Public Safety Committee on Feb. 17th, 2015

[Don Head]

We obviously encourage the offenders to be active in identifying the kinds of things they'll pursue in relation to their correctional plan.

We're also careful because we know that certain work opportunities in the institutions also provide opportunities for inmates to establish a power base. We have to balance the needs of the offenders, the wishes of the offenders, and the overall safety and security of the institution. We're always monitoring how gang members try to position themselves for some of these better kinds of opportunities.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

That makes sense.

You mentioned that criminal records can be a barrier.

Is there any opportunity for certain employers to pick and choose among offences? In other words, some offences might be considered more of a barrier to trust than others.

[Don Head]

In discussions with various groups, particularly at the forums we've held out west, employers are reluctant to take anybody who has a criminal record in relation to fraud, robbery, those kinds of things. That seems obvious. There is still some reluctance in terms of hiring sex offenders. Those groups are probably excluded more often than other groups.

With regard to those with drug offences, it was interesting. We heard from several construction groups that they're not as concerned about that, as long as the individual has the skills, comes to work, does the job and completes it, and does it a safe manner. If somebody had a drug history and they're following the program, that's of less concern to them. However, the fraud, the robbery, the sex offender types of criminal histories are the ones that seem to be a little more excluded right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Ms. Ablonczy.

Thank you, Mr. Head.

Mr. Easter, for seven minutes, please.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming, and also thank you for the written presentation. We wish the minister would do the same, as you know.

I note in your presentation that you talk about manufacturing, textiles, construction services, but there is no production of food within institutions anymore. As you would know, that's was one of the things I was greatly concerned about: the loss of the prison farms, the productivity for food within the institution, the management skills, etc.

Has the Correctional Service of Canada or CORCAN done any analysis internally that could be made available to the committee on the loss of the prison farms? Has there been any analysis on what it means in terms of added costs for food, etc.?

[Don Head]

No. We have done nothing since the farms were shut down in 2011. Our budgets were adjusted. We modified our approaches to procurement of food. We've gone to national tenders for certain types of products. Since 2011, we haven't pursued that at all.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I guess maybe from a government perspective it's best not to know the cost of the loss of those prison farms.

Let me then turn to the demand for training within the institutions. The correctional investigator in his report talked about the barriers to vocational skills training, and I'll quote what he said:

The single largest barrier to effective participation in work and vocational skills programs is not inmate disinterest, but rather the shortage of meaningful work and training opportunities.

Then he goes into the use of work releases as well.

What is the demand for skills training within the institutions versus the ability to provide that training? Second, one person is going to be in one institution where CORCAN does certain skills training, but the skills training that individual needs may be in another institution. How do you handle those two things?

What's the demand? Are you able to fill that demand, and how do you juggle different locations?

[Don Head]

Thanks. It's a really good question.

I think a couple of points are worth noting. There are sort of three types of individuals we need to deal with.

There are those individuals who come into the system and have literally no employment history or employment skills at all. In some cases, it's about giving them an assignment that gets them to get up on time, go to a certain place, stay there for the required number of hours, perform whatever tasks there are, and then repeat that. As you can appreciate, there's a segment of our population that does not have a work ethic, and trying to instill that is part of some of the tasks we have. For example, when we assign somebody to what we call “range cleaners”—cleaning on the ranges in the institutions—it's partly to address that issue.

We also have individuals who come in and have had an off-and-on employment history. It's about trying to find out what it is that's causing them to not keep a job when they've been in the community. Sometimes that's about upping their level of education. Sometimes it's about giving them a different set of skills that are more applicable in the community today. It's about trying to match those kinds of things.

Then we have other individuals who have had good employment histories, and some of those individuals are individuals we use in some of the higher-level shops that we have, for the productivity piece.

There is no question that we do not have exactly the same kinds of opportunities in every institution across the country, but we try to narrow down the needs that we are going to address for the short period of time we have. As you can appreciate, one of the challenges for individuals who have short sentences and are relatively young is that we're not going to change their lives overnight, so it's about trying to get them steered in the right direction.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

What kind of coordination is there between CSC and CORCAN in terms of first getting the basic skills? The reality is that a lot of people have literacy problems. They have no writing and reading skills and certainly no computer skills. That happens in the institution under CSC. What's the coordination and the need to have that in order to take the training with CORCAN?

[Don Head]

I'll let Ms. Garrow talk a bit about some of the connections that we're doing there.

[Lynn Garrow]

It all starts with the correctional plan. Everybody has an individual correctional plan, so everybody has individual needs. Those needs are prioritized.

When the employment need is highlighted, essentially what happens, as Commissioner Head has referred to, is that there is a correctional intervention board in every institution that looks at everybody's needs and at what's available and then assigns them. CORCAN receives inmates who are assigned through the correctional intervention board.

To go back to a bit of your point on what's the need and what's the capacity, essentially, if you look at the needs upon intake, although they're pretty standard, they are low, moderate, and high needs. The vast majority of offenders who have needs in the employment area are in the moderate area, and CORCAN mirrors that in its shops.

[Don Head]

Just to add to that, the correctional intervention board is made up of a group of different staff members, including CORCAN staff. They're involved in the review and the assessment of the offender's needs and the opportunities that are available. Although we talk about CSC and CORCAN as if they are two separate entities, they are all my staff, so they work together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Ms. Doré Lefebvre, you now have the floor. You have five minutes.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My thanks also go to the witnesses for joining us today.

