Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in the department's business plan, which is a public document, in one of the sections called community supervision, the plan states that one of the most effective alternatives to incarceration is community-based supervision or probation. That is a statement that I think we can all readily get behind and support. Yet in the budgets that are proposed here under the heading community justice and corrections, we look, for instance, under community corrections. We are actually looking at a very slight decrease in the neighbourhood of just over $2 million. In community justice, it is a very marginal increase in the neighbourhood of $1.5 million. I guess I am contrasting that, Mr. Chairman, with what we are about to get into with this department, which would be the start of a multi-year, $42 million construction program for correction facilities.
I just wanted to try to build a bit of a basis there for a comparison between what we are investing in community corrections, community justice, alternative justice systems perhaps, which seems to be quite constant, has been for some time -- it is not going anywhere -- yet we are investing amazing amounts of money in jails and secure facilities.
My question is to what degree are we really going to start investing in these community-based and alternative systems of justice and supervision and probation? Thank you.