Bill C-83 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and another Act

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to, among other things,
(a) eliminate the use of administrative segregation and disciplinary segregation;
(b) authorize the Commissioner to designate a penitentiary or an area in a penitentiary as a structured intervention unit for the confinement of inmates who cannot be maintained in the mainstream inmate population for security or other reasons;
(c) provide less invasive alternatives to physical body cavity searches;
(d) affirm that the Correctional Service of Canada has the obligation to support the autonomy and clinical independence of registered health care professionals;
(e) provide that the Correctional Service of Canada has the obligation to provide inmates with access to patient advocacy services;
(f) provide that the Correctional Service of Canada has an obligation to consider systemic and background factors unique to Indigenous offenders in all decision-making; and
(g) improve victims’ access to audio recordings of parole hearings.
This enactment also amends the English version of a provision of the Criminal Records Act.

Corrections and Conditional Release Act

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, could my hon. colleague please comment on the importance of getting the debate finished in this place and get it to committee where experts can present testimony that may see some amendments come forward before the bill returns to the House?

[MaryAnn Mihychuk, Liberal, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we know that when we work well together, our committees can be extremely effective. We will hear from those who have worked in the system, who have studied the system and who can provide expert advice.

Also, committees have the ability to bring forward amendments that can better a bill for all of us. I look forward to seeing whether the committee looks at amending it, but committees have an extremely important role.

I urge all members in the House to conclude the first debates on the bill and move it forward to committee, where there are active representatives from the Conservative and NDP sides and where we often allow those who are independent to participate. Therefore, I look forward to the results of the committee. I urge members to move forward.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the last question and comment give me an opportunity to talk about something I was going to talk about anyway. We just had the spectacle of two Liberal members of Parliament bragging about the fact that they were cutting off the debate in the House of Commons. They say that there has just been too much debate and that it has gone on too long.

The bill has not even been printed for a week. It has been before the House for less than three days. After the second day, it was enough. The Liberals had heard enough from members of Parliament and the Canadians we represent. It was just too much and members needed to get it out of the House as quickly as possible. This is from a party and a government which cried every time the previous government allocated the time for debate. It said that it would never do it if it was ever in government.

The hypocrisy of the member for Avalon is a spectacle we can all see today. He campaigned on it, and today he is cheerleading for the fact. He is heckling me during my speech while I try to talk about the concerns of my constituents. Two days in the House before the Liberals cut-off debate. The bill has not even been available to be studied for an entire week and we are under time allocation.

Why should we be surprised that the Liberals do not want to consult with members of Parliament on this? They have not consulted with the representatives of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers who will be directly impacted by the bill. They have not consulted with the guards.

[An hon. member]

Not true.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

I continue to get heckled from the other side. Apparently, the Liberals do not want to hear any debate, let alone cut it off after just three days debate.

The members of UCCO have been very clear that Liberal politicians in Ottawa are not the ones who have to go in and breakup a fight. Inmates of a what the Liberals now call a “structured intervention unit” inevitably have conflicts. These are people who cannot manage themselves in the general population of a prison. They are typically people who are the worst of the worst. In the debate, I mentioned people like Willie Picton. Clifford Olson also spent his life in segregation, where he should have been. That is where Willie Picton should be. Instead of talking about that, the Liberals are saying we should be talking about reintegrating these people into society.

Some people can be reintegrated, and we support that. Some people need to stay in segregation for the rest of their natural lives. Legislation is being proposed which will not allow for that. The Liberals blame it on the courts that this has to come forward, while they the decision is being appealed. They have not even said that this court ruling will stand. They are trying to have it overturned at higher levels, yet here we are with legislation jammed down our throats, legislation about which the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers is very concerned. It is its members who will be put at risk. Its members are the ones who have to deal with the most prolific offenders, offenders who have committed additional crimes inside the prison and who are often placed in segregation for their own protection.

The member for St. Albert—Edmonton laid out very clearly the substantial supports that were available for people in segregation. They receive mental health visits, visits from the institutional head, from the guards and health visits as well. This idea that they are locked in a dark cell and are cut-off from human contact is simply not true.

The bill now calls for meaningful human contact for two hours a day. I would like to know what that looks like for Robert Picton. What does that look like for Terri-Lynne McClintic? What is meaningful human contact when she is already receiving mental health services? She is already receiving phone calls to her family and is allowed to have visitors. Now it will be legislated meaningful human contact. This is very interesting.

