Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. He made the point himself that in so many areas that the government operates in, it really does not look at evidence-based research in its approach to policy. It has an ideology and goes with that. It will cost us substantially down the road.
In fact, when we compare the Conservatives' tough-on-crime agenda with being smart on crime, we are seeing them going in the opposite direction from some of the states in the United States. They realized that punishment and penalties alone are not the answer and that they have to get offenders into rehabilitation.
In direct answer to the member's question, the Correctional Investigator has said time and time again that there needs to be money for programming, but the money has been reduced. Research shows that it is programming, not penalties, that actually gets people off their addictions and makes the prison population safer as a result. It also gives those people a better opportunity to become contributors to Canadian society when they get out of prison.