Public Safety Committee on Feb. 11th, 2009

[Don Head]

I have just a couple of things to quickly add. Over the last couple of years we've received a significant infusion of money into the organization to advance the yard sticks for programming, specifically for offenders of aboriginal ancestry. We've been able to do several things. One has been to increase the number of elders who are coming into the institutions. We've created what we call aboriginal community development officers. They are actually individuals who are helping to bridge the move from the institution back into the community and helping to position people for success in the future. We've created what we call aboriginal liaison officers who are also working with employers to help find jobs for aboriginal peoples as they move back.

In several institutions across the country we've created what we call pathways units, which are very specific to individuals of aboriginal ancestry and provide them with several opportunities, including cultural, spiritual, and programming, that recognize their ancestry. More specifically to the point that was raised about the north, we're embarking on what we call the creation of the northern corrections strategy, and we're working in concert with the three territories as well as with some of the provinces with respect to their concerns about residents in the northern parts of the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

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

I know of your personal good will on this, and I have great respect for it. I have a concern that with the agenda of the Conservative government, more and more resources will be diverted away from these programs, when they should be increased. Instead, they are going toward minimum mandatory sentences and keeping people in jail for too long, people who maybe shouldn't even be in jail. That is a huge cost to our system. Instead of punishing, we should be rehabilitating, we should be redeveloping, we should be helping, and I'm very concerned about that.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Well--

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll have to wrap it up. Just take half a minute, Mr. Minister. You've actually been here five minutes longer than you committed to.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

I caution Mr. Oliphant about buying into characterizations of our agenda. Look at what it is in particular.

Yes, we believe in serious punishment for serious crime, but the reality of our programs also shows a strong focus on the other side of it, such as crime prevention, which we talked about. You can see the refocused targets. They are exactly the areas you're concerned about. I think that is something Mr. Holland was being critical of earlier. We think it's a good thing, and I think it's consistent with what you're telling us you want to see done. I think you see the same thing in the changes happening in the prison system.

Another area where there is a big concern is mental health. It's an issue of great concern to me, because the reality is that there are a lot of people in those prisons who really shouldn't be there. They should be in health-care facilities, but that option doesn't exist anymore, and we're left to deal with it in a way that isn't really appropriate for a corrections system. As provincial de-institutionalization continued, as community support was not provided, people got into that cycle, and it's very tough to get them out of that cycle. We've seen that accelerate over the years. For each new young cohort that comes in and doesn't have that kind of health-care support and bounces around in and out of the courts before finally ending up doing something more serious and ending up in prison, by the time we get them, a lot of damage has already been caused. It really needs a broader, comprehensive solution that involves other parts of society.

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

We'll work with you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. I appreciate you coming at such short notice once again.

We're going to suspend for a minute and allow you to excuse yourself, and then we are going till 5:30 with the rest of the witnesses.

Thank you very much, again.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I think we'll recommence our meeting.

We now are going over to the Conservative Party. I'm not sure who on this side.... Mr. MacKenzie, please, for five minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to follow up on a couple of comments from Mr. Oliphant. He made the suggestion that the Conservative Party had done everything wrong and had drained the resources rather than adding to them. I took it there that Mr. Oliphant might want to join this side, because I think we have probably exhibited the kinds of things that Mr. Oliphant himself supports, and which we do equally.

I think it's important that Mr. Head had indicated that in the last couple of years resources and money had been put forward to deal with the aboriginal community, in particular. I think we've all certainly seen in the press the issues dealing with the aboriginal community. I wonder if Mr. Head could expand on what that has meant in that timeframe and what timeframe it has been where the additional resources have been put in.

[Don Head]

Most definitely.

Over the last couple of years we've seen an infusion of money, as I mentioned briefly, to help us develop our capacity to deliver programs specifically for aboriginal offenders, both in the institutions and in the community, as well as to help to develop capacities out in aboriginal communities to support offenders coming back. As an example, we hired three more aboriginal community development officers--the number seems relatively low, but for us it's a major step forward, because these individuals do a tremendous amount of work--who work very closely with aboriginal communities across the country to see how certain individuals can come back into those communities and be supported.

We will be receiving in this coming year additional money to expand what we call our Pathways units. We currently have nine Pathways units in our institutions across the country. Obviously it's not enough for the number of aboriginal offenders who are in the system. We currently only have capacity for around 500 or so, and about 17% of our population are individuals of aboriginal ancestry.

With this money, we're anticipating that we're able to double those units, so that will bring us up to about 1,000 beds or capacity within the institutions. Within those units we have elders who are working directly with the offenders.

