Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in Parliament on Bill C-228, an act to establish a federal framework to reduce recidivism, and I commend the member for Tobique—Mactaquac for bringing forward this legislation.

A lot of things in the bill and a lot of what the member had to say are quite commendable. He said it with great passion and concern. I would be remiss if I did not remind him that many of the things here are things we have fought to have for many years. I was in Parliament between 2008 and 2015, fighting for these along with the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke.

There was a great deal of consternation among our caucus at that time as to how the Harper government treated inmates and people who were incarcerated. Many of our current caucus members were there at that time as well.

Under the Harper government, we saw serious cuts in prison farms. We saw the government closing addiction research centres, reducing access to libraries, eliminating funding for lifelines and circles of support within prisons, and cutting incentive pay for working in prison industries. Prison work programs were essentially designed to allow prisoners to save some money, so when they did get out, they had a bit of money for the work they did while incarcerated.

Currently, only 6% of prisoners at any time have access to a prison work program. The many things that were done under that regime in the interests of saving money leave us, in part, where we are today. If anything, I would say the member's bill does not go far enough.

We could talk about pilot programs to find out whether offering people employment after being imprisoned is going to help recidivism or return them to prison, but we do not need a pilot project to do that. That is common sense. That is based on the work done by organizations like the John Howard Society and community organizations. They are struggling day in and day out, with volunteers in many cases, to help people reintegrate into society and make a life for themselves, with very little help.

What we should be doing is providing them that help, not by way of a pilot project, but by way of a program for reintegration into the community. I would suspect that kind of a program would not necessarily be supported at all by his colleagues in this House.

The correctional investigator shows us time and again the failure within our prison system to provide proper rehabilitation services. The mental health supports that ought to be there for the people who suffer seriously inside prison are inadequate, not to mention how they are treated with respect to solitary confinement. We have recently seen the failure to properly and adequately assess people's rehabilitative potential within the system.

All of these things have to work together to make it possible for those who find themselves behind bars to leave prison having learned something while they were there, and to have found skills and developed attitudes that might help them reintegrate into society. That is the goal, not only to rehabilitate the offender, but also to make our communities safer by having someone who is able to be a contributing member of society.

As a lawyer, whether practising or watching other situations, I sometimes find people before the court asking to be sent to a federal penitentiary for two years or more when they are being found guilty or pleading guilty to an offence. They are saying that they need help. They want to go to a federal penitentiary because there will be programs there that might help them do something with their life.

Often, the courts believe that is the place for them to go and gives them federal time. They give them two and a half or three years instead of the lesser sentence he or she might otherwise have qualified for. They then find themselves in prison without the supports, which is a compounding factor for someone who is desperate for help and who wants to improve their lives. They want to get themselves moving forward, but they do not have the means to do so, and they are relying on a prison system that does not provide that support.

Yes, we do need what is in the bill. I will quote the preamble, which has all very well-intentioned words:

Whereas the purpose of the correctional system is in part to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by assisting the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens through the provision of programs in penitentiaries and in the community;

The preamble continues:

Whereas people who have been incarcerated should have the necessary resources and employment opportunities to be able to transition back into the community

It then concludes that our system ought to be one that:

ensures the needs of people who have been incarcerated are met and supports their rehabilitation.

Of course, that is exactly what needs to be done. We agree with that totally, and we will support this legislation. Hopefully, in committee, we can make it more powerful to be able to do the job better. The situation we are in right now is very desperate. That is, in large measure, due to the failure of both the Conservative government of Steven Harper and the subsequent government in not following the recommendations of the correctional investigator to make improvements and to leave the prisons in the state that they are in.

Mandatory minimum sentences have filled our prisons with people who do not need to be there as long as they are. They would have been given a different sentence by a judge who could consider the individual circumstances of a person or the nature of the offence itself and the circumstances of the offence.

We see more and more indigenous people in prisons. In fact, the percentage of the prison population who are indigenous is going up not down. It is approaching nearly 33% for indigenous prisoners as a whole and 40% for indigenous women. This is a terrible situation, and the programs that are available for indigenous prisoners are grossly inadequate. In fact, they are diminished, as has been recently revealed by a Globe and Mail report, because they are over-assessed. Risk assessments discriminate against indigenous prisoners and put them in penitentiary situations where they do not have access to programs.

There are many reforms to be undertaken, and I hope that the member for Tobique—Mactaquac, who I know is a new member of the House and obviously has a passion for this issue, learns more about what is actually going on in the prisons of today and gets involved in helping to insist that reforms be undertaken that go much further than the suggestions he has made in his bill.

As was just pointed out by the previous speaker from the Bloc Québécois, my colleague on the public safety committee, the correctional investigator was very critical of the Corrections Service of Canada in failing to provide proper educational opportunities behind bars.

The correctional investigator found that Canada is falling further and further behind the rest of the industrialized world with respect to digital learning and vocational skills behind bars. He also said that the evidence of the decline is increasing and that there had been little movement in implementing dozens of previous recommendations from his office in this area.

He then outlined some of the issues in detail, including that prison schools have outdated textbooks and they rely on pen and paper. They and their libraries are inadequately resourced. There is virtually no opportunity to pursue post-secondary studies behind bars and prisoners do not have access to computers.

The number of offenders on wait lists to participate in educational work programs is large and the periods can be lengthy. The correctional investigator said that this is a disaster in opportunities for people to better themselves in prison and be rehabilitated on the way out.

I do respect the passion and the commitment the hon. member has for this cause. I hope he is able to be a spokesperson within his caucus to change some of the negative attitudes that exist there and that existed in the government of Stephen Harper.

I look forward to seeing the bill at committee. Hopefully I will have further discussion with the hon. member on it.

Jack Harris

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