Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 19th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone. It's good to see each one of you here today for meeting number 127 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Before we begin, I would like to welcome René Arseneault to our committee. He is replacing Rémi.

Welcome to this committee.

[René Arseneault, Madawaska—Restigouche, Lib.]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I would now like to take a minute to express our sympathies and respect to the Office of the Auditor General on the passing of our Auditor General. This is the first meeting we have convened since going to the funeral, and last week we did not meet. I want to underscore, as I think Mr. Christopherson did so well in his comments in the House, that this committee appreciated the extremely good working relationship we had with our Auditor General and friend, Michael Ferguson. To say the least, all of us recognize that we lost the people's auditor, as someone said, and we also lost a very honourable man.

Before we move on with the meeting, I think we'll just take a moment out of respect for him.

[A moment of silence observed]

Thank you.

We're here today in consideration of report 6, “Community Supervision—Correctional Service Canada”, of the 2018 Fall Reports of the Auditor General of Canada.

I'll remind everyone that we are televised today, so please turn your phones to silent.

Today we are honoured to have with us, from the Office of the Auditor General, Mr. Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General; and Nicholas Swales, principal.

From Correctional Service Canada we have Ms. Anne Kelly, our commissioner; Larry Motiuk, assistant commissioner, policy; and Alain Tousignant, senior deputy commissioner.

We welcome you all here this morning.

We'll begin with you, Mr. Hayes. The floor is yours, sir.

[Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our report on community supervision. Joining me is Nicholas Swales, the principal responsible for the audit.

Most offenders become eligible for release before their sentences end, serving a portion of their sentences under supervision in the community. As of April 2018, almost 40% of all federal offenders were supervised in the community. The number of offenders in the community increased substantially between 2013 and 2018. Correctional Service Canada anticipates that this number will keep growing.

This audit looked at Correctional Service Canada's supervision of offenders in the community and the agency's accommodation of them, when required, to support their return to society as law-abiding citizens.

This audit is important because the offenders' gradual and supervised return to society leads to better public safety outcomes.

Overall, we found that Correctional Service Canada had reached the limit on how many offenders it could accommodate in the community. We also found that it did not properly manage offenders under community supervision.

In March 2018, nearly one third of the federal offenders on release required supervised housing as a condition of their release. We found that Correctional Service Canada didn't increase the number of housing spaces to keep pace with the demand. As a result, offenders who were approved for release into the community in 2017-18 had to wait on average twice as long for accommodation than did the offenders who were released into the community four years before. We also found that some offenders weren't being placed in their requested communities because of capacity constraints. This made reintegration more difficult for those offenders.

Furthermore, we found that Correctional Service Canada forecasted a need for more housing, but that it did not have a long-term plan to meet that need. This means that the housing shortages are likely to get worse.

With respect to the supervision of offenders, we found that Correctional Service Canada didn't provide parole officers with all the health information they needed to design release plans for offenders.

We also found that parole officers did not meet with offenders as often as they should have, and they did not always monitor special conditions imposed by the Parole Board of Canada as part of the terms of an offender's release. By not performing these activities, parole officers were not always able to conduct a timely assessment of progress against the offender's release plan or to identify changes to the offender's needs or the risk they present to society.

Finally, we found that Correctional Service Canada did not properly measure its success in meeting its mandate to reintegrate offenders into society as law-abiding citizens. The agency measured only convictions that resulted in the return of federal offenders to federal custody. The agency did not include data on post-sentence offences requiring the incarceration of offenders in provincial or territorial facilities. Without data on convictions recorded by other levels of government, the agency had an incomplete picture of the rate at which federal offenders were successfully reintegrating into society as law-abiding citizens.

We made five recommendations, and Correctional Service Canada agreed with all of them. The agency has shared with us its action plan, which includes actions and timelines for our recommendations.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hayes.

We'll now proceed to the commissioner, Ms. Kelly.

[Anne Kelly, Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada]

Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the findings and recommendations of the Auditor General's performance audit on community supervision.

Again with me today are the senior deputy commissioner, Mr. Alain Tousignant; the assistant commissioner of policy, Mr. Larry Motiuk; and, the assistant commissioner, health services, Ms. Jennifer Wheatley.

