Public Safety Committee on June 2nd, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I now bring to order meeting 24 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We are considering and continuing our study of federal corrections: mental health and addiction. Possibly we will be looking at some of these institutions, so I look forward to the testimony we will hear today.

We have, from the Office of the Correctional Investigator, Mr. Howard Sapers, the correctional investigator; and Mr. Ivan Zinger, who is the executive director and general counsel.

Welcome to our committee. We look forward to what you have to share with us. We're sure it's going to be very helpful in our study.

You have informed me that you will likely need extra time in your opening statement. So we will give you that extra time as you need it.

Without any further ado, we will hear from you.

[Howard Sapers, Correctional Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I very much value your time. We will try to keep our opening comments concise, but we will definitely go more than the standard ten minutes. I appreciate your indulgence.

I'll get right to it. We sincerely congratulate you on your decision to study this topic at this time. There are considerable challenges facing corrections and the administration of justice in Canada. Of course, today we're going to focus on two particular issues, namely the care and custody of offenders with mental health disorders and access to programs to prepare offenders for their timely and safe release into the community.

Before I go into my more formal, prepared statements, what I want to do is give you a little bit of context. I want to give you a bit of a snapshot of what the Correctional Service of Canada looks like and is facing today.

The Correctional Service of Canada, as you know, is a huge agency. It has a $2.2 billion budget. It employs somewhere around 16,000 men and women. It operates at 58 sites in every part of the country. The workforce, 41% of whom are correctional officers, is represented by six bargaining agents. About 7.1% of the workforce right now are self-identified as aboriginals and about another 5.1% are visible minorities.

The mix of offenders who churn through the system in any given year can be about 25,000, based on admissions and discharges. On any given day such as today, there are about 13,500 men and women in custody in those 58 sites, and perhaps another 8,000 being supervised in the community by parole officers working for the Correctional Service of Canada.

It's a big operation, and it's very complex. The good news is that the majority of the transactions that take place on a day-to-day basis are helpful, appropriate, and lawful. When things work, they work really well. As we'll discuss later in our presentation, unfortunately things don't always go that well, and sometimes they go tragically wrong.

Every day the Correctional Service of Canada produces what's known as a “sit rep” or daily situation report, which highlights significant security or other incidents that have happened in the last 24 hours. This “sit rep” is shared throughout CSC management, and it provides an interesting snapshot and some guidance for the issues that have to be dealt with for the day.

Without breaching any privacy legislation, I want to refer very briefly to the “sit rep” that was issued just a couple of days ago, on May 29. This is just because it was the one that was on the top of my desk; it's not because I picked it in particular.

The first item is labelled as a disciplinary problem at a multi-level women's institution. At approximately 0830 hours, the instigator advised staff that she had taken a large quantity of medication, which she and another inmate had been hoarding. She was assessed by health care and it was determined that at approximately 1730 hours she could be safely managed in her unit. At 1940 hours, the instigator refused to return to her unit. She became verbally resistant and proceeded to lunge at the officers. Physical handling was used to gain compliance. She was escorted to segregation, where she proceeded to self-harm. She ceased her self-injurious behaviour on her own and was subsequently assessed to health care with no injuries. This is noted as a disciplinary issue.

At a regional treatment centre, self-inflicted injuries, May 28: the instigator reopened an existing wound on his arm. Officers observed the instigator on camera and responded with health care. The instigator was uncooperative with staff. Additional staff members attended, and OC—that's pepper spray—was deployed when the instigator became aggressive. First aid was then provided without incident. He was treated by health care and returned to his observation cell.

Here is another self-inflicted injury at yet another regional treatment centre. The instigator was placed in a Pinel system—that's a restraint system—after threatening to self-inflict injuries to an existing wound. The instigator became compliant and was removed from the Pinel system at 1730 hours. That's about three hours in restraints.

Those are just a couple of incidents that happened a couple of days ago that challenged the men and women who work in the institutions and deal with offenders with behavioural and mental health issues.

My purpose in giving you this brief snapshot is that I believe it will help you have a better sense of the rest of the information we are hoping to share with you today. It's one thing to talk in generalities about program access and mental health care; it's something else to understand that we're talking about 13,500 men and women every day--25,000 flowing through the system--challenging a system that is heavily burdened and operating well past its capacity when it comes to mental health and programs.

