Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises an important point. The independence and impartiality of our criminal justice system, and the firewall that should be there to protect politicians of any stripe from using that system to advance the interests of their friends, is important.
It is important in the corrections world for another reason, which is to make sure that people are treated fairly, not that the most unpopular people are treated worse than other people who we might think are more deserving.
We have a system that it is never popular to advocate for. We are not going to win any kudos in most places by going out and saying that we need to spend more money on offenders, but in fact, we need to spend more money on offenders. If we want to have public safety, if we want to have rehabilitation and if we want to have our communities secure, we have to have a correctional service that deals with mental health and addictions problems and provides rehabilitation. Ultimately, that is the way to get community safety.