Bill C-12 (Historical)

Drug-Free Prisons Act

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to require the Parole Board of Canada (or a provincial parole board, if applicable) to cancel parole granted to an offender if, before the offender’s release, the offender tests positive in a urinalysis, or fails or refuses to provide a urine sample, and the Board considers that the criteria for granting parole are no longer met. It also amends that Act to clarify that any conditions set by a releasing authority on an offender’s parole, statutory release or unescorted temporary absence may include conditions regarding the offender’s use of drugs or alcohol, including in cases when that use has been identified as a risk factor in the offender’s criminal behaviour.

[Philippa Lawson]

Thank you very much.

Good morning, committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to address you on the matter of Bill S-4, which proposes amendments to PIPEDA.

My involvement with this legislation goes back to its genesis with the CSA model privacy code and the subsequent initiatives to legislate voluntary standards. As a lawyer with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre at the time, I was a public interest representative on the committee that drafted the code. I later advocated for legislation that eventually took the form of PIPEDA.

I have been closely involved with PIPEDA ever since, first in my role as a consumer advocate with PIAC and later as director of CIPPIC, both of whom I understand you have already heard from. In particular, I have conducted studies of private sector compliance with PIPEDA. I have lodged a number of PIPEDA complaints with the Privacy Commissioner. I have taken the Privacy Commissioner to court in order to establish that she had jurisdiction to enforce PIPEDA against foreign corporations acting in Canada. I published a study of security breach notification laws in 2007. I've been urging the government to adopt mandatory security breach notification laws since 2003.

Today I am speaking on my own behalf as a lawyer and privacy advocate. The last formal submissions I made on PIPEDA reform were in 2008 in my role as director of CIPPIC. Those submissions focused on three issues: security breach notification, protection of minors, and compliance and enforcement. The analysis and proposals made in those comments remain apt today, and I would be happy to provide copies of that submission to anyone who is interested.

I'm happy to see that the government has seen fit to address all three of these issues in Bill S-4, but I am disappointed that the measures in each case fall far short of what is needed. I will address each of these three topics briefly, but before doing so I would like to address an elephant in the room. That elephant is consent.

There is a pretense that companies are obtaining informed consent from customers to the collection, use, and sharing of their personal data. But anyone who takes the time to study what is actually going on will quickly see that this is, to a large extent, a fiction and that meaningful consent is rarely obtained from consumers.

Negative option consent is commonly used but rarely brought to the attention of customers. Consent is in fact often assumed simply by virtue of use of the service. Changes to privacy policies are simply posted on the company website and customers are expected to inform themselves. No one really expects individuals to read through lengthy, complex terms of service for every transaction. People simply don't have the time. If they do take the time to read the terms, they may find that they are notionally consenting to have their personal data used for purposes such as—and I'm quoting here from privacy policies that I've looked at—research, marketing, product development, and business purposes. In further violation of PIPEDA, many companies are refusing to deal with customers who won't agree to unnecessary uses of their personal data, such as marketing.

A reality check is needed on what is happening in the marketplace with so-called customer consent. In the meantime, proposed section 6.1 is a helpful qualification on what the law already requires. It may have some positive effect on what is, in my respectful submission, a widespread disgrace.

However, the current wording of proposed section 6.1 could actually have a perverse effect on the protection of children or seniors. If you read the clause, you will see that it fails to protect vulnerable populations to whom an organization's activities are not directed. All that a company needs to do to exploit children is to direct its activities to adults and then turn a blind eye to the fact that children are signing up. A simple fix is to revert to the earlier wording of this clause found in Bill C-12. However, if if the aim is to protect children, a much more effective approach is simply to prohibit certain uses of personal data about children.

I have a few words on breach notification. This is long overdue, and it will certainly be an improvement on the current situation. But are the proposed rules going to be effective? Breach notification is about more than notifying individuals. An equally important goal is to create incentives for organizations to put in place strong security safeguards.

In order to create such incentives, there needs to be a real risk of significant financial harm to a corporation from failing to put in place adequate security measures. This is the test you should be applying to your assessment of the proposed breach notification regime: is there a real risk of significant financial harm to corporations from non-compliance?

I am not convinced there is. Fines apply only to failure to report or failure to keep records and require cumbersome proceedings and proof of intent. Civil lawsuits are too costly to make sense in most cases, and the Privacy Commissioner may be dissuaded from using publicity for this purpose as a result of subsection 20(1.1), which prohibits disclosure of breach notification reports. I do not understand that section.

Until there are real financial incentives for corporations to take appropriate measures to prevent breaches from happening in the first place, and to otherwise comply with privacy laws, non-compliance with PIPEDA will continue to be a cost of doing business in Canada.

I'd like to finish with a few comments on private investigations. I am very concerned that, if the proposed changes to the current investigative body regime exception go through, this bill will actually set back privacy protection in Canada.

I will not repeat the able submissions of my colleague Dr. Geist on this subject, but let me just point out that in the new world of cheap data storage and powerful data analytics, the only limits on how far companies will go in their efforts to detect fraud, criticism, or contractual breaches will be what you put in this law. With today’s technology, it’s less costly to gather more data and to apply analytical tools to a large database than it is to restrict the intake of data to that needed in the first place.

In this context, insurance companies and other companies will, no doubt, argue that it's reasonable for them to conduct what amounts to broad and deep surveillance of their customers in order to detect fraud.

Paragraph 7(3)(d.2) would allow just that. It requires no formal investigation. The disclosure just needs to be reasonable, not even necessary as in the previous formulation in Bill C-12. This provision would open the door to routine sharing of personal data among organizations based on nothing more than the always present risk of fraud. Moreover, there would be no transparency or accountability requirements. It would be a major setback for consumer privacy.

