Public Accounts Committee on March 12th, 2009

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, witnesses, for being here.

Mr. Head, how long have you been commissioner?

[Don Head]

It has been since June 27 last year.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I was interested in your comment a little while ago indicating that you had gone to the staff on your management team and asked them about ideas for things that could be stopped, recognizing some of the four efficiencies. I would suspect that to be the case, recognizing that this has been an ongoing issue for a while, in terms of trying to build in, as was relayed earlier, the safety part, the security part. It seems to me that basic business sense and management practices appeared not to be important.

Do you have people around you who actually have a strong business managerial sense, who may actually have been in business, to help carry through what you would call, if you've been in business, just the natural things you do?

[Don Head]

In my management team I have a strong chief financial officer who has had many years of experience within the public service and who previously worked in the Auditor General's office. I have a human resources team now that is much stronger than it was a couple of years ago. So for issues around managing things such as, for example, overtime and the human resource components of it—the schedules—I have a much stronger team than we had several years ago.

In terms of people from the private sector being part of the organization, the short answer is no.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

You've never had anybody there from the private sector who's actually run a business?

[Don Head]

No.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Would you be open, having been benchmarked now, to coming back in a year and talking to this committee about the steps that have been taken, giving a progress report based on the Auditor General's report?

[Don Head]

Oh, most definitely. Yes, there's no question about that.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Following up, then, on some of the management issues, I get a little concerned about what I was reading about the employment leave records. This, to me, would be a natural operation, so help me understand why it isn't, when up to 35% of those people would be absent but not recorded by your human resources. I need to understand it a little more. I'm hoping you're going to tell me that from that time until now, under your direction, this has changed.

[Don Head]

The short answer is yes, it has. As a result of the review done by the Auditor General's office, once they brought it to our attention, we initiated an approach to review specifically the sites that were audited. As well, we initiated a review of all the institutions across the country to assure ourselves that the leave records were up to date. That process has occurred. Through my chief audit executive, by the end of this month we will be reviewing that again to make sure we're on track.

I think there was one institution that was around 35%. There was a range of 3% to 35% in the sampling. As to how the situation developed, what happened, to the best of our knowledge, is that an individual would phone in to what we call a correctional manager or supervisor on the shift and book off sick. The supervisor would make a notation somewhere but would immediately be focused on finding somebody to fill the upcoming shift. They'd get an overtime person in, and that person would come in.

The staff member may have booked off sick just the day before going on rest days, and then is not back in the institution for three, four, or five days, until their next cycle of work comes in. The notation by the supervisor who was on at the time wasn't carried on into a proper process for doing the follow-up with the employee, who comes back.... The employee may have forgotten to submit the form or whatever; we don't know. The form just was never submitted.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Is the national scheduling, the deployment system, going to be part of the solution?

[Don Head]

Very much so. The automated scheduling system that will be available in September will make it much easier, so that when an officer phones in and books, the correctional manager will push a button in the system, it will be recorded, and then the follow-up will be recorded and will occur as soon as the staff member is back.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Here is a quick one just out of interest. We've had a lot of discussion about the cost of food. What is the cost for meals per day per inmate?

[Don Head]

The cost of the rations is around $4.75, or in that $4 range—just under $5. The issue that was pointed out by the Auditor General is that it's not a true cost, because then you have to look at the preparation and so on. When we start to add in the cost for prep, we add in another $11, $12, or $15, depending on the mode of delivery in certain institutions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you.

Mr. Oliphant, you have five minutes.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We'll split our time here.

I want to come back to the overtime issue that was raised. You gave the illustration of sick time. My concern is for correctional officers. Do you note an increased amount of sick leave or stress leave among correctional officers?

[Don Head]

Yes. As mentioned earlier, we've noticed over the last several years that the average number of sick leave days taken by correctional officers has increased. Currently the average is about 17 days. That's almost the maxed-out number of sick leave days that a correctional officer can take in a given year: 15, plus these additional two, if they've already used up their 15.

We also have an issue or a problem around a provision that was put into the collective agreement several years ago, whereby correctional officers, if they've used up all the sick leave they have in their bank, can actually go into deficit for an additional 200 hours. We have several officers who are in deficit of 200 hours. The reasons for that vary from long-term illness to disability issues—those kinds of things.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I might end up disagreeing with the honourable member across who suggested that police services, EMS, and those sorts of agencies don't have overtime issues. I follow very closely the Toronto Police Service and EMS and Ontario corrections, and actually they do have significant problems with overtime. That's a budgetary problem that I've dealt with.

My concern is whether you have adequate funding for mental health, not for inmates—we'll get to that, hopefully, in my other committee—but for correctional officers and their well-being. Is that a program that needs expanding? Is it something that you need to do?

I ask this because I think auditors are like canaries in the mineshaft that signal things going on. I care, frankly, less about paperwork being done than about the well-being of our correctional officers, who are in highly stressful positions. I've worked with them and I know that. I want your opinion on that.

[Don Head]

That's very much so. This is a growing concern, probably more in the last few years than in the past.

If I go back to my own situation, when I started 31 years ago as a front-line correctional officer, if an incident occurred, it didn't matter how serious it was, you dealt with the incident. You were back at work the next day. It was just the culture. You just breathed it up and went on.

Today, as a result of all the good work the people have done around employee assistance, critical incident stress management, and the balance of work-family issues, it's not the case any more. Staff need the respite or the time away to heal.

One of my biggest concerns right now is dealing with issues that I would equate to post-traumatic stress disorder among some of our correctional officers, who are facing some of the most serious situations in our institutions. For that, we're starting to engage quite closely with the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, UCCO SACC CSN, and looking at what we could do collectively to try, for one thing, to recognize this issue, and two, to address it. But it's not an issue that this organization ever anticipated.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I will be appealing to the minister for funding for that important work. I don't think the government has it anywhere on their radar, so we'll be appealing for it.

My colleague has a question.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

This is a quick question. There's a lot of talk right now about getting tough on crime. I'm wondering about the space for the prisoners who are incarcerated right now in our prison system. How are we going to be able to jump on that after we get tough on crime?

Specifically, I'm wondering where we are with the government's commitment to a new federal penitentiary in Newfoundland and Labrador.

[Don Head]

On the issue of the proposed legislative amendments, we continue to provide input as to the impact on the correctional service, as do other government departments that may experience some impacts. In our calculations, we look at what the projected population growth would be based on our normal flow in and out of the system. We make representations for funding through those processes. We're comfortable that our voice is being heard and that our situation is well understood.

One of the issues for us, of course, is how quickly certain things may come on. From the things we've seen so far, based on plans that we've put forward, we believe we'll be able to manage until appropriate resources come forward for us to put in place the necessary capacity for significant growth within the organization.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Andrews is finished, but he asked a question—you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, because it's really not relevant to this chapter—about the Newfoundland initiative.

Don't feel you're under any obligation.

[Don Head]

At this point in time, we're not involved in any financial discussion with Newfoundland, but we are talking with them about their needs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Andrews.

Mr. Young, you have five minutes.