My focus, as my president, Maître Joncas, outlined, will be on the dangerous offender provisions specifically and the potential impact of what's being proposed.
The only surviving young woman who was declared a dangerous offender at one point was supposed to be with us. Her name is Lisa Neve. She was declared a dangerous offender at the age of 21. She then spent six and a half years in prison, until her dangerous offender designation was overturned. When it was overturned, the judges who overturned it determined that she was essentially labelled a dangerous offender on the basis of what she said, what she thought, what she wrote about what she thought, and not about what she did.
I suggest to you that with these provisions, more young women would face that situation. She was a young aboriginal woman, who I have known since she was 12 years old. The reason she is not here today is because her family asked her not to come and publicly expose the family yet again to what has happened to her even since she's been out of prison. She's been out over eight and a half years. She now works with young people; she mentors young people. She's doing very good work. Some of you, I know, have heard her speak in other contexts. But even when it's a positive story about her, her family is hounded. They have had to move several times as a result of the media attention, even though she is no longer declared a dangerous offender.
The first woman declared a dangerous offender committed suicide in the prison for women in Kingston. Since then, there have been others who have been threatened with a dangerous offender designation. These cases we have intervened in, and we will continue to do that. One such young woman who was fearful, who had been told she might likely face a dangerous offender designation, died on October 19 in the prison for women in the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener-Waterloo. She was a young woman who, at the age of 19, had been transferred into the adult system, again on the basis of much of what she said, what she threatened, what she yelled, and in some cases what she did--although our examination of her record shows that most everything she did that might be considered violent actually occurred in a prison setting.
We actually now are accumulating more cases like this, where we're seeing individuals come in on relatively minor charges and based on the conditions of confinement they are subject to, the treatment they receive in those prison settings, they are accumulating charges.
Another young aboriginal woman started on a three-year sentence is now doing over 25 years. This young woman started, her family reports, at the age of 15. She was throwing crab apples at a postal delivery worker, which is obviously not something anybody wants to face, but it's not something as a result of which they anticipated six years later receiving their daughter home in a body bag.
I first met this young woman, and she looks like this. I saw her through a meal slot in a segregation cell in one of the prisons. When I first tried to meet her, I couldn't; I was denied access, as were lawyers who tried to meet with her. We now know that part of the reason we were denied access appears to have been that she had been assaulted. That was before she was in the prison where she eventually died.
I encourage this committee to really examine the violations that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has cited Canada for, that the United Nations Human Rights Committee has cited Canada for, that we have tried to raise with the current Minister of Public Safety, who has not met with us, and that we have tried to raise at every senior level of government, and certainly with the Correctional Service of Canada. We have requested that the human rights violations and charter violations that we have cited be investigated. If they have been, we are not aware of the results of those investigations, even though we have requested them. Before Ms. Ashley Smith died, she asked us to request them. Before she died, in the last release of information we received from her, she was not even permitted to have a pencil to sign that release of information. We had to get a correctional officer to verify that she wanted us to look into this information.
I strongly urge you to look at the conditions of confinement that young woman was in, without anything in her cell save a security gown. There was not a mattress, not a blanket, nothing else in her cell for, as far as we can tell, approximately one month. I last saw her on September 24 of this year in that segregation cell. You know that four officers, possibly more, will be charged in relation to the treatment she received at the hands of corrections.
We have urged this committee in the past--it was not this particular committee, Mr. Chair, so I don't want to in any way intimate that it was you to whom we had spoken--to fulfill the mandate of ensuring that human rights are protected in this country. We urge this committee, before you go to clause-by-clause on this bill, to actually go to the prisons and see the conditions of confinement that individuals who receive these designations will be subjected to. I will take you to see the conditions of confinement in the women's prisons. You have an obligation, I would suggest, as parliamentarians who are implementing this legislation and who are going to be voting on it, to actually see the results of what you will be doing. I would encourage you to come with us to see those conditions. I would encourage you to exercise your right as parliamentarians to have access, and to also seek access to the men's prisons. It's been some time since I worked in the men's prisons, but I would suggest that if you look at the issues outlined by the correctional investigator, most recently in the deaths in custody outlined in their annual report, there are many issues with which you should be very concerned.
We consider the regimes under which women are serving their sentences right now, under what's called a management protocol, to be unlawful. I encourage you to examine that. I encourage you to see what it's like to see disembodied groups of eyes every time you go to a prison, and then what it's like when you actually see people being denied access to their counsel, being denied access to us. And it's our legislated mandate to go and provide that opportunity for individuals to have their needs met.
I encourage you, I urge this committee, urgently, to examine the conditions of confinement that those who will be subject to the dangerous offender provisions certainly, and likely some of the others, will be subjected if and when this bill is passed.
Thank you.