Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 9th, 2023

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fragiskatos.

I'd like to continue to discuss how important it is to heed the advice of the folks I met with, in particular on the crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women. You oftentimes deal directly with women in these penitentiaries. In the one I visit, the one that Mr. McCauley referred to and also visited, we heard the same things I'm sure.

One of the biggest calls to action, and I really want to thank Ms. Bradford for bringing it up, is on the pain these women have—and it's going to be difficult for me to say this—when they're not with their children. Many of them have children, and they've never seen them since they were taken into these systems. The psychological pain.... I asked a question earlier about your understanding of colonization and the deep impact it has. When you lose your children, that's how you break a whole nation.

One of the first steps to healing for these people needs to be the establishment of those cultural and traditional healing lodges. It must be. I've spoken to the minister about this. He came to my riding and visited another penitentiary, the Stan Daniels centre, a low-security prison for men. They often talk about this as well, and I don't want to avoid the fact that these men are also suffering from this, but these women spend their entire lives—obsession—in those places thinking about where their daughter is, where their kids are and whether they're alive. Some of them have lost their children to the murdered and missing indigenous women crisis, and they don't even get to go to the funerals.

Why can't this change? What is the barrier? Mr. McCauley asked, why not build the resources these women need? There have been years—decades—of this kind of treatment. Reconciliation in this country is not possible until the fundamental pieces of this kind of justice are heard by people like you and deeply felt. Imagine that you were never to see your children again. How painful that would be amongst a whole nation of people who've also endured that pain. What do you have to live for after that?

This is a punitive system that hurts indigenous people. I need to know what steps you're going to take to ensure that traditional healing lodges, the model of restorative justice that better, smarter and wiser people than me have called for, which nations like mine have built...and they've survived for thousands of years until the last, let's say, one hundred. To destroy our system in lieu of a punishment system like this...it's catastrophic. What steps are you taking to ensure the restorative justice model that is called for by indigenous women, men, two-spirit and non-binary folks...? They're calling for that.

They need to know what your action plan will be for building these traditional healing lodges. If it's resources, please tell us, Commissioner.

[Anne Kelly]

Thank you for that.

As you know, we have 10 healing lodges. We have Okimaw Ohci, which is for women. We also have Buffalo Sage and Eagle Women's Lodge, which opened back in 2010, if I'm not mistaken. We also met with some of the chiefs, and we've discussed, actually, the possibility of having other healing lodges. I think that's good. I truly believe in restorative approaches.

Alain recently had a meeting with all 10 directors of the healing lodges, so I'll let him talk.

[Alain Tousignant]

Thank you, Commissioner.

Mr. Desjarlais, the first comment I would like to make is that I want to assure you and guarantee you that we are seized with this issue every day. Every day, we go to work and we discuss the issues we're talking about. Every single day. That issue is as gripping for us, to a certain extent, as it is for you.

We've worked on the ground with many indigenous communities. I've heard and seen the pain. I understand the pain.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

You must recognize my frustration—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm sorry, gentlemen. I appreciate it, but we are out of time.

Mr. Desjarlais, you will have another round if you allow me to stay on the clock.

Mr. Tousignant, I'm sure he'll come back to you.

We're turning now to McCauley.... No, it's Mr. Kram.

I almost skipped over you. You have only three minutes.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

I was wondering if we could try to step back and look at the big picture a bit.

If the name of the your department is Correctional Service Canada, it is implied in the name that something has gone wrong in the first place. Otherwise, we wouldn't be correcting something. I was wondering if you could step back and look at the big picture, think of all your years of experience in this sector and answer for the committee what could be done to have fewer people interacting with the justice system in the first place.

It would be nice if we didn't have people committing crimes in the first place. It would be nice if we didn't have 15,000 people incarcerated in this country in the first place.

What can we do? Do we need better education? Do we need better poverty reduction? What can be done?

[Anne Kelly]

That's a question that goes over and above what I do. I'm the commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada. As I said, we believe, first of all, in education programming.

The other thing is that we have a restorative justice sector as well. I can tell you that's really powerful. When it's the right moment for the offender and the victim to be able to talk, I think, in the end, for the offender, it's a turning point. They tend not to recidivate again. It's actually very successful. It's not for everybody.

That's one thing, but there are many other things that.... Again, for us, they come into our custody and we take charge. Our motto is “Changing Lives; Protecting Canadians”.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

That's very fair. I was not expecting an easy, simple answer.

If you look at the charts, exhibits 4.5 on page 11 and 4.7 on page 16 deal with parole eligibility and completing programs before parole eligibility. Women consistently perform better than men in literally every metric in this report.

Can you comment on why that is? Do you have particular programs that work better for women or that are designed for women?

What lessons could be learned to help male prisoners?

[Anne Kelly]

First of all, they're fewer in number. We have 654 women right now and we have five women's facilities, plus a healing lodge. The other thing is, having worked myself in prisons for women—the only prison in Canada—and having been the deputy commissioner for women, when you work in a women's prison, they tend to talk a lot more, get involved and get engaged. It is a different dynamic than in men's institutions.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. That is the time.

