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

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I think that our current prison system is generally safe. Yes, correctional officers have legitimate demands, but it is also important to remember that a great deal of their dissatisfaction is due to the previous Conservative government's actions.

The repeated, abusive and prolonged use of administrative segregation is not a solution for dealing with recalcitrant inmates. If 50% of them have mental health problems, it is more of a health issue than a judicial issue. I think that there are other ways to address this issue. Prolonged administrative segregation can trigger or aggravate certain psychiatric symptoms, such as hallucinations, panic attacks, paranoia, depression, impulsiveness, hypersensitivity to external stimuli, self-harm, insomnia, and problems with thinking, concentration and memory. Putting these inmates into such a situation increases the safety risks for correctional officers.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, tomorrow is the 11th anniversary of the death of Ashley Smith. This is a tragic story that was broadcast across the entire country. Having been moved from one stage of the criminal justice system and Canada's jail system, Ashley died alone in solitary confinement without the protections that Canada offered her. This happened 11 years ago and here we are still.

As of June 2017, 399 federal inmates were in administrative segregation, including 94 who have been in isolation for more than 90 consecutive days. Between April 2011 and March 2014, 14 inmates died by suicide in solitary confinement.

The 2014-15 report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator reported the overuse of solitary confinement as a tool for managing the inmate population. Twenty-seven per cent of the inmate population experienced at least one stay in solitary confinement.

This overly affects some incarcerated groups more than others, including women with mental health issues, aboriginal inmates and black inmates.

Aboriginal inmates continue to have the longest average stay in segregation compared to any other group and represent approximately 46% of inmates in segregation.

The average segregation period is 24 days according to Correctional Services Canada.

Why does this matter? How does it harm?

In the spring, the status of women committee of which I am vice-chair studied the over-incarceration rates of indigenous women in prison, their experience in the justice system and their experience in jail.

Here are a few quotes and stats from that report.

The 2006 report of Correctional Services Canada, which is called “Ten-Year Status Report on Women’s Corrections” said:

Segregation tends to have a significant impact on women offenders. Generally speaking, women are linked to each other through relationships and the isolation of segregation, combined with the crisis or stress the woman is experiencing, can take its toll.

We heard testimony on February 1 from Ms. Virginia Lomax, legal counsel for the Native Women's Association of Canada, who said:

Segregation is a particularly cruel practice for women with histories of trauma and abuse, another area in which indigenous women are overrepresented. Their specific lived experiences of colonial patriarchy, intergenerational trauma, and state violence makes them particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of isolation.

...Prohibiting the use of segregation for prisoners who are actively self-harming is an acknowledgement that the practice should not be used to manage mental health crises, but does nothing to address the fact that segregation itself is often the cause of escalating self-harm behaviours.

For these reasons and many others, the Native Women's Association of Canada calls for a complete end to the practice of solitary confinement by any name and for any duration.

Dr. Ivan Zinger of the Office of the Correctional Investigator said in testimony at committee on February 2 of this year:

The impact of segregation is also something that we've identified. The great majority of the women incarcerated in secure units have experienced segregation. There's also a gender-based classification system, which requires that some inmates who are seen as higher risk are handcuffed and sometimes shackled to go off the unit, which creates all sorts of problems for those women.

In response to a question I asked him about how Correctional Services Canada treats women prisoners in need of emergency health care in the Pacific region, he said:

The practice of taking a woman with acute mental illness and putting her into an all-male institution, completely isolated, all alone in a unit, is shameful and a violation of human rights. I think there is no room for this in Canada.

It has to be said that these women were tried and are in jail for a reason that the justice system identified. We certainly heard a lot of testimony. They said that they were themselves usually victims of crime before they entered the criminal justice system.

We absolutely do need to protect victims and we need to see justice be done in cases of violent crime.

Many times we heard from witnesses that they want these people to end up on the other side of the criminal justice system better than they started and some of the practices described tell us otherwise.

This is an important debate about solitary confinement.

This is what the NDP recommended. In our final report to the government, tabled here in June, we quoted Ivan Zinger, the correctional investigator of Canada. He said:

I sincerely believe that in a women's facility, you could de facto abolish the practice altogether, if you used those secure units with the same sort of rigour in making it a last resort and using those secure units to separate, and not isolate, the few cases that you need to deal with for a short period of time.

