Evidence of meeting #28 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Rick Casson Conservative Lethbridge, AB
This discretionary ability to pick and choose who you charge--what are the criteria for who pays and who doesn't?
9:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada
It really boils down to the issue of whether it will create some kind of hardship in terms of the offender following the correctional plan. Our goal is to have offenders follow a correctional plan, which is to get them involved in interventions and programs and skills development that will help prepare them for release back into the community.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Thank you.
We'll have a second round of questions, and this round will be five minutes each.
We'll begin with Madam Minna.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I wanted to go back to you, Mr. Head, with respect to an issue I've raised here before. I know you said the numbers we have now give a clear idea of how many people in prison would be over 65. But you mentioned earlier that we do not know how many of them have family, either wives or children, who are still dependent. Why don't we?
We're implementing the bill, and I presume your office knew this bill was coming. Would we not need to know that, to see whether or not this measure is going to be causing some hardship for family in some cases? Obviously this bill is intended to make sure prisoners are not benefiting from double-dipping, if you like, because they're being looked after. But if there's family involved and there's hardship there then we need to make sure we don't create the other imbalance. Would that information be forthcoming sometime soon or at some point?
9:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada
To be honest, Madam Chair and committee members, it's not a piece of information we collect. We know the status of offenders in terms of married, common law, divorced, separated. We know that information. But in terms of dependants they have, we do not collect that information in terms of—
9:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada
Well, again, in terms of delivering on our mandate under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, it's not critical that we gather that information. We would take it in account when working with individual offenders in terms of their correctional plans, but it's not something we collect in an automated way. If the committee wanted that information I would have to have my staff do a manual file review of all these offenders, and that would take some time.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Mr. Head, I understand that. But given that we have a bill and that this bill was going through the House, and I think your office knew this was coming, I think it would be necessary for us to know and for the government to know and for you to know, really, if there are consequences or problems. And then we need to know that information. I'm surprised that you wouldn't have started that process. I'm just saying that because I think it's important.
We have all asked the same question, and I don't see why we still don't have any answers. And while I think everyone in this room is.... I can't speak for everybody, but there is strong support for the bill. Certainly I want to make sure there aren't unintended consequences for some of those prisoners' families, and there are families and children who are dependent. That's all.
I'll move on, but I think it's important. And maybe, Madam Chair, you might want to give time for the department or the commissioner's office to do the work, but I think this committee should know. At some point I would like to know if my actions are also hurting children or someone else somewhere and how we mitigate that.
I'll move on.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Before I would make that request I would ask Mr. Head what kind of timeframe he anticipates that would take, because we are probably looking at this bill clause-by-clause a week from now. So I'm not sure if that would give him sufficient time to be able to go through each file to determine....
9:30 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada
To be honest, Madam Chair, I'd probably need a couple of months to do this in order to do the file reviews, to go back and ascertain specifically the dependants. And we'll need to get some clarification as to what you mean by “dependants”. If we're talking about spouses, as I said, I can tell you how many offenders now are married, how many are in common-law relationships. I can give you those numbers right now, but if you're talking about other dependent family members, it's going to take some time for me to ask my staff to go out and do these file reviews.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
My definition would be obviously spouses, and children who may be under a certain age. If you have the spouses, maybe you can provide that information, as you already have it, and then hopefully later we can get the rest. I just think that's important, because this bill affects not just the prisoners but the families.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
My only concern is that we are asking for a report and these may not be the people who have all of the resources and they may have to actually go to other places to get that information. It's an interesting point, and something that would be very interesting. I don't know if it's realistic that this committee, in looking at this bill, can get that information in a timely manner. My concern is sending them on a big assignment that they can't fulfill, to actually help us.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Maybe you could answer this question. Why do we ask if they have spouses but not if they have children? I don't see why there is only the one question in the collecting of data.
9:30 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada
Again, we ask the individuals at the time of admission their marital status—married, common law, separated, divorced, other—so we collect that information at the time of admission. We do not collect the information about dependants because it's not immediately relevant to administering our mandate.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I'm going to be running out of time very quickly, so I'd like to ask you a very practical question. How would we be able to get this information most quickly? Would it be through HRSDC, and is there a confidentiality problem there? Is there a relationship that creates problems there?
9:30 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada
Well, I'm not sure how HRSDC would have the information.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
They wouldn't have it either. Well, that's fine. Okay, it's through your office that we have to get that.
I'll move on, because—
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Your five minutes is up, but we'll probably have time for a third round. So you'll have another chance.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Rick Casson Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Thanks, Madam Chair. I just have a short question and then I'll split my time with my colleague Mr. Lobb.
If an inmate chooses to work and gets paid $6.90 a day and if the commissioner or whoever makes the decision to take the maximum back from him or her, my math says they'd still end up with $500 after that for their own personal use.
We're talking about people who are incarcerated for two years or more, I believe, and over the age of.... On the issue of children, I'm not sure there'd be a lot of children. There could be, of course, but I'm not sure there would be a lot. Among inmates of that age, are there many of them--you might not even know this--who are being trained, or are they taking any kind of a formal education to better themselves when they get out? I think of things like doing income tax or accounting or maybe carpentry and all those of types of things. Is there a pretty wide range of things that these folks can engage themselves in while they're in there?
9:35 a.m.
Commissioner, Correctional Service Canada
Yes, that's a very good question. The programs that are available to all offenders include offenders 65 years of age or older as well. We've got a full range of what we call criminogenic programs, so substance abuse, violence prevention programming, programs like that. We also have skills development opportunities for offenders. We have the full range of education programs that we offer. There are adult basic education programs, including education opportunities to achieve up to grade 12. Individuals could even go beyond that. Most of the time they have to pay for that themselves out of their own pocket. So if they want to pursue university credits, they could do that, but they mostly pay for that out of their own pocket. There's a plethora of opportunities from a programs, education, and skills development perspective that are available to all offenders, including the group we're talking about.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Rick Casson Conservative Lethbridge, AB
So the opportunity does exist to prepare yourself. It also exists to make a couple of bucks. You have a system in place whereby this money can be put into a trust for them for when they are released. So the opportunity exists if the will is there to prepare oneself not only financially but otherwise for release.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
It's a pleasure to be on this committee here for a short while.
I have a question for you. In your notes it mentions that it's up to the institutional head's discretion to deduct up to 25% of the inmate's potential pension, but it's capped at $25 a week. Is what you're telling me that if somebody is making $40,000 a year on a pension, they would be charged only $25 a week for their housing?