Justice Committee on March 29th, 2010

[Jan Fox]

That's correct.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

We will continue with Ms. Guay, who has five minutes.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Yes, I will respect the time limit, Mr. Chair.

You do a lot of work with young men aged 18 and older, if I understand correctly. When these young men get out of prison, when they are on parole, under supervision, limited in their actions and have curfews, and so on, they have to find a job, but more importantly, they have to leave the gang. This must be very difficult, because the gang is expecting them upon their release.

How are these young people protected? How do you ensure that if they really want to get out of that lifestyle, the gangs will not try to kill them for trying to leave? I am very curious about how you work with those individuals who really want to leave. What is the success rate? Please go ahead.

[Harvey Cenaiko]

From a risk assessment point of view, as I mentioned earlier, in assessing each individual, their backgrounds, and their criminal activity, and then moving into the institution and assessing their institutional behaviour and the programs they've taken within the institution, for those individuals whom we release on conditional release, our success rate or our rate of granting parole where they did not commit another offence, is 90%, and 99.5% have not committed a violent offence. These are conditional releases or UTAs, day parole, and full parole.

This does show that the programming the CSC is providing in the institution is working and that when they are legislated, their time is there for a parole review.... When we assess risk, we're assessing risk in a number of areas from past, present, and future. This does show that the programs are working, but I think it shows as well that the conditional release decision-making process is working too.

[Jan Fox]

Just to add to the question of how we keep them safe, I'll start and then let Hugo finish. It's an important question. Thank you for asking it.

For me, a lot of it is about information sharing and knowledge. My staff need to be aware of the situations that these fellows can be facing. We need to know the gang members, who they're with, and who they're trying to leave. We also need to know the rival gangs.

We need to be aware of who is where and of who is living where. We need to make sure the parole officers are incredibly well trained in knowing that. We need to use very strong techniques. We use something called motivational interviewing, for example, so that our parole officers know what's fact and what's fiction.

I very much have to support what Hugo said about how disaffiliation is a process. It's a lot.... People who have had long histories of difficulties and who may have come in conflict with the law do not change overnight, as much as we would like them to. So it may take a long time, but it's a lot about information sharing with our parole officers, our partners, and aboriginal organizations and about being able to listen to what the guy is telling us.

If there are safety issues, we do have the power to move them, to transfer them. If we feel they're not being honest with us, we also have the power to suspend them and put them back in jail.

[Dr. Hugo Foss]

Thank you for that question. I think it's a really important and difficult question. As you were asking it, I could feel my heart get heavy, because it's not always possible to keep them safe. The discussions and conversations that we have, the offenders and I, are very much around their safety and around public safety.

In the 12 years or better that I've been working with this population, a number of people haven't made it. For various reasons, they have ended up being killed. But we work really, really hard to keep them as safe as we possibly can, both in the institutions and in the community, but it's not always 100% possible.

In terms of success rates, it's very difficult for me to say what those rates are. I don't keep statistics on it. Success is also very different. My measure of success is that the public has been kept safe and the person is still safe. There have been many times where I've said to offenders that I know they hate Corrections, but I tell them I have news for them: Corrections doesn't like them either.

I tell them to just finish their sentences, and if for some reason they go unlawfully at large or breach a condition, or use alcohol or drugs, I tell them not to run. I tell them that it's the dumbest thing they can do. “Turn yourself in”, I tell them, “turn yourself in”. That's the message they consistently get from me.

There have been six or seven individuals, hard-core gang members, who are shocked when they have actually turned themselves in. They'll say, “This is so not me--I never do this”. Again, that is part of the success ratio. They haven't killed anyone, they haven't hurt anyone, and they're still working at their recovery and their healing journey.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

Merci.

We're going to continue now with Mr. Dechert for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for sharing your expertise with us here this morning.

I want to ask you a number of questions about how aboriginal gangs form and how they're different from other types of gangs. I think, Ms. Fox, you mentioned that they're different from biker gangs. I take it you meant that whereas a biker gang is more like a business, these are different in nature.

As you've heard from other members of the committee, when we were in Toronto last Thursday we heard from individuals who were trying to prevent individuals, young people, from joining the ethnic street gangs that we have in many of our urban areas. I was wondering if there's a difference between aboriginal street gangs and why they form and these other ethnic street gangs.