The United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, who monitors Canada to see whether it is upholding its commitments to the United Nations, said:

... I would like to call for an absolute ban on solitary confinement, segregation, intensive psychiatric care, medical observation and all other related forms of isolation of incarcerated young women and women with mental health issues.

The NDP said, in its final report to the government:

It is shocking that instead of moving forward with reform, the Liberal government appealed the BC Supreme Court ruling against solitary confinement, choosing to spend taxpayers' money fighting the BC Civil Liberties Association in court instead of implementing reforms to help indigenous women in prison.

What did we get? The government tabled on Monday, Bill C-83. It tweaks administrative segregation, or solitary confinement, and rebrands it with different wording. It retains much of the same language and the framework that is used for administrative segregation. It ignores the rulings from the B.C. Supreme Court and the Ontario Superior Court that ruled that administrative segregation was unconstitutional. It failed to give an option for independent oversight for decisions to further restrict liberties of inmates by transferring them into the renamed segregation units. Instead of spending 22 to 23 hours a day in segregation in the current system, the new scheme proposes up to 20 hours a day for an indefinite period of time. The Ontario Superior Court had already found that the harmful effects of sensory deprivation can manifest in as little as 48 hours.

Finally, in a critique, the Supreme Court ruled that the indefinite nature of isolation is again unconstitutional, although the federal government, as I said earlier, is currently trying to appeal that decision.

This morning, at the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund breakfast in honour of Persons Day, we heard a presentation from Senator Kim Pate, who flagged that, in addition, sections 21, 81 and 84 are all interfered with in Bill C-83. These were all mechanisms, enshrined in law, that allowed prisoners to be moved to different levels of care to carry out parts of their sentence, whether that was in the community or it was a healing lodge. There were three different tools. All of them had been underutilized, hardly used at all. Senator Pate, in her previous role with Elizabeth Fry and now as a senator, had been drawing attention to them. Both the public security committee of this Parliament and also the status of women committee had studied those three provisions and made recommendations on them and, strangely, they are now gutted in this bill. It is a funny coincidence.

The representative of the Elizabeth Fry Society said, “While we have advocated for decades for the abolition of administrative segregation, Bill C-83 leaves much to be desired.”

I say, with sadness, New Democrats wanted to see real reform. We have made specific proposals on what that would look like. The government has rebranded this unconstitutional practice instead of doing what the court ordered.

I will leave with a reminder. More than one in three women in federal prisons is indigenous; 91% have histories of abuse; and many also experience debilitating mental illnesses. We have to end the use of segregation and solitary confinement. We will oppose this bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, one of my colleagues asked the member's colleague a question about voting for the bill. He responded by saying something to the effect that the Liberals have a majority government and thereby, having a majority government, we will be able to get the bill going to committee.

If I try to better understand that comment, it is almost saying that as the New Democratic Party, the members are opposing the bill but they hope it goes to committee so they can change it. I would like to get clarification from the NDP on whether the New Democrats support those initiatives that are within the legislation, that stand today. Yes, I understand the New Democrats want amendments, but would they be prepared to support the current initiatives without the amendments, or would they see themselves voting against it even in third reading?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, both myself and other members of my caucus have gone into these committee meetings in good faith and have proposed in some cases hundreds of amendments only to have the Liberals vote them down one after the next without even debating them. I must say that it is a little hard to take my colleague's encouragement to vote in favour of a bill that does not even meet the orders of two supreme courts in this country. The government is probably going to invoke closure on this bill, like it does with everything else, and will probably jam it through just for it to be challenged in court again.

I will restate the recommendation that we gave the current government back in June. It should immediately stop the appeal that it launched against the 2018 ruling to end indefinite solitary confinement in prisons across Canada and recognize the practice is unconstitutional and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment that can lead to the suffering and death of some prisoners, including indigenous women in the federal prison system. This bill does not do that.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for her contribution to the debate I have been listening to throughout the day. I think she and I will agree that we disagree with the content of the bill for very different reasons. I will mention that in reading the British Columbia decision rendered by Justice Leask he looked at the cruel and unusual punishment provision and said, in paragraph 534, that it is actually not cruel and unusual. He declines to rule against it as a section 12 violation. He finds that it is not unconstitutional to have solitary confinement, only when it is indefinite and prolonged.

