Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question and one that the committee looked at extensively in 2010, because there is a problem attracting and retaining health care professionals into the prison system. We looked into that very issue. In fact, recommendation 16 of our report says that Correctional Service Canada should develop an attraction and retention program for psychologists, nurses, psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists, social workers and other necessary professionals including paying market salaries, that Correctional Service Canada provide for dedicated budgets for the ongoing training of health professionals in order to make the environment more attractive to them.
These were two very tangible recommendations already made to the government three years ago. A further suggestion that was made as well was to locate prisons near hospitals, as is happening in Saskatchewan, where there can be a synergy between the psychology and psychiatric divisions of hospitals and universities working with the prison.
These are the kinds of innovative measures that have been taken in other countries and this is why the countries are having greater success at lowering recidivism rates than Canada is, but how much money have the Conservatives put in the Correctional Service system in terms of adding to the salaries to attract these professionals to the prison system? They have not done the job. They did not get the job done and that is why there is a paucity of those professionals in our system.