We're implementing aboriginal-specific programs. For example, we have an aboriginal substance abuse program that builds on the research of non-aboriginal substance abuse programming but it takes into account the cultural and spiritual needs of aboriginal offenders. As you may be aware, our legislation requires that we take that into consideration, and we haven't been able to do that in the past with the funding we had.

On the crime prevention piece, more specifically the victims piece, one of the things that was identified in the report of the review panel that was chaired by Mr. Sampson is the need to do more work, obviously, in terms of supporting victims, but more specifically to start to look at how we can support aboriginal victims. Many of the individuals who come into our system have committed offences against their own family members, community members, and to a large extent there has not been the kind of connection there needs to be in terms of reaching out to those people. So we're making a lot of moves in these different areas.

We still have a long way to go. We've got many years of history to catch up in terms of delivering to aboriginal offenders. We still see that our correctional results, as they relate to non-aboriginal offenders, are not as good as they should be, but we're starting to see some small incremental gains and we're trying to build on the successes that we have.

As was mentioned before, the elder-assisted hearings at the Parole Board hearings definitely has been a significant step in the right direction, in terms of, again, helping aboriginal offenders to reintegrate back into the community safely.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I do appreciate that. It would seem to me that we've only got this started in the last couple of years, you're saying. How long would you see before we start to see very concrete results on the outside? My guess is perhaps you're seeing the results on the inside, but as these people are reintegrated into society, how long will it be before we start to see those beneficial results?

[Don Head]

I think some of the long-term results are going to take five to ten years, but what we're seeing, as you pointed out correctly, is some incremental gains on the inside, and some on the outside. So, for example, one of the problems we had before is that, specifically in our prairie region, which covers Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, aboriginal offenders were more likely to be involved in violent incidents within the institutions. For those who are involved in the programs, in the Pathways units, we're seeing a decline in their involvement in violent activities and drug-related activities. So these are the kinds of increments we can build on.

As I said, we're only seeing decimal changes in terms of community successes, but that's a far cry from where we were five years ago. So in a very short period of time, we're starting to see the positive incremental changes, and we can build on those. We have a lot of work to do. As the minister pointed out earlier, many individuals who come into the system come in with a multitude of problems, so just to deal with substance abuse isn't necessarily going to deal with the family violence part, or other issues. We've got a lot of work to do, but we're starting to see some progress.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

We're going to have to move on here.

Mr. Holland, you're sharing your time with Mr. Oliphant.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to go to the associate deputy minister, Mr. Kirvan, if I could. There were a number of items and unfortunately time didn't permit me to finish, but there are items I can finish with you very quickly.

Can you tell us how many projects receive funding with respect to the crime prevention program, how many were turned down, and how many projects that had been previously awarded funding lost their funding? That's one.

Secondly, the minister, in response to one of my questions, stated that some sort of results-based matrix has been created. That's new to anything I've ever seen. Could you undertake to provide what exactly that matrix is? What criteria are going to be used on a go-forward basis so we can ensure we don't have a half-unspent budget on an area that's as vital as crime prevention?

Can you also give us a timeline on when you can get back to the committee with that?

[Myles Kirvan, Associate Deputy Minister, Deputy Minister's Office, Department of Public Safety]

Thank you.

Evaluation is a key part of the new crime prevention strategy to refocus. It's meant to be more evidence-based to begin with, as opposed to the previous regime, which was crime prevention through social development. This is meant to pull out some lessons from the last number of years, bring forward that evidence, and try to assist on that side.

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

I don't mean to interrupt, and I know Mr. Richards is new to the committee, but we only get a very limited amount of time, and that's why I make interjections, so I can be sure I get questions asked.

We've heard a lot of generalities, but I've heard from a lot of groups that have lost funding that they are on the verge of having to close programs, and they're really doing good work. Can you provide what that matrix is so we can have some clarity, both for those groups that have lost their funding and for me? Then my prior question with respect to those: can I get you to say yes or no to providing us, the committee, with that information and a timeline?

[Myles Kirvan]

So it's number of projects accepting--

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

How many projects received funding? How many were turned down? What were the projects? How many projects that had previously been awarded funding lost their funding?

[Myles Kirvan]

I will undertake to look into it in terms of the numbers themselves, accepted and not accepted. In terms of what the actual projects were, I will check on that too, just to see in terms of the organizations themselves and whether that would be appropriate for the organizations. I'll check--

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

We'd like at the very least numerically, but certainly by actual list of organizations so we can understand. The minister wouldn't provide us with an example, so we could at least take a look at some of these examples, and they could understand and we could understand why they failed to get funding.

And last is the timeline, and then I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Oliphant. How fast can we get this back?

[Myles Kirvan]

I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible.

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

Within a month, is that reasonable?

[Myles Kirvan]

Yes.

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

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.