Justice Committee on Feb. 9th, 2011

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Marshall and the other two witnesses, thank you for your testimony.

Since it seems that you have to leave in a few minutes, I will direct my question to you. You heard our chair’s question about the need for longer sentences so that offenders can get good treatment. Our government has introduced Bill C-39 that deals with earned parole. You must know that we cannot force an offender to follow treatment. A person who does not want to follow treatment will just serve the sentence and then be released. If inmates have a federal sentence of two to three years, do you think they should be forced to undergo treatment with professionals, of course, so that, once they served their sentence, they have at least earned their release? At the moment, an inmate cannot be forced to do so. That's my first question for you.

My second question is...

[Dr. William Marshall]

I can only hang on to a certain amount of information at a time. I'm 75.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Okay. Go ahead then.

[Dr. William Marshall]

I don't think you need to have a forced requirement for treatment. The system as it's presently set up works that way anyway. Essentially--for example, in the Ontario region--the fellow gets accommodation in a programs-oriented prison, which is a far nicer place to be than one of the other alternatives. That motivates him to engage in the treatment because his presence there is conditional, not only on coming to the treatment room, but also on actively and effectively participating. The Parole Board takes the same view. If you, as a sex offender, haven't effectively and successfully completed treatment, you're not going to get parole.

Between those two together, in the institution where we provide our main programs, the Bath Institution, 96.2% of all sex offenders eligible for treatment enter and participate effectively. Amongst the few who don't, some are under deportation orders and they see no value in doing it because things are going to unfold as they will anyway.

I don't think there's a problem. The present system, in my view, works remarkably well in terms of getting get sex offenders into treatment programs.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Marshall, with the system we have today, when a judge sentences a...

Can you hear me?

[Dr. William Marshall]

A little bit louder, if you don't mind...?

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

You are familiar with the penitentiary system, you know about the one-sixth and one-third rules. You know that if a judge sentences someone to six years in prison for sexual assault, the person can be released after a year. It is possible to be released after serving one-third of the sentence. Are you in favour of forcing people to earn their release? Are you in favour of forcing inmates to rehabilitate themselves by following treatment that might help them to be released at some point and make them function better in society? Sentences will then be longer. That's what matters here. We are talking about longer sentences. Do you think that we'll be more successful in rehabilitating individuals by imposing longer sentences?

[Dr. William Marshall]

Well, in terms of having treatment mandatory and saying that they must participate in treatment, personally I think that will kill their incentive to engage in treatment. They'll all come and sit in the chairs and they'll just go through the motions. That's a problem we've had in the past, when I first started doing this. It's not true at the moment: we don't have problems getting sex offenders into treatment. Once we get them in, we don't have much of a problem engaging most of them in active process and treatment.

Corrections Canada's treatment programs for sex offenders have the lowest rates of reoffending in the world. There's no question about it, right? I'd be totally opposed to making treatment mandatory. The system works as it is at the moment. Don't try to fix it. It's working.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

I want to respect your time, Dr. Marshall. You have to get to the railway station, so we'll excuse you, but we'll keep the other two witnesses here for a few more minutes.

Right now, we're going to move to Mr. Dechert for five minutes.

Mr. Comartin.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, the question that Mr. Petit put in fact had a false assumption in it that the right to a one-sixth release applies to these types of offences. In fact, it does not, because these are treated as violent offences, so the one-sixth issue is not applicable here. I just wanted to get that on the record. The assumption that was made was erroneous.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I understand that, but it's not a point of order.

I'm going to Mr. Dechert for five minutes.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your views today. I'm sorry that I didn't have an opportunity to ask a question of Dr. Marshall, but perhaps we can follow up later.

I listened very intently to what each of you had to say. I appreciate your views in terms of rehabilitation and treatment of offenders, but what I didn't hear much or anything about, really, was the impact on victims of child sexual abuse.

As you may know, in recent days we have heard from some groups representing victims, including some who were victims themselves of child sexual abuse. They've told us some very difficult stories about the length of time it takes a child sex abuse victim to recover from the psychological trauma, if I could put it that way, they suffer when they're abused.

We heard one story about a young woman who was sexually abused for quite some length of time, I believe by a neighbour, and finally, after many years of keeping it locked up inside her, she came forward. She went through the difficult process of a prosecution and a trial. The offender was convicted and was immediately sent home to serve his conditional sentence in the house across the street from where she lived. She felt so aggrieved by this and so worthless due to the way the system responded to her that she attempted to commit suicide.

