Government Operations Committee on Oct. 19th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

All right.

Okay, then it is a motion; it is not an amendment. Or is it an amendment?

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

No, it's a motion, Chair. It is a formal motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

If it's a motion, then it would follow after this motion.

So on this motion, as amended twice by friendly motions, those in favour? Those opposed?

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

The next motion is that this be dealt with in subcommittee.

[An hon. member]

It's irrelevant.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

The chair casts the vote in favour of that motion.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Okay. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I apologize to Mr. Head and Madam Dumas-Sluyter for taking from your time, but we are very keenly interested in what you have to say. I expect that you have an opening statement, and thereafter members will wish to ask questions.

So thank you, and welcome.

[Don Head, Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for allowing me to appear at a later date than you originally requested. My schedule was quite full, but I'm glad to be here today.

Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to discuss how the freeze on departmental budget envelopes and government operations will affect the daily operations of the Correctional Service of Canada.

I'd also like to address the impact on CSC operations that can be expected from the legislation connected with the government's criminal justice initiatives, in particular the Truth in Sentencing Act and the Tackling Violent Crime Act.

The freeze on the Correctional Service of Canada's departmental budget envelope and operations applies to operating budgets only, as you know. Operating budgets will be frozen at the current levels, and the freeze will also apply to 2011-12 fiscal year and 2012-13 fiscal year reference levels.

There is no freeze on wages. CSC employees will receive the salary increase for this year resulting from collective agreements and set at 1.5% by the Expenditure Restraint Act. As with other departments, the Correctional Service of Canada will absorb this increase as well as any increases to salaries and wages in 2011-12 and 2012-13 that result from future collective agreements.

Work is well under way at CSC to improve efficiencies within our operations to pay for these increases. For instance, we have introduced new staff deployment standards at our penitentiaries for our correctional officers. We are also now using computerized rostering systems to ensure that we are efficiently staffing our facilities on a 24/7 basis. This is improving our effectiveness by ensuring that our people know when and where they will be working their shift rotations well in advance. It will also help to reduce our overtime expenditures by more efficiently replacing correctional officers who are absent on training or leave.

We've also improved our integrated human resources and business planning methods to more accurately forecast our staffing and recruitment needs going forward. Because our penitentiaries must be properly staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, we make every effort to maintain our staff complement at appropriate levels. This is an important part of minimizing the overtime that would otherwise be incurred to fill vacant posts in our facilities.

Personnel costs represent our largest expenditure. For fiscal year 2010-11, Correctional Service of Canada's main estimates are approximately $2.5 billion, and personnel expenditures, including salaries and benefits, represent approximately 61% of the budget, or $1.5 billion. The rest is dedicated to operating costs, which represent approximately 25%, $625 million, and capital investments at approximately 14%, $329 million.

It's important to note that 90% of CSC's budget is non-discretionary and quasi-statutory. CSC has fixed costs that it must fund on a continuous basis. These include the provision of food to offenders, the utility costs related to the maintenance of our accommodations, clothing for offenders, and uniforms for our staff. The remaining 10% provides us with some opportunity and flexibility to seek out ways for us to meet the freeze on operating costs. I am confident that we will continue to find improvements in our program delivery that will help us to absorb these costs.

The government's criminal justice initiatives will present some opportunities for CSC as well as some challenges. The primary impact of the legislation will be a significant and sustained increase to the federal offender population over time. This will be particularly evident in the short to mid term.

As the members will know, the Truth in Sentencing Act replaces the two for one credit for time in custody before sentencing to a maximum of one day of credit for each day served in provincial detention. Only under exceptional circumstances may a judge provide a 1.5-day credit. Consequently, many offenders who would have previously received a provincial sentence will now serve a federal sentence of two years or more, and those who would have received a federal sentence will now receive a longer federal sentence.

Normally we would have expected an incarcerated population of about 14,856 by the end of the 2014 fiscal year. This figure is a result of our projections for regular growth, which is set at about 1% for male offenders and about 2.8% for women offenders. However, we are expecting an additional 383 offenders by the end of the 2014 fiscal year as a result of Bill C-2, the Tackling Violent Crime Act. And with the implementation of Bill C-25, the Truth in Sentencing Act, our analysis is forecasting an increase of 3,445 more offenders, including 182 women, by 2013.

Mr. Chair, this is a considerable increase over such a short period of time. The additional 3,828 offenders resulting from Bill C-2 and Bill C-25, together with our normal projections, represents a total growth of 4,478 inmates in the 2014 fiscal year and an anticipated total penitentiary population of 18,684 offenders by March 31, 2014. This growth, Mr. Chair, well exceeds our existing capacity today.

