Evidence of meeting #49 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was offenders.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
I understand.
There's also been some reference to some of the community partnerships you have. Habitat was used as an example. Have you also developed industry partnerships?
9:40 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, CORCAN
Yes, we are working with construction industries across the country.
I look at our partnerships on three different levels. One is government partnership. We're really partnering well with other agencies and departments within government. We've talked about CBSA. We've done six or seven ports of entry. We're just completing the sixth one. We're working with the RCMP. We have an MOU in Saskatchewan, where we're building modular homes for them out of Saskatchewan Penitentiary.
In terms of partnerships with NGOs, Habitat currently is really where CORCAN is at, again predominantly in the Prairie and Ontario regions. In the Prairie region, we completed five homes for Habitat, and another two are under way. That's occupied over 260 offenders. Those are really good opportunities for us.
Also, with the colleges and trade associations across the country, as I said when I was out in Edmonton last week, I was with Alberta Works, and they're putting me in touch with the Modular Housing Association in Alberta. I'm hoping we'll be able to capitalize on that as well.
9:40 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada
To add to Ms. Garrow's list of work that's going on is the collaborative approach we've been taking with first nations communities, as I mentioned earlier. They have economic development money. They have housing needs. Again, we have the manpower and the woman power. We have a good match there, and we want to pursue this even further. There are just so many positive returns from those kinds of partnerships and relationships that will benefit not only the offenders but the community. This is another one that we're trying to expand.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Daryl Kramp
Thank you very much, Mr. Falk.
We will now go to Mr. Garrison for five minutes, please, sir.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Head, you said that CORCAN staff were also your employees. That brings me to something that's been a particular problem in William Head Institution in my riding, where we've seen the elimination of a carpentry apprenticeship program, and now we're facing the elimination of the electrical apprenticeship program, when those are two of the three occupations in the highest demand on Vancouver Island. My understanding is that this is a failure to re-staff positions of people who are retiring.
I'm just looking for the possible explanation of why you would end those two very successful programs, which were putting people into very high-demand jobs.
9:40 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada
I am very familiar with the program, and we looked at extending it several times and trying to weigh that in terms of the overall inventory of the needs of the offenders and the kinds of activities that we could put in place. We've worked very closely with Camosun College, and continue to work with Camosun College in terms of activities. One of the problems that we had with the program at William Head is—and again, tremendous work by the staff—what they were doing wasn't something that we could easily replace in terms of the kinds of activities. It wasn't sustainable the way it was going. We worked with Camosun College in terms of those discussions, and we have some other options that are being explored right now in terms of creating the types of activities that will reflect the market need.
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
I'm trying to interpret what you just said to me, and it sounds like your failing to fill the positions that were there was the reason for closing down the program.
9:45 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada
That's definitely part of it. The program itself was not necessarily leading to the direct kind of opportunities that were needed in the marketplace.
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
Okay.
It's your emphasis on CORCAN as kind of the only solution this morning.... One of the things that the correctional investigator pointed out is that in the last 10 years there's been an almost 40% decline in the use of work release. When it comes to some of the small institutions for women where you can't run the big programs, or when it comes to meeting the market demands, work release seemed to have been highly successful. When the numbers of people in the institutions are going up, why are we seeing such a big decline in the use of work release?
9:45 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada
Work release is just an option for correctional officials to consider in terms of providing opportunities to offenders. They have a shelf life. They have a very specific timeframe—I think it's 60 days—that a work release can occur. There are some exceptional opportunities for extending that. They're not the be-all and end-all. Our ideal approach is to take greater advantage of day parole and full parole opportunities, so offenders can get out, get a job, and keep a job, as opposed to opportunities that are only in 60-day chunks.
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
According to a correctional investigator, in 2012 there were only—I believe he said—363 people out of the 14,000 in institutions who were able to take advantage of work release. I understand what you're saying is that you'd like more people on parole, but you still have a lot of people in custody. I really don't understand the decline. You haven't really explained to me the decline. Is it just because you've chosen not to use work release?
