Public Safety Committee on Nov. 6th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Colleagues, it's 3:30 p.m. I see quorum and I see that the minister has arrived.

Minister Goodale will be here with us for an hour, along with his colleagues. I'm assuming that he has an opening statement. I will leave him to introduce the people with him.

Welcome to the committee, Minister Goodale.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

It's nice to be back with you once again dealing with another piece of very important legislation concerning the security and the public safety of Canadians. That is Bill C-83, which is legislation that would amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and another act.

I am pleased to be joined here today with representatives of the Correctional Service of Canada. The commissioner of the service, Anne Kelly, is to my left. Fraser Macaulay is the acting senior deputy commissioner. Jennifer Wheatley is the assistant commissioner for health services.

To my right, from the Department of Public Safety is Angela Connidis, the director general of crime prevention of the corrections and criminal justice directorate.

In every aspect of corrections, our priority is always the safety of staff, inmates and the public. The best way to ensure that is to support safe, effective rehabilitation.

Institutional safety and staff safety above all is a prerequisite for all the rehabilitative work that happens in the federal corrections system. For safety reasons, sometimes certain inmates need to be separated from the general population.

Currently, the tool for doing that is administrative segregation, which involves keeping someone in their cell for as many as 22 hours a day, with very little in the way of rehabilitative programming, interventions or meaningful human contact.

However, in the last year, two court cases—one in Ontario and the other in British Columbia—have found in different ways and for different reasons that segregation is unconstitutional, as currently practised. Those decisions are currently being appealed. One is being appealed by the government, while the other is being appealed by the other party.

As things stand, those rulings will take effect in the coming months. In fact, with one of them in December and another one in January, we need to be prepared for those legal inevitabilities.

Bill C-83 proposes to eliminate segregation altogether and establish structured intervention units, or SIUs, as an alternative. These units will be separate from the general population, so that the safety imperative in our institutions will be met, but the SIUs will be designed and they will be resourced to ensure the people who are placed there receive the interventions, the programming and the treatment that they require.

There will be a minimum of four hours daily out of the cell and a minimum of two hours daily of meaningful interaction with other people, including the staff, volunteers, elders, chaplains, visitors and other compatible inmates. There will also be a particular focus on mental health care, with new mental health professionals hired and assigned to the SIUs.

The idea is to ensure that people can be separated from the general inmate population, when that is necessary for important safety reasons, but only for as long as necessary and without sacrificing the access to rehabilitative programs, mental health care and other interventions that help reduce the risk that offenders pose, both while they are incarcerated and upon release.

There were a number of issues raised by various members about this part of the bill, during second reading debate in the House, and I will try to address as many of them as I can.

First, the question of staff safety was brought up several times, so again, I will underscore that the safety of correctional personnel is absolutely priority number one. Employees, including correctional officers, parole officers, program staff, health care providers and others, do a very important, difficult job in challenging circumstances. But only when they are safe is it possible for the correctional service to achieve its mandate, which is carrying out sentences and rehabilitating offenders.

Under this legislation, Bill C-83, institutions will retain the ability to separate offenders who pose a safety risk from the general population, and within SIUs incompatible inmates will never be mixed together. In other words, the new system will not increase the safety risk to correctional staff in any way.

Questions were also asked during the debate about why the bill doesn't include an external oversight mechanism and a cap on the number of days an offender can spend in an SIU.

The fact is that these were measures proposed as a way of guarding against the overuse of administrative segregation, because that system has been criticized as having harmful effects on inmates' mental health.

The point is this. We are getting rid of administrative segregation. The arguments pertaining to administrative segregation are thus no longer relevant. Structured intervention units will, compared with the previous system, have mental health care at their core, along with other interventions, programs and meaningful human contact. They are therefore qualitatively different from segregation.

Nevertheless, there is a robust system of review built into this legislation. The law is clear that placement in an SIU may only last as long as absolutely necessary, and the warden will review an SIU placement within five days to ensure that the necessity remains the case. If a person is still there after another 30 days, the warden will conduct another review. The commissioner will conduct her own reviews every 30 days thereafter. Additionally—and this is an important point—a health care professional can recommend removal from the SIU at any time.