I understand that this amendment was based on the Alberta model, but I looked at the Alberta model, and subsection 20(n) of the Alberta statute is not as permissive as this. It actually limits sharing to certain kinds of organizations.

I urge you to remove these clauses from the bill and stick with the current investigative body regime. I also urge you to adopt the transparency measures that my colleague Dr. Geist recommended.

Thank you very much.

Drug-Free Prisons Act

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île for her question.

If only it was a one-size-fits-all solution, it would already at least be something. However, the solution that Bill C-12 proposes does not even directly affect the drug addiction problem in our current prison populations. It is quite simply something that already exists and is already being applied by the Parole Board of Canada.

I would even have been happier if we were trying to apply a one-size-fits-all solution to see what the Conservative government would have proposed to really tackle this problem, instead of pretending to addressing the problem and simply telling the Parole Board of Canada that what it is doing is very good and giving the board the opportunity to continue doing the same thing. It is relatively good because the Parole Board of Canada is doing very good work. What is interesting about what was proposed in this bill, and what has already been proposed, is that we are not giving the Parole Board the benefit of the doubt, but rather the choice of whether or not to apply the measures.

At least the Parole Board is not necessarily being required to apply the measures that are presented here, depending on the results of the urinalyses, but they have the possibility of playing with them. It is good that the Parole Board is already doing this. Still, we should not kid ourselves. This is a bill aimed at eradicating drugs in prisons, but nothing here covers that.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I find the short title of the bill slightly more interesting. The Conservative government chose to call it the drug-free prisons act.

Clearly, when we saw that title, we were very curious to find out what this promised drug-free prisons act was going to contain.

I was relatively surprised in one sense, but not in another, to see that the bill had nothing to do with drug-free prisons. Bill C-12 adds a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that makes clear that, when deciding whether someone is eligible for parole, the Parole Board can take into account the fact that the offender tested positive for drugs in a urinalysis or refused to provide a urine sample for a drug test. That is already happening. The Parole Board has already been using this practice for quite some time.

We support this provision, but we realize that it has to do with the Parole Board. It has nothing to do with the inmates in our federal prisons right now.

Therefore, this title is unfortunately a bit flawed. It is sad that the government is trying to make Canadians believe that it wants to address the drug addiction problem in our federal prisons, when it is actually trying to use this bill to simply say that what the Parole Board is doing is fine and that it needs to keep doing it.

Bill C-12 therefore has a relatively misleading title. We tried to amend it at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The NDP introduced an amendment to change the short title to better describe Bill C-12. The title we proposed was the drug test failures and parole act, which I think better reflects the bill.

I point this out because many witnesses said that Bill C-12 was not really doing what the short title suggested. The bill is not bad. I would like to tell that to everyone in the House. In committee, we all agreed that this is not a bad bill as such. However, the title was really an irritant whenever we had to discuss this bill. The short title has nothing to do with the bill. The bill is not bad, but it will not lead to drug-free prisons.

I would like to quote the member for Yukon. Replacing the parliamentary secretary, he attended the meetings of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Bill C-12. He himself admitted that the short title was probably going a bit too far. We were able to see that, even among the Conservatives, not everyone was really comfortable with the short title of this bill.

I hope that the Conservatives will do their homework next time and present us with a bill whose short title will actually reflect its content.

That being said, I will not dwell on the fact that the Conservatives often play politics with their short titles or bills. The titles do not always reflect the bills they go with, but they seem very nice when they are presented to the public and Canadians see them without reading the actual bills.

We in the NDP have very clear positions when it comes to the prison population, prisons and the eradication of drug addiction. We have always supported measures that seek to make our prisons safer. However, the Conservative government continues to ignore the recommendations of correctional staff and the Correctional Investigator, in particular, that would help reduce violence, street gang activities and drug use in our prisons. Virtually all stakeholders agree that this bill will have little impact on drug use in our prisons. Almost all of us agree that there will be no impact on drug use in our prisons.

Once again, the government is going to use this bill as an opportunity to cater to the wishes of its base, without actually proposing real solutions to the problems of drugs and gangs in prisons. I am enormously disappointed in this aspect of the Conservative government's strategy on such an important issue.

As I said, Bill C-12 is not necessarily a solution to a real problem and we are all—especially the members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security—aware of that. Members of the House, who have examined a number of bills, are at least partly aware of the situation in our prisons. We know that there are mental health, addiction and gang-related problems. There are therefore a number of problems and things to fix in our correctional system. Again, this bill could have been a good example of the sort of work we can do together as parliamentarians, but unfortunately we were not able to do it.

I would like to talk about what the bill should perhaps have included and about the eradication of addiction in our prisons. In 2012, a Public Safety Canada study confirmed that it is not very realistic to think that drug-free prisons can be created. I know that may be a shocking thing to hear, but the problem of eliminating drugs in prisons is extremely complex, for a number of reasons. The government should take a leadership role in this matter but, as parliamentarians, our work is to ensure that drugs are reduced as much as possible and to take steps in that direction.

The government, however, is reacting to sensational headlines in the media and trying to say that such a thing is possible. Correctional Service Canada has invested a great deal of money. Since 2008 the Conservatives have spent, for example, $112 million on purchasing technology to stop the entry of drugs into prisons. Nevertheless, this has not reduced drug use in prison. Therefore, the Conservatives' approach is not working at all.

