Public Safety Committee on May 5th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

There's one last point I want to make as well, because we had witnesses the other day from the gun community and I think we all should recognize the hunters and anglers. That is a huge industry and a huge recreational industry in many provinces across the country that brings a lot to the economy of Canada that we all benefit from. So we should recognize them as well. We're not only talking about guns here, but also about an important segment of the economy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Leef.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Easter, for recognizing that the gun community involves hunting and angling. It was obviously a little disheartening for all of us to watch in the House members on your side chastise and criticize our government for entertaining a study on the value of hunting and conservation in the environment committee.

Outside of that point, I think we continue to put on the public record here things that simply aren't true. It needs to be clarified that when we're looking at what the minister can do now in terms of classification, the minister and cabinet can always move a classification of firearms in one direction, and what we heard in clear testimony was that they couldn't do it in any other way.

We talk about special interest groups and their influence. There are special interest groups that want to ban guns in this country. When you can classify a firearm in one direction and not another, that would leave any government, present or future, in the sights of one particular special interest group interested in banning firearms in this country.

Outside of that, we did hear clearly from the Canadian Shooting Sports Association and other witnesses that those decisions ultimately would be made on the basis of technical advice, not by a group of politicians sitting in a room and making their best guess at the specs of any given firearms that we're looking at classifying.

With that, I have the confidence that any minister, present or future, will make decisions based on expert and technical advice provided. It only makes sense that if they can do something in one direction, they can do something in both directions, which is the situation now.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Seeing no further comments, shall the bill carry as amended?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Shall I report the bill as amended to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Shall the committee order a reprint of the bill?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very kindly, colleagues.

Yes, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I'll move my motion so everyone knows what it is. It's not on the agenda; it is with the clerk.

I move—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Just give us one second, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

—the following:

That the standing committee on Public Safety invite on an urgent basis the Auditor General of Canada to discuss Report 6 Preparing Male Offenders for Release - Correctional Service Canada.

I'll wait until people get the amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay.

The Chair now has a copy, but we'll have copies made and distributed to the committee in a couple of seconds.

We will suspend briefly.

Mr. Easter, could we ask, for the consideration of our witnesses, that they be dismissed at this time?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

It's not a problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Are we comfortable as a committee dismissing our witnesses at this point?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine, thank you very much.

On behalf of the entire committee, thank you very kindly for coming in today. Certainly, you may take your leave while we have a couple of discussions here.

Thank you very kindly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay, colleagues, we are back in session.

Mr. Easter, you have the floor, sir.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The reason I put forward this motion is that we did have the Auditor General's report come down. It's “Report 6—Preparing Male Offenders for Release—Correctional Service Canada”. It raises quite a number of concerns, and my motion really is that the committee invite, on an urgent basis, the Auditor General of Canada to appear before this committee. I think there are several reasons for doing so.

At some point in time when we're not held up by legislation, we will be continuing our study on CORCAN and educational programs within the Correctional Service of Canada to give inmates the employable skills they need when they leave the prison system. Although I have very strong reservations about the government having closed the prison farm system, the Auditor General makes clear that low-risk offenders are spending longer periods incarcerated without training. That's serious, because with low-risk offenders being in prison longer, I believe these places are becoming universities for crime rather than rehabilitation centres.

Also, part of the reason these individuals are not taking programs is that the very incentives that were paid to individuals to take training, or programming, was taken away from them by the Government of Canada. That's a Catch-22. There may be a financial saving for the Government of Canada. It may go well with their punishment regime, but the reality is that these individuals are coming out on the street. When they come out and hit the streets, if they have skills and training they have a better opportunity of getting a job, of contributing to Canada's economy, and not ending up back within the prison system.

Having the Auditor General here would be important for furthering our CORCAN study that we already have on the go.

The other area that I think is extremely important for the committee to hear about is this. We are the public safety committee, and the Auditor General was very critical of the slow decline in the effectiveness of the preparation for release program. In fact, I believe at one point he said that close to 1,500 people who ended up on the street in the 2013-14 fiscal year did not complete the programs before they were eligible for release. That's a number of programs, Mr. Chair. So we have a law and order government that, in fact, with their Correctional Service of Canada programming and their emphasis on punishment versus rehabilitation, now have people coming out on the street less rehabilitated, making our streets less safe. That's a huge problem.

In fact, in his report the Auditor General said, “Most of these offenders entered the community directly from medium and maximum-security penitentiaries, limiting their ability to benefit from gradual and supervised release that supports safe reintegration.”

I'll read one other quote and end there, Mr. Chair. The quote from the Auditor General sums up the issue.

...many offenders—about 65 percent in the 2013 to 2014 fiscal year—still did not complete their programs before they were first eligible for release. We also found that many low-risk offenders were not referred to correctional programs while in custody despite having identified risks to reoffend. CSC has not delivered tools to objectively assess the benefits of other correctional interventions—such as employment and education programs, and interactions with institutional parole officers—in preparing offenders for release.

The bottom line and why we must have the Auditor General here is the programming or lack of programming that's now done as a result of this government's policies. The net impact, I think, is very evident from the Auditor General's report in that our streets are actually less safe and will be increasingly so as we go down the road.

We are the public safety committee and the Auditor General's report is giving us a wake-up call. Therefore, I think we should have him before the committee to question him on the issues in the report, and we as a committee probably should reevaluate some of the programming and policies that the current Government of Canada is doing. The net impact is making our streets less safe. That's not what any of us want to see.

Therefore, I'm moving that we invite the Auditor General to appear before this committee to give us the details of this report so he can be questioned accordingly, and then we as a committee can make some recommendations.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Easter.

Yes, Mr. Hayes, followed by Ms. James.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which is the oversight committee of Parliament, I feel a little wounded because the role of the Auditor General is to come before the public accounts committee, and the spring report has been tabled.

I think Mr. Valeriote—your colleague, Mr. Easter—set the precedent when on the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs he moved a similar motion to what you're moving now, that the Auditor General appear before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs specific to veterans' mental health. When I explained to Mr. Valeriote that he should actually request that his colleague on the public accounts committee study the report there, that he should be a witness before that committee and question not only the Auditor General but also the officials, Mr. Valeriote graciously accepted. The public accounts committee studied that report and Mr. Valeriote was a very capable witness.

I believe that should remain within the purview of the public accounts committee, and I encourage you to speak with your colleague on that committee and have her bring that report forward to study.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Yes, Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I was just going to say that I think we have a couple of committee members on the public accounts committee who can speak to the Auditor General coming to that committee.

Thank you, Mr. Hayes, for clarifying that. I thought that was the case and I appreciate your input.