Hon. Céline Hervieux-Payette:

Honourable senators, I am amazed we do not read the statistics the same way.

I want to continue talking about the government's favourite subject — crime. I thought it would be appropriate to ask the leader to justify the expenses associated with the government's crime agenda.

For example, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Mr. Kevin Page, recently stated that he is worried about cost overruns of the new $5 billion prison, not to mention the increased financial burden that will be placed on our prison system. By the same token, provinces will be forced to spend more than $110 million more a year to keep inmates in jail who would have been paroled.

The government has put us in a deficit of over $50 billion and helped increase our national debt to over $519 billion. With those numbers in mind, how can the Conservative government claim to be competent financial managers, when it will increase the financial burden of Canadian taxpayers and increase justice expenditures to the provinces with these unnecessary crime projects that are tougher on Canadians' wallets than they are on crime?

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