First, the government has a clearly unrealistic goal, but one we all strive toward—we can agree on that—and second, it is not using its money appropriately. It has invested in technology and not solved the problem at all. I have some details and figures to give you later, but I can say that the Conservative government has made deep cuts to the budgets of many departments. It has reduced Correctional Service Canada's budget by 10% and made cuts in many programs, although the prison population is currently growing. It has reduced the money set aside for programming, particularly addiction programs. The government's explanation is all doublespeak.

Correctional Service Canada's funding for basic correctional programs such as addiction treatment has been reduced. Moreover, the Conservative government has closed the treatment centres for inmates with serious mental health problems. We cannot ignore the fact that mental health issues are very common in our prisons. That is one of the main points to keep in mind. Many witnesses told us that people who have addiction problems often have mental health issues as well, and we must not forget that.

In order to really tackle the addiction problem in our prisons, we believe that Correctional Service Canada must create an initial assessment system that would make it possible to correctly measure an inmate's degree of addiction so that suitable programs could be offered to the offenders who need them. If the addiction is not treated, it is more difficult to educate and return the individual to society, which is what our society chooses to do with inmates. At Correctional Service Canada, the system works in levels. An offender comes into the system at the maximum or medium level and makes his way down through the levels as part of the prison population until, at the end of his sentence, he is in a minimum security institution. Still within the correctional system, he will have contact with the general public. The offender will begin working and visiting outside the prison, and will begin his return to society.

If we do not want prisons to have revolving doors, we must provide good programs for education and social rehabilitation. That is a societal choice we have made and we must take it seriously.

Taking this choice seriously will be much less costly to taxpayers in the end, in terms of public safety, hospitals and society in general.

Inmates who are neglected in terms of education and social reinsertion are liable to reoffend and fall back into a life of crime. Many studies have proven this. The correctional investigator has mentioned it often in his reports and appearances before the committee. The experts know what is happening on the ground. They include the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the John Howard Society of Canada. I should also mention the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers whose members see former inmates returning to prison. I talked with Mr. Grabowsky, the union's national president, last week. I will not mention his age, but he has over 35 years of experience at Correctional Service Canada. He told me that during his career he has seen many former inmates return, as if prisons had revolving doors, because there are no social reintegration programs or other suitable programs for inmates. That is a sad state of affairs.

As a society, seeking to make our communities extremely safe is a wise choice. When I am walking down the street, I want to be safe, I want my daughter to be safe, and I want my friends and colleagues to be safe. For that to happen, we have to make sure that these offenders do not fall back into the cycle of crime. We must try to eradicate as much crime as possible from our society. Both sides of the House would probably agree that that is a very difficult thing to do. However, we have radically differing visions of how to do it. I will have more to say about that later in my speech.

A number of stakeholders support our position. One of them is the Correctional Investigator, who stated in numerous reports that the corrections system could face unintended consequences when simplistic solutions are applied to complex problems, such as addiction, in our penitentiaries. He suggested measures such as assessment of prisoners at intake into correctional programs to identify their addiction problems. The NDP fully supports that. He also suggested giving prisoners better access to rehabilitation programs, which would help reduce drug use and gang activity in prison.

When I was asking my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands a question earlier, I said that I would come back to what the parliamentary secretary said. She quoted something that, if I am not mistaken, was said by Don Head, the Commissioner of Correctional Service Canada, before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and that is that 95% of offenders complete at least one program while they are in prison. It is true that 95% of offenders participate in a program at some point in their correctional plan. What the Conservatives failed to mention—and we have spoken about this at length during the debate on Bill C-12—is that this percentage pertains to all programs in general. It could be an anger management program, a program to deal with aggression, Alcoholics Anonymous or a drug treatment program. A variety of programs are offered to inmates. The government seems to be lumping all of these programs together and saying that 95% of inmates participate in a program, implying that these inmates are participating in a drug treatment program. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I want members of the House to be aware of this in the coming debates.

It would be a good idea to give all offenders who need it access to a drug treatment program while they are in prison. That is not currently the case. Four out of five offenders arrive at a federal institution with a past history of substance abuse. As of July 2011, there were 775 inmates enrolled in opiate substitute treatment, representing approximately 5.4% of the total inmate population. That means that only 5.4% of the total inmate population is receiving treatment, when four out of five inmates have a substance abuse problem when they enter the prison system. Unfortunately, a balance has not been reached. That is rather sad.

In the 2012 federal budget, the government made $295 million in cuts to Correctional Service Canada over two years, which represents about 10% of its budget.

Correctional Service Canada currently spends 2% to 2.7% of its operating budget on basic correctional programs. This includes substance abuse programs, but they do not receive all of that funding.

According to the Office of the Correctional Investigator—I always look forward to its annual reports—the CSC budget for substance abuse programming dropped from $11 million in 2008-09 to $9 million in 2010-11, even though the prisoner population continues to grow. Thus, funding for substance abuse programs and access to them is decreasing while the inmate population is increasing. That is sad.

That brings me to the position of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, which works directly in our prisons to ensure our safety. It does fantastic work. I visited a number of prisons in several provinces and we were always well received. The correctional officers clearly explained the work that they do, and they work miracles with very few resources.

Their budgets are cut every year and because of Conservative bills that amended the Canada Labour Code, their safety has also been affected. Take for example the bill that amended the definition of danger, which directly affects correctional officers working on the ground. That is extremely serious for them.

The Conservatives do not have the same vision. I would not say that their policies are harmful, but they are not the right policies for our penitentiaries. For example, as a result of cuts, the Conservatives promised to increase the number of beds and inmates in our prisons. I think it was 2,700 new beds, which is a net addition of about 1,655 beds.

At the same time, the Conservatives closed two extremely important penitentiaries—one in Kingston, Ontario, and the other in Leclerc, Quebec. The latter is in my riding and is now a provincial penitentiary. As a result of these closures, a cell designed for a single person often holds two or three inmates.

