Good afternoon, Mr. Chairperson and members of Parliament.
I am honoured to speak to you today. My name is Marlene Orr, and I am speaking to you from Treaty 6 territory. As a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 6, I am especially proud to acknowledge the traditional territory of my people.
I am the director of corrections for Native Counselling Services of Alberta, a not-for-profit that, for over fifty years, has provided and continues to provide programs and services for indigenous people in conflict with the law. Native Counselling Services of Alberta runs the largest healing lodge for male federal offenders in Canada and the first section 81 healing lodge for female federal offenders.
Healing lodges are minimum-security federal institutions, in which the care and custody of minimum-security indigenous federal offenders is transferred to the indigenous community under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Focusing on indigenous culture and ceremony, section 81 healing lodges work to reintegrate indigenous federal offenders into the community using an indigenous world view. Our healing lodges are better equipped to deal with indigenous offenders than are Correctional Service Canada or their other partners because we understand historic trauma. We take guidance from our elders on how we should address those issues of trauma and the relationship those issues have to criminal activity. We are better at the reintegration of indigenous federal offenders than are Correctional Service Canada. Section 81 healing lodges are the face of reconciliation and indigenous reintegration for federal corrections.
Today I will speak about the impacts of COVID-19 on indigenous people in general and on indigenous offenders and service providers in particular. It's important to understand the wider impacts so that we can understand the impact on offenders.
Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and calls to action, we've become better informed regarding the social issues seen in the indigenous community and the direct link those issues have to historic trauma. We understand that the myriad impacts, such as loss of culture, fragmented families, lack of parenting models, addictions, poverty and violence in all forms, are directly tied to legislation in Canada that sought to strip indigenous people of their very cultural and legal identity in order to have access to their lands.
The onset of COVID-19 left us all unprepared for the upheaval in day-to-day life. Rapidly changing government and corporate policies left us in fear, anxiety and isolation for months. The impact was widely felt amongst Canadians but particularly amongst indigenous people and communities, who still struggle with poverty and other historic trauma impacts.
With the measures put in place by Canada, the provinces, municipalities and first nations communities, mental health concerns and loneliness have added increased stress. The impact on our communities, where the intergenerational effects continue, has exacerbated existing mental health concerns for indigenous people, perhaps to a greater degree than for others. Unresolved issues of trauma have surfaced and have been magnified. Lack of access to the cultural and spiritual community have left many indigenous people unable to cope with their emotional and mental health challenges without supports. That is especially true for indigenous offenders in institutions.
As restrictions ease, the use of masks and gloves has been stressed by provincial and federal authorities. With many provinces moving into relaunch, the use of masks will become increasingly necessary for people to access services. For example, in Alberta, persons attending court are required to wear masks, yet no masks are supplied by government agencies. Given the level of poverty many indigenous people experience, they are not likely to have the resources to purchase this protective equipment. Many indigenous not-for-profits are expected to bear the cost of providing this.
Very early on in the pandemic, schools closed down, and the expectation was that classrooms would move online. Students were expected to continue their studies while isolating. While laudable, these efforts come from a very privileged perspective.
According to the Canadian Poverty Institute, indigenous peoples in Canada experience the highest levels of poverty. A shocking one in four indigenous peoples are living in poverty. Speaking from lived experience, I can assure you that luxuries like electronic devices and Wi-Fi or phone data are not financially attainable for those in poverty.
This need for devices and data to stay connected became an issue for us as well. The online supports necessary for marginalized people excluded indigenous people because of their lack of access to connectivity. As we've seen here today, those are issues that our organization faces providing services out of a federal building.
Funders forced many organizations to bear the real cost of setting up online services and, when you consider that many indigenous people are too poor to stay connected virtually, it does not really make sense. Many indigenous communities have connectivity issues because of the lack of quality internet within their communities. One example is a Métis settlement in Alberta, where the Wi-Fi services do not extend beyond the governance office because of lack of internet infrastructure in their remote community.
This lack of connectivity was felt by us as well. At the very start of the pandemic, corrections staff were ordered to work from home, using Correctional Service Canada laptops to remain connected to the offender management system. Staff were kept safe and supported by corrections supplying them the equipment necessary to do their jobs in isolation.
Indigenous community partners in corrections didn't have the same assets and, as a result, couldn't work from home. Healing lodge staff had to go to work daily and risk exposing themselves and offenders in a residential facility. Despite numerous requests for laptops and connectivity, the two healing lodges I oversee were not provided with them. We were told by CSC that there was no equipment available, yet we received reports that approximately 20,000 laptops were purchased during the pandemic by CSC and are sitting stockpiled in Ottawa. The unspoken message is that the government is concerned about the safety of its staff, but not concerned about the safety of its indigenous partners.
While corrections staff were working at home, some of their responsibilities were deemed too unsafe for them to undertake. One example is the urinalysis testing performed on inmates and conditionally released offenders. This responsibility was devolved to my staff because, apparently, the task is not unsafe for indigenous people.
One of our healing lodges is in this old federal building. CSC is responsible for the maintenance. We had an electrical fire that burned out our entire camera security system. Correctional maintenance staff refused to enter our building, even though we implemented precautions long before CSC did. We were left to deal with that on our own.
CSC was slow to implement a COVID-19 response. We couldn't get answers to questions we had about policy, practice or testing. As our healing lodges are also, in part, community residential facilities, we have both inmates and conditionally released offenders. We were the only Alberta-based community residential facility that has remained open during the pandemic. We implemented policies around COVID-19 weeks before CSC did, and we continued to accept offenders released from the federal institution.
Our policies included a requirement for institutional health care to attest that offenders being released were COVID-free, or at least symptom-free. For three solid weeks institutional and community parole staff were dismissive of our policy and fought us on every transfer case. We asked that they attest that the transfer of released offenders occurred in a CSC vehicle that had been sanitized after the previous use. For three weeks, every federal institution we received released offenders from fought my staff about this. This speaks to the lack of pandemic policies and practices within CSC. It also speaks to the lack of health and safety practices in general.
The pandemic exposed cracks in the relationships among CSC, the indigenous community and community partners.
With tremendous political pressure mounting, CSC and the Parole Board rushed to depopulate the prisons for fear of COVID-19 spreading. In this rush there was little understanding of the reality of how this would affect indigenous people in communities. The rush to depopulate was a rush towards displacement and increased risk of offender exposure to the virus and to poverty.
It is well documented that my people are predisposed to a number of health issues like diabetes, tuberculosis and respiratory issues. Because of this, indigenous people in our communities are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, and the risks of contracting the virus are much greater in the presence of these health concerns. This led to first nations taking unprecedented steps to safeguard their communities by locking down their borders and restricting access to those who did not live in the community. The increased cost of implementing security and ensuring food sovereignty has been enormous and a challenge for our communities.
If you did not live in the community when the pandemic hit, you were not likely allowed to go there. CSC did not have the relationship with indigenous communities to fully understand the impact of releasing indigenous offenders to closed communities.
