OTTAWA — The federal government knows the rough cost of its centrepiece law-and-order agenda. But it’s not telling.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews revealed Wednesday that the federal price tag on just one piece of the legislative package, the Truth in Sentencing Act, will be $2 billion over five years.
But that’s just a small part of a huge package of reforms that Toews would not publicly cost.
“We have an idea” of the total burden, Toews finally told reporters after many questions on the subject.
But then he added: “I’d rather not share my idea on that. They will come out in due course.”
The federal Tories have well over a dozen pieces of tough-on-crime legislation that have already passed or are in the hopper. They have never given a cost estimate of the entire package.
And they have been reluctant to discuss impacts even on specific pieces of legislation — even when Parliamentarians debating the bills have asked.
In response to a request last fall from a Liberal MP, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is expected to release his own report next week. He is expected to show that the cost of the Truth in Sentencing measures could run up to $10 billion over five years, split between federal and provincial governments.
The costing is rough, laden with caveats, and will be presented as a range of estimates. That’s because the government refused to hand over much of the data requested by the budget watchdog, and his office was left developing its own statistical models based partly on U.S. prison data.
While Page’s report has not yet been made public, people familiar with the six-month investigation say it concludes that the provincial governments will likely shoulder about three quarters of the burden.
That’s because the majority of inmates are sentenced to less than two years, and are automatically sent to provincial facilities, explained Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada.
Toews says he has not seen the budget officer’s report, but his officials tell him it is flawed, a response widely anticipated by the peer review panel brought together by the watchdog.
“We fully expect government to say these numbers are garbage,” said Jones. But unless Toews is prepared to share details of his own costing, the minister has no grounds to complain about the watchdog’s work, Jones said.