Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Tobique—Mactaquac for his heartfelt speech and for introducing this bill.
He should know that I could not agree with him more about the importance of the programs he is talking about. I came to this House after 20 years of teaching criminal justice, but in my first term in Parliament, it was the Harper government, I was the public safety critic for the official opposition. I watched a Conservative government destroy the very programs that he is talking about. It closed down prison farms, cut apprenticeship programs and did everything it could to make sure these programs were not available in our prison system, and to focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I also watched the Conservatives institute mandatory minimums that placed inordinate numbers of indigenous people, Black Canadians and poor Canadians in the prison system.
Therefore, my question to the hon. member is: does he have the support of his caucus, because this is an about-face for a Conservative party that has always favoured the exact opposite of what he is talking about?