Mr. Speaker, Kim Pate, the executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, testified last night and was not challenged by anybody, not by the Bloc, not by the Conservatives. She said, “as one of my colleagues in corrections said to me today, if this bill goes through we'll probably need at least several more prisons fairly quickly to incarcerate the women who will be held for longer periods of time”. That is the effect on women.
I have been to women's institutions in our country and have seen the types of people in them. They are disproportionately aboriginals, addicts, alcoholics and women victims of sexual violence. These women need support. On a first non-violent offence, we should try to reintegrate and help these women heal in society.
There is no problem to fix here, other than political optics and cheap game playing. The Bloc and the government do not come with statistics that show people released on accelerated parole reoffend at some alarming rate. It is quite the contrary. We heard testimony that this would lead to more prison overcrowding, more tension, more violence in our prisons, more danger to guards and corrections officers and more recidivism.
It is bad policy and it is bad for taxpayers.