While I have appeared before this committee as interim commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, I'm honoured to appear before you today as the commissioner, which became effective at the end of July 2018.

I'd like to take a moment to mark the recent passing of Michael Ferguson, the Auditor General of Canada. He was a highly respected public servant who dedicated his career to Canadians. The impact of his passing is being felt by many.

The Auditor General's reports under the leadership of Mr. Ferguson have significantly contributed to our ongoing mission to assist offenders with their rehabilitation and to keep Canadians safe, and this fall 2018 report is no exception. This most recent report examined whether CSC adequately supervises offenders in the community and assists them with accommodation and health care-related services that facilitate and support the reintegration process.

As the committee knows, CSC is responsible for offenders sentenced to two years or more. It's important to note that the majority of offenders will be released back into Canadian communities. CSC keeps Canadians safe through the effective rehabilitation and successful reintegration of offenders.

Beginning at sentencing, parole officers and other institutional staff work closely with offenders to prepare them for their eventual release into the community. While incarcerated, offenders are encouraged to participate in various correctional interventions, such as educational and correctional programs and vocational training, in order to learn the skills necessary to help them return safely to the community and to become law-abiding citizens.

It's important to note that offender rehabilitation doesn’t end once the offenders are released into the community. Research demonstrates that society is best protected when offenders are gradually reintegrated into society through a supervised release, rather than released at the end of their sentence with no controls or support.

The gradual release of offenders into the community under supervision allows them to be assessed, monitored, guided and encouraged to become law-abiding citizens. Assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens upon their release from prison is the most significant contribution CSC can make to keeping Canadian communities safe.

With the appropriate level of structured supervision by their community parole officer coupled with the assistance from their community case management team and members of the community, offenders can continue to apply the skills they have gained while in custody and benefit from new opportunities available to them in the community.

CSC is experiencing a shift in how and where it is managing its offender population, with a greater proportion of federal offenders serving their sentence in the community. For example, CSC saw an increase of approximately 1,500 offenders managed in the community in the last five years, from approximately 7,600 at fiscal year-end 2012-13 to over 9,100 in 2017-18.

The community-supervision population continues to grow. At the end of 2018 it exceeded 9,400. Moreover, the numbers of both indigenous and women offenders on conditional release have increased substantially over the past five years, an increase of 36% for indigenous offenders and of 50% for women offenders. In fact, there are now more women under community supervision than in federal custody. In addition, in 2017-18 we saw the highest number of day parole releases reported since 2012-13, an increase of 43%. As well, we saw the lowest number of revocations, with a decrease of 27%.

These results are positive for CSC. However, they also present a challenge, particularly with regard to community accommodation. There are approximately 200 community-based residential facilities in Canada, which are operated by CSC partners and accept offenders with residency conditions at their discretion. If one of these facilities is unable or unwilling to offer an offender residency, it is the responsibility of CSC to provide the offender with accommodation through one of its 14 community correctional centres.

Our efforts to manage, monitor and support offenders beyond institutional walls are as important as ever. Community supervision is critical to our ability to successfully reintegrate offenders into the community while ensuring the safety and security of all.

As you know, the Auditor General made five recommendations to address identified issues concerning community supervision. CSC fully accepts the Auditor General's findings and recommendations. Work is already under way to implement measures to address these important findings.

With respect to a long-term approach to accommodations, we are creating a national long-term community accommodation plan. We have also begun developing a comprehensive solution to better manage bed inventory, match offenders to community facilities and manage wait-lists.

In terms of the Auditor General's recommendation regarding the monitoring of offenders, we have added a responsibility to those of the district directors to monitor, on a monthly basis, compliance with the frequency of contact and special conditions. In addition, CSC has reinforced the need for and the monitoring of documentation to be completed in cases where exceptions to the frequency of contact requirements are warranted.

Regarding the recommendation concerning the facilitation of access to health care services, CSC is reviewing its policies related to the sharing of health care information and determining the most effective approach to ensuring that parole officers receive the information they require in a timely manner.

CSC is also continuing to work with provincial and territorial health care authorities to remove barriers to accessing health care cards and to ensure that offenders obtain proper identification prior to their release.