We were told that some individuals are looking for a group of people to share identity with, that they sometimes lack positive role models in their personal lives, and that there's a general lack of economic opportunity for many of these young individuals. We were told that these are some of the reasons why they join the gangs.

A number of organizations in urban areas try to work with young people in terms of at-risk youth programs. I was wondering if you could comment on what types of programs you think would be effective and that we should be offering to try to stem the flow of young people into these gangs in the first place.

Additionally, I wonder if you comment on the role that drugs play.

Mr. Foss, you mentioned that many of the members of these gangs are users themselves. We heard from a number of witnesses last week in Toronto who suggested that one way of taking organized crime out of gangs is to decriminalize and legalize some, if not all, of the drugs they may be using.

I wonder if you could comment on what you think the impact of that sort of a solution would be on some of these young people. Perhaps you could also comment on where the drugs come from and what we ought to be doing to stem the supply of the drugs.

I know that these are a lot of different questions to focus on, but I'd be interested in hearing from Ms. Fox, Mr. Foss, and Mr. Louis specifically on those issues.

[Jan Fox]

Again, I'll start, and I'll talk about my experience, although I'm by no means the expert here. The two on my right are certainly more expert in terms of the actual characteristics.

But when you were describing the ethnic gangs, I did hear some similar words about things that I also see with the aboriginal community, and particularly, the need for a sense of belonging, not having good role models, and the relationship to poverty. I would also say that in jail I think gangs might flourish a bit more for the purpose of protection in jail and, you know, being together to address that.

You did ask about what we think might have caused what's going on. Again, I'll defer to Mr. Louis, but one of the things I've seen is that some of the young aboriginal guys have very much moved away from their roots, from their spirituality, and from their work with their elders. That has changed in their communities. I'm also seeing a bit of a migration. Instead of going to home communities, many of the young ones are coming to the cities, where they are feeling a little bit lost and where there are not the same supports, if you will, as there are in their home communities.

So what do we need to do? I think we need to stay the course. You may have heard that in Corrections we've done an awful lot of work in trying to assist people in regaining their spirituality and their culture. It's not always successful, but it has been one of the most successful things I've experienced in my time, and we have some wonderful programs in relation to that.

Most importantly, what I've seen in my 29 years of working in Corrections, although I hate to admit that, is that we've often tried to be everything to everybody, and we don't have that ability. We need to focus on what our colleagues in the aboriginal communities are telling us.

Also, we haven't talked much what is new and emerging, and in my district, that is the Asian gangs. We need to ask the people in those communities what they see as needs for their young people. I think you'll hear from both chiefs of police in my district later about some initiatives they've undertaken in that regard. Both Chief Boyd and Chief Hanson have really reached out in town hall meetings and have come to the communities where gangs issues are prevalent. They've had some great success with that. I think we need to continue to do that as well.

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

Could I just ask you to clarify? Did you say that some people join the gangs after they go to prison, not before?

[Jan Fox]

Yes.

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

Thanks.

Mr. Foss.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

Thank you very much. Your time is up.

[Jan Fox]

Oh, I'm sorry.

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

Perhaps we'll have another chance to finish up later.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

Yes, I think we probably will, Mr. Dechert.

Mr. Rathgeber, for five minutes.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.

Thank you to all the members of the committee for coming here today.

I would especially like to say hi to my old friends, Greg Rice and Harvey Cenaiko. Greg and I practised together early on in our careers, and Mr. Cenaiko and I were MLAs together from 2001 until my premature retirement in 2004. He stayed on until 2008, I think.

It's great to see all of you.

When Mr. Rice and I practised together, we were civil litigators, and I'm intrigued by this issue of disclosure. With respect to the resolution of disclosure efforts civilly, it is handled in a pretrial application, as Mr. Comartin suggested, and that may be the result of this symposium last Thursday in Toronto that we talked about.

I'm intrigued by it, and I agree, Mr. Rice, that we need to fix this. It takes up too much of your resources, it leads to delays in trials, and ultimately, sometimes those trials are stayed as a result. But given what the Supreme Court has said in Stinchcombe case and others, and given what the charter says about making the right to full answer in defence to a charge, can this be modified, in your view, or are we stuck with this?

[Greg Rice]

That's a tough question.

