Public Safety Committee on Dec. 8th, 2009

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you very much for being here. It's been a great learning session from all committee members' points of view, I think.

I just want to do a little bit of further exploration and perhaps wrap up on the issues of outreach, because certainly you've reinforced what we've heard from a lot of people, and on a couple of levels. I know my colleague was talking about post-secondary institutions and such, and some of the most successful partnerships happen that way. I think, Dr. Ward, you referred to the challenges that are faced, and we've heard of these challenges of keeping professionals in the system.

Is there anything you could recommend in terms of how we do that, how we bring new professionals like you and others in the professions to work within the correctional system? What would those recommendations be?

[Dr. Helen Ward]

I think it's important to get behind anti-stigma measures. I would also be looking at curriculums in various training programs for social workers, for criminologists, etc., and what they have to offer. You might want to be looking at supporting more co-op placements. We do co-op placements for criminology students, and it's very successful. Then that, of course, widens things.

I think for professions where people are scarce--and we're going into this baby boomer retirement where we're going to have a real shortage of professionals--we physicians are often pretty much free agents, so there need to be incentives for the kinds of practice we need, and then disincentives for the kinds of practice we don't need quite so much of. That's obviously probably at a provincial level, but I think there needs to be some thought given to how we move people into these areas. Some of it may be financial as well as training.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Are you talking financial or are you talking professional development? We had one psychiatrist say to us when we were touring--I'm not sure if it was Kingston--saying this was the best lab there was, and you could just see the challenges they were looking at, and the stimulation, I suppose, from a practical point of view of what that would mean. So you mean on both fronts?

[Dr. Helen Ward]

I do, and I think that is a place to encourage people. I also think, though, that at a more grunt level, doing the actual clinical work, we would do well to follow some of what's been done in Quebec in terms of CLSCs and getting more and more mental health resources into the community and community health centres and family medicine centres, and giving those people incentives to pick up difficult populations. We're doing some of that, but we could do more.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

One thing I don't think I've heard from any of you today is a peer mentoring system. I'm sure you probably have those systems in place. Does anyone want to comment on that, how effective that is? It strikes me from what we've heard, that if you can develop a peer mentoring system, it is a very powerful tool.

[Doug Brady]

When we talk about peer mentoring, we talk an awful lot about our graduates getting involved with our participants. Right now we're having a meeting every two weeks with the participants and graduates, which the graduates wanted us to do, to talk to them about their problems and to help them out along the way. Many of our graduates become sponsors of our participants in different things in the community because they keep coming back to court. It's not unusual to see one or two or three people who are graduating from our program in our court every week to support one another.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

So it is something that you're developing and you see a future in it. Can I take that away from your comments?

[Doug Brady]

Most definitely.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Is there any further outreach on which any of you have suggestions to our committee? I'm talking about outreach within communities. You say they're all different and I concur on that. But are there any other areas where you can see, as you speak to us, recommendations that we can bring forward in terms of how you do the proper reintegration of people with both addiction and mental health issues? Do you have any comments that way, if you had a wish list?

[James Budd]

Housing is very important. As Dr. Ward mentioned, there are housing programs available, and it was an understatement when she said there weren't enough of them. There are, by far, not enough of them. It's very difficult for somebody to remain clean or maintain their mental health program while living in a shelter system. So that remains a significant issue that would be of great assistance to us.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you for that.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Holland]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kania, for five minutes, in the fifth round.

We should have time to finish the fifth round if we keep everybody to time.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Ward, we had briefly discussed the fact that the crown is the gatekeeper. I'd like your comments about that, because to me it would appear that perhaps it should be the judge or somebody else who's the gatekeeper.

[Dr. Helen Ward]

I might actually have to ask Mr. Moffat to comment. I think ultimately the way most of these courts are set up, in the end, the crown is going to be the one that agrees or that pilots the diversion piece or the favourable legal outcome. In mental health court, we don't have a lot of judicial involvement at the front end, and I think it's difficult legally sometimes to figure out how to have that involvement.

That's the only comment I have.

[David Moffat]

The crown is responsible for public safety. Ultimately, that's what we see as our job. When I started in mental health court, the direction I got from the crown attorney was, “Here's the drug treatment court; this is the way it works. Don't ever forget that your number one priority is protecting public safety.”

As such, the crown discretion is something that we're just not willing to give up. That's what we see as our job and our responsibility and our role in the system. We use our discretion to decide whether someone is screened in or not, and then from there we go with treatment and judges and the rest.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

There's a comment here about “deemed fit to stand trial”, in terms of going through the system to make that determination. Correct me if I'm wrong—I'm not familiar with the system—but that has nothing to do with whether somebody was actually fit at the time they committed the crime. Is that correct?

So they could have not been fit at the time they committed the crime, yet fit to stand trial after the fact, and they wouldn't be part of this.

[Dr. Helen Ward]

Right, and I apologize; I don't know what material you were given. I didn't see it.

There are two different issues. One is the person's mental state at the time of the offence, and that is related to criminal responsibility. The second is their fitness to stand trial, which is whether they understand why they're there and what's going on.

Those are very, very basic tests, but they can be completely unrelated. The offence could have happened two years ago; they could have been perfectly well, but now they've developed a dementia or psychosis and they're not fit to stand trial. So they have to be dealt with separately.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

On drug treatment courts, why is there the distinction with respect to violence? There are a couple of things here. There's the violence, and there's the guilty plea—because I understand that you need to plead guilty in order to have the benefit of this. Secondly, there's a distinction in that if you commit a really serious offence, you don't have the benefit of this rehabilitative program. In my view, if somebody is addicted and has committed an offence, whatever it may be, because of drugs and that addiction, that person needs help, period.

So can you please discuss that?

[David Moffat]

The starting point is public safety, and the crown won't screen someone in if we're concerned.

This is someone who is in custody now. We're allowing them out of custody to go to treatment, and there's a risk involved. If there's a risk to public safety that involves violence, then we're less prone to do that.

The other incidence with the violence is—and this was brought to our attention by the judges—that we're court-ordering people to do this. We're ordering someone to spend time in this program, which in Ottawa is for at least nine months, often 12 months. If we're going to court-order accused persons to do this, then they have to be in a safe environment, and it's not a safe environment if we're allowing people into that atmosphere where they have committed crimes of violence and are likely to commit crimes of violence again.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

It's not even crimes of violence, because there are other more serious crimes. For example, with break and enter into a residence, you don't get to be part of this program, correct?

[David Moffat]

There is no drug treatment program in Canada that will allow someone in with a residential break and enter, the exception being, say, a case-by-case basis for a new home being built, no one's there, it's a residential home development. Then they'll allow people in.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

So let's take that non-violent offence. They have a serious drug problem. They cannot go into this program. What do you do to help that individual? Isn't the point of rehabilitation to try to make them better so they don't reoffend?

[David Moffat]

For instance, I just had someone not available for drug treatment court. I talked to the defence counsel and said, if he's not suitable for drug treatment court because of the violence, let's look at other options. He went in with a two-year conditional sentence, and he agreed to do a two-year residential in-treatment program, followed by three years of probation. That was an appropriate sentence, and that was for a series of break and enters.

So there's the option.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Holland]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Ménard.

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

I would like you to tell me exactly how you select people admitted to your program.