Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech and welcome him to the public safety committee, where I know he is going to make some very important contributions.
I want to go back to something the member for Prince Edward—Hastings raised a few moments ago when he talked about some magic realism connection between the Conservatives tough-on-crime policies and the falling crime rate. I would point out, of course, that the crime rate has been falling for 40 years without the benefit of the Conservative measures.
Then the Conservatives always leap to unreported crime and say the rate is falling because unreported crime is going up. In fact Statistics Canada conducts the general social survey every five years, when it asks Canadians about victimization, and gives us a picture of unreported crime. There is absolutely no evidence that unreported crime is rising.
What we have here is a case of the Conservatives trying to take credit for a social trend with their policies, which have had absolutely no impact in lowering the crime rate. What we do know is that the number of people in prison has been going up despite that declining crime rate, and that the budget for corrections is being cut.
I would like to ask the member how he thinks the Conservatives can square this circle. How can we provide more addiction treatment in prisons when the Conservatives are cutting the budget? Right now the total budget for programming is only 2.7% of the expenditures of the corrections department.