Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Dec. 1st, 2009

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Good morning, and thank you for being here.

I'm quite aware of the Elizabeth Fry Society, which in my books is a B.C. success story. You mentioned that it started in 1939; there were visits through the war years into the prisons, and it grew across the country. I think it's very important to note that there's no international equivalent, as far as I know. It's a Canadian icon and an institution.

Through the first 30 years of its existence, the Elizabeth Fry Society received no government funding. In 1969, they received their first federal moneys. The caveat was that they had to form a national umbrella organization, which is basically the roots of the organization that you represent today.

I grew up in a house full of Elizabeth Fry people. My mother was involved. She joined in 1959, and this year she received her 50-year certificate, with your name on it. You were one of the signatories. She was very active in visiting prisons early on and then in building up the Vancouver-based society. She was president on two occasions, and they were 20 years apart, I might add.

They had some real firsts. They were the first to receive CMHC funding for charitable housing and they had the first group home for women. That occurred in 1965. Those are reminiscences that I've had with my mother, knowing that you were coming.

She recalls what an unpopular cause it was in 1959. She separated what she called the “do-gooders” from those who did good. This crazy activity that she was involved in was very much criticized within her circle of acquaintances, but it's a very good cause.

There is a very good book for source material on 50 years of Elizabeth Fry in British Columbia. It's called Women Volunteer to Go to Prison: A History of the Elizabeth Fry Society of British Columbia, 1939-1989, by Lee Stewart. The inside cover says, “This book is dedicated to the memory of the remarkable women, the founders of the Elizabeth Fry, who took up an unpopular cause when they first volunteered to go to prison”. I want to enter that as a little bit of background.

When I looked at your web page, one of the principles stuck out at me. I was never aware of this before, and I think it would concern a lot of people. Your third principle states, “Women who are criminalized should not be imprisoned”. What does that mean?

[Kim Pate]

Thank you for raising the point about your mother. She has done remarkable work and has been an inspiration to many of us over the years. We have a commemorative pin that we wanted to give her this year, so I think I'll talk to you afterwards about how to get in touch directly.

As to that principle, it came up about 20 years ago when we started to see increasing numbers of women going into the prison system. It's interesting that you asked about that today, because I just returned from a United Nations meeting last week in which we were looking at the development of minimum standard rules for the treatment of women prisoners. Two things were determined: one, that alternatives to prison need to be developed; and two, that there is a worldwide plan to get rid of prisons for women. This is because the majority of those who end up in prison are there largely because of the responses they've had to various situations.

It doesn't mean that there aren't people who need to be separated from society for a time, either for their own protection or the protection of others. What we're talking about is not having the prison system, which was developed to protect the community from men who may have committed violent acts. We should be focusing on the needs that women have.

That's how this developed. It came about after the task force work, which found that even the most progressive penal reform experiments in the world had not had the impact that was anticipated. I mentioned the healing lodge earlier. In all of the new prisons that were developed across the country, there was uniform agreement that women should be in minimum security settings, recognizing that most women are not a risk to the community. Every successive report—the Arbour report, the human rights report, UN documents, the correctional investigator's reports—has repeated that message. They were supposed to provide opportunities for women to go into the community. So in fact, programs offered in the prisons were initially supposed to be offered in the community, not in the prison setting, and women were supposed to be going out into the community as much as possible.

Last week when I was talking to people from European jurisdictions, they were talking about that very model. In some of these jurisdictions, they have housing units in the community. Women go out to care for their children, they go to school, and they go to work and come back only to sleep in the prison at night. That was the model being examined. The physical prison setting was based on a model out of Minnesota, the Shakopee Prison. It's interesting that the prison still exists without a fence around it. Recently, the prison system was going to build a fence around it, and the community rose up and said that for a hundred years it had existed and the community had grown up around it. We haven't flexed our thinking to figure out how we can keep people in the community in ways that are more constructive for them and for others.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We'll have to leave it at that, Ms. Pate.

Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Russell.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you. It's good to speak with you again.

I want to follow up on what one of my colleagues was getting at with respect to mental health issues. Can you give us a sense of what a woman would go through when she's charged? Is there any kind of mental health support during this process? What is going on? Some of the evidence seems to suggest that a huge percentage of the people have some sort of mental health issue—FASD particularly, some people would say—in aboriginal communities. As I understand it, there's very little screening for this, few supports, and very little diagnosis. I'd like you to comment on that.

The correctional investigator wrote in the report:

There are further increases in incarceration of Aboriginal peoples expected related to recent amendments to the Criminal Code regarding weapons, gang affiliated offences, dangerous offender designations, impaired driving and mandatory minimum sentencing.

We have a flawed system now, a broken system. What is it? What are all of these changes to the Criminal Code going to do? Are they going to exacerbate the situation?

[Kim Pate]

Thank you.

In terms of mental health, the correctional system employs the greatest number of psychologists and psychiatrists, probably, than any other system. I think it was in the Kirby report. Senator Kirby, as he then was, identified that when they looked at the situation a few years ago. The reality is that, unfortunately, most are put in place to do things like assessments. There are assessments for risk, assessments using the instruments that we've already talked about that have been shown to be flawed in that area by various groups far more experienced and expert than I.

