Justice Committee on Oct. 18th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Thank you.

Mr. Harris.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the presenters for their useful information and views.

Professor Oscapella, I would like to ask you a question concerning your discussion on the drug situation. It's interesting that your presentation comes on the heels of an article in yesterday's Globe and Mail by Neil Reynolds, not a noted liberal, on issues of certain types. He talks about the war on drugs. He says it cannot be won and that it has in fact led to increases in crimes and violence throughout the world. He talked about the U.S. and Mexico in particular and the number of deaths approaching 40,000 in the last five years. He says that if the United States legalized drugs, the savings would be $44 billion in law enforcement and another $42 billion in tax revenues.

These are interesting numbers.

I understand that some countries have attempted to take a different approach towards drugs in order to reduce crime and harm to society. Would you care to comment on what has happened in Portugal, which I understand has undertaken a program of changes in its approach to the use of drugs and the criminalization of drugs, particularly marijuana?

[Eugene Oscapella]

Yes, certainly, Mr. Harris. Thank you for the question.

Portugal about ten years ago introduced a system of essentially a drug-dissuasion committee. Instead of being criminally charged for possessing small quantities of a drug or selling small quantities of drugs, people who were apprehended would be required to appear before a committee of three people and they would discuss the person's drug-use habits. Essentially, it's a non-criminal way of dealing with potentially problematic drug use. Let's remember that most drug use is not problematic in terms of its effects on society.

What they found was that actually drug use rates went down. That doesn't necessarily mean that the policies caused the drug use rates to go down, but that they did not explode upwards, as some people might have suggested. In fact, the program has been quite successful. The Economist magazine, as a matter of fact, did an article on it not too long ago. It sort of praised it as an alternative to the current prohibitionist war-on-drugs model, which, as you pointed out, has been a colossal failure primarily because of the black market in drugs that it creates, which makes it extremely profitable for insurgent criminal and terrorist groups that benefit from the drug trade.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Has that been done by changing all of the criminal law, or has it been done by introducing a new approach to handling it? Is it a diversion program?

[Eugene Oscapella]

I believe it's been done by changing the law. One of the problems is that the international treaties are sometimes cited as an impediment to doing that. I'm not so sure they are the impediment. The Netherlands, for example, has had a long-standing policy of non-prosecution for possession of small quantities of drugs. So even though the laws remained in place, they used the policy of non-prosecution. We could do the same thing here in Canada. That would be one way to ameliorate the harshness of this law.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

Of course, one of the relationships, one of the issues we're talking about here is that it appears that the American rate of incarceration, for example, is in some measure tied to the war on drugs. Some 25% of inmates in the U.S. are incarcerated on drug-related crimes. Have you seen any numbers in terms of Canada and what level of our prison population is related to drug cases or drug possession or trafficking or other related matters?

[Eugene Oscapella]

I think Mr. Head would be in a better position to answer what percentage of people who are in there have a drug crime or drug offence as their principal offence. It will vary. As you pointed out, one quarter of all the prisoners in the United States--which incidentally incarcerates one quarter of all the human beings who are imprisoned on earth--are in prison for drug-related crimes, most of them non-violent. But again, Mr. Head might be in a better position to answer that question than I am with regard to the specific recent statistics.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I understand the arguments in relation to how drugs are dealt with by society. Is there a way into this? Most people present it as an all-or-nothing issue, you know, that drugs are bad and we have to tackle that because it's our obligation as a state to protect people from this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Unfortunately, Mr. Harris, your time is up.

We now go to Mr. Woodworth.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd very much like to begin by welcoming the witnesses and thanking them for their contribution.

Whether or not we always agree on everything, we're all here with the same intention of providing good public policy for Canadians, according to our principles.

I want to begin, Mr. Chair, by reassuring those Canadians who have been listening that the whole notion of a war on drugs is not anything that our government has declared. It's not anything the minister has ever said, to my knowledge. It's certainly not what's in Bill C-10. And all this talk about war on drugs is really a diversion, and a misleading diversion, about what actually is in Bill C-10. Whatever our policy is on the prohibition of drug trafficking, it isn't established in Bill C-10.

I'd like to ask Mr. Head a little bit.... You are the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, and I'm assuming that people watching can understand that this means you're the head man in the corrections system. Is that correct?

[Don Head]

That's right, sir.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And I'm imagining that you didn't get to that position without some significant experience in the corrections system. Is that right?

[Don Head]

That's right, sir.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

How many years have you been involved in corrections?

[Don Head]

Thirty-four years.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

For 34 years. And during those 34 years, have you seen pretty much everything there is to see about our corrections system?

[Don Head]

The odd day there is something that surprises me, but I've seen a lot, yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Would it surprise you to be told that we currently have a crisis of crowding in our corrections system, which amounts to cruel and unusual punishment? Have you observed that, by any chance?

[Don Head]

I wouldn't say that the latter part of your sentence is something I've seen. Are there issues related to double-bunking? Yes. I know at the provincial and territorial levels there are some issues, but I wouldn't describe the conditions as cruel and unusual punishment. I've been to many different places around the world, sir, and I can tell you that Canada is still a leader when it comes to how we treat offenders.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

So you know what cruel and unusual punishment in corrections would be, and that's not what we have. Is that your evidence?

[Don Head]

I wouldn't buy into that statement.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

All right. And do you think you're in a crisis?

[Don Head]

I think we're at a point in our history where there are some challenges, challenges in terms of growth and in terms of specific subsets of the population, but I wouldn't be declaring a crisis.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

All right. Well, I'm going to rely on your 34 years of expertise in accepting that evidence from you today.

I'd like to ask you about the issue of capital costs that might be associated with Bill C-10. Have you attempted to determine whether or not there will be additional capital costs to your budget as a result of Bill C-10?

[Don Head]

Yes, and in terms of the numbers we've looked at, the overall amount for capital costs would equate to about one additional living unit or two additional living units within the correctional system.