Public Safety Committee on March 6th, 2012

[Barbara Jackman]

No, but I do know that GPS is used for five or six people in total across the country. It's not been used. It's only recently started being used.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I understand that. My question is, do you have any sense—and I guess I could find this—of what percentage of removal orders are voluntarily complied with?

[Barbara Jackman]

I have no idea, sorry. I don't know the statistics. You'd have to find out.

I do know that they've gone to voice reporting, where they take the person's voice. I think if you were to investigate that, that's worked out quite successfully in terms of keeping track of people.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

That would only keep track of them up until the day of their removal order. Presumably, if they were not going to comply with the removal order, they wouldn't phone in the next day, and therein lies the problem. It's under that situation—

[Barbara Jackman]

Except what they've been doing lately is actually detaining people for removal before removal is arranged.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I understand that, but the problem here, or at least my suggestion is, that if a person's only choices are detention or being subject to conditional release and part of that release is monitoring, I think most people would choose liberty and therefore would choose a monitoring device—an infringement of liberty, I'll grant you, but less so than detention. I certainly am suggesting that is more effective if the person is likely to disobey a removal order.

I suspect that's my time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes, your time is up.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you, witness.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We will now go back to the opposition. We'll go to Mr. Garrison, for seven minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you, Ms. Jackman, for being here today.

I think your testimony is quite valuable in that you're the first person I've heard who's had this very direct experience with clients under these kinds of conditions.

I'd like to go back to what you said about there being no study of the experience of your clients. You just mentioned that in passing. Was there no study done by anyone, the courts or anyone in government, about the impacts of these conditions?

[Barbara Jackman]

In individual cases, we had psychiatric assessments done on the clients at various stages, both when they were detained and when they were out of detention. What I'm saying is not that jail is better than release; I'm just saying that when you get the package of restrictive conditions, one of which is GPS, the psychiatric issues don't go away.

I want to say one other thing. I think one reason why it's so profound is that whether or not your family is your jailer, they're impacted by what's happening. When officers show up to check your GPS, your children see them coming into the house with guns. And they come quite often. So those are the kinds of things.... It's not just you anymore in jail; it's you, your wife, and your children who are affected by these kinds of conditions. Maybe that's one of the reasons it's so hard on them, because of their concern about what it's doing to their children.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

So would that be the basis for your comment that you felt this was even more cruel than detention?

[Barbara Jackman]

In a different way I do think it is cruel on a long-term basis. I'm not saying if you put it on someone for six months and you don't have it coupled with house arrest, but you want to just make sure they keep a curfew or something. It wouldn't be the same thing. It's when it's coupled with house arrest and it affects the family. I think it can be cruel if it extends over a long period of time.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

As part of your testimony, you said it becomes like a crutch or a default, where the court has simply continued that condition without any real relationship to what it's accomplishing. Is that a fair summation of what you're saying?

[Barbara Jackman]

I think that's exactly what's happened in our cases. Once it's on, they're afraid to let it go because of the optics of it. So whether or not it's needed is something different. I have only one of those security clients in the criminality cases. He left Canada and is being sponsored back.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I know we have limited time. I just want to turn to the broader use of electronic monitoring for refugee claimants, which seems to be being considered here. Could you make any comment about Canada's international obligations under the refugee conventions and whether the use of this kind of monitoring of refugee claimants would be consistent with our international obligations?

[Barbara Jackman]

Until a refugee is recognized as a refugee, they're a refugee presumptively. Someone has to make a decision. But we're supposed to comply with the convention on the status of refugees, and that means you don't penalize people for having sought protection in Canada. Maybe you cannot call the GPS a sanction against people, but in practical terms it is a sanction, and I think it's in breach of our international obligations.

I can understand it if you're concerned about criminality or security, if it's on a fixed-time basis to see that the person is going to comply. Someone raised the concern about removal. Put it on when you're waiting for the PRRA answer so that they're on it for a very short time, before removal, not for the whole 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years that they're in Canada. That's not fair, and not only that, it's costly; it's a waste of money.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Again, I will just pick up on the costly part. Do you see the use of this electronic monitoring as a misallocation of resources?

[Barbara Jackman]

I completely see this.

Do you know what we have with the security certificate cases? You should ask the CBSA about how many staff they have to do the GPS monitoring. They had two officers at a time, on rotation, on duty all the time to monitor three cases—three cases. I don't know how many people they hired to work in that unit. That unit is still going on, and the unit's whole purpose is the GPS monitoring and making sure that conditions are complied with. They not only have the GPS; the person had to call and say where they were going in order for the officers to follow them around, when they could watch them on the GPS map. It becomes an industry in and of itself within the government. They're making work for each other in that context.

I bet you if you asked for a costing, it would be millions. They have spent millions on the GPS monitoring. For what effect? These guys aren't running around at night with gangs breaking into buildings. These guys are older men with families.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

In the study we're doing at this committee we've combined the two: the use in criminal cases with immigration and refugee cases. What you're saying to us now is that you see some arguments where it might be useful on the criminal side, but you do not see any arguments for the immigration and refugee side, except if it also involves criminality?

[Barbara Jackman]

I can accept that when you're talking especially about young people—it's the same in the criminal concern—who are going around robbing buildings and you want them to stay at home, it might be useful if there's a curfew on them, to have a GPS, but again, for a very fixed period of time, not long. If it's over a long period of time, it becomes oppressive.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I have 40 seconds left.

Can I ask you to go back to some of the problems that were created for family members and talk a bit more about the effect on families?

[Barbara Jackman]

As I said, it was coupled with the rest of it. The GPS is on; officers are showing up at the house.

In one case, the officers came to the house. They found a toy gun that one of the young boys had, and that became a whole issue in the hearing. The kid was feeling guilty that he got his dad in trouble because he had a toy gun. It's that kind of thing. The reason they were in the house was because of the means of control over the dad, to check things. And then they find the toy gun.

There are problems.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Jackman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

That is a problem.

Thank you very much, Ms. Jackman.

We'll now move to Mr. Moore, please.