We are moving quickly to identify the measures required to address these population increases, and we are taking a multi-faceted approach. Several measures are now being developed, including temporary accommodation measures such as double-bunking. We are also now in the process of tendering for the construction of new accommodation units, program space, and support services within existing Correctional Service Canada institutions.

Regarding the expanded use of shared accommodation, I should note that it will be aligned with greater offender accountability. We expect offenders to be out of their cells engaging in programs and making positive efforts to become law-abiding citizens who can contribute to safe communities for all Canadians when they are released. These temporary measures will be implemented in a way that will minimize any adverse impact on front-line service delivery at our institutions. I assure you that with the proper support, any steps we take around budget implications and capacity issues will not jeopardize public safety or the safety of staff or inmates.

With respect to the new units, we can expedite the design and construction process by using proven and refined designs. Furthermore, we are strategically planning expansions at institutions located where we expect the greatest increases. Beyond expanding our facilities, CSC will be improving our program delivery capacity to meet the needs of an increasingly complex and diverse offender population. This includes programming for offenders who require treatment for mental health disorders and addictions, or those who are trying to break from their affiliations with gangs, particularly among our aboriginal offender population.

I should note that we are expecting the largest increase in our prairie region, where we will need 726 more accommodation spaces. As this region is where a majority of our aboriginal offenders are housed, we are currently reviewing our aboriginal corrections strategy to improve our delivery of education and employment training. This will assist in the safe reintegration of our aboriginal offenders back to their home communities.

Of course, there is a cost to all of this. Our current estimates are approximately $2 billion over five years in order to provide sufficient resources to address the additional double-bunking that will occur and to get the new units up and running. This also includes funds to ensure that we continue to provide offenders under our supervision with access to programs.

The assessment of this legislation's impact on CSC will be a long and complex process. As we continually monitor this impact, we will continuously fine-tune our approach to accommodate population increases and adjust our service delivery. We will also seek to connect this short- and medium-term impact with future requirements associated with the aging and inadequate infrastructure at some of our older institutions.

A long-term accommodation plan that will provide a forecast to the year 2018 is expected to be presented for consideration by this spring. As we move forward, we will be consulting with our partners and the communities in which we are located across Canada to ensure that we proceed in a transparent and collaborative fashion.

Of course, with the short- and long-term accommodation measures I've mentioned above comes a necessary increase in our staff complement. As indicated in the most recent report on plans and priorities, CSC is planning to staff an additional 4,119 positions across Canada over the next three years. This increase will enhance our capacity to carry out our mandate, help in our work with offenders, and improve our public safety results. I am very sensitive to the possible effects of an offender population increase on the work and safety of my staff in our penitentiaries and parole offices, whether they are existing staff or new hires. But I'm also very aware of, and extremely confident in, the commitment and ability of my employees to deliver high-quality correctional services that produce good public safety results for Canadians. I am speaking about our correctional and parole officers, our vocational and program staff, our health care professionals, and our support staff and management teams across the country. These are dedicated people, and the additional staff who will be added over the coming years will significantly help those who are on the ground today working with offenders.

We have been modernizing the way we select and train our correctional officers and other staff, and we work together with our union partners to make sure we are hiring the best-suited people who are committed to making a difference in the lives of others and the safety of their communities.

While it's clear that the criminal justice legislation and the spending freeze will pose some challenges, I am confident that the Correctional Service of Canada will successfully adapt and continue to provide good public safety results for all Canadians.

Mr. Chair, in closing, I wish to thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee, and I welcome any questions you may have today.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Head.

We'll now turn to members' questions.

Madame Coady, for eight minutes, please.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you very much for taking the time and making yourself available today. We certainly appreciate it, and thank you for waiting a couple of extra minutes while we dealt with a motion. We certainly appreciate that, and we appreciate you having the time to give us such a good outline.

I have several questions. I just want to talk about your budgeting process. As you are well aware, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said they think you're going to need more funding projections for the federal sentencing act, as you've put it before. He thinks there's a requirement gap, for example, in this year of about $1 billion, next year of about $1.2 billion, and the year after of about $1.15 billion. Could you just comment on the differentiation?

