Yes, I do, Mr. Chair. I don't have any written comments. I'm going to do this as I'm accustomed to doing, on the fly. But I'm going to refer the chair and the committee to the report we issued in October 2007. I suppose most of my comments are buried in the report, and one or two of the 109 recommendations are in one or two pages of that report.
The report is on the CSC website; it's a publicly released document. There are a number of sections in the report that deal with mental health in particular. I think there are some 10 or 11 recommendations that deal with mental health, recommendations 47 to 58, if members want to take note of those particular ones.
I just want to say a couple of things, and then I think it is probably beneficial to open it up for questions, Mr. Chair, or whatever your process is.
I would encourage the committee not to look at mental health as a stand-alone issue within corrections. It's really one of a number of issues within corrections. What the panel found when we did our review of corrections was that all these pieces of the puzzle are very much connected. To tackle the mental health issues within corrections and not deal with infrastructure doesn't work. To deal with infrastructure but then not deal with the issues around mental health, or drug addiction, or programming doesn't work. The solutions around corrections and federal corrections really need to be holistic, if you will.
Just looking at mental health in particular, the panel commented on this, and I don't know how this committee looks at it, but what the commissioner just explained is that with the multi-millions they spend on mental health and health programs within corrections, effectively what Correctional Service Canada is creating is its own health system. Federal prisoners are outside of the federal Health Act, and because of that, even though these institutions may be in Ontario, Saskatchewan, or B.C., where there is a health system, the federal corrections system creates its own. The potential for duplication and reinventing the wheel is large. I think the potential for “not the best” spending of federal taxpayers' money is extremely high when you're building another health system within the federal corrections system, right in the backyard of the Ontario health system.
One of our recommendations on the mental health side alone is that there be some improvement in the coordination between the delivery of services for federal penitentiary incarcerated inmates and those that are done outside. Those inmates will be released back into the community and then they will be part of the provincial/federal health system. You need to have the integration. I know the commissioner is struggling to do it, but it is very difficult to do when in fact the act says federally incarcerated individuals are outside of the Health Act.
An interesting comment in our report was that we should look at mental health as a penitentiary within a hospital as opposed to a hospital within a penitentiary. You need to think a bit about that phrase. I would encourage the committee to do that as they tour these facilities.
I'm going to champion a particular project that was started in Ontario, not because it was started by me when I was the Minister of Corrections in Ontario, but because it was started by a government in Ontario, and that's the Brockville situation. If you have the opportunity, I would encourage you to tour the Brockville mental health facility, where they have indeed created a penitentiary within a hospital. You will walk into that place and it will be secure, there will be guards there, but the inmates are treated more like hospital patients, and I think, frankly, they respond differently than they do in some of the federal institutions that the panel toured.
That system is a little bit more integrated with the provincial health care system as well. It's actually run by the Ottawa Hospital.
Infrastructure is a recommendation in our report. The panel actually recommended the creation of complexes, not because they become these massive big prisons, as some people have twisted our recommendation into, but because they give the opportunity for the commissioner to put a hospital within a penitentiary, if you get my sense, and have the flexibility to move inmates around from one institution within the other, from one facility to the other, within the same confines--within the same fence, if you will.
Tremendous operational efficiencies, tremendous service delivery efficiencies could be achieved, and I would argue--and the panel actually alluded to this--that cost savings as well can be achieved by better managing a much smaller group.Commissioner, is it 50-some-odd institutions that you have?
A final comment around mental health. This was alluded to in the report but not specifically spoken to in the report.
On the mental health side, the panel's view is that the primary objective for corrections should be to stabilize the individual and treat as necessary. The individual will either transition down into the general population of a prison population or out of the prison on release, and they may or may not have the same level of services they became accustomed to within the institution. As a result, you need to get them transitioned and stabilized to a point at which they can actually live as law-abiding citizens outside the gates, relying upon the services that are available within the particular community they go to. To get them accustomed to a high level of service within an institution and then release them to a low level of service outside the institution is, frankly, setting them up for failure.
I think some of the recidivism statistics around mental health issues that you will have heard already from the commissioner or the correctional investigator would indicate that that's what's happening. These individuals are leaving, they're accustomed to a more individualized level of service inside the institution, and they're on their own. That is why the primary objective should be to stabilize, so they can actually survive as law-abiding citizens within their community.
In fact, I think if you ask the fellow who runs the Brockville institution what his primary objective is, that's what it is. His challenge is a little bit more difficult because of the shortness of stay within provincial institutions. It is much shorter than in federal institutions. He has to focus on stabilization because they're not around long enough to have any effective impact from treatment.
Mr. Chairman, those are my comments. I appreciate your taking a look at this very important subject and I await your further questions.