Mr. Speaker, the truth is that the government has been anything but transparent and forthcoming on the issue of the cost of its crime bills. For the last year the government has utterly refused to provide an estimate of the cost of its crime bills. For the last six months it has taken one-third of the staff of the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer to cost out these bills.
One bill cost $10 billion. This bill will add billions more. Mandatory minimums for people who have as few as five marijuana plants will put more people in prison and probably will cost billions of dollars more as well. It is not an exaggeration to say that Canadians can measure the cost of the government's, what I would call, dumb on crime approach, to be in the tens of billions of dollars.
In terms of cost, I do not think that is where Canadians want to put their money, particularly when it will not make communities safer.