OTTAWA – Canada’s parliamentary budget officer projects that one new law-and-order bill will require 13 new federal prisons to house more than 4,000 additional offenders.
In a report released Tuesday, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page concluded that the additional cost to the penal system will be $5.5 billion annually by 2015-2016.
"The provinces and territories are expected to shoulder more than half of the extra costs."
Page’s analysis could reignite a long-standing dispute with provincial governments, which for almost four years have been lobbying for additional federal funding to help pay for Conservative government measures to put more offenders in prisons and jails and to keep them there longer.
"Our government fully recognizes that Ontarians want safe communities and that there is a cost attached to ensuring this occurs," acknowledged Laura Blondeau, a spokeswoman for Rick Bartolucci, Ontario minister of community safety and correctional services.
"Ontario will continue to do its part, but fully expects measures initiated by the federal government will be accompanied with the resources needed for implementation."
Page’s report deals with one new law, that took effect in February and stripped judges of their discretion to hand down sentencing credits, on a two-for-one basis, to compensate for time spent in pre-sentence detention.
Several provinces have pushed hard for elimination of the credit. The federal government has rejected the pleas for more money, saying that the provinces are obliged to absorb costs for measures they have sought and that will benefit communities.
Provinces are responsible for jails, in which offenders serve sentences of less than two years, while the federal government oversees penitentiaries, where prisoners serve terms of two years or more.
Ending two-for-one credits, which were designed to compensate for the comparatively harsher conditions of pre-sentence custody, is one of several Harper government law-and-order initiatives. Other measures, which are winding their way through the parliamentary process, include proposed legislation to curtail conditional sentences served at home, and to impose automatic jail terms for a variety of drug-related crimes.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, as a pre-emptive strike against Page’s report, publicly confirmed in late April that the government has budgeted $2 billion over five years for the new law eliminating two-for-one credits.
That estimate was a sharp increase over an initial budget of $89 million for one year.
Toews acknowledged he has a "good idea" of the overall cost of the entire crime-and-punishment agenda, but that he did not want to share the information.
Toews also has said that "our government is prepared to pay the cost to keep dangerous offenders in prison."
Critics contend the government is going down the same road as the United States, which is now retreating from tough-sentencing initiatives because they are expensive and have failed to reduce crime.
Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland, who asked Page to analyze the cost of the new legislation, said the law-and-order agenda will be "crippling" for a deficit-ridden government.
He noted that Page’s report covers only one bill, so the entire government tab will be much greater.
"Trying to get Parliament to vote in the dark, to approve billions and billions of dollars in bills without any costing of the implications is completely irresponsible," Holland said.
Page intends to release future reports estimating the costs of other federal law-and-order bills.
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