Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague from Trinity—Spadina on this issue of solitary confinement. If the government really wanted to do something about what is happening in our prison population, it could join with Mr. Howard Sapers, the ombudsman for federal prisoners, and do something.
I was shocked to discover that not only do seven times as many people commit suicide in prison than in the general population, but also that rather than having a rehabilitation system, which is what the rhetoric of the CSC would have us believe exists, we have what The Globe and Mail, in its editorial of December 5, refers to as the “flagrant overuse of solitary confinement – a punitive measure so counter-productive that even the incarceration-crazy United States is putting an end to it – risks undermining the good work the CSC does.” It needs the budget and the tools to address this crisis. It needs to deal with intake, substance abuse, and mental illness. None of that seems to be happening in this bill whatsoever.