Having said that, we of course understand the important need for accountability. To ensure that the new system is implemented as intended is our goal. To that end, once SIUs are up and running, the correctional service will publish statistics on a quarterly basis so that Canadians can see exactly how many people have been in SIUs and for how long. The commissioner will notify the correctional investigator whenever someone hits the 30-day mark and every 30 days after that. Community partners, such as the John Howard Society, the Elizabeth Fry Society, St. Leonard's Society of Canada and others, will be welcomed into the SIUs to see how they are functioning and to provide important feedback. That feedback and transparency are an important part of the way we want to make this system work.

Finally, speaking of making it work, we know that the new system will require new resources. Providing interventions, programs and treatments to offenders outside of the general population is a labour-intensive proposition. We understand that and we will be providing the resources necessary for it to happen effectively and safely.

Safety is the bottom line. The legislation prioritizes the safety of correctional employees and of the people in their custody. In fact, by enhancing the interventions and treatment provided to inmates who pose a particular risk, the new SIU system will help lower that risk and make the institutions safer. Ultimately, when their sentences are over, offenders are more likely to return safely to our communities if they have received effective rehabilitative programming, interventions and treatment.

I've only dealt with one aspect of the bill, that dealing with the SIUs, which is the largest aspect of the bill. There are several other components to this legislation. I would be happy to answer questions about those other components.

I would just make the point that they are all in aid of the same objective, to run a system that is safe and secure, and to run a system that is ultimately successful in rehabilitation so that in the future we will have fewer offenders, fewer victims and safer communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Minister Goodale.

Before I call on colleagues for questions, I just note that we are studying Bill C-83. Occasionally, when colleagues have a minister present, they seem to have an enthusiasm for questions that are possibly of limited relevance to the actual study. I just suggest that the chair be humoured by some tie-in to the actual bill itself, Bill C-83.

With that, we have Monsieur Picard.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

Thank you for being with us today, Minister. It is a pleasure to have you and your team of professionals here.

I'm going to dive right into the issue of structured intervention units. I have had the pleasure of visiting institutions with my colleague in the past, and my impression was that administrative segregation was a major reprimand, the end of the line, but when they explained to us why people are put in segregation, it was clear that the reasons are much more complex and diverse than we thought. People are put in segregation for safety and mental health reasons, but sometimes it's because the inmates themselves request it. People are put in segregation due to circumstances that vary significantly from case to case.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Picard.

I think the two names in themselves are indicative. On the one hand, you have administrative segregation where the focus, obviously, in the title is on separation and the important issue of security.

With a structured intervention unit, the security emphasis is not lost, but what is added is the notion of intervention. The way the existing system of administrative segregation works.... Even though the correctional system will try very hard to continue with interventions, treatment programs, outside visitations and so forth, the way administrative segregation is structured it's just very difficult to accomplish anything but the segregation.

Under the new approach, there will be separated facilities, or units within facilities, that will accomplish the purpose of getting people apart when that is necessary to maintain safety and security, but they will be physically designed and resourced in such a way that the interventions will continue.

By definition, the people who are likely to be in a structured intervention unit are the ones who probably need the greatest attention and treatment and have the need for those external interventions.

It's a bit counterproductive when you just put them into a segregated area and are not able to continue the interventions. We're trying to maintain all of the dimensions of security that are necessary but to make sure that the structure and design and resourcing.... As I indicated, we'll be hiring additional mental health professionals, among others. The whole point is to continue the treatment, the interventions, the attention and the programming that they need to reduce the risk that they pose.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

This matter was raised about two years ago, and one of the major issues then was the number of days spent in administrative segregation. Under this bill, administrative segregation of an individual must end as soon as possible even if the individual is in a structured intervention unit.