And while you're commenting on that...you're hiring an additional 4,119 full-time employees, I think you said. At the beginning of your discourse you said the salary package is about 90% of your budget, so I'm wondering where the discord is here. You say you're hiring a tremendous number of full-time employees and adding to your cost base on a go-forward basis, and we're also hearing from the PBO that you probably haven't budgeted enough money. Could you comment on that, please?

[Don Head]

Thank you very much for that question, and I look forward to trying to explain it as clearly as I can.

I'm quite confident with the numbers that we have projected based on the information that's available to us. We have had an opportunity to review the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report, and I think, as you're quite aware, there are some differences, partly because there were certain pieces of information that we couldn't provide the Parliamentary Budget Officer as a result of cabinet confidence. Therefore, some of his calculations are based on some assumptions that are not the assumptions we have used in our process.

We've looked at many things in our calculations, including past trends in terms of overall population growth. You heard me mention earlier our normal population growth of about 1% for men and about 2.8% for women, and that's based on historical data and trends that are available to us.

As it relates to the bills I mentioned, particularly Bill C-25, we used a set of assumptions that are slightly different from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and some of the assumptions the Parliamentary Budget Officer used are not ones we would use. For example, in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report, he bases some of his calculations on about an 8,000-plus offender admission rate into CSC. Our admission rate is lower than that. His calculations actually include admissions for not only warrants of committal, new offenders coming into the system, but also individuals coming back on suspension or revocation from the community. So those are not new offenders; they're just offenders who are already in the system who are being suspended. So there's almost a 50% difference in terms of calculation from admission rates when you start to look at that.

As well, in his calculations, again based on the information that was available to him, he looked at using total operating costs for CSC as opposed to those that are directly linked to providing services to offenders at the custody and intervention level.

So those two areas create some differences in the numbers.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Well, I'm confused as to how almost $4 billion in differentiation can be explained away by cabinet confidences. I'm also equally concerned that your department wasn't able to meet with the Parliamentary Budget Officer in a way that would allow him to have that kind of discussion as to how the set of assumptions could be, I guess, set into the same view.

Could you tell me what your estimated impact of the Truth in Sentencing Act is going to be?

[Don Head]

Yes. In terms of Bill C-25, the estimate is $2.1 billion over the five-year period. That includes operating costs, capital costs, and the employee benefits plan. As an example, for 2010-11 the cost or the infusion into our budget is just over $88 million. That ramps up to $572 million or $573 million next year. By 2014 and 2015, we're looking at an ongoing steady cost of a $447 million addition to the Correctional Services budget base.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

I'm still grappling with your moneys, your main estimates and your supplementary estimates, because of the exorbitant costs. You've been discussing and telling us today that your operating budgets are frozen, that you're hiring 4,200 people, and that you also have a big capital project under way. When I look at your estimates and at some of the increases, they're almost 100% in the acquisition of land, buildings, and works alone. When you look at those kinds of expansions, it's very difficult to see how it's just going to be $2.1 billion.

When the Parliamentary Budget Officer did try to make himself available and tried to have that conversation, was it the department or was it somebody else who was saying not to meet with the Parliamentary Budget Officer?

[Don Head]

The practice has been that any information we have, that goes through the normal Treasury Board-cabinet discussion processes, is treated as cabinet confidence. That's the way that business has always been done. We've respected those rules. There was no other direction given to us. We respected the rules that have been in tradition for quite a long time.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

And therefore you did not feel that you had to meet with the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

I want to move on.

You foresee big changes in the size of the prison population in the federal correctional facilities in the coming years. Looking at the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report, we see an impact of the Truth in Sentencing Act. For example, on total correctional funding requirements, for the funding requirements of 2009-10 it looks like about 49% of the total is for the province and the territories. But that moves to 56% by the year 2015-16. In other words, the cost of this would be absorbed by the provinces and territories predominantly.

In my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador we have a provincial institution where we house federal inmates while they're being remanded. Have you allocated any additional budget to ensure that, for example, these federally remanded inmates are housed properly in provinces where there is no federal facility?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Head, Madam Coady has left you with about a ten-second reply. Could you be very brief and maybe work the reply into some other line of questioning?

Thank you.

[Don Head]

Yes, we've looked at the cost overall and at how we proportion that across the country, including exchange-of-service agreements, which are what we have with the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

And that's near $2.1 billion?

[Don Head]

Those are part of all the costs, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Madam Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, Mr. Head and Ms. Dumas-Sluyter. I am very grateful to you for your attendance. Thank you also for your patience at the start of the session.

