Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Edmonton Centre for those questions, although I still have not forgiven him for the damage he caused to the centre. I could not bring my grandson to visit it the day I was there. The centre is right across the street from his office, and I am sure he caused the flood in the centre the day I was there and my grandson could not visit.
With regard to past estimates that I know the government has been putting out, those estimates are based longitudinally. They have not all come to fruition up to this point. They will eventually. I do not think the estimates are that far off.
Let me say to the member that since the Conservative government has been in power, the budget for corrections has almost doubled. It is not quite 100%, but it is very close, just in five years. It almost six years now, but we have not seen the last year, so it probably has doubled by now. That is very real. Even though those estimates have not fully come to fruition, I believe they will, because I think they were properly done by Correctional Service Canada. We have very good Correctional Service Canada people. We need more of them, but they are very good.
With regard to prison repair, I agree with that. I know that in Ontario, in and around Kingston in particular, there are prisons that are over 100 years old and have had minimal repair in that period of time. There is no objection if that was the purpose, but that is not the purpose of the money that is being proposed to be spent. It is to house new prisoners, not to do the major repairs that are needed.
Finally, with regard to habitual criminals, there are studies in the United States that suggest or show exactly what the member has suggested, which is that if people are kept in prison longer, the crime rate is going to go down. For a short period of time, I would accept that. However, when criminals are in for an extra length of time, they are in prisons where there is no rehabilitation for them at all. That was the California experience. There was no rehabilitation at all. When they get out, the crimes they commit are more violent, and in fact the crime rate goes up.