Public Safety Committee on June 11th, 2009

[Don Head]

Yes, we expect some growth based on legislation.

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

We have 10,000 spaces for mental health facilities, including alcohol or drug treatment. There is room for about half the population. If you have 400 staff, you can run about 10,000 spaces. That's about half, but four out of five of our prisoners have mental health problems. I am assuming that when you say “mental health”, you are referring to addiction as well.

[Don Head]

The four out of five is the number for substance abuse problems.

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

I call that mental health, following an Ontario model. I don't know what other people do. There is room for fewer than half right now in this population, and the population is going to grow.

[Don Head]

Let me address your math. One of the things we have, of course, is the issue of time. Because the average sentence length is just over four years, we have a certain period of time in which to address the needs of offenders. We don't have to address 22,000 individuals every year.

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

About 5,000 access the programs, so it seems to me we have two problems. We have a capacity problem, which is about accessibility of the programs. It's still not big enough. And we have a motivation problem—some people aren't participating. The motivation problem could be legislated, as Mr. Sampson's report is recommending, or it could incentivized. There are two ways of doing this. Generally, every health professional I've ever talked to, every addictions person I've ever talked to, has said that legislating people to treatment doesn't work as well as incentivizing or marketing the programs.

Is it the understanding of Correctional Service Canada that it's best to incentivize?

[Don Head]

Yes. That's our view.

I think the suggestion from the review panel was in terms of the framework, because the current legislative framework puts 100% of the onus on the Correctional Service of Canada. It's just not clear to offenders that there's a role for them to play. A legislative change would entrench that. However, as I said in response to an earlier question, the issue of motivation has to be linked to some kinds of incentives. If individuals receive all the same level of privileges or all the same level of incentives, whether they choose to participate in programs or not, it's going to give us the exact same results as we've got today. We need to find a way of differentiating those kinds of incentives.

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

I fly Air Canada because I get points. Let's think about it. There's got to be incentives to keep people going, whether it's about privileges or moving from super max to max, or from medium high to medium low. Those kinds of things have to be part of the framework if you've time to do it and availability. One of the problems in those incentive programs is that you may have people in the population ready to move down, but you have no spaces down, so you have to keep them up in the maximum security facilities. Or, you've got people ready for a different kind of programming, but they're not available.

I need an hour. I could go on for an hour. It does relate to infrastructure too.

[Don Head]

Yes.

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

You've got to have buildings that work.

[Don Head]

It's an absolute continuum. It goes from the point of assessment to the planning, the availability of programs, access to the programs, the right level of infrastructure, and the ongoing support. Without all elements--

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

Could I just ask for a written thing. Could I get something in writing on the integrated correction program model? You refer to it, but I don't quite understand it. So could I get something in writing for the committee that would help me understand what that pilot is?

[Don Head]

Very much so. We'll provide that to the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much, sir.

Mr. Norlock, please, for five minutes.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much for being here, gentlemen.

I was making some notes as the questions were going back and forth, as I try to do at every committee meeting, especially those that I believe will be, in all probability, more concentrated on by the people who put us here and you serve. That is, of course, you serve a prison population but you also serve the community at large.

The first thing I look at is, should we be classing our prisons as social service agencies or should we class them as places where people go who commit crimes? And in this day and age they're generally serious crimes, because if they're less serious crimes, we tend to use probation and those other things. And when someone has committed an anti-social behaviour and they go to your institution, we want to do a few things with them. The first thing I would like them to understand is why they're there in the first place. The next thing is that they need to understand why they shouldn't go back. Then there's an obligation on society because we put them there, because usually they deserve to be there and we don't want them to come back. Then we get into the social service side of it all. The social service side says, how can we help you help yourself to get out of it?

Am I going down the right track here or do you disagree with what I've said?

[Don Head]

I'm very much on the same track with you.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

As a society, we know it's pretty expensive to operate our prison system. We really don't like people who cause us to spend a lot of money. One of the reasons we don't want them to go back is, number one, they probably hurt people or do something wrong to go back. The other one is that we don't want our taxes to go up because we don't want them to go there. We want to provide the services. But if I look at what you've just said, you want to provide the services.... One of the things that I'm told is about the recruitment and retention issues, specifically...because Canada's largest federal penitentiary is in my riding, and we know there's a high number of inmate population who are there due to sex-related crimes, and we want to provide the programming.

Am I wrong when I say it's very difficult to get the right kind of professionals in there to treat those who have those types of problems? Number one, is it a recruitment and retention issue specifically around the sex offender, and also around drug addiction? Do you have an issue or a problem there?

[Don Head]

This is just a response to the points that were raised.

There is absolutely no question that in order for us to be 100% effective, we need to be better plugged into or tied into the kinds of support services that social service agencies provide across the country.

In some cases, that's a challenge just because of our physical location, where we're located. We have institutions, for example, in Sept-Iles and Port Cartier, where the kinds of support services that would be needed if people were going to be released into that immediate community are just not available. They would be in places like Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver, so that's a challenge. In other communities where we need to tie into those kinds of agencies, they're currently overtaxed with just the demands that are placed on them by citizens that aren't incarcerated. So there are some challenges there.

In terms of the question around recruitment and retention, particularly in the health care field, this is one of the most significant challenges that we have at the moment. We are starting to make some headway in terms of our hiring of nurses, our hiring of psychologists and social workers. But we have challenges, again partly due to our physical location, but partly due to just, as the committee members would be well aware, the demand for health care professionals across this country.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Would I be also correct in saying from the health care providers' perspective, especially psychiatrists and psychologists, that you don't have an array of patient caseload, an array of the types of illnesses? In other words, a psychiatrist or psychologist outside of the prison system would have people with varying degrees of problems, with a varying number of problems, so that they could, from a professional perspective, be able to explore all of their practice. Whereas, in the prison, it's pretty well all the same type of person because they've committed a crime.

I've been told that, number one, there's a lack of the numbers of people that are available and, number two, they really just don't want to function under that system. Let's face it, some health care professionals don't want to work where you are because they just don't want the personal safety issues, but the other reason is from a professional development part. Would I be correct there?

[Don Head]

I think the one point that you raise around professional development is an issue. I would actually argue that the array of opportunities is probably more specific to us than in some of the general communities.

There is one point I will add, because it is relevant. One of the challenges that we have right now is the issue of remuneration for health care workers. I'll just give you a very quick story anecdotally. We lost a psychologist at one of our institutions in Alberta. They were making about $88,000 a year. They left to go to work at the Alberta hospital, where they immediately started at $108,000, and one year later went to $118,000. I can't compete against those kind of options that are out there. Provincial jurisdictions are moving in that direction, providing those remuneration opportunities that are greater than what I can provide within the federal system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

A very short one.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

I have just one other one. It has to do with, of course, part of the whole process for those addicted. But at the risk of the ire across the way, one of the best social programs is a good paying job. Using my experience at the Warkworth Institution, doing a lot of good things, we had one of the largest CORCAN operations in the country. I think $5 million worth of production was going out of there. They're doing work for the hostels in Toronto right now because of the bedbug infestation. Of course, there's the repair of military vehicles. When they learn these trades, I'm told by the instructors that, with the exception of a handful of people, there is no recidivism and in many instances they have a job before they even leave the prison because they're connected through their instructor.

The good part of it is that just recently they've instituted two shifts. So once again the inmate realizes that, when you go on—

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll have to wrap it up.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Anyway, if you have a chance, I think you need to talk about some of the very positive things, because we always want to concentrate on the negative things.

But you do a good job.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Monsieur Ménard.