As I listened to your presentation, I noticed that you were very familiar with the present situation in the penitentiaries. That puts you at a great advantage. Often witnesses we have had here were concerned with the bureaucratic aspects, but did not have the knowledge of the real situation that you do.

Mr. Head, I think we have to look at the present situation in the penitentiaries in order to be able to project and predict what will happen, given the two acts that you have to deal with and the increase in the numbers of offenders that will suddenly arrive at your door in the next few months.

At the moment, the situation is deplorable. I have in my hand some letters from CX employees, saying that their training has been greatly cut back. The training budget, which was more than $1 million, is to be reduced, in fact. So CX employees do not feel safe. They have to be trained to learn how to use their weapons, but that is not happening. That is the first thing.

Second, some institutions are overcrowded, which leads to a tense climate. Because of the overcrowding, inmates cannot get the hours of recreation to which they are entitled, in order to go into the yard, to take courses or work at their trades, or even to just do what they have to do—after all, there is some rehabilitation in prison. It all leads to climate of some tension.

Third, there is also a petition about CX employees that you received in 2010, I think.

So, this is the situation as we see it. We know that the two new acts are going to mean an increase in the number of inmates. We are aware that the correctional investigator has mentioned that the biggest population of people with psychiatric conditions are in federal prisons, precisely where the fewest psychiatric services are provided. You are telling us that you are aware of the problems and that the Correctional Service of Canada will be able to adapt. But, at the same time, the correctional investigator is saying that the Correctional Service of Canada is adapting, but it takes a long time to make any progress.

Mr. Head, what are we going to do to ensure the safety of the inmates in the Correctional Service of Canada's institutions, as well as the safety of the staff of those institutions and of those who reside in the vicinity, given the two new acts, the freeze in the budget envelopes and the fact that money is being used to build or expand inside? That is my question.

[Don Head]

Thank you for that multi-level question.

I have a couple of comments. One of the things that we are ensuring as we move forward, as I mentioned in my opening comments, is that whatever we do, whether it's related to the changes in legislation, to departmental budget freezes, or to anything around our overall transformation agenda, is that the environment within which our staff work, our inmates live, and our visitors come to is safe and secure. That is paramount in all our decisions. We need to have a safe, secure environment for everybody who comes to those facilities.

We are, as you pointed out, very conscious of the impacts of an increased offender population coming into the facilities and what that could mean for the operating environment, the tension within the environment. We have had experience in facilities across the country where we have had double-bunking for periods of time in the past, so we do have some experience in managing that. But we are going to continue to monitor this very closely.

In terms of some of the other points you raised, I just want to mention that, as a result of budget increases in the last several years, we have been able to provide additional advanced or enhanced training to our staff, including our correctional officers. For example, we recently acquired new sidearms for our correctional officers and have just about completed the training of all staff on the new firearm.

Overall, our training budget has increased by about $24 million, so that's allowing us to provide training not only to our correctional officers but also to our health care staff, our parole officers, and our psychologists--the whole range of staff.

In terms of the mental health issues you raised and commented on, they are of concern to us, the number of offenders who are coming in with mental health disorders and how we respond to them. We have received some increases in our budget over the last few years, but there's still a lot of work to do. As I mentioned at previous committee meetings, unfortunately, we have become the default mental health system in the country. That's not the place I want to be. I believe those with mental health problems need to be treated in other places. However, we have to respond to the decisions of the court, and we're trying to respond the best way we can, both for those who are in the institution and those who are under our supervision in the community.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Vincent, you are going to have to be brief. You have two minutes.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There is something a little contradictory there. You say one thing, but the opposite is true. You say that, by 2014, there will be 4,478 new offenders. Each new offender costs $147,000. In addition, 4,119 additional full-time employees will be hired, an increase of 25%. You say that this will cost an additional $2 billion, but your budgets are frozen. So could you tell me where you are going to cut back? You are going to have to make cuts somewhere. You cannot bury your head in the sand and pretend that everything is going well. At the moment, you are short of money and you have to find some to pay the staff. How are you going to do that?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Head, be very brief, please.

[Don Head]

Thanks very much for that precise question. There are several efficiencies that we've identified that we're going to pursue, for example, the reduction in the amount of overtime. Through the implementation of our security deployment standards, our rostering system, we've been able to reduce our overtime expenditures in comparison with the previous year by about 47% and over the last three years by about 32%. That frees up significant money for us to address the impacts of the constraints we're facing.

The number that we have to address this year, based on our adjusted reference levels, is about $4.8 million, and we're able to do that through the reduction in overtime. As well, we're also—