I think the contents of this legislation completely take apart the system that we have today. That is why many Conservatives will be voting against it.

I want to talk about the budgetary impact of this legislation. In the public safety minister's departmental plan there is a projected reduction of 8.8% in real terms, in actual financial resources, being given to Correctional Services, and a reduction of 150 FTEs over the next few years.

Does the member have any concern, or does she share my concern, that Correctional Services Canada simply will not have either the financial resources or the manpower to actually implement the contents of this bill?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague raises an interesting point. As this bill was only tabled on Monday, that is not an analysis I have done.

It is certainly a good point to say that it is indefinite solitary confinement. There are times that segregation is necessary for the safety of other prisoners. However, we did have very clear direction from both courts, and very good advice from multiple witnesses, the investigation done by the correctional investigator Dr. Ivan Zinger and advocates across our country. The current government was given good advice, which it has failed to take.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan, Infrastructure.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker,

[Member spoke in Cree]

[English]

The Government of Canada's number one priority is the safety of Canadians and our communities. It is important to ensure that federal correctional institutions provide a safe and secure environment for staff and inmates, which assists with the rehabilitation of offenders. We must reduce the risk of reoffending and we must keep our communities safe, whether it is in Winnipeg or elsewhere across the country.

The Government of Canada introduced legislation that proposes to strengthen the federal correctional system, changing its direction from one which was under the Conservatives' more of retribution to looking at latest evidence and best practices by implementing a new correctional interventions model and strengthening the health care governance, better supporting victims and addressing the specific situation of indigenous offenders.

Following a recent court decision on administrative segregation, Bill C-83 proposes to eliminate segregation and establish a structured intervention unit, SIU, that will allow offenders to be separated from the main stream inmate populations as required, while maintaining their access to rehabilitative programming, interventions and mental health care. We need to ensure they actually have rehabilitative programming and can receive appropriate interventions and health and mental health care. These are extremely important.

These proposed reforms support the government's continued commitment to implement recommendations from the coroners inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, regarding the use of segregation in the treatment of offenders with mental illness. It also builds on past efforts to address gaps in services to indigenous peoples throughout the criminal justice system.

I would like to quote my good friend, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the member from Saskatchewan. He said:

We are committed to a correctional system that keeps Canadians safe and holds guilty parties accountable for breaking the law, while fostering practical rehabilitation so we can have fewer repeat offenders, fewer victims, and ultimately safer communities. This approach to federal corrections will protect the safety of our staff and those in their custody by separating offenders when required, and ensuring they get more effective interventions, rehabilitative programming and serious attention to mental issues.

The bill is extremely important because it introduces a number of new elements into our corrections system.

I had the opportunity of hearing the Commissioner of Corrections Canada, Anne Kelly, who testified last week. This will be an important means forward. She is very committed to having a corrections system that responds to the department's mandate, not just simply having a justice system that responds to mob justice, a corrections system that improves safety not only within society, but also within the corrections institutions for staff and inmates, and also ensures that we rehabilitate people so they can integrate and not reoffend when they leave the corrections system.

Some of the things being put into place are the structured intervention units. These would be established to provide the necessary resources and expertise to address the safety and security risks of inmates who cannot be managed safely within the mainstream inmate population. It does occur that there are certain people who will never be safe within our prisons. No matter what we do in this place, unfortunately some people commit crimes that are so heinous, those against children, those done by pedophiles, that it is very difficult to integrate them into the mainstream population. For their own safety and for the safety within the entire system, sometimes a different approach must be taken.

A structured intervention unit would have structured interventions and programming tailored to the specific situation of that inmate. Inmates would have an opportunity for a minimum of four hours a day outside their cells. They would have an opportunity for two hours a day of meaningful human contacts. They would receive continued programs to help them progress toward their correctional plan objectives.

