Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting us.
I also want to thank the Edmonton Institution for Women for allowing me to do this. I'm here today for one of my visits and they were kind enough to open up their video conference process so that I could be here. It seems appropriate to be having this discussion from a prison.
As I think most of the members know, I represent the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, an association of 25 members who work across the country providing services and working with marginalized, victimized, criminalized, institutionalized, and particularly, imprisoned women and girls.
I want to start by saying that short of clarifying the authority that already is invested with the Correctional Service of Canada and the Parole Board of Canada, Bill C-12 really amounts to a very expensive reinforcement of existing law and policy. Unfortunately, it also contributes to a belief or an assumption that I think is not necessarily always true, that drugs in prisons are completely within the purview of and generated by prisoners.
When Canada adopted the then U.S. model of the war on drugs some years ago, experts in addictions, including Dr. Diane Riley who worked with the Correctional Service of Canada and others, urged that the focus be on programs and service delivery, not on the model of more punitive interdiction techniques alone. As the committee noted and in particular as a member noted in the House debates on this bill on November 22, 2013, when members visited Norway and talked about drug strategies, that jurisdiction as well as many others in the world adopted the models and programs that Canada has actually rejected or has essentially stopped using since that time. Given that there was some interest and apparent respect for the work that was being done in Norway by those who visited, I think it underscores the importance of looking at some of those measures.
Current evidence-based research in the area of addictions is clearly identifying issues, such as social interaction in the environment in which people are present as most effective in reducing drug use. Punitive responses have actually driven up drug use. In the prisons, one of the things that Dr. Riley predicted, and in fact we have actually seen, as Mr. Grabowsky and Ms. Latimer have spoken about and others will undoubtedly speak about, is the influx of more dangerous and potentially lethal drugs, including those that involve the use of needles as the war on drugs and the interdiction techniques escalate.
In short, I would urge the committee to not continue to go down the route of reinforcing existing policy and allowing more resources to be spent on drug detection and interdiction techniques alone, given that these are being shown to be not the most effective but certainly the most expensive approach to this issue. It would be far preferable, as has already been stated by my colleagues on the panel, to instead look at enhancing programs and services and supports both within prison and upon release. All of what this bill is aiming to achieve already exists in law and policy.
Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.