Public Accounts Committee on April 17th, 2018

[Anne Kelly]

I will say that 10% of CSC staff are aboriginal. We always try to recruit aboriginals to work for us. Ten per cent is a pretty good number. In fact, that percentage is higher than the workforce availability, which is 6.4%. There are specific positions for aboriginal people. The positions of community liaison officers I mentioned are positions for aboriginals.

I will now talk about program delivery. There are aboriginals completing programs, which is a tremendous help. As I said, we recruit, we go to colleges and universities to talk to students in order to find out whether they are interested in working for Correctional Service Canada. We also provide training and skills development for non-aboriginals.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Deltell.

We'll now move to Monsieur Massé, please.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have the opportunity to participate in the committee's work and to examine many of the Auditor General's reports. I want to highlight the work done by the auditor and his team. He has once again submitted an excellent report to our committee. Unfortunately, the report's findings reveal a bleak situation for Correctional Service Canada.

I will provide a few examples. In part 5.9, the auditor says:

Overall, we found that Correctional Service Canada had not implemented an initial security classification process designed specifically for women offenders.

A bit further down, he says:

Overall, we found that Correctional Service Canada's delivery of correctional programs did not allow many women offenders to complete their correctional programs in time for parole.

In part 5.62, he says:

We found that Correctional Service Canada provided few women offenders with employment opportunities with CORCAN or with work releases... to help them obtain employment upon release.

The report outlines many such findings.

Mr. Ferguson, explain to us how we can make such findings today, in 2018. What explains such a bleak report for a federal government organization?

[Michael Ferguson]

It is difficult to explain.

I think that Ms. Kelly mentioned the need to focus on all aspects related to those female inmates and to understand different parts of their sentence in institutions, so as to determine whether the necessary programs, such as mental health services, are being provided to them in a timely manner. I think there has been a lack of focus in the past on the important aspects for those female inmates.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Ferguson.

Ms. Kelly, how did you react when you read the Auditor General's report? I know you will tell me that you accept all the recommendations, but I would like to know more about your strategy. Generally speaking, what will be CSC's strategy in light of the report submitted to ensure that what is implemented will help resolve the series of issues raised?

[Anne Kelly]

The report clearly establishes that improvements must be made. For us, it is important to make improvements. Based on certain data, we are on the right track. The number of inmates who have benefited from day parole has increased considerably, while the number of revocations has declined significantly.

As for our strategy, I would say that we want to establish aboriginal intervention centres for aboriginal women, since they account for 39% of the prison population, which is a very high percentage.

We also want to focus on our results. I am the interim commissioner, and today, I will participate in a meeting of our steering committee, where we will talk about results. Tomorrow, we will talk about results in terms of aboriginals. We really have to highlight the problems and what needs to be improved in order to see gradual progress. Once again, I think that we are on the right track.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Kelly.

[The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Thank you, Mr. Massé. Your five minutes are already up.

Ms. Harder, go ahead.

[Rachael Harder, Lethbridge, CPC]

Thank you so much for coming to meet with us today.

My first question has to do with trauma and substance abuse, and counselling around that. I would love to ask you questions with regard to preventative measures, because there are far too many people, period, in correctional facilities in Canada, but definitely far too many women. I understand that the scope of your report doesn't go into prevention, really. It deals with the system as it exists today.

That said, Mr. Ferguson, my question is based on the recommendations that are provided in the report. I'm wondering if you can elaborate a bit more in terms of access to substance abuse treatment or trauma counselling for female inmates.

Ms. McCalla actually came to the status of women committee a number of weeks ago. During her time there, one of the things she brought up was that incidents of physical and sexual abuse are very high among these women. They themselves have experienced trauma and have had crimes committed against them in their lifetime, which may cause them, out of that pain and their background, to then commit further crimes. They themselves have been victims.

What kinds of recommendations are you offering in terms of how best to respond to that fact?

[Michael Ferguson]

I think the important thing is that when these women enter into the correctional system, their needs have to be assessed to see what type of programming they need, and that needs to happen very early on. The Correctional Service has many programs in place, and we didn't notice any particular problems with the programs per se. The problems were with the access to the programs.

When women with that type of background come in, it's important that they very quickly get into the programs that have been identified and that can help them. When they get through those programs, they get to the point where they can be paroled. Therefore, they can have support as they are trying to reintegrate back into society. What is important, again, is making sure that all of those programs are actually available, that they are available when they need to be, and that they are delivered as quickly as they can be.

There is a reassessment at the end of the program, and that gives the women a longer time to try to get reintegrated back into the community in a safe way.

[Rachael Harder]

In your estimation, then, based on the report, would you say that the programs themselves are fine but it's actually the access to those programs that is the issue?

[Michael Ferguson]

I'm going to ask Ms. McCalla to comment on what we have done in terms of looking at the quality of the programs.

[Carol McCalla]

We looked to see if CSC itself had evaluated the effectiveness of the programs. They had conducted recent evaluations of their general stream of correctional programs, as well as their specialized programs for aboriginal women. For the general stream of programs, they looked primarily to see their impact on reoffending, that is, whether women returned, once they were released into the community. They found that the programs didn't have a significant impact; however, for aboriginal women, they did have an impact.

