Public Safety Committee on Nov. 5th, 2009

[D/Commr Marc-Arthur Hyppolite]

Let me be very specific with respect to the community mental health services that are provided. I can tell you specifically, approximately 50 new positions were created in support of the community mental health services--30 in the community at 16 separate parole offices. In addition to that, there were 14 new positions to provide discharge planning services for offenders in institutions, and five regional coordinator positions were created to coordinate the release of these offenders into the community.

That is specifically in response to the question by Mr. Don Davies.

As of March 31, 2009, 97% of the front-line positions in the mental health strategy were filled, so when there is an anecdotal story that there are no positions, no services.... A total of 471 referrals were made for clinical discharge planning services, and 540 referrals were made for community mental health specialist services, for a total of 923 individual offenders who were referred--88 were referred to both services. We are talking about a total of 923 offenders since we put that community mental health strategy in place. I could go on.

I can also tell you, out of the 52 sites, 43 contracts have been signed to provide for where we identified gaps, and that also includes fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. May I add that quite a number of our staff, especially correctional officials--we start with the managers, in terms of our training plan—who now interact with offenders with mental health issues are also being trained. I believe the last time I checked the numbers--which I can verify--1,600 of them had been trained.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Very good.

Do I have a little bit of time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You have less than half a minute.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I want to touch on the aboriginal culture and traditional teachings. I was very pleased to hear that you are doing more in that venue. I've had personal experiences with aboriginal people who really do feel a sense of belonging and openness when they are allowed to practise those teachings. So I congratulate you for that, and I hope that also follows in the community maintenance, because they are introduced to elders in the correctional facilities, and I certainly hope they are encouraged to continue those relationships outside.

You do make a comment that's interesting in your dissertation, Ms. Van Allen, that we are seeing women serving much shorter sentences. Can you explain that comment?

[D/Commr Elizabeth Van Allen]

I believe 61% of the women coming into our institutions now are serving much shorter sentences, less than four years, so that means we have less time to work with them inside to prepare them for their return to the community. It's another challenge that we face.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Is that because of the types of offences or...? Have you any insight into that?

[D/Commr Elizabeth Van Allen]

Unfortunately, no. We could do some digging to look and see, but the sentences are shorter coming in. That's what we're seeing now.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll have to wrap it up there. Thank you.

Mr. Oliphant, then Mr. Norlock.

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

Thank you to all of you.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order.

I just want to be clear on this so that we manage our schedule properly. According to the schedule you've given, these witnesses are here from eleven to twelve, and from twelve to one we are to move to the next two witnesses. I'm just wondering how we plan on managing that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

That's a good question. I'm at the will of the committee. We started maybe 15 minutes late, because the group that was in this room did not vacate it in time. I was going to split that time in half, allow these people to go a little bit beyond twelve o'clock, and then because we're here for three hours, we could let the next group go just a little bit beyond one o'clock.

Is that okay? Would you prefer to break now?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

My suggestion would be that we give the full hour to these witnesses and the full hour to the next witnesses. Where we would take off the time would be in the last hour, which is optional, for the SOIRA. I'd rather hear from the witnesses.

How is that? We could have a full hour for each of the witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

So you want to go to about a quarter after?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Yes, on the condition that we spend an hour on the next one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I think we could probably proceed with SOIRA.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Is that okay with the committee?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

All right.

Mr. Oliphant.

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

Thank you all for the important work you do. I have a little less thanks, though, for the spirited defence of the status quo. I think that's good and loyal. But I don't think Commissioner Head is as committed to the status quo as you have been today. I can understand this, given the clippings I read this morning about new civil servants having to sign on to the government's economic action plan. You need to know you have permission to help us make the system work better. That's what we're about.

Ms. Van Allen, at the end of your statement you said you still had work to do. I would like to focus on the work we still have before us. It might be capacity with respect to diagnosis or physical infrastructure. It might be staffing problems—bringing in the appropriate culturally sensitive and professionally trained staff. Or it might be a problem with the take-up of the programs by incarcerated people. The time is yours. We need your expertise to help us to do our work better.

[D/Commr Elizabeth Van Allen]

We have a challenge with our infrastructure's capacity to deal with our mental health offenders. For our women in minimum and medium security, we have a good program in place. Our structured living environments work well, and we've been commended for them. In fact, a recent review panel commented on the SLEs, as did Constance Glube in her assessment of CSC. That's working very well.

It's more difficult when we have to deal with women who have behavioural challenges stemming from more complex mental health needs. Unfortunately, working with these women requires a more secure environment. We have five regional facilities. The secure units are relatively small, and that poses challenges. That's an area we will have to work on in the coming years

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

I don't want to interrupt, but I will. It seems to me these are not mutually exclusive. Behavioural issues are very often, if not almost always, related to mental health. This is the crux of what we're trying to do here. We want to have a facility that provides treatment but is safe for correctional officers and the community. Do we have insights on that?

[D/Commr Elizabeth Van Allen]

This is an area we've been looking at since I've come to this position. We've done assessments of some of the infrastructure requirements in connection with the types of women we're having to work with and the challenges they present. We'll have to work through the normal Treasury Board processes to move some of our ideas forward.

[D/Commr Marc-Arthur Hyppolite]

We have challenges to work with in improving the system. We're not going to sit here and say we don't have challenges and everything is great. As to mental health, there are a series of things we're concerned with. We're sharing best practices with specialized agencies and the community. There's a component of our mental health strategy that has not been funded. We've been funding it internally. We are trying to secure permanent funding after March 2010 for our community mental health initiative. This has to do with intermediate mental health care, which is necessary when somebody is suffering from mental health issues that are not acute but require support. We want to be able to create supportive units that will provide immediate care to these people. This is not funded, and we'd like secure funding for it. We also need to improve our capacity to diagnose, in the interest of gaining a better understanding of the prevalence of mental health disorders.

Moreover, we are limited by a severe shortage of equipment and mental health staff such as psychologists and nurses. It's a major issue for us in some parts of the country, particularly in areas such as Grande Cache, Alberta, and Port-Cartier, Quebec.