I'm going to ask my executive director, Dr. Zinger, to provide you with a brief overview and mandate of the role of the office. Following this overview, I'll outline my own concerns regarding the delivery of mental health services to offenders. Then we'll return to Dr. Zinger to talk about access to correctional programs. With that in mind, we'll probably take another 15 minutes and then get into your questions.

Ivan.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger, Executive Director and General Counsel, Office of the Correctional Investigator]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Last year, the Office of the Correctional Investigator celebrated its 35^th anniversary. The office was established in 1973 to strengthen the accountability and oversight of the federal correctional system. The office was given a legislative mandate on November 1, 1992 with the enactment of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

The office investigates and resolves individual federal offender complaints. As well, it has a responsibility to review and make recommendations on the Correctional Service of Canada's policies and procedures associated with individual complaints. In this way, systemic areas of concern can be identified and appropriately addressed.

The office has 24 staff, and receives between 5,000 and 7,000 offender inquiries and complaints annually. Last year, our investigative staff spent approximately 300 days in federal penitentiaries conducting interviews with more than 2,000 offenders. In addition, our staff met with many other individuals during their penitentiary visits, including wardens, correctional staff, inmate committees, native brotherhoods and sisterhoods, and health care professionals.

Overall, the most common inmate complaints are related to health care, followed by institutional transfers, administrative segregation, and case preparation for conditional release. It should be noted that specific offender complaints related to mental health services are relatively infrequent. However, mental health issues are often a key factor in many complaints received by this office.

For example, offenders may complain about being placed in administrative segregation or transferred into a higher security penitentiary, or having been subject to an unjustified use of force. After investigating, we discover that the placement in administrative segregation or the transfer to a higher security institution or the use of force were the result of a disruptive behaviour due to a pre-existing mental health condition.

[Howard Sapers]

Thank you.

I want to focus now on the issue of mental health in corrections.

First, it's important to remember that the Correctional Service of Canada is legislatively mandated to provide health care to offenders through the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Federal offenders are excluded from the Canada Health Act, and they're not covered by Health Canada or provincial health systems. The Correctional Service must, therefore, provide health care services, including mental health care services, directly to federal offenders, including those residing in community correctional centres. The CCRA states that the health care services provided must conform with professionally accepted standards.

In the last decade, Canada has experienced a significant increase in offenders with mental illnesses entering federal penitentiaries. In fact, federal penitentiaries in Canada probably house the largest populations of the mentally ill in this country. The Correctional Service is now in the position of having to manage offenders who require a high degree of professional mental health service and care. The ability of the Correctional Service to effectively and humanely manage this increasing and challenging population is being tested to its limits.

Mental health problems are up to three times more common amongst inmates in correctional institutions than amongst the general Canadian population. More than one in ten male inmates and one in five female inmates have been identified at admission as having significant mental health problems. That's an increase of 71% and 61% respectively since 1997. A recent snapshot of federally incarcerated offenders in Ontario indicated that 39% of the Ontario offender population was diagnosed with a mental health problem--a staggering challenge for any correctional authority.

The Correctional Service has been aware of this challenge for a long time. In fact, in July of 2004 it approved a mental health strategy that identified serious gaps in services and promoted the adoption of a continuum of care for initial intake through to the safe release of offenders into the community. At that time, my office concurred with the Correctional Service's identification of the gaps in mental health services and endorsed its strategy.

In December 2005, the Correctional Service secured funds to strengthen the community component of this strategy. My office welcomed the news of these new investments--approximately $6 million per year for five years--into community mental health. We also were pleased when the Government of Canada included in its March 2007 budget some new but temporary investments--approximately $21 million over two years--to address the lack of a comprehensive mental health intake assessment process and to improve primary mental health care in CSC institutions. The March 2008 budget provided ongoing funding for these initiatives, another approximately $16 million.

Despite these important investments, totalling over $60 million to date, I continue to be disappointed by the very slow pace of change and by the lack of real, demonstrable improvements in the level of mental health services and support provided to offenders with mental disorders. There's no doubt the Correctional Service has had some success in the last two years--for example, in the implementation of a new mental health training package for front-line staff, the development of a mental health screening system at intake, and the implementation of an enhanced discharge planning initiative. However, the overall situation for offenders suffering from mental health disorders has not significantly changed since my office first reported to Parliament about this troubling situation in 2004.