Also being put in place are factors unique to indigenous offenders. The needs and interests of indigenous peoples would be better supported by the legal requirement for Correctional Service of Canada to ensure that systematic and background factors unique to indigenous offenders are considered in all correctional decision-making. For an awful long time indigenous peoples have not received the same amount of supports.

For instance, in Manitoba, in 2016 our government put forward $26 million for legal aid to help all peoples. Generally, a lot of indigenous peoples are very poor and need recourse to legal aid. Unfortunately, the provincial Conservative government decided to cut back the exact amount that was given to this. Instead of helping the people who were most vulnerable in the system, they were not helped. They were thrown to the side again.

This is often why we have systematic structural violence in the system, which ensures that indigenous peoples continue to be overly represented because they cannot obtain good legal advice. This is a good way of ensuring that even indigenous offenders within the prison system will obtain the services they require.

For instance, I have met many indigenous peoples who have been in the corrections system, but they did not know how to apply for early release or parole on time because they did not have access to those services. This is part of that.

Supporting victims is another aspect of the bill, which is very important. It would better support victims in the criminal justice system by allowing those who attend Parole Board of Canada hearings to access audio recordings of the hearings.

We are also going to be strengthening the health care governance. The proposed reforms will affirm Correctional Service Canada's obligation to support health care professionals in maintaining their professional autonomy and clinical independence. They do not need the Minister of Public Safety telling them how to do their jobs or what they should be doing. It has been said in the House in the past number of weeks that the opposition would like the Minister of Public Safety to intervene directly in cases. However, we must ensure that health care processionals have the opportunity of doing the assessments independent of the political obligations or politics that happen in this place.

The Correctional Service of Canada would also have the obligation to provide patient advocacy services to inmates to help them better understand their health care rights and responsibilities, as recommended by the coroner's inquest on the death of Ashley Smith. Included in that is further improving mental health supports for inmates to ensure offenders with mental health needs receive proper care.

Budget 2017 invested $57.8 million over five years, starting in 2017-18, and $13.6 million per year thereafter to expand mental health care capacity for all inmates in federal correctional facilities. Budget 2018 builds on these investments, proposing $20.4 million over five years, beginning in 2018-19, and $5.6 million per year going forward for Correctional Service of Canada to further support the mental health needs of federal inmates, particularly women.

We all know, and I am sure all believe, that those who end up in corrections facilities obviously are not within the norm of our society. They have committed crimes for whatever reason and some do require mental health supports.

Winnipeg, right now, is facing a deep and profound meth crisis, which has been ignored by the provincial government. Thankfully, the mayor is a bit more progressive and is attempting to tackle this problem head on. However, the provincial government for a long time has refused to even meet with city counterparts or even with the federal government on this issue. This has caused issues. People should not walk around any Canadian city fearing they might be attacked. Often, many of these issues are related to mental health and people self-medicating themselves with drugs, alcohol, gasoline and other types of drugs, which numb them to the pain of the life in which they exist in great poverty.

Our corrections system really needs to hold guilty parties to account for breaking the law. However, we also need to create an environment that fosters rehabilitation so there are fewer repeat offenders, fewer victims and, ultimately, safer communities. That is why it is important for this bill to pass. We need to strengthen the federal correctional system and align it with the evidence and best practices so inmates are rehabilitated and better prepared to eventually re-enter our communities safely.

One day, almost all prisoners will leave the prison system and live among Canadians. We need to ensure that they do not reoffend, that we are all safe and that they have received the appropriate care so when they are released, they do not reoffend and do not hurt others.

Therefore, the bill would eliminate segregation following recent court decisions and introduce more effective structured intervention units; increase better support for victims during parole hearings; increase staff and inmate safety with new body scanner technology; and update our approach to critical matters, like mental health supports and indigenous offenders' needs.

Correctional Service of Canada needs the authority to separate offenders from the general population for the sake of institutional safety. By replacing administrative segregation with structured intervention units, the proposed legislation ensures that offenders who are separated from the general population will retain access to rehabilitative programming, mental health care and other interventions. Ultimately, effective rehabilitation and safe integration is the best way to protect Canadian communities.