The Liberals have not consulted with UCCO or victims of crime, which is par for the course. They did not consult with the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers when they brought forward their ridiculous prison needle exchange program idea. Prisoners in maximum-security facilities, prisoners who often spend much of their day trying to fashion weapons to use against other inmates or against guards when necessary, would be given needles in their cells as a right of an inmate. The Liberals are now forcing that on our prisons and our prisons guards. Also, they would be given spoons so they could heat up their drugs and inject them intravenously, spoons that no doubt are part of a kit that has to stay in the cell but can be used as a weapon.

All of these things are clear to anyone who has been in a prison, who has had a tour of a prison or who has talked to a single prison guard. They know this is a ridiculous proposition, but the Liberals do not care. They do not consult with the actual front-line workers. Instead, they come up with these pie-in-the-sky ideas in their ivory towers in Ottawa and tell the workers on the ground, the people who deal with sharks in the prison, that they will have deal with this now.

Never mind that it is the mandate of a prison guard to ensure there are no illegal drugs in the prison. We will have a situation where there will be illegal drugs in a cell, guards will have to search the cell, but will have to set aside the government-mandated safe injection kit to look for the illegal drugs, which they then will take away. What a ridiculous proposal. That is what the government is defending. The government does not talk to the people who are actually impacted by these decisions.

Again, we have many concerns with the bill.

The member for Malpeque said that we should not legislate based on the exceptional cases. If the legislation does not capture the exceptional cases, what good is it? If we do not allow for prison guards and prison officials to have the ability to have disciplinary segregation when people are endangering guards, other inmates or themselves, what is the point? We simply put people at additional risk.

We support a few parts of the bill. We support giving the audio to victims. We support body scanners and think that should be expanded to ensure there is no contraband in prison. The minister said in his speech on the bill, “Keeping contraband out of correctional facilities would help make institutions as safe and secure as possible.” Therefore, we will have body scanners to keep those bad drugs out of those prisons, but we will give needles and spoons to the prisoners to ensure they can inject those life-altering drugs as soon as possible and as safely as possible. How about we just keep the drugs out of the prison? How about we double down on that effort?

I am glad the heckling continues from the Liberals who love debate in this place.

The government once again thinks it knows best. It is not going to take any guidance from the people who work in these prisons.

One of the highest populations of corrections officials and prison guards live in my riding and work in the many institutions around it. In the Pacific region, there is the Pacific Institution, Kent Institution, Matsqui Institution, Mountain Institution, Mission Institution, the Kwìkwèxwelhp Healing Village and the Fraser Valley Institute for Women. I have these people in my office all the time talking about this failed approach from the government. However, this is a government that thinks it knows best. It is a government that is ignoring their concerns and is not dealing with the actual concerns of Canadians.

When we saw that there was a bill on notice to deal with corrections, we hoped it would deal with the ridiculous situation where Tori Stafford's murderer could be transferred down to a minimum-security facility. We hoped it would give the tools, which we believe it has already, and clarify, with this proposed legislation, that someone like Terri-Lynne McClintic would not be in a minimum-security prison. Instead, the government modified it in the bill to allow the minister to allow corrections officials to designate a single cell in a minimum-security facility as a maximum-security cell. Therefore, there would be no fences, locks, segregation, nothing, but room 102 would be declared as a maximum-security cell in a minimum-security prison.

The government has failed to consult with victims, failed to consult with corrections officers and for that reason we should reject the legislation.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I regret that it is unlikely that we will find a compromise on this issue given the fact that Liberals do not believe in the Conservative ideology around prisons and locking offenders up and throwing away the key, as if that somehow were going to resolve the problems we have. The truth of the matter is, whether on this issue or prison farms, the Conservatives have always had that ideology. Where does that lead? It leads toward the system we see in the United States where we end up with super prisons and four times as many people locked up as we did decades ago.

The member specifically asked, how about it if we just kept the drugs out of the hands of inmates? It seems simple enough, but over 10 years the Conservatives were not able to do that. As a matter of fact, if they had been able to do that, we would not be having this conversation right now. Why was the former government not able to keep the drugs out of the hands of the inmates, if it is so simple and he suggests that we should be doing it?

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the fearmongering question by the member opposite when he talked about locking them up and throwing away the key. I am surprised he did not say “three strikes, you're out“. As to super prisons, we were used to that kind of rhetoric from the Liberals when they were in opposition, when they would say that because of our criminal justice reforms we would have to build new prisons, that there would be double bunking otherwise, and all the rest of that nonsense.