The problem faced by the Correctional Service is largely one of capacity to respond to an increasing number of offenders with significant mental health issues. This problem is compounded by the inability of the Correctional Service to recruit and retrain and retain trained mental health professionals, and by security staff who are ill-equipped to deal with health-related disruptive behaviours.

Keep in mind that the Correctional Service of Canada is probably the largest employer of psychologists in the country. That said, there are some regions where as many as four out of ten psychology positions remain vacant. There are incredible challenges in recruiting and retaining health professionals.

For example, the majority of a psychologist's day within the Correctional Service of Canada is spent conducting mandatory risk assessments to facilitate security for conditional release requirements rather than treating or interacting with offenders in need of their clinical help.

Those offenders who have acute needs or who require specialized intervention may be sent to one of the five regional treatment centres; however, this is only if they meet the admission criterion that they possess a serious and acute psychiatric illness. Typically, however, the offender is monitored at a regional treatment centre only to be returned to the referring institution after a period of stabilization. Driven by volume, the regional treatment centres have become a revolving door of referrals, admissions, and discharges.

The overwhelming majority of offenders suffering from mental illness in prison do not generally meet the admission criteria that would allow them to benefit from the services provided in the regional treatment centre. They stay in general institutions, and their illnesses are often portrayed as behavioural problems or--if you think back to that situation report I read to you--they are labelled as disciplinary as opposed to health issues. This is especially true for offenders suffering from brain injuries and for those with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

I am particularly concerned by the persistent and pervasive use of segregation to manage and isolate offenders with mental disorders in federal penitentiaries. Placing the mentally ill into a system not designed to meet their needs is cruel. It becomes brutal when they are forced to navigate a system that is not only one they do not understand but also one that profoundly misunderstands them.

The mentally ill suffer from illogical thinking, delusions, paranoia, and severe mood swings. In the correctional environment, mentally ill offenders do not always comprehend, conform, or adjust properly to the rules of institutional life. Irrational and compulsive behaviours associated with their individual affliction can result in verbal or physical confrontations with staff or other inmates, which often lead to institutional charges and long periods in administrative or disciplinary segregation. Mental illness can lead to a vicious cycle in correctional settings.

Simply placing an offender in ever more restrictive conditions of confinement and isolation is not an effective correctional or mental health intervention. Prolonged periods of deprivation of human contact cannot but adversely affect the mental health of offenders, and it's counterproductive to their rehabilitation.

After conducting investigations, my office often discovers that placements in segregation are often the result of disruptive behaviour resulting from a prevailing mental health condition. It's a classic Catch-22: when the intervention fails, the response is to do more of the same.

The practice of confining mentally disordered offenders to prolonged isolation and deprivation must end. It is not safe nor is it humane. A case in point is the death of Ms. Ashley Smith. Ashley Smith died on October 19, 2007, at the age of 19 at Grand Valley Institution for Women. She died in segregation, having never been the subject of a comprehensive psychological assessment during her 11 and a half months in federal custody.

In my report of June 20, 2008, amongst my 16 recommendations, I recommended that the Correctional Service immediately review all cases of long-term segregation where mental health issues were a contributing factor to the segregation placement; that it amend its segregation policy to require that a psychological review of an inmate's current mental health status, with a special emphasis on the evaluation of the risk for self-harm, be completed within 24 hours of the inmate's placement in segregation; and that it immediately implement independent adjudication of segregation placements for inmates with mental health concerns.

It's been almost a year since I submitted that report to the correctional services, and while there have been some, there have been too few concrete steps taken to respond to these recommendations. I understand that the Correctional Service will shortly publicly release its response to my 16 recommendations flowing from this investigation into the death of Ashley Smith. I look forward to this detailed and robust action plan. I hope it will address my recommendations and reduce the likelihood of future preventable deaths in federal custody.

I will now ask Dr. Zinger to discuss the issue of program access and substance abuse.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Thank you.

The Correctional Service is mandated by law to provide programs and interventions that address factors related to an offender's risk of reoffending. The act stipulates that the Correctional Service must provide a range of programs designed to address the needs of offenders and contribute to their successful reintegration. The act also includes specific provisions for the delivery of programs to women and aboriginal offenders.