Ms. Shanahan, you have the floor now for three minutes, please.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to say how much I appreciate the remarks we have heard from our colleague Mr. Desjarlais today, especially around how this issue is not just about indigenous marginalization; it's an issue of Canadian justice. I think the restorative justice system we have had the privilege to learn about from first nations people is one that can and will transform that justice system.

That being said, we are talking about systemic barriers today, so I would like to ask the Auditor General a question.

One of your recommendations, Ms. Hogan, was that “Correctional Service Canada should improve its collection of diversity information for offenders, ensure that the information is complete, and align its collection methodology with that of Statistics Canada.” Why is that?

[Karen Hogan]

What we found, and as we've been hearing throughout testimony today, is that there's a lot of data available at Correctional Service Canada. A lot of the data gathered on visible minorities didn't follow the same 11 buckets that Statistics Canada uses, such that then you would have a lot more data available through Statistics Canada.

Correctional Service uses a rating scale of 30. Where an offender needs to self-identify and select what visible minority bucket they may fall into, we heard there was confusion and uncertainty as to what they should be ticking off. Then when we looked into the systems, we saw increasing gaps in that data actually being entered into the system. We felt that it was important to have that disaggregated data but in a way that was meaningful and useful.

We wanted to make that recommendation to Correctional Service to align with Statistics Canada but also to be more diligent in ensuring that it was entered into the system and that the information was complete so that they could make well-informed decisions going forward.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

That's a very interesting recommendation, Commissioner Kelly. Can you speak to where CSC is at in following that recommendation, and do you agree?

[Anne Kelly]

Yes. Actually recently we've made progress on simplifying and defining the race categories. As the Auditor General said, we used to have many—I counted 25—and now actually in our corporate reporting we're down to seven.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Very good. Thank you.

The Auditor General has also recommended that CSC develop workforce representation. I think we've heard a little bit about why that is important, with particular attention on overrepresented groups. Can you speak to that recommendation and what CSC is doing to respond?

[Anne Kelly]

For us, it's what I mentioned earlier. We've historically exceeded the workforce availability for indigenous people and visible minorities, but we have more work to do for persons with disabilities. For women we're almost there. We're at 51%, and workforce availability is 52.6%. The other thing though, in terms of more representatives of the population that we serve—and this is what I was explaining—is that now we have representation objectives for each institution that take into account the population. Let's say 70% of the offenders in the institution are indigenous. That's part of the equation. We set ambitious representation objectives for ourselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Villemure, you have three minutes.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I will give my time to Mr. Desjarlais again.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

In that case, Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to my Bloc colleague for allowing me additional time to really make certain that the conditions of these places are understood by Canadians.

To be frank, I wish that the commissioner was more frank and, I'd say, transparent, with the reality of how these places look and the resources they receive. I can't name one person I've met in my entire life working with indigenous people and living in community, who have had an opportunity to heal the way they would have wanted to. We have a long way to go. We're only in the very infant stages of understanding this country's history in a way that provides a level of justice and a playing field that would be fair in the consideration of these traumas.

TRC call to action number 36 is in relation to the survivors of sexual abuse. The intersectionality between survivors of sexual abuse and colonialism is great. It doesn't take much other than asking many of our residential school survivors to talk about that experience. There were children in the most vulnerable positions who were taken advantage of because of this country's policies, a kind of injustice that is still pervasive in our population today. Few criminal charges have ever been laid against those perpetrators. They get to walk out in the free world here in Canada, many of them still among us, while these women have to stay in prison.

The call to action asks you to look into the effects of that, to build resources and supports for survivors of sexual abuse and to bring that into your understanding of their experiences in those places.

Our justice system is unjust. I don't think I have to tell you that, Commissioner Kelly. You know that. You have to deal with the unfortunate realities of a broken justice system, in one of the hardest roles in our country, and the attempts to find ways to do the work of healing when this country has done so much damage. You probably hear, if you've spoken to the women, how unjust it feels for them to be attacked constantly their entire lives, and then to be left in the position they are in, while their perpetrators get to walk.

It's clear that our systems are overrepresenting indigenous and Black folks, but they also need to find ways to represent that these people are living traumatic lives of their own and are forced by our policies—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Desjarlais.

We'll turn now to Mr. McCauley, for three minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks.

I just want to follow up, Ms. Kelly, with regard to more facilities for women in the Prairies. What is the plan going forward? If I look at the Edmonton Institute for Women, clearly, it's not conducive to proper healing. The majority of the women in that facility are indigenous, and it's not working.

What is the plan going forward? Is it more healing lodges along those lines? Institutionalizing them is not working. What are we going to do to address this?

[Anne Kelly]

We have the Edmonton Institute for Women and Okimaw Ohci. When Alain met with all the healing lodge directors, where it made sense, the women would be transferred to a healing lodge. As I said, we have Buffalo Sage Wellness House and Eagle Women's Lodge as well.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

When you say, “where it made sense”, what—

[Anne Kelly]

I mean, for those who met the criteria to go to a healing lodge.