A key challenge for CSC is that women do not tend to reoffend. They have a very low rate of reoffending once released, so the impact of these programs was very hard to identify. What we call for in our report is for CSC to evaluate how well these programs target the risk factors, for example substance misuse, which, for women offenders, is identified as a high criminogenic need. It's a factor that can lead to reoffending.

How well do the programs themselves address those? That's the primary way that we saw women offenders get treatment for substance abuse or sexual abuse. They're multi-targeted programs, and CSC needs to assess how well those programs address those specific risk factors.

Another thing we pointed out was that they should have a hand-off to the community. We saw that many women were staying in custody once they had completed their correctional programs in order to get access to counselling. That counselling could be provided in the community, and CSC research has also shown that it is much more effective in the community than in custody.

[The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès (Brossard—Saint-Lambert, Lib.)), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Harder.

Mr. Chen, go ahead.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the Auditor General and the folks from Correctional Services for being here today. I also echo the comments of my colleague to congratulate you, Interim Commissioner Kelly, on your post.

You described for us, in general, who the women are. You said that they are likely to be younger, experience poverty and unemployment, have a history of physical and sexual violence and abuse, and be disproportionately aboriginal women. It was a very stark picture that you painted. My reaction was that these women are vulnerable at best, victims at worst.

What the Auditor General said a number of times today really hit home, with respect to timely access to rehabilitation programs and services that are culturally relevant and specific to the needs of these women. Ultimately, the goal is not to keep them there; it is to ensure that they can reintegrate back into society and perhaps have a better shot at success.

The Auditor General talked about an assessment tool that is used when the women first arrive to determine their level of security risk, and sometimes the women are placed in higher security than necessary or given programs they do not require.

I appreciate your comments, Commissioner Kelly, with respect to agreeing with the Auditor General's report and recommendations, but I'm going to pick out the one sentence that bothered me out of all the great things you said: “This will determine what revisions to our initial security reclassification tool, if any, may be required to increase its validity for women offenders.”

I found that a bit contradictory. On the one hand, you agree with the Auditor General's findings and recommendations. On the other hand, you're saying “if any”—if any changes to the tool are needed. Perhaps you can shed some light on what you mean by that. Do you agree that the tool needs to be re-examined and changes need to be made, as the Auditor General has pointed out?

[Anne Kelly]

I'll start with the answer and then turn it over to Dr. Blanchette.

There are two things. For the initial security classification, to classify a woman as maximum, medium, or minimum, we use the custody rating scale, which, if I am not mistaken, was validated for women offenders. Based on the Auditor General's report, we're willing to look at it again to see if we need to change it. There is a security reclassification scale specifically for women that was developed in 2005. It was based on a sample of women offenders.

In terms of the right programs, that's something different. Up to now we were using the custody rating scale, which is really a security classification tool, to assign women to a certain intensity of program, because there are moderate and high-intensity programs. For both men and women, the Auditor General has said that the custody rating scale is not the appropriate tool. It's a security classification tool, and we need a program tool.

That is why we've developed what we call the criminal risk index, which has been validated for both men and women, to ensure that we assign the right intensity program to both men and women.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

So several scales and ratings are used—

[The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

If you'd like Ms. Blanchette to finish, you have about 10 seconds.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

l'll hear the answer. Thank you.

[Dr. Kelley Blanchette]

The custody rating scale has been validated for women on more than one occasion, but we recognize that it was a tool developed with primarily a male sample. Ideally, tools are developed for women from the ground up. In the past, we have attempted to add predictive accuracy to the custody rating scale but with no luck.

In short, part of the reason is that it is the initial tool. We get offenders, inmates, coming in whom we don't know at all. It has to rely on static risk factors, things like the length of their sentence, their age, or whether they have violence in their history, because we don't know them well enough at the point of entry to be able to fully assess their needs on the day they come in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Chen. It was a good try, but we're way over time. The new chair isn't quite as lenient as the former chair here.

We'll go back to Mr. Blaikie, please. Mr. Blaikie, you have five minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie]

Thank you very much. I was going to take some leniency. I don't mind.

In keeping with the theme of delay in accessing what is otherwise decent programming, one of the issues appears to be staff, at least on the mental health side. Maybe I'm wrong in getting that impression from the report, but that seems to be the case. I don't know if this is outside the scope of the report, so forgive me if I'm going further afield; you can let me know.

Do we have a sense of whether that shortage of staff with appropriate mental health training is because of a dearth of supply in the general labour market, or whether Corrections isn't as competitive an employer within the field of mental health work? I don't know if the Auditor General has an opinion or if CSC officials would like to speak to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Ferguson, go ahead.

[Michael Ferguson]

I'll start, and then I think probably the CSC officials would be able to give you a more in-depth answer.

In our report, we identified vacancies in some very important positions dealing with mental health issues. Their first challenge is to fill the vacancies they have and then determine what they can do with that. As to why they were not able to fill those vacancies, I'll turn that over to Ms. Kelly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Ms. Kelly or Mrs. Wheatley, go ahead.