According to their assessment on the ground, despite a decrease in double bunking, corrections officers are currently seeing the potential for an increase in double bunking, which creates a serious problem in terms of drug addiction and the safety of corrections officers. These officers never know what will happen when there are several inmates in a single cell. Furthermore, it can be dangerous for the prison population, not to mention the fact that problems with street gangs and drug addiction can get worse if strict corrections plans are not followed.

The Conservatives should have a look at the studies that show what happens when you put several people in a cell designed for a single person. We often hear that it helps save money, but it creates many more problems in the long term.

The NDP wants to ensure that prisons are safe working environments for our corrections officers. That is extremely important. We will not make these workplaces safer by merely giving fancy titles, like the title of Bill C-12, to relatively simple measures without directly addressing the problem of drug addiction. This will only guarantee that inmates will end up back in the prison system.

I hope that the Conservatives will take note of all of this and of what the witnesses told the committee, so that the next time they introduce a bill called the drug-free prisons act, it will actually address the problem it claims to fix.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her remarks on Bill C-12, a Conservative government bill.

The parliamentary secretary indicated that 95% of inmates complete at least one program during their time in prison. That is what we heard at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. However, I want to pick up on that, because she forgot to mention that these were general programs, not drug treatment programs, a subject that Bill C-12 does not really address. I hope that she will set the record straight when she has the opportunity to speak again in the House. I will come back to this point, when I have the opportunity to give a speech.

I would just like to make an observation regarding the speech given by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. I really appreciated her speech since I share many of her views. As she said, as a society, we do not want people to be constantly returning to prison and reoffending. I agree. That is why we need to give them the right tools.

Could my colleague give a few examples of the right tools that we could provide to our correctional system in order to help drug addicts and people struggling with mental health problems successfully reintegrate and become good citizens, and put a stop to this cycle of returning to the prison system?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to this bill. I have heard my hon. colleagues from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and Malpeque, and I agree with much of what they said. I will try to avoid repeating the good points that they made and focus in on why I agree that this bill is so very lacking.

The essential difficulty goes beyond the fact that the bill does not address the serious problems within our prisons or the issue of drugs and addiction in any way that would make a meaningful difference. The essential difficulty—and this is something that bears repeating—is that as with so many bills in this place, the legislation coming at us has not been designed through the lens of someone who wants to improve public policy in an area for which the federal government has jurisdiction but rather through the lens of someone designing a brochure for the next election campaign. The titles are whiz-bang, the claims are extravagant, and the bills themselves are, in some cases, wide-ranging and disastrous, as in the case of the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38.

In the case of this bill, it has an overreaching title. Of course, who would not agree that it would be a good thing to have drug-free prisons? The title of the bill is the drug-free prisons act. In a grand total of five clauses, one of which is “This Act may be cited as the Drug-Free Prisons Act” , we have a regime that would require an offender who has already been granted parole to be subjected to a request for a urine analysis. If they refuse or test positive, the bill would then have this information referred to the Parole Board to determine whether the parole should still be granted.

There are a lot of things wrong with this idea just as a practical matter. For one thing, the Parole Board already has the power to take into consideration whether an offender is currently drug-addicted or has substance abuse issues that would affect whether they will reoffend.

The nature of urinalysis testing is that some drugs will be detected for quite a long time after the offender's use of that drug, whereas other drugs could be in and out of the offender's system rather quickly. For instance, we could have an offender in prison who was a cannabis user. That drug would still show up a long time after the last use. However, if the offender had been using cocaine, it would disappear within two days. The bill does not actually address the question of whether we are releasing someone who has a drug addiction onto the streets; rather, it answers the question of particular drugs.

As it has been pointed out by witnesses before the committee, the bill would certainly do nothing about someone with an alcohol abuse problem. In terms of the percentage of dangerous offences committed by somebody misusing alcohol versus using cannabis, I cannot tell members how often I have talked to RCMP officers who tend to relax when they approach a house and are told to be very careful because someone in there has been smoking marijuana. I have heard this story from so many of them. However, if they are told to be careful because someone in the house has been drinking heavily, they worry, because the tendency is a violent reaction.

I am not encouraging marijuana use, but when we talk about violent criminal acts, alcohol is a serious problem. This bill would do absolutely nothing to determine if this is someone who might reoffend because of a substance abuse issue that relates to alcohol.

Let us talk about the state of our prisons. We have had some claims made so far in the debate today, but I found statistics online from the Correctional Service of Canada and from the Correctional Investigator's report that were not in recent evidence before the committee, and they indicate that between 1997 and 2008, the percentage of offenders in Canadian prisons who were dealing with mental health issues doubled. The issue of mental health in the prison population is more prevalent today than it was in 1997.

Substance abuse issues are often linked to mental health issues. This point has been made, including in the debate today. The problem with substance abuse and people with mental health issues who self-medicate to try to deal with their own demons in the absence of counselling and help is that they turn to drug addiction.

Quite a significant proportion of people in the prison system were really in need of mental health assistance, support, counselling, and treatment before they entered the prison population, and are still in need of it as they leave the prison population. Some of those people are also, as an aspect of their mental health issues, dealing with substance abuse and addiction.

We have heard it claimed here today by the parliamentary secretary that we should be extremely satisfied to hear that $9 million was spent this year on addiction counselling for substance abuse in Canadian prisons. I am happy to accept the $9 million figure, but if we go online and look up Correctional Service Canada, we see that $11 million was spent on substance abuse in 2008-09. From the testimony of Conservative members of Parliament, we know that $2 million less is being spent this year than four years ago, and we also know that the prison population has been growing in that time. We also know from earlier statistics that the trend lines show that more offenders in our prison system have mental health and addiction issues than a decade ago.

