Public Safety Committee on May 15th, 2014

[Andrew McWhinnie]

The support that's provided to people coming out of jail, first of all, provides stability. One of the largest protective factors against reoffending that I can think of is stability in terms of housing, in terms of relationships, in terms of a place to go during the day to combat isolation, and other sorts of things.

People who have been in jail for 15 or 20 years or more in some cases come out, and they don't know what a bank machine is. They don't know where the food bank is. They may be expected, in many cases, to travel across the city to meet appointments all on the same day. They have no means of transportation, no money, no identification, and no knowledge of how to use the public transit system, so they need stability, stress reduction, support in maintaining medications, going to the hospital, getting a doctor, making sure they take medications, making sure they don't drink, and making sure they appear for their probation and parole appointments. When they get really cranky or angry or fed up or despondent or they fall into despair or say, “My life is not working. I want to go back to jail”, they have people who they can talk to about that and who can talk them through that and talk them into a better frame of mind.

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

Who are the volunteers who step forward to do this work?

[Andrew McWhinnie]

They're your neighbours. They're often people who belong to a faith community. They're moms and dads.

I have to tell you, when I looked at the folks sitting around the table at our retreat, there were 30-year-old people with new families, with young children, some of them churchgoers, some of them not, and they were saying, “If I don't do this, how can I say to my children that I did anything to protect them in society as much as I possibly could?”

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

How about broader support in the community? What's the broader reaction to the existence of the program? I know some of this because it is in my community.

[Andrew McWhinnie]

If you talk to a room full of people and say, “How about it? Let's provide the support and accountability network for sexual offenders,” they'll run you out of the room. And if you go back to your constituencies and say that, you're not going to get re-elected. But if you're talking about the reduction of victimization, about protecting children, about protecting college students, that's what we're about. That will get you elected. And when we talk to people about that, they start to say, “Okay, I get it. I understand it.”

We've done some evaluations and asked, “Do you think your community is any safer? Do you feel any better about being in your community, knowing that there is a circle of support there around these guys who are coming out of jail?” People say, “Yes, a little bit.” They still think they should all go to jail and be kept there, and we should throw away the key, but they feel better that there is a circle of support for the people who are coming to the community, whether they like it or not. Because in Canada we don't have civil commitment, and we don't put people away forever—not yet, anyway. So we do have people of that high risk who are coming back to our communities.

And these are citizens who are stepping forward to do something about that.

Where else, anywhere, will you find a group of citizens, an organization that involves ordinary citizens, your constituents...? And it doesn't matter what your political stripe is: circles of support and accountability resonate on both sides of the House. You guys have proven that, just in the last go-around we had over our funding. And you find that in our homes across the country as well. But where else will you find a program that engages citizens, where citizens engage their own communities in risk reduction? I don't know where you'll find it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much. Our time has expired.

On behalf of the committee, I would certainly like to thank Mr. McWhinnie. Thank you so kindly for your time today.

Ms. Lower-Basch, thank you so much for participating today. We appreciate your taking the extra effort, and certainly your thoughts are here on record for us to evaluate now.

Once again, thank you very much. We deeply appreciate it at this committee.

Have yourselves a good day.

The meeting is adjourned.