Excuse me, Mr. Speaker. I thank the MP for bringing forward this bill, and I want to quote her. She said Bill C-240 “would empower courts to prescribe structured rehabilitation measures, including education, skills training and treatment programs, to be undertaken during custody. These are not soft-on-crime measures. They are smart-on-recovery interventions.”
We have to give people the opportunity to go back to their families.
I was given a tour, as a city councillor a couple of years ago, of the penitentiary in my riding, the Okanagan Correctional Centre. At that time, the warden told us city councillors that it was 25% full. We have one of the highest crime rates, in Penticton and area, in all of B.C., per capita, and our correctional centre is only 25% full. The leaders in the community, the mayors of all the cities in the valley, have sent a letter to the province asking to use that correctional centre for exactly what the MP for Kitchener Centre is asking for: to provide rehabilitation measures, education, skills training and treatment, to give these people a chance to go back out in the world and back to their families, if they are able. If they cannot, if they are dangerous people, as we know there are, then they should not be released as they have been.
This bill would also allow court-ordered rehabilitation measures for offenders. I believe everyone in this great hall knows that people get to a point in their drug use where there is no going back.
I want to thank, again, the MP for bringing this forward, and I hope everyone here votes to support it.