I could speculate as to why that is. We do know that cutbacks, which I lament and which I know a lot of Conservative members of Parliament have raised while I have been here as a member of Parliament, to kill the deficit back in the 1990s, the cuts to transfers to provinces, downloaded a lot of problems on provincial governments, including cuts to a lot of mental health services. We transferred a lot of social problems from mental health services at the provincial level to the people who were essentially living on the streets, which I think has contributed to the fact that the offender population with mental health issues has gone up.

What on earth would this bill do to improve the situation? The answer is absolutely nothing. Not one more dime will go to mental health treatment or addiction counselling. Nothing will improve the situation for either the offender population or public safety under this bill. This bill pretends that we are doing something about drugs in prison, because it will make a good brochure for the next election campaign. It does nothing for the prison population. It does nothing for public safety.

To confirm that point, I turn to the evidence of Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I know that some of Mr. Sapers' testimony has already been referenced by members of the official opposition and the Liberal Party, but I do want to draw attention to a number of his conclusions. He points out the following:

Four out of five offenders arrive at a federal institution with a past history of substance abuse and dependancy. The use of alcohol and drugs is a criminal risk factor for a significant proportion of the offender population; however, urinalysis testing is ineffectual in monitoring or reducing the risk linked to alcohol use and dependency.

I want to underscore this. This remedy this bill puts forward will not create drug-free prisons—and the text of the bill in fact makes no pretence to having anything to do with drug-free prisons but rather punishing someone at the point of parole who might test positive—and will do nothing about one of the largest criminal risk factors, which is alcohol dependency.

When looking at this issue, we know that we need an integrated, coordinated program throughout Correctional Service Canada to redouble our efforts. This ties into another issue that has been raised recently, that some of the prison population can be radicalized to terrorist ideology when they are in prison. These are people in desperate need of mental health services and addiction counselling.

Specifically, the shooter who broke in here on October 22 had earlier begged a judge back in 2012 in a Vancouver courtroom to send him for addiction counselling, to send him to a place that could help him with mental health counselling. I believe that if we had had those services in place, we might have saved two lives on that day. Most particularly and most importantly, we could have saved the life of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, had his attacker got the help he desperately needed.

We cannot second guess these things but should be investing in mental health treatment, counselling, addiction services, and in making sure that offenders in our prison system are treated in ways that would allow them to re-enter society as contributing citizens. We should not be finding ways to deny them parole at the last minute.

I close with these words of Howard Sapers:

A better and more cost-effective way to prevent crime is to put more of our limited resources into addiction treatment and prevention programs. Zero-tolerance or punitive-based approaches to drug use and abuse and addiction simply do not work in prison.

Let us be smart. Let us do what needs to be done. Drug-free prisons are a fine goal, but the bill is a fraud on the goals the Canadian public will be told that the bill serves.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-12, the drug-free prisons act. The place to begin is to acknowledge a straightforward fact, which is that the bill will have hardly any consequence in ensuring that prisons are drug free. It is a much bigger issue than that. Even one of the members, one of the backbench Conservative members who was there for one meeting, in discussing the bill at committee, indicated as much himself. It is a name; it is not action in terms of this particular bill.

I am always amazed, and I have said this before, at the deception of the government. They think that if it can name a bill a certain way, it will happen. It will leave the perception in the public that the Conservatives are actually doing something, but they are not. What is really required is action.

The government somehow believes that if we can treat addictions by threatening those who suffer from addiction we are actually doing something. Research has shown that on the drug issue, threats alone are not enough.

The previous member who spoke talked about drug addiction as being a health problem. Somewhere around 75% to 80% of the people who go into prison actually go in with either a drug or alcohol addiction, and many of them have mental issues as well, so there has to be treatment beyond the penalties the government is talking about imposing.

The government somehow believes that it will achieve drug-free prisons if it coerces even further those offenders about to qualify for parole. There will be some people who do not achieve parole as a result of this decision. Is that the right thing to do? Is there a better way of handling that? Those are issues that need to be looked at.

Somehow the public is to believe that this legislation will actually accomplish something new. It really will not, and that became clear from the evidence presented at committee.

The title of the bill is misleading in the extreme, while the contents of the legislation actually add little, if anything, to the situation relative to those inmates on parole. I will come to that in a little bit.

Bill C-12 is another in a long line of government legislation, some of it private members' bills from the Conservative side as well, that use victims and offenders for their ideological ends.

The first point is this: Does the bill actually bring forward new policy related to the issue of drug use and those applying for parole? The answer is a simple no. Bill C-12 actually adds nothing to the parole process that does not already exist.

In direct answer to a question I posed to the chair of the Parole Board with respect to the Parole Board being able to exercise its full discretion as it has so far, the chair responded, “That is right”. Let me rephrase that. What I was really asking the chair of the Parole Board was whether this bill would take discretion away from the chair, and it does not. The Parole Board would still have the discretion it has always had, although the bill tries to make it look otherwise.

The Conservatives have said that there was a substantial change in that regard. The fact is, Bill C-12 does not alter the ability of the Parole Board to do the job it has been doing all along. The chair of the Parole Board actually went even further when asked whether any new requirements in this legislation will add anything to the current practices of the board.

I will quote his answer. He stated:

The new information that will be provided with the legislation will trigger a review by the board, as is currently the case when any new information regarding an offender is provided to the Parole Board of Canada prior to an offender's release, which we obtain from CSC.

Again, what is contained in Bill C-12 is already in practice. It has been the practice of the Parole Board.

