Madam Speaker, Canada's prisons are home to an increasing number of offenders with mental health disorders, ranging from anti-social personality disorder through to schizophrenia, and offenders who may also be addicted to alcohol or drugs. We are seeing criminalization of the mentally ill.
A recent report from the Office of the Correctional Investigator shows that the number of people in federal prisons with mental illnesses has nearly doubled in the past decade, while the incarceration rate has barely budged.
What solutions would the hon. member suggest to treat people with mental illness who run into difficulty with the law, often because of a lack of a national mental health strategy and poorly-funded, disorganized and fragmented community mental health services?