Mr. Chairman, the correctional centres that I have visited are all learning facilities, particularly the young offender's facilities and the adult correctional facilities are ones that have programs where the offenders have schedules from the time they rise in the morning until they retire in the evenings. The facilities all encourage contact with families and communities, but they do not encourage calls to be made in or out of the facilities by inmates or by families at any time of the day or week. It does cause problems with the scheduling and staff making sure that people are not running back and forth to phones all day. I do not want to over-exaggerate it, but just to keep it simple, inmates and families are encouraged to phone only during certain times so inmates are available and phones are made available to them for their use only at certain times of the day and week. That has been the practice for some time. I know it creates difficulties when people in small communities do not have ready access to phones or the only available times are certain hours of the day, but this is the current practice and that is why some of the people in the small communities have difficulties. That is the way those facilities are run.
We have received requests from time to time, to look at ways in which we can help families of young and adult offenders visit to provide support to the inmates. These types of suggestions are made, but we know there are not adequate resources to entertain these suggestions, so we have not responded to them. Thank you.