Mr. Speaker, I regret that it is unlikely that we will find a compromise on this issue given the fact that Liberals do not believe in the Conservative ideology around prisons and locking offenders up and throwing away the key, as if that somehow were going to resolve the problems we have. The truth of the matter is, whether on this issue or prison farms, the Conservatives have always had that ideology. Where does that lead? It leads toward the system we see in the United States where we end up with super prisons and four times as many people locked up as we did decades ago.
The member specifically asked, how about it if we just kept the drugs out of the hands of inmates? It seems simple enough, but over 10 years the Conservatives were not able to do that. As a matter of fact, if they had been able to do that, we would not be having this conversation right now. Why was the former government not able to keep the drugs out of the hands of the inmates, if it is so simple and he suggests that we should be doing it?