Public Safety Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Larry McDermott]

Locally, the gentlemen around me probably can answer that question more accurately, but my understanding is no, they are not.

What I'm hearing from those who work with aboriginal women and from aboriginal women themselves--and this also is addressing the question you asked previously--they definitely cultivate an emotional relationship with animals. In that emotional relationship of caring, being responsible, and nurturing are skills that, when blended with vocational training, make one a more employable person and make one successful in their community.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

That's right. They are those kinds of intangible, personal skills we talked about.

[Larry McDermott]

Absolutely.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kania, please.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

I'm going to start by discussing my notice of motion from last time. A motion is pending. I am going to ask that it be heard at the next meeting, on April 1.

Part A of the motion reads: “That the committee calls upon the Minister of Public Safety to table forthwith the Strategic Review document referred to by CSC officials on March 25, 2010, during their testimony before the committee”.

I would ask that part B be heard on Thursday, April 1, at our next meeting. It reads as follows. We ask: “That the Minister of Public Safety refrain from taking any steps to sell, dismantle, or reduce operations at any of Canada's prison farms in any way until independent experts have had an opportunity to fully review the value of the farm program and duly report in writing to both the Minister of Public Safety and the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security”.

I am moving that the motion be debated and dealt with at the next meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You're giving notice, in other words.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

That's correct.

[Applause]

Dean Flanagan, as a fellow lawyer and a former secretary of the Ontario Bar Association, I understand you're here in an independent capacity, to be objective. I regret that your independence was challenged by my friend, Ms. Hoeppner. She did so without giving you an opportunity to defend yourself. I'm giving you that opportunity now.

[Bill Flanagan]

Thank you. I'd like that chance to comment.

I agree that our criminal justice system is about balance. This is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about in law schools. Law professors think about it a great deal. You have to balance appropriate punishment for people who have offended and you also have to think about fair treatment of accused and our inmates.

As a society, I think it is extremely important that we maintain this balance. As I said in my earlier comments, we have, for many years, seen a decline in crime rates in Canada, yet at the same time, we're seeing an increase in our prison population, an increase that is projected to be as much as 10% over the next few years. The government has also increased the budget for the Correctional Service of Canada by 27% over the next two years. In all of this, we also see a government that is determined to close these prison farms, notwithstanding all of the evidence we've heard today that demonstrates how effective these farms can be.

So I would only suggest that somewhere along the line we may have lost that balance. I think we ought to restore it.

Thank you.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

I'm going to read a quote for you and ask you to listen to this and respond:

...virtually none of the inmates who work on the prison farms end up with employable job skills and makes them more likely to reoffend when they re-enter the community. That is bad for our communities.

Does anybody agree with that quote? No?

Have the panellists disagreed with that quote? Raise your hands. Yes? That would be all of you.

That is a quote from the Honourable Peter Van Loan in the House of Commons on April 28, 2009.

[Voices]

Shame.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

I want to ask Mr. Perry about the scaling down. What I note from the statistics is that since 2007-08 there has been a scaling down at most of the institutions, such that between 2007-08 to the present there are roughly 250 people left who work on the farms.

First of all, assuming you agree with that, would you not also agree that any statistics the government might be seeking to rely upon to shut down the farms are skewed and not reliable because they don't show the true capacity of the system?

[Dave Perry]

I would answer that as president of the Frontenac Cattlemen and I would say yes.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Now, in terms of the rationale for shutting down the prison farms, have any of you been made aware of any independent information or evidence to suggest that the shutting down of these prison farms is logical?

[John Edmunds]

No, I have not been made aware of anything, and as it stands right now, anything that I ask the government around the farms, around their operation, is flat out refused. We're not allowed to see it now because it could affect the upcoming auction of the materials from the farms. Everything right now is off limits.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Do you have a comment, Ms. Dowling?

[Dianne Dowling]

I do. My understanding is that before the decision was announced they didn't ask for feedback on this decision from CSC staff. They didn't ask the citizens' advisory committees; at least, the one in Ontario was not asked about it. CORCAN has an advisory board of tradespeople and business people, and that board was not asked for its opinion on this decision either.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you. Unfortunately, we're out of time.

Mr. Goldring, please.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I certainly do want to thank the presenters here today. You certainly are demonstrating a compassion for the issue. I want to thank you very much for your words.

I grew up on a farm here in Ontario, just outside the Cobourg area, so I'm familiar with a little bit of what farming is and the benefits there can be. Some of your comments are very true and very realistic in regard to the benefits of being on a farm.

But I was also executor for my brother-in-law's farm, a 10,000-unit chicken farm, when he passed away. He was divorced, and there was one person working on that farm, who was virtually working on that farm alone and at barely above minimum wage.

So my concern is that the farming experience can be very good and very satisfying, and maybe therapeutic as well, but at the end of the day, when somebody leaves a prison, they may have a family to sustain, and they have to look for things. In looking at the skills of some of these other things....

