Mr. Speaker, out of the 13,500 people in our federal prisons, we have approximately 4,000 people serving a life sentence. Of the multiple murderers, not people who have committed two murders, even though it is more than one, they are different from what the member for Abbotsford is going after. He is going after serial killers. My friend from Scarborough—Rouge River is right. There are very few of those in Canada currently.
I want to make another point with regard to sentencing offenders to prison for longer periods of time and keeping them there longer that spills over into this bill. Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan from Texas just said this month that this was tried in the United States and it has been a total failure. The U.S. cannot afford it, number one, but it does not work anyway. The rate of recidivism is going down. In the states that did not go down that route, the crime rate has actually dropped more than in the states that did take that route.
Would my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River comment on that and on whether he sees any reason for Canada to follow the U.S. model, which is what the Conservative government seems to be absolutely determined to do?