Finally, with respect to post-sentence outcome data collection, CSC is collaborating with the Department of Public Safety on work in the area of recidivism rates, including information held by provinces and territories on adult reconviction.

The Auditor General's findings and recommendations have given us much to consider moving forward. Please rest assured that we are working diligently to address the audit recommendations.

I will conclude my remarks by saying that I have been lucky over my 35 plus years with CSC to witness its evolution in its approach to corrections, as well as the considerable progress we have made in ensuring the effective rehabilitation and safe reintegration of offenders serving a federal sentence.

CSC's contributions to creating safer communities would not be possible without the dedication and passion of Correctional Service employees, our partners and stakeholders and our volunteers—to all, thank you.

With that, I thank you for the opportunity to meet today and welcome any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Commissioner.

With that, we'll move into our first round of questioning, which is a seven-minute round, and we'll begin with Mr. Arya, please.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Commissioner Kelly, welcome back. You rightly pointed out that it is important to note that offender rehabilitation does not end once they're released into the community. You also said, “Assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens upon their release from prison is the most important significant contribution CSC can make to keep...Canadian communities safe.”

Tell me this in your own words. You know that is the main objective, and the Auditor General's report says you have not met that objective. Why? You have been there for 35 years. You have seen how CSC has evolved. What are the things that were being done 10, 15 or 20 years back, and what are the things that are being done now? Why is that still not satisfactory for the Auditor General?

[Anne Kelly]

I started my career as a parole officer 35 years ago. I worked both in the institutions and in the community, and it was among the best jobs I have had.

Certainly as a community parole officer, frequency of contact, which is mentioned by the Auditor General, is one key element among many elements that comprise the community supervision framework. Frequency of contact is established when the offender is released into the community. It's based on the offender's risks and needs. That's how you establish whether you're going to see the offender eight times a month, four times a month, twice a month, once a month. Sometimes when they have been in the community for a long time, it's more sporadic.

There are other elements to community supervision. Almost 3,000 offenders in the community are residing in community-based residential facilities. When you reside in what we call a halfway house, you are seen on a daily basis by the people who work in the halfway house. There are other things in place in the community as part of the community supervision framework. Normally the offender has to report to the police so they are seen by the police. We also have electronic monitoring in the community to assist in supervising the offenders.

Offenders in the community are also expected to participate in community maintenance programs, which means they are seen by program officers. Many offenders also have to see a psychologist as a special condition, which means they are seen by a mental health professional. Many offenders also go to work. We also reach out to their family. In some cases, we do urinalysis testing with the offenders, and we do curfew checks. As you can see, community supervision includes a lot of elements.

When the Auditor General looked, frequency of contact is supposed to be documented in a certain place in the casework records. That's not always done. I fully admit we need to be better at documenting.

The other thing is frequency of contact. The offender is continuously assessed, so frequency of contact can change. When released, an offender may be seen by the parole officer four times a month, based on their progress it may be reduced to twice a month. That needs to be clearly documented. Otherwise, the auditors are going to look for four contacts a month and not two. That's something else we need to document.

There are times where it's impossible for the parole officer to see an offender. The Auditor General has raised this, and he has talked to us about it. For example, there was a forest fire in a community, and the parole officer couldn't speak to an offender. The parole officer in that case clearly documented that in the casework record, and the Auditor General's Office accepted that. These are the things we need to do.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

My time is getting short. I have a couple of other questions.

You mentioned the huge increase of 1,500 in the number of people in the last five years...you are expecting it now to be 9,400 people for community supervision this year.

Have you had a proposed net increase in the number of federal officers?

[Anne Kelly]

We have a ratio of parole officers in the community: one parole officer for 13 offenders. Right now when we look at the number of parole officers and the ratio, we have 715 parole officers, and the ratio is around 1:13. It varies a little.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

So you already have a great number of parole officers?

[Anne Kelly]

Yes.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Obviously one of the things that measures the success of CSC is if the offenders return to society as law-abiding citizens.

How are you measuring that? The Auditor General has pointed out that you don't have data if they reoffend and go to provincial jurisdictions. You mentioned you are working with the department of public safety on that.

What progress have you made?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Arya.