In the 1996 Arbour report, a number of recommendations were made regarding women in the federal prison system. The report said that the programs provided to women should be in line with job opportunities available in the field. In the 2012-13 Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, I also noticed that there were several programs for women's professional training. However, many of the women are asking to acquire skills other than those needed for traditional housework. Apparently, a number of programs for women in the prison system are related to housework.

Are there new activities and what type of professional training is provided to women? Has progress been made with the training and the job opportunities for women in the prison system?

[Don Head]

I'll let Ms. Garrow talk about some of the specific activities in a moment.

One of the challenges that we have with the women offenders is the fact that we have small regional institutions across the country. This makes it hard to get large-scale activities going, as we do in many of the male facilities. As the member is familiar, recreating the laundry operation that you would have seen at Leclerc is difficult to do in the small women's facilities that we have across the country.

We are trying to find more—for lack of a better phrase—modern opportunities for the women than some of the traditional ones that we've done.

I'll let Ms. Garrow talk about some of those things that are being pursued now.

[Lynn Garrow]

I'm pleased to say that we're in all five of the regional women's facilities. The shops are extremely small. Largely what we have in there are textiles. The women are making everything from bedding to parts of uniforms for different agencies, such as the coast guard, etc., and inmate clothing.

I've been in the job for about a year and one of the priorities that I take very seriously is to offer more opportunities for women. I was very pleased to be at a conference last week in Edmonton and talking about aboriginal women offenders with people from the private sector and NGOs. We talked about what opportunities there actually were in the labour market and what it was that we felt we could offer. So we are pursuing alternative opportunities.

Currently, in terms of vocational, we have offered non-traditional vocational opportunities, everything from forklifting to flagging. Some of the women have taken it up. We have also offered opportunities in construction. When we've done builds with Habitat for Humanity, for example, in the Ontario region, we actually used two women from the Grand Valley Institution.

There are small changes, but we obviously would like to make bigger changes and we'll be working hard to do that in the future.

[Don Head]

If I could add to that, one of the challenges for us, particularly in the Prairie region, is aboriginal women. With a number of aboriginal women returning to their first nations communities and the employment opportunities in those communities being next to nil, there are challenges. Even though we try to give them the skills to find jobs, they go back to their home communities where employment levels are low.

We are looking at what we can do, for example, around construction of homes. We've also done some work with women in terms of setting up their own businesses, so that if they go back to their first nations communities, they have training about how they can establish their own business, whatever their interest is, to try to sustain themselves going forward.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Is that why only 30% of Aboriginal women participate in the CORCAN training programs? I think between 125 and 140 inmates participate, but only 30% of them are from First Nations communities.

Is it because they feel that there won't be any opportunities for them when they go back to their communities? Is it because they are not interested in the programs in place right now or do the programs seem not to be appropriate for them?

[Don Head]

It's definitely a combination of a couple of things. One is the issue that there are no jobs at home. In some cases, it's the issue of education levels. That's the first thing that we need to work at, to help bring up their education levels. Another challenge for us is that unfortunately a larger number of aboriginal women are doing life sentences compared to non-aboriginal women. As you can see, there are challenges with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Falk, for five minutes.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses for coming here this morning.

Mr. Head, I just want to briefly comment on the vocabulary that you used here this morning. You could have used the word “custody” and you chose to use the word “care”, and I appreciate that. To me it talks a little bit about the attitude of the Correctional Services here in Canada, and that you really do view the individuals you have not only as being in your custody but being in your care. It's very different.

I'd just like to direct a few questions to Ms. Garrow. When you decide which trades you want to do training for, on what criteria do you base those decisions?

[Lynn Garrow]

We look at Statistics Canada—I think it's the top 21 jobs—and I am pleased to say that we're in seven of the top 10. We're very much where the labour market needs are. We look at them nationally and then we look at them regionally as well.

Some of our business lines are not. Laundry would be a good example, but what we're trying to do with laundry is targeting certain segments of the population, such as the mentally ill, who come and work in our centres de tri, our processing plants, and in the laundry itself. Where there are lines where we're not where we want to be in the labour market, we look to target specific groups of the offender population to keep them busy, and a lot of it would be the repetitive work, like laundry.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

You've talked quite a bit about participating in the construction industry. Do you also participate in the heavy construction end of things, with operator training on heavy equipment and truck driving training? Having qualified truck drivers always seems to be a very high need in our country.

[Lynn Garrow]

It is a high need, and we are not participating at this point, but we've been looking at various opportunities and have been in early conversations with different industries. We're also looking at some of the colleges, because there are colleges that offer the programs as well. One of the opportunities with oil and gas, which we would really like to get into, would be their funding or contributing to funding some of our inmates to go to these programs.

So we have reached out. I've been on the job a year, so the conversations are still preliminary.

[Don Head]

I just might add, we'd have to be very selective of where we do those kinds of opportunities you're talking about. Those would be the kinds of things we'd pursue in minimum security facilities or on community release. The last thing I want is big, heavy machinery inside my secure facilities. I wouldn't want to be explaining to this committee why a great big truck just drove through my fence and took out 80 inmates.