How does the nuance in the bill address the thorny issue of number of days in segregation? I'm not 100% sure, but I think this came up at the UN.

People are put in structured intervention units in order to meet needs that we used to think, perhaps wrongly, were being met under the old system and to give them access to external programs and interventions.

How can we reduce the number of days an inmate has to spend in an SIU?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

According to the law, the person's time there will be as short as possible. The critical thing is that for the entire time they are in a structured intervention unit, they will receive the treatment they need to modify their behaviour, to deal with mental health issues, to be counselled—in the case of indigenous people, for example, by elders—and to be visited by the John Howard Society or the Elizabeth Fry Society. They will receive the kind of interventions and attention that will reduce the risk they pose and make it more likely that they can successfully return to the general population.

The problem with the previous form of administrative segregation—as it was called, and before that, solitary confinement—is that for 22 hours a day, that person was alone in a very dark place, probably getting worse, probably increasing the danger and the risk. The objective here is to create a different environment that will allow treatment and other interventions to continue. Their mental health will improve and their other difficulties will be reduced. They will become less of a risk, both inside the institution when they return to the general population, and outside the institution when they are eventually released.

The focus is on treatment and detention.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Picard.

Mr. Paul-Hus, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Minister, ladies and gentlemen.

On page 3 of the bill, section 29.1 relates to the reclassification of various areas in a penitentiary. They can be reclassified from minimum security to maximum security and vice versa.

In Ms. McClintic's case, you received a report, but we haven't heard your comments on that. Was the decision to move that person to a healing lodge based on the same philosophy as reclassifying certain areas in a penitentiary? For example, could the classification of that person's room where she was sent be changed from minimum to maximum security? I'm exaggerating, but only a little. I want to understand how this works. Can you tell us if, in this person's case, the classification will go back up to maximum security?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

That is a separate issue, Mr. Paul-Hus, which does not pertain directly to Bill C-83. As you know, however, some weeks ago I asked the commissioner to examine the circumstances around a particular transfer, and beyond that particular case, to also examine the transfer policy in general to determine, first, whether the policy had been properly applied, and second, whether the policy needs to be changed.

Toward the end of last week, the commissioner completed her work and provided me with a report. I have that report under very careful consideration and I expect to be in a position very soon to offer a response to the findings and to the advice I have received from the commissioner. As soon as I'm in a position to do that, Mr. Paul-Hus, I will make my comments public.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

We are eagerly awaiting your comments, Minister.

This bill also covers body scan searches. Our understanding is that prisoners would be subjected to these searches.

Are you planning to subject all penitentiary visitors to body scan searches? Doing so would have a major impact on illegal substances entering correctional institutions and could eliminate the need for needle exchange programs.

Are you planning to subject everyone to body scan searches?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Paul-Hus, as you know, contraband getting into correctional facilities is a serious problem. It presents very serious safety and security issues. The Correctional Service of Canada has various techniques now for trying to intercept contraband, which is against the law and needs to be stopped from coming into the institutions.

The one basic technique that the Correctional Service has at the moment to employ is searches, including strip searches and invasive searches. The introduction of body scanners will allow the same, or perhaps even an increased, level of security in a less intrusive manner. I notice that the use of these scanners is being extended to a number of provincial correctional institutions across the country.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Minister, my question was actually about whether you're planning to subject all penitentiary visitors to body scan searches. In 95% of cases, scans would prevent drugs and other items hidden in body cavities from getting into correctional institutions. Are you planning to use this kind of search on everyone?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

They could indeed be used for that purpose. Let me ask Commissioner Kelly to comment on what her practical intentions are.

[Anne Kelly, Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada]

Yes, the body scanners would be for use with the offenders and the visitors. It would be used the same way as other methods that we now use at entrances. If there is a hit, we do a threat risk assessment.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

If everyone went through body scan searches and if fewer illegal substances got in as a result, there would be no need for needle exchange programs, which unions don't like. After all, needles are used to consume contraband drugs. I know the program is meant to control the spread of disease, but the problem is still there. If there is a way to keep 95% of illegal substances out of penitentiaries, there would be no need to give prisoners needles.