[Anne Kelly]

At this point, it's true. Once offenders have completed their sentences, we don't follow them up. However, we are working with both Public Safety Canada and StatsCan to look at an automated way of capturing that data. We do routine studies as well. With the social data linkage project with Stats Canada, we hope to be able to cover both post-release employment and income as well as health outcomes and also, obviously, readmissions to both province and territories.

I'll turn to my colleague Mr. Motiuk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Speak very quickly, because we're already over the time.

[Dr. Larry Motiuk, Assistant Commissioner, Policy, Correctional Service of Canada]

As Commissioner Kelly mentioned, we are engaging in joint projects with Stats Canada and Public Safety Canada, looking at reconviction rates post-federal custody. One of the difficulties is that having access to that data and routinely reporting requires some effort. We're looking at automation and whatnot. Work is well under way on this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kelly, please.

[Pat Kelly, Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC]

Thank you.

Thanks, Commissioner Kelly. I noted that in your opening remarks you spoke of the revocations being down and the number of day parole offenders being up, reporting that as good news. Yet, much of the report really talks about offenders not being adequately supervised during community sentence.

How do we know that this is good news? If offenders are not monitored properly, which is what the Auditor General has said in this report, how can you assure Canadians that they are safe, when offenders are not being monitored adequately?

[Anne Kelly]

I would like to start by saying that we do have an increase in the number of offenders in the population, but we also have a corresponding decrease in the number of revocations, which speaks to the work that is done by parole officers. As I explained previously, frequency of contact is one element of a broader community supervision framework. I can assure Canadians that offenders are monitored in the community.

After the OAG looked at 50 cases, I asked Mr. Motiuk, who is the assistant commissioner, policy, and has research under him, to also review the 50 cases and look at casework records and all documentation that was on the files of those 50 cases. What we found in almost all cases was that certainly the offenders are met within 24 hours of release. We also found that the compliance issues identified by the Auditor General—and staff may want to speak to that—are not systemic, in the sense that there's a lack of contact month over month. In some cases, it may be one contact that's missed, one month. In other cases, what we found is again, some of the documentation.... This is something we're addressing.

Mr. Motiuk can speak more to it, but in reviewing the casework we found lots of evidence that parole officers were very engaged with the offenders.

[Pat Kelly]

Okay.

If I may, I will read from page 9 of the report:

For 19 of the 50 offender files examined (nearly 40%), we found that parole officers did not fully monitor offenders as required.

Now, you've said that you accept the findings of the Auditor General, yet I get a sense of defensiveness around this from you, Commissioner.

Do you accept this finding, that 40% are not being monitored as required? Are the requirements not correct? Should they be modified?

If all these other various forms of monitoring that you've spoken of are sufficient, why is the Auditor General saying that in 40% of cases they're not being monitored as required?

[Anne Kelly]

I certainly don't mean to be defensive. We accept the Auditor General's findings and recommendations. As I said before, in some cases, it's a question of documentation. In other cases, again on the frequency of contact, if the frequency changes during the month and it's not properly documented, unfortunately the Auditor General will be looking for four contacts a month when actually there are two that are required.

As a result, we're amending our policy. We've added a responsibility to the district directors to monitor compliance with the frequency of contact.

[Pat Kelly]

It says that...“9 cases in which parole officers met with offenders on several occasions over a short time period, which was not in keeping with the spirit of the policy”. Perhaps I'll put the question to Mr. Hayes. I thought that observation was somewhat curious. It sounded like you were suggesting that officers may be gaming the system, so to speak, squeezing in several visits in a short period of time as an expedient rather than actually fulfilling the requirements.

Is that what you found or...?

[Andrew Hayes]

I would point the committee to paragraph 6.46 where we mention that we found instances, and these are the nine cases that we're talking about, in which parole officers met with offenders in a compressed amount of time—for example, three times in six days. The point that we want to make with this is that this approach did not allow parole officers to perform timely assessments of changes to the needs of the offenders or the risk that they present to society.

The commissioner has mentioned that perhaps the requirements might change in terms of frequency of contact, and if they're not documented, the commissioner is correct that we would be looking for compliance with the policy or the requirements that were in place and documented at the time.

I'll ask my colleague if he has anything to add to that.