Evidence of meeting #139 for Public Safety and National Security in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was needs.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
Nothing in the legislation would see any remediation of that situation, according to your assessment.
5:10 p.m.
Legal Counsel, Native Women's Association of Canada
That is my assessment. Correct.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
Thank you.
I apologize if my next question was already raised, but I had to step out to take a call; I haven't yet learned how to separate myself into multiple people. The issue of oversight has been brought up. I'd like to hear from each of you—including you, Professor Parkes, on video conference—on not just what's lacking but how you envisage oversight, if we were to put it into the regime in any kind of substantive way.
5:10 p.m.
Prof. Debra Parkes
You may have already heard from Josh Paterson of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. I know that they will have significant submissions on that.
The reality is that oversight needs to be independent of Corrections. In fact, without that, this bill is unconstitutional. I think it's very clear. We have many, many years of reports and recommendations. We have great laws on the books, but unless there is external oversight....
What would that look like? That could look like a tribunal or an independent decision-maker appointed to be independent from Corrections. It could be like a chairperson who is currently appointed for disciplinary hearings outside of Corrections. It could be a tribunal like the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal or some other tribunal. It could be the courts. You'd have to get approval from the court for any segregation or isolation over a certain number of days. For example, 15 days is the international standard under the Nelson Mandela rules. There are different ways that could be achieved.
My own view is that court oversight is the best and most likely route to have meaningful independence, because there's always the potential for regulatory capture and layers of administrative tribunals. It's very difficult to get timely results.
5:15 p.m.
Program Director, Aboriginal Legal Services
I think the other issue that has to be balanced here is that these individuals are very vulnerable and they need a process that is relatively quick. I agree with Debra that the courts have a lot of advantages, but the difficulty with courts is that things quickly turn into incredibly legalistic processes. There are questions of access to legal aid. There are all of those issues. We have to think about how that works so that these are not empty promises.
The idea is that it doesn't require the individual to bring an application; rather, the institution has to justify why it's keeping people past a particular date. It would then trigger a process that would allow, I think, more opportunities to really get at these issues. For people who have mental health issues and who might not know to bring a challenge, if the CSC has a responsibility to bring it, and if they have access to representation, then someone can raise their concerns in a way that doesn't require them to be totally proactive. Again, you're asking people to do more than they probably are capable of under the circumstances.
5:15 p.m.
Legal Counsel, Native Women's Association of Canada
I echo what both of our witnesses are saying. I would emphasize that it's important that there be a solution that takes their needs into account and provides them with meaningful access to justice, something independent, as Dr. Parkes suggests, but that is also quick and that people know is available, and that addresses their needs and provides them with a quick remedy.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
Thank you very much.
The other piece, which I'm getting from all of the responses, is that I think that's why the courts come back. I think there are two reasons the courts come back—and perhaps Professor Parkes could comment on this. One is the fact that you get to the point, with abusive punishment, where you are influencing the sentencing decision that was made by a court in the first place. The other piece, just in order to give it teeth, which I think is a concern here, is that you get all of these reports. We know it's an issue whenever we get media stories of people who have self-harmed and all of these horrifying situations, but ultimately would you agree that the issue has to do with an ability to actually enforce any kind of recommendation that's made?
I don't know if you share it, but my understanding is that the bill doesn't allow for any recommendation by a health care professional or anyone else but a warden or the commissioner to be enforceable.
5:15 p.m.
Prof. Debra Parkes
Exactly. The decision-making and the review process are all entirely internal to Correctional Services. As far back as Justice Louise Arbour's report in 1996 to the task force on administrative segregation to the most recent court decisions, we've had all these years of recommendations saying we need external oversight. It's just something the CSC has resisted.
I can understand why it would be resisted, but there's going to come a time when if this committee is not going to recommend those changes, I think a court is going to ultimately impose them in any event. It would be nice for legislation to get ahead of that and to say we recognize that the potential for harm is so great—we see deaths in custody, and we see the people languishing in solitary confinement—that we need something external to the correction service. It's no indictment of individual people. It's just a system that is all about maintaining power and control. You need a check on that.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Mr. Dubé.
Mr. Spengemann, go ahead for seven minutes, please.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Mr. Chair, thank you very much.
I would like to thank all four of you for being with us. I would like to take my time to explore the issue of mental health or at least use a mental health lens.
I think this is a system that doesn't generate good mental health outcomes for anybody who's involved with it, be they correctional officers or inmates. I think the aspiration—and Professor Parkes, I appreciate your point on closing the gap between aspiration and ensuring that it actually happens—of doing away with administrative segregation is a very important one, a fundamental one.