For example, I was in New York City visiting some of the homeless shelters. They had a work program to reintroduce people to life skills, to the street. All of that is very important to do, but also, in going through these CORCAN farms--maybe somebody could help me with this--I'm seeing a lot of other skills here that are being developed. For example, in Alberta, there are welders. As has been mentioned before, there is manufacturing, and there are other areas. I know full well that in Alberta a welder up in Fort McMurray can make $100 an hour.

So it becomes a bit problematic when, as has been mentioned across this, right now we import farm workers, but those farm workers who are imported are minimum-wage workers. I wonder how many people can be satisfied in the long term while working at a minimum wage when they have families and responsibilities that they want to take on in the future. And how many more would like to have....

I can appreciate, Mr. Leeman, that the tickets are problematic in regard to going through and obtaining them and going through the levels of them. But perhaps that's something that could be focused on more to allow people to access the ticket levels and the additional training that's needed, so that they can move up through the ranks of journeymen, up through the ranks in the trades, and share in some of that rewarding experience financially as well, which many tradesmen in the construction industry here in Ontario--and certainly in Alberta--take part in on a regular basis.

My concern is along that line. I think we have to be aware that when people leave the prison system, part of leaving, staying out, and going into the greater community, is the rewarding as they move up through life skills and up through the wage levels and the increasing of wages. Maybe someone would care to comment.

In regard to my own background, I had a manufacturing company for some 30 years. I didn't need the welding tickets, the hard tickets, but I did need people who had some reasonable amount of skills to begin with. I could carry that through and train them more as time went on. As a matter of fact, one fellow, an aboriginal, a very best friend of mine, was able to take over a portion of the company eventually, even though he came in at minimum wage, with a very low skill level, but something that I could work with.

At one point, I'm very pleased to say, it was politely pointed out to me by the aboriginals that they outnumbered all the rest of us in my company. Many of them went on to become very successful or moderately successful, but all of them were able to go into that family-sustaining wage level that I don't think is that common coming out of a farming circumstance, unless you're able to move into farm ownership or into some other very serious end of farming.

Mr. McDermott, maybe you could comment on that for me.

[Larry McDermott]

I think it's important to realize that the skills learned on a farm are transferable. I tried to express that in my previous answer.

In other words, when I think of the list that we looked at on the smart growth panel, I know that I was exposed to many of those skills—yes, at the entry level—in my farming background. I think it's applicable in this circumstance.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

But then most of these here would be more applicable; for my company, it'd be difficult for me to interview people who had just come from a farming scenario versus those coming in with some manufacturing or some assembly background experience. Those types of skills would be what my company would be looking for and I would be able to build on those skills.

[Larry McDermott]

Well, I think that's true. I would suggest that you're talking more about an urban circumstance. Yes, 60% of the aboriginal people live in aboriginal circumstances, but there is 40% still looking for employment. They want to go back to their families. They're located in rural areas and on reserves in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay. We'll have to wrap it up there, unfortunately.

Last of all, Mr. Holland, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank Mr. McColeman, because I think there was a sincere misunderstanding, that he raised, which I think is at the crux of part of the problem here. Maybe I can bring this misunderstanding to the witnesses.

Unlike any other program, the prison farm program is asked to compete not against an existing or specific program, but against an ideal. As an example, we don't take the birdhouse program, where people build birdhouses, and compare it to the program where people sew patches onto military backpacks, as an example. Now, I support both of these, though it's a little hard to show explicitly how these lead to a job, as it is with most programs, but we don't ask to have a battle of the programs to say who will become the winner, which I find confounding.

The second part of the problem is that there seems to be a thought that we only have so much room for programs. I think we need to challenge that, because, in my experience, it's the opposite, and I'm wondering if the experiences of the witnesses have been the same. I would argue that many of our inmates are not in fact being challenged with programs. I would argue that they have the types of programs Mr. Perry mentioned, where they just go in, touch a doorknob, say they were there, and then come back.

How many programs do we have that are as substantive as this one? Why can't we continue to have this good programs like this? Why is this program being pitted against other programs?

Maybe we can start with Mr. Edmunds and then hear from Ms. Doherty and Mr. Perry.

[John Edmunds]

I think the most important thing we have to remember is that one of the documents that Rob Sampson was involved with, the road map to corrections--I probably misquoted the name--talks about expanding programs. It talks about expanding the prisoner's workday and giving the prisoners more opportunities.

There's nothing saying that we can't build the houses and do even more, but what we're doing right now is that we're looking at taking away something that adds value to a person's life, to their workday, and gives them a sense of purpose and more hours of work than they'd have inside a normal institution.

Yes, the comment was made that they could come out at minimum wage. I think a lot of the people who come out of the Correctional Service of Canada will come out at minimum wage, because they've just paid a price to society. I actually also grew up on a farm and went from that to being a tradesperson to the president of a union. I guess what I'm saying is that at least the farm is giving them a direct start in life; it's something hands-on, something tangible, and it's a program that can work. But I also agree that the government should support the rest of the documentation, take it farther, and create more programs.