What we actually found during our time in office is that people were deterred from committing crimes because they did not want to go to prison. Our agenda was to provide deterrence. I do not understand the Liberal mentality of wanting to wish away the types of people who are in prison. Yes, there are some who can be rehabilitated, but the Liberals want to gloss over the fact that there are serial killers, serial rapists, people who will never set foot in public again in the prison system. They want to wish that system away. Yes, our government had no tolerance for drugs in prison policy. We think it is the right policy and the Liberals should stop sending mixed messages by making our guards keep prisons drug-free while handing out drug paraphernalia at the same time.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's excellent speech magnifies this soft on crime approach by the Liberals, but he brought something up that is very concerning to me. I live in a community with a lot of unions and workers and there seems to be a pattern here. The Liberals did it with marijuana, and with this bill they have not consulted the workers to make sure they would have a safe workplace.

Could the member elaborate on the lack of consultation for this bill, because it seems the government wants to throw a blind eye to the fact that people are working in extremely dangerous environments? Could he comment on how important it is to consult with the people on the ground, because it could be somebody's life that is being affected here?

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals do not consult on these things because they think they know best. They think they have all the solutions and they have come up with these things in a boardroom and a bull pit session and think they know how they can make this better for someone who might be in segregation. However, what they have not done is talked to the actual union officials.

Many of us met with UCCO last week about the prison needle exchange program. Correctional officers do not even have protective gloves that can stop needle stick injuries. They are not protected from inmates who would weaponize a contaminated needle to use against them or someone else, but this is being forced on correctional facilities. It is being jammed down their throats because the Ottawa Liberals know best. They have come up with these policies in a vacuum. They should talk to the people who are actually going to be impacted and put at risk before they come up with these cockamamie schemes.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time. I will bring some perspective to this debate dating back to October 2004, when I first came to the House. At the time, it was the tail end of a minority government.

We did not deal too much with legislation that addressed crime and other matters as such. I remember when the Conservatives came to power in 2006. They came in on a wave of their getting tough on crime and criminals. Over the years, to say it has been a mixed bag of success is to be somewhat generous. I do not mean that in a harsh or partisan way, but in a way that reflects that it is somewhat disappointing that we never had a decent conversation about crime, and certainly not about rehabilitation. Crime had become a superficial way of trying to gain popularity and votes. I say this not against the Conservatives specifically, but the debate has drifted in that direction. I think the tag line was “Do the crime, do the time.”

The problem is that we had seen what happens in jurisdictions around the world, and especially in the United States, where they truly used it, amping it up to the point where it became absolutely deafening, to the point where it was a matter of “Lock them up and throw away the key.” I mean nothing specific by that.

I will say, however, that tag line was used quite a bit. Unfortunately, we now find that so many people in the United States who originally used that as a way of gaining popularity and a way of pushing forward a very good public policy are now winding back some, but not all, of that. I am sure some of it worked out in the end. In many cases, there were a lot of people in the system who deserved to be in the system and should continue to be in the system, and that worked.

However, we realized over the years that a lot of people should not be in the system that long and were not given the tools to go back into society. There are people in society who do not belong in society. I get it. I think we all get that. However, there are people in the system administered by CSC who will go back into society. Who will that person be coming back into society, as opposed to who they were when they left society and went to prison for the first time? It is us who make the decisions to be there for the people who help rehabilitate the criminals.

I understand, on this particular legislation, that there are opinions on both sides of it, people who like what we say, and others who say that we need to look at furthering this debate about rehabilitating a person who has been incarcerated and is now going back into society. It takes several steps to get to that point. There are many examples around the world that we could use to get back to that point.

We also have the court system, which has pointed out that the old system has discrepancies that we need to fix, like solitary confinement. Let us look at the concept of solitary confinement for just a moment, the separation of someone from others for the safety of everyone involved. To a great extent, that has to happen within the system.

I have never worked in the prison system. I have never been in prison myself. However, I certainly know enough about the situation. Over the past 14 years, I have certainly heard enough about those who feel that rehabilitation in the prison service is deficient in many ways, federally and provincially in many cases. In my opinion, Bill C-83 is a way to take a step, so that when people go back into society, they will not be the same people who went into the prison. It is incumbent upon us to have that wide debate.

Now, we want to do several things in this particular bill, which I will point out.

This legislation proposes to eliminate segregation, following recent court decisions, as I pointed out. It introduces more effective structured intervention units. It proposes better support for victims during Parole Board hearings and it proposes increasing staff and inmate safety with new body scanner technology. Bill C-83 proposes to update our approach to critical matters like mental health supports and indigenous offenders' needs, as well as the needs of the general population.

What CSC really needs is the authority to separate offenders from the general population for the sake of institutional safety.

