Justice Committee on May 13th, 2022

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I'm sorry about that.

Thank you very much to all of our witnesses.

I have a question for the Elizabeth Fry Society. As a young person many years ago—as a law student, actually—I was introduced to the Elizabeth Fry Society here in Nova Scotia. That was decades ago, so I can only imagine how it is now. Through that, I saw all the good work that is being done on the ground here and across the country, particularly for women, and now for gender-diverse people.

Ms. Coyle and Ms. Kish, you've made the point a few times that we need to have a criminal justice system that accounts for systemic racism, applying the Gladue principle for indigenous people. We've previously heard about the role that race and culture assessments in sentencing can play in addressing the systemic racism in our justice system.

What do you think of the use of those assessments? Is that also part of what we can pursue to advance racial justice? What else would you recommend?

Please go ahead and take your time. Either one of you or both of you can answer.

[Emilie Coyle]

Nyki, I'll turn it to you.

[Nyki Kish]

Working together across tables is really important to bring in people's voices—the voice of everybody who's impacted—both through the law and through our programs and services. Right now, through mandatory minimum penalties, we have so many people across Canada who are kept and broken from their families in permanent ways. We have outcomes that we're sure Canadians would be very concerned by if they knew about them.

We believe that if authority is given to the justices, parole officers and correctional authorities to meet their mandate, to incarcerate or not incarcerate, and return people to the community when they're ready, this will have the strongest result.

Go ahead, Emilie.

[Emilie Coyle]

To answer your question specifically about Gladue reports or similar types of reports for other people, there is a utility to them. There is a utility to anything that is able to bring to light the various factors that have brought a person in front of the justice system or to be involved with the justice system.

The things that you will uncover in these types of reports are the very things that we mentioned at the outset. For example, in the prisons we go to, the people we meet are survivors of violence themselves. There are many types of structural violence, but there's also the physical, sexual, emotional and financial violence that they've experienced in their lifetimes. We punish them again through our legal system. The legal system is complicit in the type of violence they are experiencing.

If we're able to utilize those types of tools to bring to light the stories of the people who are being brought in front of the justices, it can be very helpful.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Following up on that, you would recommend a rehabilitative approach for people who have committed a crime and don't pose a threat to public safety, instead of imprisonment. Can you tell me what kinds of rehabilitative approaches you would recommend? Why do you think it's a good thing to do?

I know you've already talked about it, but could you elaborate a bit more on that? How is that different, from your perspective, across the country?

[Nyki Kish]

We will often work with people who have never gone to school or have never been in social positions where they've had access to career development or social stability. We see people who want to contribute to society, want to succeed and want to be a part of the common good, but do not feel [Inaudible—Editor].

Increasingly, we're seeing people passively go through the justice system without understanding the laws that impact them. In this process, we're seeing cold, hard prisons that create worse outcomes, and then people are returning to the community without any access or pathways toward meaningful participation.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Again, I want to restate that the mandatory minimum sentences that are at play are in this, provided that there is no threat to public safety. Would you agree with that?

[Nyki Kish]

Completely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Kish, and Ms. Diab.

Monsieur Fortin, you have two and a half minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Ms. Coyle.

You talk a lot about indigenous women who end up in prison, but who have themselves been the victims of several acts of violence before, whether it be rape, theft or assault. That is the example you give.

Don't these women want their abusers to be in prison?

[Emilie Coyle]

I can't necessarily speak on behalf of everyone who has experienced that. However, I can say that we have an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in this country. We have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission findings in this country. Many of them speak to the fact that people who are indigenous in this country have suffered many types of violence.

Whether somebody is looking for accountability through the lens of imprisonment or is looking for accountability and healing from many different systems, that is, I think, a larger conversation.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I understand that the abusers who end up in prison, whether they are women or men, would like to see mandatory minimum sentences eliminated. However, I would be curious to know how a woman who has been the victim of extortion committed with a firearm, for example, would react if she were told that we were going to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences and that we would no longer have to send her assailant to prison. What do you think her reaction would be?

[Emilie Coyle]

Again, I can't speak to specific people's reactions, but I will say this: If we are really looking to achieve public safety, and we are not achieving it with the system we have now, why are we not trying to pour resources into a system that would achieve true public safety? Mandatory minimum penalties are not giving us that.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

You have 15 seconds.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Okay.

In this case, thank you, Ms. Coyle.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Monsieur Fortin.

Mr. Garrison, you have two and half minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to return to either of the witnesses from the Elizabeth Fry Society and talk about the knock-on effect here of over-incarceration. That's the large number of indigenous women in particular who have criminal records.

Can either of you talk to us about the consequences you see for trying to rehabilitate and reintegrate people who have criminal records into their communities?

[Emilie Coyle]

I really thank you for that question. I think I was only able to touch on it very briefly in my remarks.

We are part of a coalition of 85 organizations and individuals. It's called the Fresh Start Coalition. If any of you are interested, we have a website. We have many testimonies on that website from people who have criminal records.

