Evidence of meeting #27 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Basically, any agreements that we have on the Canadian border and the United States border are bilateral. They require an ongoing agreement with the United States. Decisions have to be made with that in mind.
If we apply the ATIP rules, that would ensure that any sensitive materials pertaining to the Canada-U.S. border are not released to the public.
I would suggest, Mr. Chair, that this is a good time to vote.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Fisher.
Seeing no further interventions, I will ask the clerk to conduct the vote, please.
This is a vote on the motion itself, as previously amended.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Sorry, you are correct.
(Amendment agreed to: yeas 9; nays 2 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Madam Clerk.
The amendment has passed.
We're now back to the original motion as twice amended.
Is there any further debate on this motion?
Seeing no interventions, I will ask the clerk to conduct the vote on the motion, as twice amended.
The Clerk
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will go right to it.
(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 10; nays 1 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Madam Clerk.
The motion as twice amended has now passed.
Do we have time now to start our second panel?
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You didn't hear it at the beginning, but I read both motions. The question on the second one should be put forthwith, since the motion has already been moved.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Just on a point of order, Mr. Chair, the other motion wasn't moved. It was read, but it wasn't moved.
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
All right, Mr. Chair. It reads as follows:
That Public Safety Canada provide the committee with the total number of RCMP, CBSA and Correctional officers infected with COVID-19, broken down by cohort and province, between March 11 and June 15, 2020, and that these statistics be presented to the committee no later than July 10, 2020.
Mr. Chair, before you go ahead, I would just like to point out that the motion deals only with the officers of the three agencies. The information isn't hard to find. The government should have already provided it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.
Is there any debate?
Mr. Fisher, please go ahead.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Mr. Chair, I think this notice of motion by Mr. Kitchen is a pretty good motion. I'm inclined to support this.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you.
Are there any further interventions? Seeing none, I will ask the clerk to conduct the vote.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Madam Clerk.
I understand that we have a hard cap at 3 p.m. eastern, so we have less than an hour to go. I guess we can start the second panel and do what we can in that hour or in less than an hour.
That being said, I will suspend the meeting right now while we bring in the next panel..
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
We will continue.
We have a hard cap at the top of the hour, so it's likely we'll get statements and maybe an abbreviated first round.
Having said that, I will introduce our panel of witness.
From the Native Counselling Services of Alberta, we have Ms. Marlene Orr. From the John Howard Society of Canada, we have Ms. Catherine Latimer. From the Union of Safety and Justice Employees, we have Mr. Stanley Stapleton and Mr. David Neufeld.
Thank you all for coming. We were delayed with committee business, but we'll try to give everything our full attention.
The Native Counselling Services of Alberta, please go ahead. You have time for a 10-minute statement, but if you can abbreviate it at all, that would be appreciated.
Marlene Orr Director of Corrections, Native Counselling Services of Alberta
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of Parliament. I'm honoured to speak to you today.
My name is Marlene Orr. I'm speaking to you from Treaty 6 territory, the traditional lands of the Cree, Nakoda Sioux, Métis and many other indigenous peoples. As a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation and Treaty 6, I'm especially proud to acknowledge the traditional territory of my people.
I'm the director of corrections for the Native Counselling Services of Alberta.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.
My apologies for interrupting the witness, but the sound quality is quite poor. Can we get that fixed?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Yes. Can we take a quick look at the French interpretation? We're good.
I'm sorry, but could the witness try again, please?
Director of Corrections, Native Counselling Services of Alberta
I am the director of corrections for Native Counselling Services of Alberta, a not-for-profit that has provided programs and services for indigenous people in conflict with the law, for over 50 years.
Native Counselling Services of Alberta runs the largest healing lodge for male federal offenders in Canada and the first section 81 healing lodge for federal female offenders. Healing lodges are minimum-security federal institutions in which the care and custody of minimum-security 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. We are better equipped to deal with indigenous offenders than the Correctional Service because we understand historic trauma and take our [Technical difficulty—Editor] reintegration because we know our communities. Section 81 healing lodges are the face of reconciliation and indigenous reintegration for federal offenders.
Today I'll speak about the impacts of COVID-19 on [Technical difficulty—Editor] service providers in particular. The wider impact is important for understanding the impact on offenders.
Since the Truth and Reconciliation [Technical difficulty—Editor].
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Madam Orr, your sound has gone. I'm not sure if it's on your end or my end. Are you there?
Madam Clerk, maybe we can get somebody to give her a call. We'll carry on with another witness.