First of all, I'd like to ask each of you if you have any expertise in treating the victims of child sexual abuse. If you do have that kind of expertise, perhaps you could tell us about the long-term impact of these types of offences against child sex victims. What do you think the impact for them is if they see the offender not receiving any jail time whatsoever for the offence that's been committed against them?

Maybe Dr. Hannem could start.

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

I don't have any clinical expertise in treating victims of child sexual abuse.

In my opinion, the case you have mentioned was certainly a grievous miscarriage of justice, in the sense that the judge should have been aware that they were neighbours. I can't explain that type of sentencing.

I'm going to have to beg your pardon, but I have a class coming into this room in the next five minutes and I'm going to have to excuse myself. I don't have the room booked for more time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Dr. Hannem, I want to thank you for appearing as a witness. We will excuse you.

Perhaps we could ask Mr. Fletcher to stay for a few more minutes.

Mr. Fletcher.

[Randall Fletcher]

To respond to that question, prior to specializing and working with sex offenders, I did work in a general mental health setting and did some treatment with victims, particularly with adult survivors, adults who had been sexually abused as children. As well, in my practice with sex offenders, I work very closely with victim services, which is a support service for victims, including victims of sexual abuse.

What I can say is that again you can't look at it as a one-size-fits-all kind of answer. Victims vary greatly in terms of the degree, severity, length, and type of damaging effects they experience. There are a lot of factors that can go into it, one of which is the offence itself and whether or not they reported it right away, whether they got help with it, and that sort of thing.

Certainly, I'm not in disagreement with sex offenders getting some jail time. I think that often for child victims in particular what that does is remove their sense of guilt. Often, children feel that somehow they were to blame for what was happening.

Another thing incorporated in the program I run is that wherever possible, once the offender has reached a sufficient stage of progress in treatment, we offer an acknowledgement of the offence to the victim. Sometimes it can take the form of a letter. It could take the form of a face-to-face meeting, if the victim chooses, or even a videotape in which the offender acknowledges that what he or she did was wrong, that the victim did not deserve this and did not in any way encourage it, and in which the offender gives very specific recognition to the ways this has done them harm. Of all of the things I have seen with victims, that seems to produce the biggest benefit.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I'm glad you acknowledged that. We have heard from a lot of victims that, in their view, some jail is required, and they get a sense of self-worth out of that.

Part of what our government is trying to do with this legislation is to address the concerns of victims, because they're often left out of these kinds of discussions. We think it's time for their concerns to be addressed as well.

It's fine to address offenders and what they need--how they can be rehabilitated and reinserted back into society--but we also have to care for the victims and make sure their needs are met as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

I want to thank Mr. Fletcher for appearing before us.

We'll excuse you as well, Mr. Fletcher.

Members, we still have some committee business to deal with.

[Randall Fletcher]

I wonder if I could just make one last comment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Please make it very brief.

[Randall Fletcher]

Just in terms of length of sentence and how that impacts on treatment, it's important to understand that if a person gets a provincial sentence, which is anything up to two years less a day, the judge also has the discretion to add a period of probation, and in the case of sex offenders almost always does, up to three years.

What that means is that in addition to the time they're incarcerated when they can get treatment, there's a three-year period in which treatment can be mandated and where the rule is that if they don't take treatment they can be charged with breach of probation and get additional jail time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you very much.

Members of the committee, we've circulated the seventh report of the steering committee, the subcommittee.

Have you had a chance to review that? All we need is a motion to approve—

Go ahead, Monsieur Ménard.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

If I am not mistaken, I think we are going to have five witnesses on Monday. They are all high-calibre witnesses. Their names were mentioned in the previous testimony. For example, we have Mr. Hanson, Mr. Quinsey and their francophone counterpart—though he doesn't have a French name—Mr. Van Gijseghem. I think the people from Quebec know him. So that's three people who really are among the most qualified witnesses we will have heard from. I believe there will be two other witnesses.

I think that receiving all five of them together, giving them 10 minutes to do their presentations and allowing only seven minutes per party for questions is somewhat insulting to them. We must remember that they are traveling to come meet with us. In addition, I think that we'll get in-depth answers from people with considerable expertise. I understand we made the decision a bit quickly, but I would like us to hear from two groups of witnesses on Monday and Wednesday, and defer the vote until the next meeting. Their testimony could help to speed up the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Well, I don't know what to say. We had this discussion at our last meeting. I believe Monsieur Ménard provided us with four witnesses. Mr. Comartin provided us with four witnesses.

Monsieur Ménard, we only got from you today the names of two extra witnesses you now want to call....

Is that correct?

[A voice]

Yes.