Evidence of meeting #2 for Public Safety and National Security in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Holland Liberal Ajax—Pickering, ON
It is a point of order.
Just quickly on that, I don't think the vote actually takes place until 5:30, and it's only a five-minute walk, so we can probably pretty safely go until 20 minutes after.
5 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
We have marching orders from our side of the table here. We have only two more people on the list anyway, and then we will have gone through the whole rotation, so I think it's going to work out quite well.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
All right, let's get to it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I must say that I do find this sort of preoccupation with the segregation from the other side of the table a little bit curious. It's something I would abhor, personally.
Ms. Christie, I am really, really proud of you, and I think you're a real inspiration to young women who have turned their lives around.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Thank you so much for sharing so much about your intimate personal life with us, because I know that must have been difficult for you.
I wonder if I might prod even a little bit further, if you'll grant me the indulgence. I find you extremely articulate. I just want to know if you had some formal education. Then also, could you comment to me on what led you to the path of heroin addiction? Is that too personal? If it is, it's okay; we can move on.
5 p.m.
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
No, that's all right.
Ruth is my mentor. I've been working with Ruth and she has been educating me for the last couple of years. Other than that, formally I have a grade 12 education, like everybody else, and I'm sure I would exceed that now.
What led me to heroin addiction was methadone. I was 16 and I had a baby. They were going to take the baby away from me, so they told me I had to go on methadone. I went on methadone, and then I missed my methadone appointment. I didn't even know heroin could get me better, but somebody told me, so I started doing heroin to get myself better from methadone. That's how it started, and then eventually it all went downhill and I ended up on—
5 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
It's the converse of what I thought you were going to say. I was going to ask you if any methadone treatments would have helped, but obviously it was the cause rather than the effect.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
You've changed your life around largely because of the program and the treatment you received. To what else do you attribute your success? Was it just the hope, or the housing or the job that you now have? You're obviously very good at what you do. Was it the support?
5 p.m.
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
The employment has definitely been a big thing. I actually didn't take the step of taking the employment; I was doing it as a volunteer for a couple of years. They kept prodding me to take the job, and I did. It has been really, really good in my life.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Thank you for being so personal with us.
Obviously, with 10% of those who are in prison being women, even one is too many, and such a large percentage are aboriginal. Do you think, panellists, that treatment for mental health and substance abuse issues or homelessness, all the social issues, would help to reduce our prison population? In your opinion, if we could cure some of these social ills ahead of time, would we have fewer men and women in the corrective system?
5:05 p.m.
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Absolutely. As I alluded to, mental health is so interrelated with the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual. When we actually asked women what would help them to get healthy, they came up with these nine health goals over the course of the two years of the project.
The Doing Time project actually asks women who are now out in the community what is assisting them in achieving those nine health goals and what is preventing them from doing so. As Amber alluded to, so far in the interviews, 40% of the women are homeless when they're released from prison. So how is anybody going to get healthy when they don't have a place to live, and how are they going to support themselves? The easiest route for them is to go back to what they know, which is their drug addiction and their substance use. Hence, they commit a crime and they go back to prison.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I'll try to get in as many questions as I can, so you can all feel free to answer.
Warden Tole, with respect to the aboriginal population, where we seem to see such a large percentage of your prison population being aboriginal women, what more could we be doing for our aboriginal population in terms of services, programs, or preventative measures? What's lacking such that we see so many aboriginal women in incarceration? Is it a lack of systems, a lack of hope, opportunity, education, or employment? What is it that you could put your finger on?
Perhaps Ms. Christie would like to respond as well.
5:05 p.m.
Retired Warden of Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, As an Individual
It's probably all of those things. Poverty is one, in addition to a number of the systemic things the population has suffered.
Generally speaking, from my experience, the first nations population, or aboriginal population, does not do well in our prison system, provincial or federal. Supporting the process of transfer of programs and responsibility to the bands and nations that are able to manage them, and to support that process, would probably have a great deal more success. You can't get much worse than what we're doing. In terms of managing that population, we really can't.
I just want to make one comment about what you said in terms of how to stop people from coming into prison. The female population in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Great Britain has drastically increased, really incredibly, over the last five years. If you look at all those countries you'll see that there has been a reduction in social programs. It affects every population, but women are affected first.
Basically, the leaning more towards a kind of war on drugs, against crime, and the reduction in social programs has basically pulled a lot of that population into our system.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I wouldn't mind hearing from Ms. Christie on it as well, particularly with respect to treatment from an aboriginal perspective and using the alternative approaches.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Research Assistant, Women in 2 Healing
You're going to find that everybody is different. What we've found in our research with aboriginal women is that everybody comes from a different band, everybody believes different things, and cultural sensitivity is not always followed in institutions. Actually, only once have I ever seen my culture in a prison setting.