A criminal record follows a person for the rest of their life. We have currently a very onerous application system that people have to go through in order to get their record suspended at the end of a certain period of time. The length of time is long before a person can apply. The application process is onerous and can be expensive, despite the first step of reducing the initial application cost, which was just done recently here in Canada.

I think for us, for people who are coming out of prisons with criminal records, that can affect their housing. They can't find homes because of a box on a landlord's questionnaire. They can't find employment, because employers....

In fact, we have a recent example, which Nyki can speak to really briefly, if you would like, of a person who lost her job.

[Nyki Kish]

Yes.

It's unfortunate. We work with an individual who was released after a lengthy incarceration. They spent many of the years inside the penitentiary doing the best they could, helping others and doing the best they could from the place they were. When they were released, they found meaningful employment. An old Internet article that was found by their employer caused them to be fired from their job for the disclosure of that.

We see criminal records significantly barring people from rehabilitation and meaningful employment over the life course.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

The bill, as it stands right now, does not include the expungement of those criminal records. This is the obvious question here: What positive impacts would that actually have, if we could add that to this bill?

[Nyki Kish]

Our system is mandated towards successful rehabilitation and reintegration, so I think that we ought to equip ourselves as a society to provide that.

When people are sanctioned through incarceration and then sanctioned again for the rest of their lives through prevention of the social determinants of wellness, the expungement—

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Kish. Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

That concludes our first panel. I want to thank all of the witnesses for your testimony. It's always very informative and powerful, and in Ms. Bui's case, very emotional and personal. I also want to thank you.

We'll now suspend for a minute or so while we do a sound check for the next witnesses. We'll resume right after that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Okay, we'll resume.

For the two witnesses who just joined, there is a language button on the bottom of your screen. Make sure you set it to the language of your choice or you can pick floor if you're fluent in both languages. Just so we don't have any interpretation delays, you can choose that.

There will be opening statements for five minutes. As I said earlier, I use cue cards. When you're down to 30 seconds, I'll raise a yellow cue card. When you're out of time, I'll raise a red one. I don't like interrupting when you're in your thought, but the 30 seconds hopefully gives you enough time to wrap up your train of thought.

We'll begin for five minutes with Ms. Durham.

[Kathy Durham, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Thank you for facilitating this discussion.

A couple of years ago, I received a call from one of my commercial tenants about a fence of mine being cut, stolen goods around the area and a storage shed that was being used for addiction and drug use. They also had a shelter behind one of the units, with illegal drug paraphernalia scattered around the area. Not knowing any better, I started to clean it up, and I watched the situation. This group of people were gathering behind my property on city land in an area known to RCMP. There were many stolen bikes and goods, and our tenants were getting broken into regularly.

I started to take pictures and document things. One night around 10:30, I got a call from a friend that the fire department was down on my property. I rushed down, worried about the fires because the units were loaded with potato chips and our neighbouring property is Lo-Cost Propane. The fire department stopped me at the gate and warned me not to approach this group. They were known to police and were dangerous, especially when high. The fire department recovered 11 needles that night, and the city sent a haz-mat team into the area to recover the drug paraphernalia on their property.

I told city council that if something doesn’t change and a fire gets into Lo-Cost Propane, Cranbrook is going to light up like the fourth of July. From that point forward, I became more vigilant in my attention to the situation: recording things, emailing bylaw and reaching out in the hope that some form of government could help.

I started to share my story about being broken into in my own home one night. It was the night that I was going to leave my 15-year-old son home for the first time. Call it mother's intuition, but I drove into town late that night and picked him up. That night, someone entered my home. The police knew this person. My son's PS4 was stolen and loose change was taken. A few weeks later, after fingerprints were obtained off my window and some video surveillance from my neighbour's property, who also had his car and shed broken into, the perpetrator was arrested. Eight other people whose homes were broken into were blacklisted out on the court documents, and then I was invited to the court case but declined out of fear of safety for me and my family.

Then I noticed on Facebook that another business had issues and was reaching out. She mentioned issues with drugs, threats to employees and theft. Things were getting crazy for businesses. A few businesses met with MP Morrison and city council. I told them that I represented four businesses, all victims of crime, with employees that had knives pulled on them and goods stolen. Our local garden centre offered to purchase razor wire for these businesses. Over a hundred businesses came forward. We are a town of just over 20,000 people, and commercial crime is up 171%.

A young employee on her first job had a gentleman come in and buy goldfish. When he was paying for the goldfish, he dropped drug paraphernalia all over the cash register. The man then proceeded outside to open the bag of goldfish and eat them live in front of this young lady.

I leave you with the thoughts of your family home being broken into, your young son home by himself and your daughter having to watch someone eat a live goldfish. We, the law-abiding citizens, are being targeted by crime and violence, knives and machetes, while trying to protect our families, our businesses and our livelihood. Removing mandatory minimums would only give these criminals another avenue to escape penalties and to continue to victimize hard-working people.

Thank you.