That is why the bill is more perception. In my view, it is not just perception, but the way the government named this bill, the drug-free prisons act, is deception to the very core when it has very little to do with that and does not deal with the real issue of drugs in prisons.

If we are to stop drugs in prisons, we have to stop the market. If we are to get people off drugs, penalties are will not do it alone. It requires programming, treatment and constant follow up. That is the only way to get people off these addictions. There is no question that people face drug and alcohol addictions. Some people do small break and enters and some get into greater crimes as they get hooked on drugs. It is a serious problem and we have to reduce the market both in prisons and in Canadian society.

I will tell a story about the correctional system. I will give the government some credit for maintaining some of the programs that were started years ago to get people off drugs.

A constituent of mine had a son who was terribly addicted to drugs, got caught doing a small crime, and was going to be sentenced to two years less a day. That parent came to me to see if I could advise her in any way on how to get her son committed to a federal institution, which is a very tough place to spend time. Of course, there was nothing I could do.

Her concern was that her son would go into a provincial institution for a small crime. Because he was so addicted to drugs, he would commit bigger crimes over time. She felt if she could get him committed to a federal institution for two years or more, maybe her son would be able to take part in the programming to get him off drugs and become a better contributor to Canadian society.

I raise that point to indicate how serious the drug issue is and just imposing penalties, as this bill would try to do based on a urine sample, is certainly not in any way going to make prisons drug free.

When the Correctional Investigator testified before the committee, he too expressed his observation that Bill C-12 added nothing to the process and procedures currently in use with respect to the parole of offenders. He stated:

The window of opportunity targeted by this bill is very narrow....As members might be aware, the parole board already takes into consideration positive urinalysis results or refusal to provide a sample when making parole eligibility decisions. The board also frequently imposes a “do not consume” or “abstain from drugs and alcohol” prohibition on those on parole or statutory release and temporary absences. Bill C-12 would simply put these practices into legislation.

The Office of the Correctional Investigator, whose specific role is the environment within which federal offenders are maintained and hopefully rehabilitated, has issued report after report with direct reference to the issue of drug use within our federal institutions.

Again, with respect to Bill C-12, the Correctional Investigator was clear about the obvious intent motivating the legislation. He said:

—Bill C-12 contemplates cancelling a parole grant on the basis of a positive drug test regardless of when the drug was ingested. Without condoning drug use, we should be clear-sighted about the consequences of proposed legal measures. This is not about making federal prisons drug-free or treating substance abuse. It is about punishing illicit drug use in prison.

That is a pretty serious charge from the Correctional Investigator. It is about punishment; it is not about cure. We will not make prisons drug-free unless we find ways to establish a cure.

I would remind the government that the objective of drug-free prisons is not something that the legislation before us would even faintly achieve.

In its 2011-12 annual report, the Office of the Correctional Investigator made the following observation with respect to the prevalence of drugs within our federal prisons. It reads:

A “zerotolerance” stance to drugs in prison, while perhaps serving as an effective deterrent posted at the entry point of a penitentiary, simply does not accord with the facts of crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

According to that same annual report of the Correctional Investigator, “Almost two-thirds of federal offenders report being under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants when they committed the offence that led to their incarceration”. The current population is about 15,000, so that would mean about 10,000 people. However, what is more disturbing is that a very high percentage of the offender population that abuses drugs is also concurrently struggling with mental illness.

My point in raising these facts is that it is a much bigger issue than urine testing. As the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca said earlier, it is a health issue. It is a huge issue in our society and in our prisons. We have to use programming that actually deals with the addiction problem to get to the bottom of this issue.

Yes, these people in prison have committed a crime, but in most cases, they will come out and be on our streets again. How do we give them the best opportunity to become good citizens and contribute to our economy, raise families and live in communities? That is what we should focus on here and not just the punishment aspect that the bill tries to portray.

The Correctional Investigator in his 2013-14 annual report was critical of the government's continued refusal to develop a comprehensive program to respond to continued drug use in penitentiaries and to undermining a key program within Correctional Services Canada, CSC, to address the addiction program

With respect to the former, the report found that:

Interdiction and suppression in the absence of a more comprehensive range of treatment, prevention and harm reduction measures will not eliminate the demand (or supply) of contraband drugs or alcohol.

According to the evidence provided to the public safety committee by the commissioner for CSC, upon admission, “about 80% of offenders arrive with a serious substance abuse problem”. He went on to inform the committee that anywhere up to 90% of a standing prison population would have a lifetime problem of substance misuse or dependence and that “this dependency does not magically disappear when they arrive at our gates”, meaning the prison gates.

Members can see how big the issue really is.

The critical issue then is that of therapy for those incarcerated with substance abuse problems. On this point, the record is clear. Again, the Correctional Investigator confirmed in his testimony before the committee that “We've seen a decrease in the actual dollars being spent on substance abuse programming this year over last year”. I want to emphasize that quote because it is something the parliamentary secretary earlier indicated might have been untruthful.

Let us call the bill for what it is. Unless the addiction issue is addressed, a problem acknowledged by public safety itself, titling a bill a drug-free prison act is really an act of fraud. It is deception, deception to the core. A drug-free prison act means nothing. The only way to get drug-free prisons is if we do the programming inside prisons. CSC admits 80% of the people have a drug or alcohol addiction before they come into the prison. That may have been part of the reason why they did the crime that put them there in the first place, or there may have been other background issues.

Yes, they have to do their time and pay the penalty and pay the price to society for the crime that they undertook, but if we are to have a better society as a country, we have to make prisons places of rehabilitation, not universities for crime. Make them places of rehabilitation that these individuals can come out, be gainfully employed and contribute to our society.