From a series of evaluation reports we know that correctional programs work in contributing to public safety and are a good value for money.

Offenders who complete their programs are significantly more likely to be granted a discretionary release and are less likely to reoffend following their release. In terms of value, internal CSC documentation suggests that for every dollar the service spends on correctional programs it saves, on average, $4 in avoided incarceration costs.

Programs address a number of important issues that when dealt with can significantly reduce the risk of re-offending. The Correctional Service offers numerous very good programs, including in the areas of sex offenders, anger management, family violence and substance abuse.

In terms of addiction issues, about four out of five offenders now arrive at a federal institution with a serious substance abuse problem, with one out of two having committed their crime under the influence of drugs, alcohol or other intoxicants.

The main problem with programming is access. The Correctional Service allocates only 2% of its total annual budget to offender programming. Currently, the service spends $37 million annually on all its core correctional programs (including for women and aboriginals). The program funding envelope, which has remained stable over the last decade, includes training, quality control, management and administrative costs. We do not think 2% of an over $2 billion annual budget is enough. The Correctional Service has indicated to us that it hopes in the next fiscal year to reallocate a significant portion of the $48 million it anticipates receiving as part of its Strategic Review initiative to core programming. We look forward to seeing more programs being provided to more offenders as this reallocation rolls out.

The most recent investments dealing with drugs and addiction in penitentiaries have been limited to interdiction initiatives. In August 2008, the Minister of Public Safety announced a five-year $120 million investment in the CSC's Drug Strategy. All funding went to interdiction initiatives, including drug detector dog teams, increase in security intelligence capacity, ION scanners and X-Ray machines. No new funding was allocated to treatment programs for addiction or harm reduction initiatives.

Drug interdiction alone can only go so far in addressing addiction issues and the spread of infectious diseases. Over the last five years (2004/05 to 2008/09), the Correctional Service has spent significantly more time and money on efforts to prevent drugs from entering its institutions. A measure of the success of these efforts is the percentage of positive urinalysis samples, which indicate drug use. Institutional random urinalysis has shown that drug use declined by one percentage point in the last five years. In the last fiscal year (2008/2009), the rate of positive samples was 10.8% (889 positives out of 7,543 urinalysis samples taken in CSC institutions). Five years earlier, it was 11.8%.

For now, offenders have to contend with long waiting lists for programs, cancelled programs because of insufficient funding or lack of trained facilitators; delayed conditional release because of the service’s inability to provide timely programs they require to complete their correctional plans; and longer time served before parole consideration. The situation is becoming critical as more and more offenders are released later in their sentences, and too often having not received the necessary programs and treatment to increase their chance of success in the community.

Thank you.

[Howard Sapers]

I last did a quick census on program access for the Correctional Service of Canada on May 10. That day, there were 13,353 men and women inside the 58 facilities. Of those 13,353, only 3,190 were currently assigned to core correctional programs. This means that in every region of the country there were dozens and dozens of offenders waiting for program assignment, with unmet needs in terms of their correctional plan.

A correctional plan is something that is prescribed at admission to deal with the criminogenic factors that have been identified by the Correctional Service and that need to be addressed before they can be safely released into the community. These would be programs such as those dealing with drugs, violence, and sexual offences. What this results in is offenders increasingly spending more and more time in higher security levels before they are eventually released into the community. When they are released at statutory release or at warrant expiry, typically they have not had the benefit of the correctional programs they were prescribed.

On May 10 of this year, of those 13,353 incarcerated offenders, 8,526 were past their day parole eligibility dates and 6,704 of those were also past their full parole eligibility dates. This all speaks to a lack of access for correctional programs.

The health and welfare of our federal inmates is a very important public policy issue. The vast majority of offenders are, one day, released into society. It's beneficial for us all if these offenders return to their communities having received adequate mental health services and rehabilitative programming. All of us have a vested interest in treating offenders with humanity and responding to their clinical and program needs to help them lead productive and law-abiding lives upon their release.

Thank you very much for extending our opening time. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Without any further wait, we'll turn it over to Mr. Mark Holland.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you as well, Mr. Sapers and Mr. Zinger, for appearing before our committee today. It's very much appreciated as we embark upon this study.