Let us now go to the John Howard Society.
Please go ahead, Ms. Latimer.
Catherine Latimer Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada
The John Howard Society of Canada is a charity committed to just, effective and humane criminal justice systems. I am grateful for the committee’s invitation to share our concerns about the response to the outbreak of coronavirus in Canada. For many Canadians, the pandemic has caused fear and significant disruption to our lives. For others, it has had tragic consequences, and we send our condolences to all those who have lost friends and family to this disease.
The federal government has direct responsibility for prisoners in its care, and the impact of the coronavirus on the federal prisons has been profound. Two people have died, more than 360 people have been sickened, and five institutions have been contaminated. The rate of infection was assessed at 13 times the rate in the general population.
According to the correctional investigator’s April 23 release, 400 prisoners were held in medical isolation in extreme conditions that violated their rights. Hundreds more are locked down in their cells for 22-hours a day, with inadequate meaningful human contact, which is inconsistent with the UN definition of solitary confinement and its prohibition. Prisoners protesting the conditions were met with force in some cases, resulting in prisoners having to seek medical assistance outside of the prison. Visits with family and volunteers were cancelled, and chaplaincy services were suspended, all of which increased feelings of isolation. Programs and opportunities to make progress on correctional plans were suspended, leading to increased feelings of hopelessness and frustration.
We are experiencing the worst crisis in Canadian corrections since the Kingston Penitentiary riots almost 50 years ago. The tragedy is that we were forewarned by epidemiologists and other medical experts about the amplifying effect that prisons have on the virus. The medical and human rights advice was to remove as many people from prisons as possible and give the remainder a chance, through prevention, by permitting social distancing.
As soon as the pandemic was labelled as such in mid-March, there were calls on the federal government to safely release prisoners. These were ignored. The first two prisoners at Port-Cartier tested positive on March 30. On March 31, Minister Blair asked CSC and the Parole Board of Canada to consider ways to expedite releases. Other more expeditious measures, like respites under the Governor General’s clemency authority, were not considered.
While other jurisdictions and provinces released hundreds and thousands of prisoners following the advice of medical experts, Canada did not. Canada has duties to prisoners. Section 215 of the Criminal Code provides that those who are detaining individuals have a legal duty to provide the necessaries of life to those under their charge and could be criminally liable if they, without lawful excuse, fail to discharge that duty and it endangers the life of the prisoner or his or her health in a permanent manner.
The Corrections and Conditional Release Act obligates the service to provide essential health care and reasonable access to non-essential health care that conform to professionally accepted standards. A core purpose of the correctional system, as set out in the CCRA, is to carrying out sentences in a “safe and humane” manner. CSC is required to use the least restrictive measure consistent with the protection of society, staff members and offenders.
The World Health Organization and other international bodies released a joint statement about how COVID-19 should be managed in prisons. Among other things, it stated that COVID-19 responses in prisons must respect the human rights of people deprived of their liberty, and the disruptive impact of restrictions should be actively mitigated. It provided that any intervention should comply with the UN's standards for the treatment of prisoners, the Nelson Mandela Rules. Those rules define solitary confinement as “22 hours or more” in cells “without meaningful human contact”, and prohibit prolonged solitary confinement, 15 days or more, which is understood as a form of cruel treatment. Canadian courts have recently recognized the harm that such isolated confinement can cause and have found charter violations.
There are hundreds of prisoners who have experienced isolated confinement for well over 15 consecutive days as a response to the COVID-19 virus. Many would like to see an in-depth, independent inquiry into the government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis in our federal prisons to assess whether obligations were met, how people died and became ill, both from the virus and the strict isolation imposed in response to it, and to assess what should be done in future for a second wave or another pandemic.
Based on the concerns I heard from prisoners and their families, the inquiry could provide much-needed answers. In the interest of time, I will give you categories rather than go into the issues raised by the prisoners and their families. Those include issues associated with the prevention of the disease from getting into the prison, dealing with the infected prisoners once the prisons were contaminated, dealing with the other prisoners, and reopening the prisons and bringing back some of the strict measures that had been put aside during the pandemic.
In conclusion, individuals in our federal prisons have suffered as a result of the government's response to the coronavirus. It is questionable whether the duties and obligations to prisoners have been met during this period. I hope this committee will recommend that an in-depth, independent inquiry be held to examine and learn from this crisis during which the physical and mental health of our prisoners were imperiled and their rights disregarded.
Thank you so much.