Thank you.
I have been practising law for some 38 years. I practise in the “Kingston of the west”, Abbotsford, surrounded by federal and provincial prisons, so part of my practice is not simply representing people charged with offences; it also involves a considerable amount of post-sentencing work dealing with people in prison, either in relation to prison issues that arise under the auspices of the Correctional Service of Canada or before the National Parole Board in terms of conditional release. So I'm very familiar with how the Corrections and Conditional Release Act operates and what happens to somebody who comes back to Canada, arrives at the reception centres, and is then processed in the same way as somebody who is sent from the courts. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have, because there are provisions in this bill that seem to be inconsistent with that, in the sense of the business about protecting victims or witnesses. Our Correctional Service of Canada is designed to do that, so it's unclear whether the opinion of the minister in some of these provisions is suggesting that the person is going to reoffend when they come into prison in Canada. Or is it after they've gone through the whole process of imprisonment in Canada and have passed through the National Parole Board? Or exactly when? The act doesn't seem to address that.
I have acted and am continuing to act in about 50 cases currently. We have 10 that are filed before the Federal Court. I've acted in all of the cases, I think, except for Grant and DiVito. By the way, I have given the clerk an update of the cases and what has been going on in the law so that you'll have it for your benefit later on in terms of just what has been happening.
The Federal Court has been setting aside the decisions of the minister on a regular basis as being unreasonable. They are, by and large, boilerplate; you can see that they've just plugged in the names and so on in different places. They are, in my submission, inconsistent with the purposes of the act, which is to enable transfers in order to facilitate the rehabilitation and reintegration of the offender by having them come into our system, so that Corrections Canada gets to know who they are and gets to assess who they are, determine their security classification and what programming may be required, and process them through, as I say, a Canadian perspective.
The Corrections and Conditional Release Act requires Corrections Canada to try to place people in close proximity to their families and to their community support in a compatible linguistic and cultural environment, because it has been recognized for many years that having support, having people who can support you and be nearby, is a very important factor in assisting in somebody's reformation and rehabilitation.
The example of Mr. Curtis, who I acted for, is an example that's fairly typical. Mostly, Canadians in the U.S. are there for drug offences, usually as couriers or mules. Usually they've made it to minimum security. As indicated, they're not eligible for a lot of programming in the U.S., so they're simply biding their time, hoping they can come back to Canada and go through the Correctional Service of Canada process and that will assist in their reformation and rehabilitation.
The alternative is that once they reach a certain stage of their sentence in the U.S.--federally, it's at 85%--you get deported back because you're inadmissible in the country in which you've committed the crime. Then you come back, as has been indicated, without a Canadian criminal record. Certainly there's an American criminal record and certainly there are databases now that people can access in order to find foreign criminal records, but it doesn't form part of your Canadian police information computer, which, if the ordinary police officer stops you and is checking his database, is what's going to come up.
The offence has to be an offence in both countries. You have to be a Canadian citizen. The sentence has to be one that can be administered in Canada. We've had some cases where people traffic in certain drugs in the U.S. That's illegal in the U.S., but not in Canada, so those people wouldn't be eligible for extradition or for treaty transfer. You have those two critical factors: citizenship and double criminality are the base.
The situation is such that there are many, many Canadians sitting in this situation, losing their support, losing spouses, and being out of touch with families, and not just in the U.S. I have a number of particularly egregious cases in Japan.
We recently had to file because the minister denied the application of a woman called Ms. Bouseh, who, along with two brothers, was involved in a drug offence going into Japan. Ms. Bouseh was arrested and not sentenced until nine months later. She found out she was pregnant and gave birth to her child while shackled and handcuffed in a prison hospital in Japan. The child was removed from her within a couple of days, and she hasn't seen the child since. The minister took almost three years to decide the question, and he denied her. I have difficulty understanding how that promotes Canadian public safety.
I had a letter just last month from another Canadian in Japan who contests the legality of his conviction and says he was framed. But leaving that aside, he too got nine years. When his wife found out what the current government was doing in relation to treaty transfers, she gave up on him. He has three children--an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 15-year-old--and he just found out recently, through his mother, that his wife, who had left him, had suddenly died. He has been unable to have any communication to find out what's been happening to the rest of his family. He was sentenced in 2006, so it's been four or five years since he's had any communication with his kids. He was hoping that through this process he'd be able to come back and be reformed and rehabilitated through the Correctional Service of Canada.
I get lots of letters from prisoners throughout the U.S., and throughout the world, in fact, telling me these stories. As I said, I've been to court now on numerous occasions.
This bill seems to be designed to make it easier for the minister to deny transfers, when the purpose of the bill as set out in clause 3 is to assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration of the offender. In the decisions that I see regularly now from various ministers--starting with Stockwell Day, then Peter Van Loan, and now Minister Vic Toews--the bottom line in the reasoning is that they don't believe a transfer would achieve the purpose of the act, which again, even with the amendment to clause 3, is to enhance public safety. These transfers enhance public safety.
If somebody comes back who has been deported in the end and we don't know much about them, that's it. If somebody comes back on a transfer, we get to know them, we get to assess them, we get to find out who they are and what their connections are--all of which the minister's own department, the Correctional Service of Canada, supposedly does. We have case management teams develop correctional plans and present them, if they apply, to the National Parole Board. Most members of the National Parole Board are appointed by this government. You have to convince them you do not pose an undue risk to reoffend before you can then be released.
Many of the treaty transfer prisoners come back past all of their eligibility dates. They still sit--at least in British Columbia--for two to three months in the reception centre before they're classified and placed. Frequently they're first-time offenders with no history of violence, so they qualify for something called accelerated parole. The test for that is whether there are reasonable grounds to believe you're likely to reoffend in a violent manner before warrant expiry.
Many years ago I had the privilege of appearing here at committee when the government decided to make it more difficult for violent offenders and easier for non-violent offenders, because it was recognized--and the research still shows--that the longer you keep a person in prison, usually the worse they get. They don't get better being in prison; they get worse. So accelerated parole was created.
Many of these people are first-time federal offenders and not involved in a violent offence. If they come back to Canada on a transfer, the act recognizes--because of the conversion of the offence and sentence--that they become second-time offenders. So if you're deported back and reoffend, you could still qualify for accelerated parole. If you're transferred back, you would no longer be eligible for accelerated parole if you were to reoffend.
I know the committee has the statistics that were presented to the minister in terms of what happens in relation to people who come back. It would be nice to know what happens to people who are deported. We don't have the statistics of those who come back free and clear. How many of them have reoffended?
We do know that of those who have come back—and have been within two years post their warrant expiry date in Canada—the statistic is 0.6%, which is four people out of some 620 who were transferred back between 1997 and 2007. We also know from the statistics that between 2003 and 2008, with a total of 473 in that period, 16, or 3.4%, reoffended.
So the incidence of recidivism by these people who have come back through the treaty transfer process is very low. That seems to indicate that the existing program has been working quite successfully and ought to be maintained, and fewer people should be denied.
I'm over my time, but I've given in my written solutions--