I am running out of time, but let me make one last point. I want to emphasize the fact that we will support the bill. The bill will not do any harm because the Parole Board still has discretion at the end of the day, although there will be some pressure on the Parole Board as a result of the legislation maybe to deny parole where it otherwise might not have. However, the bill will not do a whole lot of harm, but it sure as heck will not do a whole lot of good either.

I would encourage the government to do this. Instead of giving bills fancy titles and taking up House and committee time with a bill that really would do very little, it would be better off to come in with rehabilitation programs for individuals, stronger programs, to get off drug and alcohol addiction so when they have done their time, they can contribute to society in a way that will help our economy and communities. The objective ought to be that.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, when we studied Bill C-12 in committee, witnesses noted that many individuals who find themselves incarcerated have committed serious crimes, in many cases connected to serious drug addiction and other types of illicit drug abuse. The minister mentioned this at the start of his speech.

In committee, we also heard that it was important that the bill would put the onus back on the offender to really take advantage of some of those programs available, and to ensure that when they are eligible for parole, they leave prison and go back into the community drug free. I think most Canadians would agree that someone who finds himself in jail as a result of crimes or drug addictions should leave the penitentiary, or that system, drug free.

Therefore, my question for the minister is two-fold. The bill would ensure that offenders know that these tests are being done. First, does he feel that informing inmates of the ramifications of continuing use of illicit drugs would change their decisions so they would be eligible for parole and be able to be integrated into society?

Second, if we did not pass legislation like this, if we did not have programs in place but simply turned a blind eye to this type of problem in our penitentiaries, what would be the success rate of offenders being reintegrated into society and capable of holding down jobs and contributing to the economic prosperity of the country?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, like the critic from the NDP, I too wondered if the minister was really talking about a different bill than Bill C-12, in the way he basically painted it all out of proportion. The bill's title shows the kind of deception that comes forth from the government. The drug-free prisons bill is not going to make prisons drug free.

The minister, in answer to a question, said that the bill was to empower the offender to get free of drugs. The Correctional Investigator, in his 2011-12 annual report, said the following, which I think is the way one empowers an offender:

...a comprehensive and integrated drug strategy should include a balance of measures— prevention, treatment, harm reduction and interdiction.

Will the minister come forward with a program in this area? Does the minister not agree that to really make prisons drug free, these are the kinds of programs that we need, rather than just more punishment, that we really need a drug strategy in prisons to assist people to get off drugs, rather than just penalties?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak this afternoon to Bill C-12, which seeks to eradicate drugs from our federal penitentiaries.

From the outset, I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for studying and adopting this legislative measure. It is an important measure for fighting the use and presence of illicit drugs in our federal penitentiaries and holding offenders responsible for their actions. I am pleased to see that the committee recognized the importance of moving forward with this legislative measure.

Drug use and abuse in our federal prisons is a serious and pervasive problem, one that cannot be solved overnight. It may seem logical that prisons ought to be free from drugs, but unfortunately this is not the case. The reality is that 75% of offenders are entering Canadian federal prisons with a substance abuse problem. Moreover, almost half of all federal offenders are serving sentences for crimes that are directly related to their substance abuse, so the reality is that when offenders enter our federal penitentiaries, they have a serious drug addiction problem. Rehabilitation helps those offenders to get rid of their drug addictions. That is why Correctional Service of Canada launched a program to eliminate and eradicate drugs in prisons. It has been in place since in 2008.

When Correctional Service Canada launched its transformation program in 2008, one of its priorities was to eliminate drugs in its institutions.

The goal is simple: put an end to drug smuggling in federal penitentiaries. There are two benefits to getting drugs out of our federal penitentiaries: It will make penitentiaries safer for the staff and, of course, it will help our inmates in their rehabilitation.

Drugs and other contraband in our federal prisons cause a serious security problem for our correctional officers. Offenders who are often under the influence of drugs are more erratic, unpredictable, and often violent toward correctional officers, themselves, and other inmates. This destabilizes the institutions and puts the men and women on the front lines at risk.

Drug paraphernalia causes another layer of risk. Needles in the hands of prisoners simply give another weapon to prisoners seeking to harm our front-line personnel. If I may digress for a moment, this shows just how foolhardy an approach the NDP has taken by seeking to establish a needle exchange in prisons. Is it naïveté or hubris that the NDP believes these easily concealed needles would not cause a risk to front-line staff?

Our correctional officers play a key role in the correctional system. They maintain the safety of our federal penitentiaries while monitoring the offenders, supervising them and interacting with them. Regardless of the nature of their clients, the inmates, and their place of work, correctional officers deserve to work in a safe place where their integrity will not be not adversely affected and where they will feel safe.

Removing drugs from our federal prisons contributes to that goal and by so doing, we are also helping offenders successfully reintegrate into society. Some of them have to take a drug treatment program as part of their correctional plan. If they do not have access to drugs when they are incarcerated, their chances of success are greatly increased. This helps reduce the demand for drugs and ensures that these offenders are making progress toward a successful rehabilitation.

As in a legitimate economy, when demand drops, so does supply. Supply adapts to demand. This formula also works in our federal prisons. By putting an end to drug smuggling in these institutions, we can ensure that offenders are successful in their drug treatment program. Success in these programs will result in a lower demand for drugs and, therefore, a drop in supply.

Ultimately, removing drugs from our federal prisons will help keep Canadians safe. With this goal in mind, our Conservative government has implemented a number of measures to directly target drugs inside our prison walls. We have seen great progress on a number of fronts, progress that has been recognized by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in its report following its 2012 study on drugs in federal prisons.

