prioritizing prevention, for example.
As I mentioned, I come from northern Manitoba and I have the honour to represent those communities. In those communities young people grow up with no recreation facilities. First nations have substandard schools infested by mould. Young people face levels of poverty that are shocking to most Canadians.
Last night I watched a film, hosted by the Assembly of First Nations, called Third World Canada. I and so many others live in that kind of Canada. Instead of recognizing the root causes of crime, whether it is poverty or lack of access to opportunity, and instead of saying we need to build healthier communities, the government is pulling away from its responsibility to first nations. It is pulling away from government programs that support people on the margins of our society. It is getting rid of valuable rehabilitation programming for people who end up in the correctional system. Not only that, it is spending a gross amount of money on building prisons that will serve nothing more than to make our society less secure and less healthy.
On that note, I—