Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Charlottetown for his speech. It is a rather worrisome debate. My colleague, the member for Gatineau, pointed out how this is a very election-minded bill. I would like to get back to the facts and to the problems experienced in some countries. Obviously, our neighbours to the south, the Americans, are stuck managing a huge problem with violence in their prison system. I want to share a quote from the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder. He said:
Statistics have shown—and all of us have seen—that high incarceration rates and longer-than-necessary prison terms have not played a significant role in materially improving public safety, reducing crime or strengthening communities.
It is quite clear that the United States is currently trying to backtrack on these exceptionally long and harsh sentences because they do not fix the problem and they create a lot of social problems. That is not to mention the high cost of the prison system and the American justice system.
Could my colleague give us other examples from around the world, or even more American examples, of bad measures that the Conservatives are trying to force on us?