Can we all agree on that?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Paul-Hus, our objective is to make these institutions as safe and secure as they can possibly be for the people who work there, for the people who visit there on occasion, and for the people who are in custody there. All these measures are intended to enhance public safety.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

Earlier, you said that segregation cells were dark, but I visited a penitentiary where the lighting in those cells was exactly the same as the lighting in regular cell blocks. The difference is that the inmates were segregated for 22 hours a day. Their cells had windows and were very bright. They even had televisions. People think that the hole, the segregation cell, looks like it did in the old days. They think it is a dark place with a locked door, but that is no longer the case.

After your parliamentary secretary's speech, I asked her what the main difference was structurally. Forget the administrative side of things and the medical and psychological aspects. I'm talking about the physical structure. how will structured intervention units differ from the current set-up. There are already comparable cells. Will they be bigger? I'm trying to understand.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

The crucial distinction is the level of service, treatment and interventions; the amount of time that is allowed out of the cell during the day, which will be doubled in an SIU compared with administrative segregation; and again, the whole orientation of the system.

Under administrative segregation, the heavy emphasis has been on the control and safety and security imperatives, without continuing treatment. In a structured intervention unit, the security features are maintained, but the objective is to ensure that the treatment, interventions and programming will continue and perhaps even be enhanced, particularly with respect to mental health, to make sure that the individual gets less dangerous and not more dangerous.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.

Mr. Dubé, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Minister, thank you for being here.

I just want touch on this issue of independent review. You'll recall that in the 1990s, when Justice Arbour commented on the situation, her notion was around this fact that essentially power was being taken away to a certain extent from the courts because of the abuse and misuse of solitary confinement.

She would probably not like me paraphrasing, but I'll do my best. Her assessment was that, essentially, the courts were being to a certain extent impeded on because the nature of the punishment was changing through the way that solitary confinement was being used at the time. From what we've seen with these court decisions, arguably that hasn't changed. She called for judicial oversight.

In Bill C-83, there is this notion that with the commissioner—and I say this, of course, with all due respect—and the institutional head, the warden essentially, will be reviewing and that's satisfactory. However, my issue is that even the Ontario decision, which didn't go as far as the B.C. decision, says that the person who is reviewing shouldn't be in any way influenced, or in the circle of influence, or reporting to the person who made the decision.

If the commissioner is designating an area and designating an inmate, and the warden is then the one who is reviewing every—what is it?—five days or so, does that not contravene what the judge's assessment was about the circle of influence that can prevent this review from being truly independent?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Monsieur Dubé, I hear your point, but your question assumes that the system being examined is the same system under Bill C-83 as the one that exists today. Our objective is to change that system fundamentally so that it's no longer in any way, shape or form administrative segregation. It is a new approach that focuses on intervention, treatment and programming that does not have the dark aspects that Justice Arbour was rightly concerned about.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

In the technical briefing, we were told that the current cells that are used for solitary could be converted into SIUs. Senator Pate has said this is essentially solitary confinement under another name, and others have said similar things.

The John Howard Society said, “There's nothing in Bill C-83 that specifically limits the placement of people with mental health issues in these structured intervention units.”

Minister, the concern I have there, and I wonder if you could respond to this, is that in his report last week the corrections investigator talked about the staffing issues with psychiatric services in our corrections facilities. When you go back to the bill, the purpose of an SIU is defined in it as to:

provide an appropriate living environment for an inmate who cannot be maintained in the mainstream inmate population for security or other reasons;

What's to prevent “other reasons” from becoming an issue of appropriate staffing? It's great to have language in the bill that talks about mental health practitioners, but what's to prevent the person from being placed there because there just aren't the resources to handle someone? That's what we're seeing currently with solitary confinement.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'll ask Commissioner Kelly to comment on this as well, but you are absolutely right to say an SIU system cannot be run on the same human resources and financial resources complement.