Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
Although we support the bill, I would like to take this opportunity to point out just how much the Conservatives’ approach does not work, even though they say they are the best ones to handle law and order issues. My colleague gave an excellent example of this in his speech: mandatory minimum sentences. In the United States, even the Republicans, who are often hand in glove with the Conservatives ideologically, are rejecting that idea as a way of reducing crime rates in our communities.
When it comes to drugs in the prison system, we also have to consider health and prevention. Of course, people have addiction problems, and I do not understand why we would not be considering solutions to address that.
As my colleague said in his speech, we could offer programs within the prison system to start reducing the incidence of these problems and healing these people and then, as he put it so well, avoid crimes being repeated. The best way to protect victims is to make sure that people are not in a position where they want to commit crimes, and I think we can do that by focusing on rehabilitation.
On that point, would my colleague like to say more about the fact that in spite of the new laws being enacted, very little is being done to offer more resources? We see cuts being made and a lack of financial resources in the prisons.
What does my colleague think?