In terms of having outside organizations, I could go on and on about what our aboriginal research project has done and how we have brought in our women from institutions. We've brought so many different members of our community together and then brought the women in and let them all meet and mingle. Do you know what I mean? It's a learning process in terms of what women need and want and what they're willing to take.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brant, ON
First of all, let me also say thank you for being here. This has been incredibly good information you're bringing to us. I appreciate your taking the time to travel and having the courage to be here as well.
The first thing I want to do is bring up the fact that the comment about our being concerned about segregation really, if we want to be partisan about it, came up on the other side. We think it's an issue as well. We want to get our heads around that issue.
I just would like your comments about my comments. In the federal system we're typically dealing with longer sentences, and we have more time for different types of rehabilitation. The one thing, when we travelled and saw the various institutions, is we saw some programming but in my opinion not nearly enough about getting people trained for meaningful work when they exit. Does that play a role?
Warden Tole, perhaps you could answer that from your perspective. I know you don't have a lot of time in the provincial system because it's two years less a day, but I'm interested in exploring that just a bit in terms of how useful it would be, in your mind, that we concentrate some kind of focus on education for people and retraining for people when they're in the institutions so that they can integrate better when they get out and have meaningful work.
5:10 p.m.
Retired Warden of Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, As an Individual
I think that is really key. It's very important. I think that a longer sentence is a sort of double-edged sword. Having a longer sentence gives you an opportunity to provide more programming, but in reality the longer that you keep people isolated from a normalized environment, from a real living environment, you're working against that all the time because it has a negative effect on people when they're removed.
They can concentrate on things, they can participate, and certainly, while they're incarcerated, there are things that you can do in terms of therapeutic programming, but also meaningful work, vocational training in areas that probably will allow them to have a real job when they get out. Also, there are meaningful activities like allowing them, if it's a reasonable thing to do, to participate in the community on a basis of just volunteer work, on doing a number of good things with the community. Again, it gives a lot of good feedback.
I've never actually seen a population that wouldn't prefer to be actively engaged, whether it be work, education. They'll do all of it. It also provides a healthy sort of lifestyle for them, and that's really what you need. These people are going to be there, sometimes, for a long time. It's very difficult to then go back out to the community when you've been in a very isolated situation.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brant, ON
It seems to me the successes we are having are when we give people self-esteem. Part of that self-esteem and health is having something meaningful to do in your life and something that is fulfilling. Obviously, if we can, we should focus efforts in that regard.
Dr. Martin, you said there were a lot of low-cost things that can be done. I'd be very curious to see your list of things. It would be helpful, if you were so inclined, if you could provide that for us. We have your submission today, but actual practical, put-in-place procedures, policies, whatever, would be helpful.
You all nodded your heads when we mentioned--I hope I pronounce this right--Okimaw Ochi, which we visited, as a totally different model for aboriginal women in terms of institutions. Number one, have you been there? Have any of you viewed it? Are you familiar with the model? I just want to know your thoughts about that model in terms of its structure, how it works, and how effective it is.
5:10 p.m.
Retired Warden of Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, As an Individual
I'm familiar with it. I haven't actually seen it. It basically operates on a therapeutic type of model, and it uses first nations spirituality, teaching. I don't know, I haven't been familiar with the recent situation, but I know that it did encourage women to have their children there.
I think the only criticism I would have is it hasn't expanded for women. The only thing I would see is, considering the population that's in both the federal and provincial system, it hasn't been something that has been expanded. It seems to be probably the most successful of the women's centres in terms of less violence, fewer mental health problems, a healthier environment, people doing well, better staff relations. That's what my understanding is, and I haven't actually seen it but certainly I've read a lot about it and talked to people about it.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brant, ON
It was very different and very impressive. I don't have the actual numbers, but the one thing that was a little surprising was that rate of recidivism of people coming out of there was still very high.
It's a unique model. I just wondered whether you could comment on it as a model.
As you're finding through your research, people really have to want to change, correct? Everybody's timing is different, I suppose, in terms of when you're prepared to look in the mirror and make those changes, especially in these populations. I would like your thoughts, and particularly the doctor's thoughts, on what the true motivators are. What are the true motivators to bring people to the point where things click and the light bulb goes on?
5:15 p.m.
Clinical Professor, Department of Family Practice and Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I think you can learn the answer by listening to those stories. For each woman it's a bit different, but the things that have come through that I've heard are a hope that it is possible that they can succeed, actually having people who believe in them, and community support. It's those constellations, and people will often say that they had a moment when they thought, “Aha--it is possible that I can do it”.
That's another research project, to actually gather those stories that tell us about the moment. It will be a realization. It might take a while for them to effect it. It's almost like a teeter-totter; the motivation turns, and things align for them so that they can actually turn it around, but they have to have that hope.