I think one of the things we're seized with on this side in examining this issue is the trajectory of where this is all going, if we take a look at policies that have been brought forth over the last while—these “tough on crime” policies that are increasingly doing what the Americans are now undoing, which is more and more mandatory minimums, longer sentences, and more incarceration.

We can paint a picture of where this is heading. You have a situation where the system is overburdened. You've described, really, jails being used as hospitals. You now have more and more inmates coming into the system for longer and longer periods of time. You have things like the two-for-one remand credit being eliminated, which again means additional stresses on the system, yet the underlying conditions, which are so bad in remand and led to those credits existing in the first place, not being dealt with.

So when you look at that and you look at the case of what happened to Ashley Smith, if we continue that, what is your projection for where this is all going and how many more Ashley Smiths there could be or how many more tragedies we could have if we don't fundamentally change the way we're headed right now?

[Howard Sapers]

The Correctional Service of Canada right now has empty cell capacity of maybe between 800 and 1,000, scattered across the country. So if you were to take a very high-level look and you say, gee, we've got empty cell space, so if more people come into a penitentiary, we must be able to accommodate them, you might be able to draw that conclusion.

The reality is that with the mix of the offender profile, with the issues to do with gangs, with the mentally ill, with the special concerns of women or aboriginal offenders, that capacity isn't in the right place at the right time; it's not available. We have overcrowding, particularly at medium security, where the vast majority of offenders spend the vast majority of their time. That's where they're stacked up and wait-listed for those programs. That's where there is no intermediary care for their mental health needs. That's when they're not getting into those core correctional programs that were identified in their correctional plan to facilitate their conditional and safe release into the community. We know through research that the safest way to release offenders into the community is gradually under supervision, not just send them out cold turkey at the end of their sentence.

So the concern I have is that without additional capacity, both human and financial, without addressing some infrastructure issues, the Correctional Service of Canada cannot meet an increased burden of offenders, period. If you include in that the realities of operating a correctional system, realities such as the largest medium security institution in the Atlantic region locked down for days on end because there was information that there was a dangerous article in the institution.... Under the Canada Labour Code, quite rightfully, staff decided it was dangerous to work without exceptional searches. The institution becomes locked down; there's interruption in program access and interruption in routine.

There's another medium security institution in the Pacific region locked down going on three weeks now. That means no institutional movement, restriction to cells, and no access to programs. In that particular institution, of course, problems became much worse because it's one of the few and rare correctional institutions in this country where there are no toilet facilities in the cells. So you have inmates locked in their cells, defecating and urinating in their cells when they can't get access to escorts to toilet facilities. These are not the conditions you would want for adequate rehabilitative or mental health services.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Could we tie that back to the issue of actually making our community safer?

As you said, inmates are going to be coming out of the system and back into our communities. An overburdened system is already facing the strains of trying to act as a hospital, of not having programs and services available to help inmates deal with addiction issues or mental health issues, and of not being able to give them the assistance they need to ensure that when they are coming back into society, they're ready to contribute as opposed to reoffend. Is it not true that by not making these investments and just dumping more and more people into the system without the solutions to rehabilitate them, we're actually making our communities less safe and increasing the likelihood of recidivism? In fact, we're probably seeing an increased rate of victimization when these individuals come out.

[Howard Sapers]

My understanding of the research is that the most effective correctional programs take place when offenders are motivated to be involved in those programs, which is usually earlier in their sentences rather than later in their sentences. Those programs can be effective when offenders have the cognitive abilities to achieve success in them, and that means basic literacy and educational requirements have to be addressed first. Those programs work best when they are tailored to the specific needs or deficits that offenders may have. If they are fetal alcohol-affected or are otherwise brain-injured, or if they have mental health issues, you have to address those underlying issues.

All of that being said, when you're dealing with mentally ill offenders, for example, the best way to prevent future criminality is to treat that mental illness, but we're talking about a prison system and not a health system. The best way to ensure that these folks don't come into conflict with the law, I suppose, is to make sure they're getting adequate services and the treatments they need in the community before they enter corrections. This is an area that's well beyond my scope or mandate, but certainly in other jurisdictions, particularly the United States, there has been a lot of work in looking at how to use increased diversion, mental health treatment courts, and those kinds of initiatives to prevent mentally ill offenders who have come into conflict with the law from being incarcerated .

