Evidence of meeting #33 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Have you yourself actually looked at the screening tools, gone through them, and done an analysis? Have you had independent experts do an analysis?
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
We have not done our own academic analysis of the tools. We have referred to and relied upon the external work that's been done by academics at Canadian universities, by the department's own research branch, and by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. We work with that tool all the time, and of course, of the thousands of complaints that we deal with every year in the office, many have to do with classification and access to programs, so we have a very operational familiarity with the impact of these over-classifications and the use of these actuarial tools that the service relies on.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Is it your expectation that, as you indicate here, Corrections Canada will have a new model in place shortly, or will there be continuing delays?
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
I believe the service is sincere in its desire to develop a new tool and a new set of tools by fiscal year 2009-10.
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
I can tell you that in the past, the service on this file has missed many of its targets.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Do they have the resources, to the best of your knowledge, to meet them? Why did they set that timeframe? Why was it not given more urgency?
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
I believe the timeframe was determined based on what they projected as all of the steps they'll be required to take to validate a new tool, and that's subject to some debate. As far as the resources go, it is my conclusion that the service does not have the resources it needs to implement all of the priorities that have been identified.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Meanwhile, many people's lives are being negatively affected.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
I'm not sure whether you have already appeared before the Committee, because in the fall, in addition to being a member of this Committee, I was also a member of the Justice Committee. That Committee was reviewing the rather extraordinary bills that the government has tabled in a bid to increase the number of inmates in our prisons. Getting certain people off the street and sending a lot more of them to prison was very much the goal. I hope I am not confusing you with someone else. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that we met someone from the Correctional Investigator's Office as part of our hearings. At the time, we were told there was a huge problem with the Aboriginal population and that it was going to continue to expand. I see now that person was right. It's quite clear.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say right off the bat that rather than studying the housing issue, we should perhaps be looking at the parole situation as it affects Aboriginal inmates. There is clearly a very serious problem. I don't know whether you agree with me or not, but I believe that, as a general rule, we are not talking about the same type of crimes. People end up in detention. In this case, we're only talking about federal penitentiaries.
If I understood you correctly, Mr. Sapers—and Mr. McIsaac can probably confirm this as well—when a judge sentences an Aboriginal Canadian to ten years in prison for assault or armed sexual assault, more often than not, that person ends up in a maximum security institution where no programming is available to him. Did I get that right?
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
Yes. The profile would suggest that an aboriginal offender convicted of a violent crime is much more likely to be initially placed in maximum security and held in maximum security for a longer period of time. In most of the federal maximum security institutions, there are no core programs available designed specifically to meet the cultural needs of aboriginal offenders.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Yes, I'm aware of that because I was a practising criminal lawyer before becoming a member of Parliament.
That is obviously a serious crime, but does it mean that an Inuit or an Aboriginal from a reserve in the North is going to end up in an environment where he is surrounded by criminals and known traffickers? In a way, that is what is happening now, particularly if the individual is in a maximum security institution.
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
The simple answer is yes.
Ed McIsaac Executive Director, Office of the Correctional Investigator
The numbers have not altered significantly over the last 10 to 15 years. I will use the prairie region as an example, as it has the highest number of aboriginal citizens as well as the highest percentage of aboriginals incarcerated in our federal penitentiaries. Aboriginal inmates represent almost 43% of the federal population within that region. If you look at the maximum security population, they represent 56%. If you look at the minimum security population, where the majority of people are being released, they represent barely 30%.
So you have a significant gap there. As Mr. Sapers mentioned, the later someone is released in their sentence, the less chance they are going to have to access the programming on the street. And if they are on statutory release from a maximum security institution, then the chances are they received very little programming while inside.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Are there agreements between the Correctional Services of Canada and Quebec or other provinces, allowing Aboriginal inmates to serve their sentence in provincial institutions, so that they don't have to be too far from home?
In Abitibi, there is a provincial prison. For example, an inmate from the region who has to spend three years in prison will end up at Rivière-des-Prairies, near Montreal, rather than being able to serve his sentence near his family.
Do such agreements exist? I am still in shock; I'm stunned. We have to do something, because that is simply ridiculous.
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
There are some exchange of service agreements in place between the Correctional Service of Canada and provincial and territorial governments for the housing of inmates, but more importantly, there are two sections in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that allow for the direct involvement of aboriginal communities in sentence administration of aboriginal offenders. Subsection 81(1) allows for such things as healing lodges—there are eight lodges around the country—and section 84 allows aboriginal communities to be involved in the supervision of aboriginal offenders released back into their communities.
The difficulty again is that while the healing lodges are very positive initiatives, they are minimum security. So if you think about the whole chain of events we've been talking about, getting into the healing lodge may be a challenge, but the healing lodges are very positive and very progressive and the law as written does permit for the use of these agreements under sections 81 and 84.
I can get you some figures in terms of the exchange of service agreements between the Government of Canada and the provincial governments. I don't have them on hand right now.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Sapers, and I also want to thank the committee for supporting my motion to have you come before us today.
I have a couple of specific questions.
I want to go back to your report for a second. On page 11, you talked about the Canada Correctional Service remaining in large part unfocused and fragmented, and you specifically talked about recommending in previous years that the service appoint a deputy commissioner. I just want to make sure people see these pieces, because these are important parts of a long-standing number of recommendations that your office has made over many numbers of years, and the situation does not look like it's improving.
I want to do a couple of technical pieces, as you raised sections 81 and 84, and the classification piece. I want to address the classification piece first because it sounds like there has been a change.
The department's response on page 43 of this report was that the security classification tool used by CSC was appropriate for aboriginal offenders and that the criteria used to classify offenders are contained in.... My understanding is that you are saying they have switched their position since this, because their departmental response was that the classification tool was appropriate. I'm hearing you say they are now saying they are going to review the classification tool and develop a new one.
Am I misunderstanding something?
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
No, you're not.
I'm going to ask Mr. McIsaac to give you more detail, but the issue of classification, particularly as addressed to aboriginal women, was responded to in previous reports and also led to the commitment to develop a new tool by the fiscal year 2009-10.
Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator
It was just for women.
The Canada Correctional Service language has changed over recent years in terms of agreeing or disagreeing with the issues of systemic barriers and differential outcomes for aboriginal offenders. Their most recent response to the report—even though the strategic plan for aboriginal offenders still lists as one of its priorities reducing the outcome gap—would seem to suggest that they have developed the program tools they need to do so. We would challenge that.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
So they would like to reduce the gap but still use the same classification tool for men. It doesn't make sense.