The practice of administrative segregation and its history is an interesting one and has been criticized for many years. The case of Ashley Smith, who died in 2007, a case that has been mentioned in most of the speeches today, comes to mind. It highlighted issues related to segregation and mental health care in a Canadian correctional system.

In 2013, a coroner's inquest into the death of Ashley Smith resulted in recommendations, including instituting a cap on the amount of time an inmate could spend in segregation.

In 2016, the government introduced Bill C-56, which would have created a presumptive cap of 15 days in administrative segregation and a system of independent external oversight, which I believe is very important. Since that bill was introduced, legal challenges in Ontario and British Columbia found administrative segregation to be contrary to the charter. We cannot keep inmates locked up by themselves, with only two hours of contact with other people, for the rest of their lives. Both these rulings have been appealed, one by the government and one by the other party. However, as things stand, they take effect in December 2018 and January 2019. This means that Corrections Service of Canada may no longer be allowed to use the current system of administrative segregation.

There are also pending class action lawsuits related to administrative segregation and the failure to provide adequate mental health care, as well as complaints before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

In May 7, Ontario passed Bill 6, the Correctional Services Transformation Act, which implemented a hard cap on days spent in segregation and prohibited certain classes of inmates, like pregnant women or those with mental illnesses, from being segregated at all.

The number of inmates in segregation on any given day was over 700 in 2011. It is now 340.

While the correctional investigator has acknowledged that the reduction in the use of administrative segregation is an improvement, he has also raised concerns that this decline may be related to increased violence among inmates. However, SIUs are designed to ensure that inmates can be kept in a secure environment, while not being segregated from vital programming and meaningful human contact.

Bill C-83 would eliminate administrative segregation. Instead, people who have to be separated from the mainstream inmate population, generally for safety reasons, will be assigned to a secure intervention unit. In an SIU, people will get a minimum of four hours daily out of the cell, including at least two hours of meaningful human contact with staff, volunteers, visitors and other compatible inmates. There will also be a daily visit by a medical professional. By contrast, people currently in administrative segregation are only entitled to two hours daily out of the cell, with minimal human contact and access to programming.

Within five working days of movement to an SIU, the warden will review the case and decide if the inmate should remain there. Subsequent reviews will be conducted by the warden after another 30 days and by the Commissioner of Corrections Service Canada every 30 days thereafter for as long as the inmate is in the SIU. Therefore, it will be the top corrections officer in Canada, our commissioner, who will be reviewing all of these cases. Reviews can also be triggered on the recommendation of a medical professional, who, as I have mentioned, will be independent and have full independence to conduct what he or she terms is in the best interest of the patient, or if an inmate refuses to leave his or her cell for a given number of days.

Currently victims are only entitled to audio recordings of parole hearings if they did not attend. However, there have been concerns that, due to the emotional nature of the hearings, it can be hard for victims to retain all the details of the proceedings. Even victims who are present could benefit from access to a recording that they could review afterward, on their own time and in a more comfortable setting.

Therefore, Bill C-83 would give victims access to audio recordings whether they attend or not. It is very important to have to a good record of what actually occurred.

This legislation will add a guiding principle to the law to affirm the need for a CSC to consider systematic and background factors unique to indigenous offenders in all decision-making. This requirement flows from the Supreme Court's Gladue decision in 1999, and has been implemented through CSC's policy directive since 2003. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to follow, as the corrections services have often not followed it. Now it is actually being enshrined in law.

This bill would also implement key recommendations of the Ashley Smith inquest by creating the legal framework to have patient advocates in CSC institutions. Patient advocates will work with offenders and correctional staff to ensure that the offenders receive appropriate medical care. Bill C-83 also enshrines in law the decision-making autonomy of medical professionals operating within the CSC.

The next one is extremely important to ensuring safety within correctional facilities in Canada. Here I refer to body scanners, which will help keep drugs and other contraband out of prisons. The bill authorizes the use of body scanners, comparable to the technology used at airports, to search people entering correctional institutions. These devices are less invasive than strip searches or body cavity searches, and they do not raise the concerns of false positives reported by some people who have been examined using ion scanners.