Just for the committee's information, the test under Stinchcombe is that everything is to be disclosed that is clearly not irrelevant. I think one of the committee members brought up the fact that we can't get into the mind of a defence counsel. It's really difficult even for us to ascertain what is relevant and irrelevant. Something that appears to be totally innocuous may be really important to the defence. We don't know,so we always err on the side of inclusion, and of course the test is “clearly irrelevant”, that is, what is really clearly irrelevant in a case. That's a very difficult thing.

What can we do? I don't think it's for me to say here what we can do, but here's what I can say, for what it's worth. I've wondered about this. I've wondered about how investigations were conducted. I realize that Stinchcombe wasn't around 20 or 25 years ago; it was in the early nineties that Stinchcombe came in. But we have all these new tools now. We have the ability to put vast amounts of information through computers and to put various things into databases.

So when we do these investigations, we can continue them not just for a month or two months, but for a year or a year and a half. Also, we can employ police officers across provinces and we can get all of their information and import all of it into a database. That may actually mean going far up the chain to get the people we want, but by the same token, I wonder if in creating the ability to do that we haven't outsmarted ourselves and produced a product that we simply can't prosecute.

Because you have to remember that when we go into court, we have to present the evidence through witnesses. We don't have the ability to simply put a hard drive in the court or on the jury's desks and say, “Here you go--read it”. We need to do it through witnesses. I wonder if we haven't created a kind of monster through the use of computers and the like.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

It's normally law enforcement and crown prosecutors such as you who cite disclosure issues as being a problem in the prosecution of organized crime. I know that you talk to the defence bar from time to time, so would you agree with me that it's also in the defence bar's best interests to have this matter resolved? It's just so the disclosure they get is in fact relevant, and so they're not getting a truckload full of documents they have to sift through, much of which might not be relevant but is needed to satisfy your obligation to provide them with everything that is clearly not irrelevant?

[Greg Rice]

I would agree with that. In many cases, I think, when defence counsel receives the hard drive, which is really what amounts to a truckload of paper, they are not in a position with their own resources in their own offices to adequately digest all of that information.

Defence counsel will have to speak to this, but my view of the procedural bogging down that it causes is that unless something is changed this will continue. In some cases, it can be a useful tool to defence to basically cause one of these large cases to go on either until we get to a delay problem or, as I mentioned with one case, until a case is crushed under its own weight.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brian Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Rathgeber.

Mr. Norlock, for five minutes, please.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming today.

Mr. Rice, I have just a quick observation. It's defence council's obligation to their client to try to win at all costs. That's the problem you face. As a policeman for 30 years, I saw the transition. I saw the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's a good thing, but when left in human hands, it can be manipulated beyond belief. That's just a comment, sir. I really wish.... I was going to go down that path, but I think it's fruitless.

But here's what I do think is a fruitful path, quite frankly. Warkworth Institution is within my riding. It's Canada's largest federal medium-security penitentiary. They have a healing centre there. I forget the exact name of the program, but it is a complete and separate dwelling within the confines of the institution. There are some first nations territories in the vicinity, but actually, because of the numbers we have, it's very successful. I believe it's immensely successful.

I'm throwing this out to Mr. Louis, Ms. Fox, and Mr. Foss, if we have time. I'll try to be succinct with my words. I think the reason it is successful is that it goes to the roots of first nations people, which are for all intents and purposes very religious, if I can use our term. That is based on the creator, and it works up from there, building on self. That's the same for every religion. Quite frankly, I think you underuse the chaplaincy programs in our prisons. They're very cost-effective and they reach into the community from birth up.

I wonder, Mr. Louis, if you could talk about that, and then just leave a bit of time for Ms. Fox and Mr. Foss to comment.

[Roy Louis]

Thank you for that question.

I really think what Corrections has done in creating these institutions.... We have one in Hobbema. It's based on native spirituality. It's very unique in that sense, because it's unfortunate that our people have to learn their own spirituality in an institution. However, what they've done and what they've learned is something else. I think our statistics on recidivism are quite low because of the fact that they're working on themselves to heal their minds, their bodies, and their spirits. I think it's very important for places like that to continue. In our region, I'm very proud of them.

I've been involved in our institution since the day it opened in 1997. I've seen a lot of progress and I've seen a lot changes. I've seen some of the programs that we've done. Our horse program is very successful and the “In Search of Your Warrior” program is very successful. There are many other things happening there, which is good for the inmates serving their sentences.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Foss.