To conclude, I think it's fair to say, based on the research, that if offenders don't get the benefit of rehabilitative programs while they're incarcerated, then there's no reason to expect that their behaviour will be terribly different upon their release.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

This is to Mr. Zinger. You may not have this here, but you can get back to us.

In your presentation you said that despite all the money being spent trying to stop drug use in prisons, testing had shown only a 1% decrease over five years in the number of people using drugs. Can you tell me what has happened to HIV, hepatitis, and infectious disease rates over that same five-year period? In other words, the measures that have been put in place have resulted in only a 1% drop in drug use; correspondingly, with the policies that have been put in place, what have we seen in terms of infectious disease?

This isn't just a problem in the prison system. These people are released to the general population, and these infectious diseases then become a major health issue and concern in the broader population outside the prison in that same five-year period. If you don't have that information now, I'd be interested in getting it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Do you have a brief response?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

I would first say that data are actually quite sparse on some of those issues, but I would be more than happy to provide you with the existing data. A study done back in 1999 was quite thorough, and the service has recently replicated some of that data.

In terms of hepatitis C, we're looking at a rate of 30% among the inmate population. In terms of HIV, it's 10 times higher than in the general population. I can provide you with a much more detailed response.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Yes, and also please tell us what happened over that five-year period.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Monsieur Ménard is next.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here. You raise some important problems, which underlie a philosophy of a civilized state with regard to crime.

I learned a lot in reading, first, what you sent us and, second, by listening to you today. I hope these presentations will be given the public distribution they deserve. Some people, who believe that the federal government has and had the resources to release offenders serving sentences of less than life imprisonment, hoped we would take steps to at least undertake the rehabilitation of those individuals. I admit I very much doubt that now.

That being said, I have some specific questions to ask you. I'm not challenging your conclusions in any way, but I would like those who don't share my opinion to have the opportunity to be convinced as well.

You said we could save $4 on every dollar invested in programs. How did you come to that conclusion? Was a study done? If there is one, could you send us a copy of the report?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

That's correct, Mr. Ménard. According to the Correctional Service and its own internal report, the saving is attributable to early releases into the community and to extended stays in the community. Investment pays off, and the service has calculated the ratio.

I'll consult my Correctional Service colleagues, and we'll definitely be able to send you a copy of the report for details on that calculation.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I expected as much, but you'll understand that, for a segment of the public, releasing offenders before their sentence has expired may seem dangerous if we don't ensure that those who are released won't reoffend. Do those reports tell us whether those people reoffend or not?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

I have a lot of sympathy for the position of members of Parliament. I believe there is a considerable lack of understanding among the public regarding crime, and how to reduce recidivism rates and ensure that the public is safe. Studies should thoroughly inform those who determine public policy.

For example, there is the study by Professor Gendreau, of New Brunswick, who clearly states that, when sentences are increased, there is a negative impact on public safety. The recidivism rate does not fall; it increases slightly. We're talking about public policy and reforms of criminal justice, penal justice and the correctional sector. A lot of things must be done, I believe, to ensure that this is guided by the research.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Dr. Zinger, we have two minutes left. I don't believe you clearly understood the question I asked you. I would invite you perhaps to read it. If you can answer it in writing, that would be even better. It called for a more specific answer than the one you gave us. I want to move on to something else.

Your job is probably one of the most frustrating in Ottawa. I believe you've made a lot of recommendations in recent years. Could you tell us what percentage of the recommendations you've made in the past five or 10 years haven't received a satisfactory response?

[Howard Sapers]

It's very much a moving target, I know. I can't give you a percentage.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Can you give an approximation?

[Howard Sapers]

We often make similar recommendations year after year when we're not satisfied with progress. Let me try to be as precise as I can be. We get 6,000 or 7,000 complaints from inmates a year in my office. The majority of those complaints or concerns are addressed very quickly and on site at the institution between my staff and Correctional Service staff by making recommendations to resolve the issues they have raised. Every year thousands of issues are addressed, and they are addressed quickly and appropriately—

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

That's good.

Pardon me for interrupting you. Obviously I wanted to talk about systemic recommendations, not individual recommendations.