Body scanners are already in use in many provincial correctional facilities, and now the federal system is catching up. This is going to improve safety. A number of groups are in favour of this, including the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, which. While cautiously acknowledging Bill C-83's measures on administrative segregation, it welcomes the introduction of body scanners to prevent contraband. Jack Godin states:

Our union has advocated strongly for the implementation of body scanners. We are satisfied with the results. But we still need more resources to manage high-risk, violent and self-harming offenders, such as what was tabled by the Union in 2005 to manage high-risk women offenders which has fallen on deaf ears.

They have some criticisms, but nonetheless are favourable overall towards the idea of body scanners.

To implement these secure intervention units, new investments will be required, mainly to hire new staff. The government has committed to making the necessary investments, with the exact dollar amounts to be announced very soon.

The government has also signalled its intention to invest heavily in mental health care within the corrections system. This will include mental health care in SIUs, as well as early diagnosis and treatment for inmates from the moment of intake, and upgrades in the CSC's regional treatment centres, which provide intensive mental health care for more serious cases. This funding will be on top of some $80 million for mental health care for the CSC in the last two budgets.

I only have about two minutes left, as my time is slowly winding down. I would like to read a few clauses from the bill so that people who are watching on CPAC, or anywhere else, can hear what is in the bill.

On structured intervention units, the bill states:

Purpose

32 The purpose of a structured intervention unit is to

(a) provide an appropriate living environment for an inmate who cannot be maintained in the mainstream inmate population for security or other reasons; and

(b) provide the inmate with an opportunity for meaningful human contact and an opportunity to participate in programs and to have access to services that respond to the inmate's specific needs and the risks posed by the inmate.

In section 33, it states:

An inmate's confinement in a structured intervention unit is to end as soon as possible.

As I have already mentioned, there are other elements are included in that. For instance, we talk about “four hours outside of the cell each day”, but there is also time not included. Section 36 states:

Time not included

(3) If an inmate takes a shower outside their cell, the time spent doing so does not count as time spent outside the inmate's cell under paragraph (1)(a).

Also section 37.2 states:

A registered health care professional employed or engaged by the Service may, for health reasons, recommend to the institutional head that the conditions of confinement of the inmate in a structured intervention unit be altered or that the inmate not remain in the unit.

That means it is up to the health care professional to decide when things have gotten out of hand.

In my last minutes, I would like to quickly address the whole idea of indigenous offenders. It is incredible because, first, the bill defines indigenous people in its very first clause:

Indigenous, in respect of a person, includes a First Nation person, an Inuit or a Métis person; (autochtone)

It also includes putting in place a lot more advisory committees, committees to consult, and the idea of spiritual leaders and elders:

Spiritual leaders and elders

83(1) For greater certainty, Indigenous spirituality and Indigenous spiritual leaders and elders have the same status as other religions and other religious leaders.

Let us give thanks to Gitchi Manitou. Let us give thanks to the Great Creator. I think this is the first time I have ever heard this mentioned, and I proud to see that this measure has taken hold within this bill.

With that, I believe my time has come to an end at 20 minutes. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here and look forward to some of the very interesting questions and comments.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Manitoba for his interventions, as he knows better than most of us the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples in our prison system, as well as their overrepresentation in solitary confinement. He also well knows the long-standing evidence of the damage and the harmful effects that can happen to someone in solitary confinement.

Just for the record, the Orwellian language being thrown around in this debate is a bit worrisome. Most Canadians who are at all familiar with the topic know what solitary confinement is. It is solitary. That is what it is. Calling it “structured integration units” pretends it is something else than what it is. I think that is abusive of the debate. I think it disabuses Canadians of the truth of what is happening here.

My question is very specific. The whole reason this bill has been tabled is that the previous practice of solitary confinement in our prisons was shown not by one but two of our higher courts to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of British Columbia said that it allowed for prolonged indefinite confinement, but did not allow for independent oversight of decisions to segregate and to prevent inmates from having a lawyer represent them at segregation hearings.

As well, an Ontario court found the same thing, namely, the lack of independent oversight when a decision was made to put a prisoner into solitary confinement, which we know from extensive research can have long-term and damaging effects on them. There are, of course, instances when there have to be separations.

