Mr. Speaker, there is lot of wisdom in that question. It touches upon a number of issues that reflect the deficiencies in the bill before us.
There is nothing in this bill that deals with prevention. There is nothing in this bill that addresses the need for increased resources to help prevent crimes from happening in the first place.
As I said in my speech yesterday, it is a renowned accepted fact on all sides of this House that 80% of the people in federal institutions suffer from an addiction. I do not think one has to be a criminologist to realize that if we really want to assist people so that they do not commit an offence once they leave prison, it would be wise to put resources into addressing their addiction.
There is not one iota in this omnibus bill, that takes in 10 separate acts, that addresses that matter. It is highly predictable that we will not make a dent in terms of helping those people to not reoffend once they come back to our communities. I have seen statistics that show that a very high percentage of people released from federal prison are returned to prison for breach of conditions. One of the conditions is invariably that they stay away from alcohol and drugs.
Well, if 80% of them are addicts or alcoholics and they are not getting acceptable treatment in prison, it only stands to reason that when they return to the communities, they will reoffend. They get into that revolving door of prison, which is very expensive for taxpayers, ineffective, and leads to recidivism, which everybody on all sides of the House would like to reduce.