While someone is segregated in solitary confinement, there is still a way that we can reach that person to effect a major change. Therefore, there is a minimum. Yes, we do segregate that person from the general population for the safety of the institution, but we also need to provide the structure so that we can tackle the problem in a responsible and mature manner. This is what the SIUs this legislation introduces are about. Four hours of human contact could alleviate the problem.

The problem may have started with a particular person. I am not blaming anyone else. However we must look for the reason why that person needs to be segregated. Why is the individual like that? We need to make sure that it does not happen again. In order to do that, as the courts have pointed out, human contact is needed, which would make the situation it that much better for the institution itself and for the prison population in general.

For many years CSC has been criticized for the practice of administrative segregation, better known as solitary confinement. The case of Ashley Smith is a good example. Ashley died in custody in 2007. Her case highlighted issues related to segregation and mental health care in the Canadian correctional system.

In 2013, a coroner's inquest into the death of Ashley Smith resulted in recommendations, one of which was instituting a cap on the amount of time an inmate can spend in segregation. We realized from that case alone in 2007 that there was a problem and that we needed to go further.

We need to protect institutions and instill institutional safety by taking an inmate from the general population. But then what? What is the right answer?

The right answer involves our listening to the experts who have to deal with these people every day. I know they are on different sides in this particular step that we want to take, but it is our responsibility to have this debate and send the bill to committee so that opposition members who have some concerns can make the proper amendments.

We must remember that key here is the fact that a lot of these people will face society once again. We want to make sure that an individual who goes back into society is not the same person who went into prison.

We know these people through families, through friends, through contacts who have been in prison and had a rough time. We hear about them all the time. That is one of the major things that happened in 2007 with the case of Ashley Smith.

The number of inmates in segregation on any given day in 2011 was over 700. It is now about 340. Why is that the case? We need to explore the reason why.

As we look for answers to this particular situation, I realize that these units, these SIUs, are not the perfect answer for everyone involved in the system, including the guards.

My support for Bill C-83 comes from my understanding of the need to take that step of providing human contact to protect society at large. Of course, there are people here on both sides of the issue. We need to have a debate here and the bill sent to committee so that we can look at any amendments that might be brought forward.

I thank everyone involved in this debate. I also thank the superior courts of both British Columbia and Ontario for helping us guide the way.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, many times throughout this debate we have asked the governing party why it did not consult with correctional officers, who have some serious concerns about their own safety while providing the kind of services they do for all Canadians.

My question this time is more related to the member's inference that a committee will study this legislation and that amendments will be presented at committee. The member inferred that the committee would be open to considering amendments. However the track record of the Liberal government is not that great when it comes to being open to accepting good amendments put forward by opposition members.

I want assurance from my colleague that when these amendments are brought forward, amendments that are backed by correctional officers who are concerned about their safety, the committee will in fact give them due consideration.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, yes.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is very encouraging to hear a straightforward answer, a rare thing in this place, and that the answer is “yes”.

I will be presenting amendments. I certainly want to be listening carefully to the evidence before committee because we have already heard some very strong concerns from people who have given their lives in dedication to this field.

I have mentioned, for instance, Senator Kim Pate, who used to run the Elizabeth Fry Society in Canada before becoming a senator. I will just quote what she said in her statement, “Changing the Name of the Unit Is Not Enough”. She suggests that this new structured intervention unit appears to be “rebranding” of what is currently done, but with fewer limitations on how frequently it can be used.

I would like to hope that that is not the government's intent. Therefore, I will ask my friend again if, in openness to amendments, we can be absolutely certain that this ends the kinds of torturous ordeals that particularly discriminate against racialized, marginalized and indigenous women in prison.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for bringing this up, especially with regard to the indigenous dimension of this. I did not bring it up in my speech and I apologize. However, certainly there is a higher proportion of the population who find themselves in that situation.

I hear what she is saying about the amendments she is bringing forward. I know her situation within the context of a committee and her position itself. I am assuming she will be there. I have no doubt it will be debated thoroughly whether I am there or not, not that I have any domain over it but members get the idea.

Nevertheless, the unit that the hon member brought up to me right now, and the flexibility within it, provides that human contact. The certain situations that other people have spoken about, I cannot speak to as I did not see their comments. However, I will say this. The human contact aspect of this to me is very essential. It is a central part of a system that is backed up, of course, by court decisions.

In this particular case where are we looking at an institution that does not provide any human contact whatsoever, which is really incumbent upon solitary confinement, really, we should put ourselves into the 21st century when it comes to dealing with rehabilitation and human contact to benefit society as a whole.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for our hon. colleague.

I just want to know, first, if the changes in Bill C-83 have been fully costed. As well, how is the government going to measure the deliverables outlined in Bill C-83?