9:45 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada
No. Work release continues to be an option available to correctional officials at the institutional level, but there has to be a right match in terms of the offender, any kind of opportunity, and the kind of support. It needs to fit in with their correctional plan in terms of any other programs that they're doing. Work release continues to be an option that's available, but that's assessed by the case management teams in each of the institutions.
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
It seems to me that if you have a 40% decline in something then that would unlikely be a result of a bunch of individual decisions. That's a very large decline in the use of work release.
9:45 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada
I don't think you're suggesting this, but there is no direction to stop using work release. Work release continues to be a viable option as part of the overall correctional continuum. There is no directive to stop using work release.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Daryl Kramp
Thank you, very much.
We will now go to Ms. James. Five minutes, please.
February 17th, 2015 / 9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the commissioner and officials for appearing at committee.
I'm going to go back a bit to something that was brought up by my colleague, Ms. Ablonczy. She was asking about the success rates for individual offenders who have received these types of skills training. Commissioner, you went into some statistical information about other programs—and if they take anger management, and so forth—and that the chance of them reoffending with a violent offence is less than 2%. You did indicate that during that period of time after they left the institution that rate can go up. I don't think that I heard specifically about the success rate of someone who has received, for example, training in welding or in the construction industry. What is the success rate of that individual finding a job in that particular field and retaining that job? I'm not sure I heard the answer to that question.
9:45 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada
In terms of the specific tracking on the training and the alignment with the jobs, we don't collect those kinds of statistics; this is something that we're looking at going forward. We're able to determine if an individual has gotten employment out in the community, but not whether it's directly linked to a specific type of training that they received in the institution. Our system is just not automated enough to provide us that kind of data. It requires manual file reviews.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
You just said that you're looking at possibly doing that in the future, and I think that would be very instrumental in determining whether the programs and the training we're providing in our institutions are actually relating to success and someone having stability in the community and not reoffending. I look forward to hearing more about that in the future.
In your opening remarks you said, “These on-the-job training skills are provided in seven of the top 10 industry sectors by payroll employment.”
Can you explain what you mean by that?
9:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, CORCAN
The payroll statistics are put out by Statistics Canada. In terms of the top 10 that we fit into, there's manufacturing; construction; administration and support, waste management and remediation; accommodation and food services; professional, scientific, and technical services—and that one may sound a little weird, but we actually have an engineering centre where we train inmates on AutoCAD, and that's also available in some of our other institutions. There's also health care and social assistance, and we actually have eyewear lab technicians; we now manufacture eyeglasses for virtually all of the offenders in the Ontario region. The last one is education, where we use coaches, so we have higher-skilled inmates who work with other offenders in our shops. We call them lead hands and things like that.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
So these statistics are based on the highest-demand jobs or the ones that need to be filled?
9:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, CORCAN
No, these are labour market trends that come from Statistics Canada. They list 21 in total, and we went for the top 10 and looked at those.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
My colleague across the way, Mr. Garrison, asked about making sure we're providing the training for jobs that are in demand.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
If you're using labour market information, how often do your programs in your institutions change to match that? Is it something that you look at every year, every five years? I'm just wondering if what you're offering to offenders right now in the institutions is the same that was being offered two years ago, or five years ago, and so on. Or is the turnover based on those labour market statistics?
9:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, CORCAN
Since I've come in what we've done is look at them on a quarterly basis, because that's how they come out. We are aligning our vocational strategy to the on-the-job training. We've looked at what we've offered in the past for vocational skills, and now we're saying that if an institution or a site is going to offer a certain vocational training—because we do have a national plan—it has to indicate what this is going to contribute to the particular offender.
There are essentially two sides to this story. One is that you do require vocational certificates for health and safety, and there are certain prerequisites to work in any of our shops. Then there are additional certificates as you move into the areas that are more demanding, for example, welding, construction, and those kinds of things. And then there are others where the vocational certificates are a little bit longer, and we would do something with offenders like pre-construction, for example, what we do with St. Lawrence College in Kingston, which would come in and work with our offenders for about 10 weeks, and the offenders would then receive a certificate. We do that in various areas. Landscaping is another one that's very popular, and inmates are securing jobs upon release.
That's what we've been doing.