With just an “Orwellian” change of terminology, the Liberals are setting this up to head right back to the courts, because they have not included the independent oversight that both of those superior courts insisted upon in striking down the previous regime, giving the government time to fix it. This bill does not fix it. Why not?

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting question. I have been working quite hard with the John Howard Society, which has an office just in front of my office on Ellice Avenue. I am very proud of the work. I often have the chance to go over and speak with them. They have had a halfway house in the past few years where I could go to speak with people who had just been recently released from prison and hear their own stories directly from them.

Solitary confinement is a terrible thing. In the military it was used quite often against prisoners in POW camps. It is a form of torturing people because, over time, it erodes your sense of humanity. It erodes your sense of connection. As human beings are social animals, we do need contact with others.

I think the difference with this bill is that we are trying to define, to a greater extent, what intervention will actually look like, and if we must have rehabilitative programs, what those would entail. In this case, we must have meaningful contact. The bill refers to “an opportunity for meaningful human contact and an opportunity to participate in programs and to have access to services that respond to the inmate’s specific needs and the risks posed by the inmate.” I think that is extremely important, because there are other clauses here that refer to a health care professional. Their ruling is important and if the inmate is suffering from mental health duress, then that must have a review, and it goes immediately, I believe, to the commissioner of Correctional Service Canada.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I will just let hon. members know that we are letting questions and comments go a little longer right now. We have roughly 10 minutes. I am not taking any part of that right now. We will tack that onto the end. However, usually when there are not a lot of people standing up, we let members take a little bit more liberty with their time. I just wanted to let members know that, so that if members are interested in weighing-in on this 10-minute period, they can stand up and we will be sure to recognize them.

The hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the way has raised many concerns about the treatment of indigenous Canadians in our country. He has often supported reforms in that direction, and yet I am puzzled that the member has not mentioned another tragedy.

There was a lot of talk about the way Ms. Smith was treated and then committed suicide, but three years after Ms. Smith's death in prison, there was a suicide by an indigenous man, Eddie Snowshoe, from Northwest Territories. Mr. Snowshoe had been incarcerated in solitary confinement for 162 days. Mr. Snowshoe had attempted suicide many times in prison. What was the response? They gave him drugs that made him feel even worse and put him in solitary confinement. The same situation happened with him as it did with Ms. Smith. When he was transferred from Stony Mountain to Edmonton, no one bothered to tell them that he had already been in solitary confinement for 134 straight days, so they started the clock again. Just before Mr. Snowshoe committed suicide, he asked to speak to a psychiatrist. That request was never passed on. Also, he asked to be transferred into the main cells.

Could the member speak to why the bill, unlike the previous bill his government tabled a year ago, which specified 21 days maximum for solitary confinement and 15 days after a year and a half, gives no time limit and has completely discretionary language? How are we to be satisfied that there will be no more Eddie Snowshoes when so many indigenous people are incarcerated in our country?

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is an important question. Mr. Snowshoe's case is absolutely disgusting. Spirituality is extremely important to me as a sun dancer and someone who believes in and practices spirituality. I had a pipe ceremony in my office yesterday, and the hon. Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and the member for Etobicoke came to my office. We spent a beautiful 20 minutes praying and thinking.

Excuse me, I am not a lawyer, but the bill does have has a paragraph specifying that indigenous spirituality must be allowed for all indigenous inmates. Under it, Mr. Snowshoe could request those services and have contact. Subclause 83(2), under spiritual leaders and elders, states:

The Service shall take all reasonable steps to make available to Indigenous inmates the services of an Indigenous spiritual leader or elder after consultation with (a) the national Indigenous advisory committee established under section 82; and (b) the appropriate regional and local Indigenous advisory committees.

It is extremely important to allow contact with another human being, to allow a person who is in segregation, or in this case an intervention unit, to have contact with others. From what I read in the bill, the idea is to make sure that if they have to regroup people together who have similar issues, a certain amount of services can be provided. All that programming needs to be provided to that person. They cannot be isolated by themselves, but the programming for all of those things needs to occur day after day to get them on the right path.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We will take one last question.

The hon. member for Sturgeon River—Parkland.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for—