The other thing is this. In terms of identifying FAS in particular, we know that the focus on FAS as an issue for aboriginal people is also flawed and it's discriminatory in nature. There are some really good decisions made by Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. She's now the children's advocate in British Columbia. When she was sitting as a judge in Saskatchewan, based on submissions from Corrections, child welfare, and others, she identified that if in fact the diagnosis that was being applied to individuals meant there was no treatment possible, which has been one of the reasons used for not providing any kind of programming to individuals identified as having FAS, then there needed to be a program developed in the community where she could send these individuals and not send them to prison. If sending them to prison was going to mean they were just going to end up in a segregation cell, what would be the point of that?

I'm conscious of time, so is that good?

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

No, you still have two minutes, but I want to get your thoughts on the second question, around changes to the Criminal Code.

[Kim Pate]

Yes, we're already seeing those changes. As I understand it, a number of committees have asked for the details on the costing. I think we should be concerned about not only the fiscal costing, because the numbers are going to be greater, but also the social costs and human costs that these new measures are going to create. As we put more and more people in prison, even with the investment of more resources into the institutions for programming, whether it's for aboriginal initiatives or mental health initiatives, as you see more and more people coming in, it will be those individuals who are easiest to manage, who don't have some of the more complex needs. Whether it's health and issues around their experiences as aboriginal or indigenous peoples or their experiences of having abuse, I think they're less likely to get access to those programs. So we're likely to see increased numbers of people in for longer periods of time.

I mentioned earlier the woman whose case I was working on last night, who today is going to be considered by the National Parole Board. Here's someone who, without some interventions, without that ability to have human contact with people who actually talk to her and determine what might best assist her, is likely just to get identified on paper in a certain way that will predispose her to not having access to programs, not having access to conditional release, to being more likely to be breached earlier if she misses a curfew or can't figure out the bus system because she can't read, or whatever the issue is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Russell.

Now let's go to Mr. Clarke for five minutes, and that will wrap it up.

Mr. Clarke, go ahead.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witness for coming in today.

You mentioned the correctional system as being discriminatory, but you mentioned you've been on reserve. Are you first nations?

[Kim Pate]

No.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Okay. I'm first nations; that's why I'm just wondering.

Are you aboriginal? No? Okay. Because I can see you're very passionate on these issues of, basically, the aboriginals who are incarcerated.

In my past life before politics, I was in the RCMP for 18 years. I've lived and worked on a reserve. What I've seen, just from that aspect of trying to protect a community, most people here probably wouldn't comprehend or understand.

Now, we always talk about statistics and everything like that. I'm wondering if you have the statistics on hand. What is the population of reserves? The population.

[Kim Pate]

I don't know that information, I'm sorry.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Okay.

And we've seen the crime rate increase on first nations reserves and in aboriginal communities as well. For instance, at the RCMP station on Onion Lake, back in 1995, I believe, we had about 743 complaints come in. When the phone and the infrastructure was brought into the first nations communities, the crime rate tripled.

Communities want to be protected. They demanded a client service, and policing was one of the mandates. But the first nation communities demand it.

Now, I have two questions here, or actually maybe three.

For violent offenders, in the federal system...because you don't deal with the provincial system, do you?

[Kim Pate]

We do. We're in the midst of developing some of the human rights stuff on the provincial side, and our local societies do.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Of the offenders who are incarcerated, how many offended against aboriginal victims? Do you know that number?

[Kim Pate]

I don't know the number. I do know that the research that came out of Statistics Canada last year showed that generally it's the people who are closest to you from whom you are most at risk.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

How many of the offenders committed physical crimes against a person?

[Kim Pate]

In the federal system, at least half of the women serving federal sentences are in for what are termed “crimes of personal violence”. What isn't disaggregated, though, is whether they were responding to violence. It might have been defensive, perhaps excessive defensive action.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

What I have seen, from my background, is the victims and the turmoil they went through. I was reading one of your statements. You don't believe in the victim impact statements.

Do you not believe in the victims and what they have to say?

[Kim Pate]

It's quite the opposite. I'm raising my daughter without a grandfather because he was murdered, and I worked with the RCMP when I was younger.

The reality is, to take a system that is not premised on victim involvement from the beginning, that doesn't start with supporting people as they've been victimized....

Up in the north, the last time I was in Iqaluit, women and children were in jail for their own protection because there was no other place for them to go. We're talking about not making the police the first people to have to deal with mental health issues and all of those areas. As we've cut all those other services, we're asking the police to do things that they really shouldn't be doing.

The victim impact statements are telling people that they can have a say, creating a sense that they'll have a say, when in fact it's not a system that presumes their entitlement.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

You talked about families and women being in jail for their own protection. So how do you feel about matrimonial real property in that new legislation coming out?

[Kim Pate]

We haven't worked on that. I know that the Native Women's Association has done a lot of work on it, and I suspect they'd be better equipped to speak about that issue. We would basically respect their position. They would have more expertise in that area.

We would agree that victims need to have their needs met. Most of the women we work with are victimized before they end up criminalized. The fact that their needs aren't met is often very much key to how they end up in the system. Saying that there will be victim impact statements—being able to have a say after the fact—and then creating the expectation that you'll actually have your needs met is the reason we've taken that position. It's not that we are against victims having their needs met at all; it's quite the opposite.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Chair, I wonder whether Ms. Pate would be able to provide us some type of statistical data in regard to offenders and victims, as to their ratio.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Perhaps you can take that up with her after we suspend.

Thank you, Mr. Clarke and Ms. Pate.

That will conclude our first hour.

Madam Crowder, do you have a point of order?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Yes. In my questioning I asked that the committee.... I guess I have to do it more formally.

I move that the committee report that it considered the Office of the Correctional Investigator report Good Intentions, Disappointing Results, and that it report it to the House.