We've heard a lot in the last few sessions about the Gladue principles and the Mandela rules. I would like to add to those the lens of reconciliation with our indigenous peoples and go with the assumption that, yes, inmates create social risks, which is why they are inmates in the first place, but to correct their behaviour, we have to explore their needs and we have to take their needs seriously. That is a fundamental, logical step.
I want to ask your opinion aside from the legal framework, or going below the legal framework, with regard to what would have to change inside the correctional system to achieve this culture change.
I would like to start with the question of who Correctional Service's personnel are, the women and men who do the work inside the correctional facilities. How much diversity is there? How do we hire them? Who should we hire? Are there changes that need to happen there, especially when we look at vulnerable populations and representation among our corrections officers?
5:20 p.m.
Legal Counsel, Native Women's Association of Canada
We recommend that elders be part of that process and that Corrections not define who those elders are, that communities themselves determine that and that these elders be reflective of these communities.
Also, I think it's important to provide culturally sensitive and trauma-informed care when people are disclosing what people would call their systemic or background factors, or their Gladue factors, and make sure that one-on-one counselling is available in their language, to be determined by that counsellor, and also that people can choose to have an elder as their counsellor.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said that spiritual and cultural care is often a very important factor in addressing mental health, physical health and emotional effect, and that needs to be factored in. That's why in proposed sections 85 and 86 I've inserted in my brief that elders be given the autonomy to make certain decisions about mental and emotional health, and that they be health care providers in a sense.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Professor Parkes, would you like to add anything to that?
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Debra Parkes
I don't have specifics in front of me. That would be a good question for CSC. Maybe you've already asked it of them in terms of the demographics of the staffing.
Certainly, I guess the way I see it is that it goes to issues of diversity in terms of staffing but also to training. You see reports regularly from the union for correctional officers about how little training they get in mental health, for example, and some of those issues.
As well, if you look at the most recent Auditor General's report, the fall Auditor General's report, in terms of what proportion of CSC funding goes to community supervision and what per cent goes to corrections, you see that it's 6%. Forty per cent of people are on community release and only 6% of the funding is going there. It's also about the preparation for getting people out into the community and how little resources there are in corrections.
It goes to Ms. Damoff's point. I'm glad to see that resources are being allocated, but one would hope that a lot of those resources would be going to preparing people for release, because, again, indigenous women and indigenous people and others within corrections go well past their parole eligibility date. They go to statutory release or they go to warrant expiry in a way that's not good for public safety, so preparing them for release....
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you for that.
Let me pause you there for a second and ask the four of you this question. This is sort of embedded in your submissions.
It's the conclusion that “meaningful human contact”, to use the Mandela phrasing that was put forward by the UN, should take place throughout a person's correctional plan, not in a prescribed number of hours but really from the day of incarceration to the day of release. Is that a fair statement?
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Debra Parkes
Yes.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Okay.
If we look at the specific mental health challenges and the addiction challenges, I think what we need and what's being contemplated through the bill is a massive investment in mental health services, and potentially also in physical health services in dealing with addictions. If that's true, who would the folks be who would provide mental health services specifically, not with the kind of training that a correctional officer would undergo but psychologists and potentially psychiatrists...? Where would we find them? How much familiarity would they need to have with the correctional system to be able to deliver on the needs that incarcerated persons have?
5:25 p.m.
Program Director, Aboriginal Legal Services
First, I think, Corrections has to figure out how they want to deliver services. One of the problems is that Corrections likes to deliver services in a particular way. Take the question about FASD. If you have FASD, you are not going to work well in group settings. You're not going to work well in a cognitive behavioural process. You can't do that. If the rule is that in order to move through your correctional plan you must have completed these groups, it won't happen. It doesn't matter who you put in to administer those programs. If they can't make it work, it won't work.
CSC has to be willing. It may be willing. We'll see. I mean, the money is fine, but we'll see how it actually gets put out and if they're willing to listen to people who can talk about “this is how services have to be developed”. The focus needs to be on the needs of the individual person and to move out from there, as opposed to saying, no, they all have to fit into this particular framework. That's crucial.
5:25 p.m.
Prof. Debra Parkes
About indigenous women in particular, I was just out at the Fraser Valley Institution this week with my students here at the law school. We met with women in the minimum-security unit who should be ready for release, and they are entirely idle with their time. They talked to me about how they have absolutely virtually nothing. In terms of programming, they have way less on the minimum-security side than people on the maximum-security side or the medium-security side. That is clearly an example of how all the resources are going into certain interventions. That's what I worry about with regard to the SIUs: all the resources going into those kinds of interventions and not into getting people out into the community.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Pierre Paul-Hus
Thank you, Mr. Spengemann.
Mr. Motz, you have five minutes.