Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak in this concurrence debate. I want to expand on some of the comments made by colleague from Ajax—Pickering.
A lot has been learned since the government first decided, against all facts and common sense, to close prison farms. Its agenda is to go the American way and emphasize punishment over rehabilitation. Punishment is an American system that has proven to be one of the worst in actually fighting crime and rehabilitating people.
Let me ask a question. If members were to walk the streets in many of the big cities in the United States or in many of the big cities in Canada, where would they feel safer? I think they would feel safer walking the streets in a Canadian city.
However, when we look at Canada and the United States, in terms of their incarceration rates, the United States incarcerates about six times per capita as many people as Canada does. The United Sates incarcerates them and has a system that is based on punishment. It has a system of private jails. It has a system of super prisons. However, it is a system that is recognized around the world as one that is not working in terms of preventing crime over the long term, because it does not emphasize the rehabilitation of people.
The government likes these short bills talking about fighting crime. However, what it avoids at all costs, at all times, is facts that would back up its arguments. In fact one of the reasons it has closed down the mandatory census is that it really does not want to have to deal with the substantive facts. The government wants to believe what it wants to believe and does not like arguments based on facts going against it.
However, where the borrow-and-spend government sitting across the way is going with regard to the prison system in this country is that it is looking at spending another $9 billion or $10 billion on building more super jails. One of the biggest failures in getting there is closing the prison farms. The excuses the government has used, in terms of closing the prison farms, are really unbelievable.
When the announcement was made to close the prison farms, the former minister of public safety told the public safety committee that, in the view of the government, the funds directed toward the prison farm program could be better used if the resources were “redirected to programs where people could actually gain employable skills, as virtually nobody who went through those prison farms ended up with employable skills...”.
There are several problems with the point that the former minister of public safety made.
There is a great need in the farm community itself for those employable skills learned on the farm. There is a huge shortage of labour in much of the farm community, and we have to bring in people from other countries with those skills to work on those farms. It was a miserable statement to make against people who worked on farms, as if their skills were not of value.
The fact of the matter is that working on prison farms is not just about getting a job on a farm, as Conservative members at the public safety committee tried to make it out to be by asking the Correctional Service Canada people how many people got a job on a farm. They did not dare ask how many people got jobs. That is what working on these prison farms is all about. It is about learning life skills. It is all about rehabilitation. It is working with others. That is what it is all about.
In terms of rehabilitation, and my colleague mentioned it earlier, there is just nothing like working with livestock to give one a better sense of life.
I recall at the prison farm in Kingston I ran into an old gentleman who was in prison for life for some very serious crimes. When I talked to him, he told me he had been in trouble all his life, both inside and outside the institutions, and that he had revolted all his life, even inside the institutions, until he came to this farm. He put his hand on a cow and he said that these animals made him recognize what life is all about. He was rehabilitated as an individual. He said himself that he actually became a human being because he was working with livestock. He understood and loved those animals.
My colleague mentioned earlier how they cared so much about an animal with foot rot that really, from my perspective as a farmer, should have been put down. But they cared and they wanted to bring that animal back to life. They wanted to give her life again, where she could walk and be productive again. When I went back to that prison farm eight months later, that cow had healed. That is rehabilitation and working with animals, and I make those points to point out how important working with livestock and working on prison farms really is for the rehabilitation of individuals.
I want to come back to the facility itself. A case study of the Frontenac facility indicates that the program has been successful. The program that the government wants to close down was successful, and I have to ask why it wants to close them down. Why does it want to misrepresent the facts relative to these institutions? Why do the Conservatives not want to rehabilitate inmates so that they can get on to producing in the economy again in a productive way?
The Frontenac facility has been in operation since 1962 and it operates on 455 hectares of class two farmland. The facility houses 130 cattle and produces 4,000 litres of milk per day, which places this facility within the top 20% in terms of productivity in the province of Ontario.
In 2005, this prison farm operation won Frontenac County's most improved dairy herd award, and when we walk in the facility we see the breeding, the genetics that are in that herd. That herd has been around since the turn of the last century. There are genetics in that herd that just cannot be replaced by going out and buying another herd. The facility supplies milk and eggs to Corrections Canada institutions in Ontario and Quebec.
The training program provides, through the prison farm, as follows. Inmates receive training on heavy equipment maintenance related to farm machinery. Inmates receive training on operating tractors, loaders, corn planters, harvesters, ploughs and spreaders. Inmates working in dairy operations can receive third-party certification for learning to operate and maintain the industrial pouch filler. They learn welding skills in the repair of farm equipment. They learn how to operate a variety of hand and power tools. They learn about environmental stewardship, which includes nutrient management and composting. They are trained in crop management and how to maximize yield and feed values. They receive training on feed management as it relates to milk and egg production. They learn how to grade eggs to meet industry standards. They learn how to operate a major poultry operation. They learn about animal care and welfare, including proper management and breeding techniques.
They learn a lot in these institutions, including management skills for the herd, administrative capacities in running computers and clerical skills. All those are important and, with the loss, with the closing down of the prison farm system, the ability to learn those skills in a farm setting where they get rehabilitation as well is lost because of this ridiculous decision by the Government of Canada. It is a decision not based on facts but based on an attitude toward people who have gone to prison, yes, to pay a price for a crime. However, the prison farm system actually rehabilitates them in a way that makes them better persons in society when they get out. That is what we need. The government should be ashamed.