For example, Correctional Service Canada adopted a consistent approach to manage all of the main entrances and vehicle service entrances, which provide access to penitentiaries.

Correctional Service Canada has increased the number of teams of sniffer dogs. We have also brought in new equipment to improve scanning for visitors and other people who go in and out of federal prisons every day.

Correctional Service Canada has also developed a national database for monitoring and tracking visitors. These are practical tools to control the movement of people and goods entering penitentiaries to keep drugs out.

Correctional Service of Canada has also expanded its random urinalysis testing of offenders to reduce the availability and consumption of drugs inside institutions. In fact, since 2013 CSC has been carrying out random urinalysis testing on 10% of offenders every month, increasing the chances that all offenders will be subject to a random test each year.

All of these measures directly support the efforts made to make prisons a secure environment in which corrections staff are safer and in which offenders can focus on rehabilitation. The Drug-Free Prisons Act is another step towards achieving that objective.

Earlier I mentioned that Correctional Service Canada was increasingly using random urine sample screenings to effectively target offenders over the course of a year. The measure we are implementing is based on that work. It will amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to give Correctional Service Canada and the Parole Board of Canada new powers so that they can use data taken from the urine sample screenings to hold offenders responsible for their actions.

Essentially, if an inmate's urine sample tests positive for the presence of drugs, there will be consequences with both Correctional Service Canada and the parole process, since this inmate is clearly not ready to reintegrate into society.

Under the legislation, the Parole Board would have the explicit authority to cancel an offender's parole if the offender fails a urine test between the time at which he or she is granted parole and the time he or she physically leaves the penitentiary.

It is important to note that any offender who refuses to take a urine test during this time is considered to have failed the test. In this way, there is no loophole that an offender could slip through. The onus falls fully on the shoulders of the offender to ensure that he or she stays clear of drugs in order to be released on parole.

The bill would also stipulate the Parole Board's authority to set specific conditions for an offender as part of his or her parole in relation to an offender's use of drugs or alcohol. In other words, it could impose a condition that the offender must completely abstain from all drug or alcohol use while on parole.

These two amendments will strongly encourage inmates and former inmates to make better decisions and to abstain from drugs over the course of their incarceration and parole. This is all part of the objective of making Canadians safer.

Ultimately, the concept of the bill is simple. By providing drug-free prisons, we would be helping offenders work toward successful paroles and reducing recidivism, and ultimately there would be fewer drugs on our streets.

I appeared in front of the committee on public safety and was pleased to see the bill receive positive support, so I hope the bill can proceed quickly at report stage and pass without further amendment so that we can take another step towards freeing our penitentiaries of drugs by providing tools to the Correctional Service of Canada so that it can move in that direction.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There is one motion in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-12.

The sponsor has indicated that she will not be proceeding with her motion. Consequently, there will be no motions at report stage. The House will now proceed without debate to the putting of the question to concur in the bill at report stage.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-12, the Drug-Free Prisons Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start out by thanking the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for his intervention yesterday. He rose on a point of order that his privileges were denied by security, by the RCMP, he said, in particular. Today he rose in this House to indicate that a discussion had taken place and that the matter had been settled.

As I said, his original point of privilege suggested that it was the RCMP who had stopped him, and in fact, that was not the case. It was, in fact, Senate security services. The member has spoken with them and met with them and has accepted the explanation. That is in the spirit I was attempting to capture yesterday when I said that as we go through this process of managing the changes that are happening here, as the House and Senate security forces are integrated and as we ask the RCMP to do more on the Hill, and we are, hopefully, in a motion, going to deal with other stuff, we have to work together with our partners. We all have an obligation to work together to help them do their job of protecting us. I am pleased that the matter has been brought to a close.

This afternoon we will finish debating today's motion from the NDP. Tomorrow, we will debate government Motion No. 14, standing in the name of the chief government whip, respecting an integrated security force for the parliamentary precinct and the grounds of Parliament Hill.

If additional time is needed, we will resume that debate after our constituency week, on the afternoon of Monday, February 16. Earlier in the day—Monday—before question period, we will start the second reading debate on Bill S-7, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.

On Tuesday, February 17, we will start the day with report stage on Bill S-2, the Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act. After question period, we will switch to Bill C-12, the Drug-Free Prisons Act, at report stage and third reading, now that the Public Safety Committee has wrapped up its study of the proposed legislation.

On Wednesday, February 18, we will start second reading debate on Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism act, 2015. These measures would provide Canadian law enforcement and national security agencies with additional tools and flexibility to keep pace with evolving threats and to better protect Canadians here at home. That debate will continue the following day.

Finally, on Friday, February 20, we will complete third reading of Bill C-32, the victims bill of rights act, our government's proposal to put victims at the heart of our justice system. It will be the 10th day that this bill has been discussed on the floor of the House, not to mention that it was thoroughly studied by the hard-working justice committee throughout this autumn. It is time that law came into place for the benefit of victims.

Public Safety and National Security

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in relation to Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. The committee studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House without amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Yes.

No reprint is necessary as there are no alterations.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the end of Bill C-12.

The chair is prepared to adjourn for the day unless the committee wishes to consider other business at this time.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I'm going to support clause 5, but just to make the point, Mr. Chair, as was said at the last committee meeting the bill really does nothing. It's more smoke and mirrors so that the government can try to portray that they're really doing something for drug-free prisons. As was very well discussed at the last meeting, we need to make every effort to ensure prisons are drug free. There's no question about that, but this piece of paper, this Bill C-12, is not going to enhance that ability in any way.

Therefore, while I'm supportive of the legislation, I also realize at the same time that it's not really going to do anything substantive. It's just smoke and mirrors.