An average day for a correctional officer can be lots of things, and I think that's the part the Canadian public doesn't understand. At one moment during the day I could be stepping into a cell playing the police officer confiscating drugs from an inmate. At the next moment, the inmate may turn around spontaneously and assault me. The following week, I could be engaged in fighting a fire down the range and having to evacuate 50 inmates. The week after that I could encounter an inmate who has hanged himself, and I arrive at the scene, have to cut him down, and have to perform CPR immediately.
I think the Canadian public thinks that we work in such a controlled environment, and this, I think, is where there is much confusion. We're not always in a controlled environment. The frustrating part for correctional officers as first responders, and I have many examples I can provide you, is that there are examples in which we've had officers intervene and save inmates from committing suicide 40 or 50 times—one officer.
On the street—and again with no disrespect to our colleagues—if that were a police officer or a firefighter on the street, they probably would have been given a key to the city; they would have been honoured by the mayor and thanked for doing a great job. But the Canadian public doesn't care whether correctional officers save an inmate 40 or 50 times. This is a huge stressor on our members, because we can go from that one instance to fighting with an inmate on the ground. The next instant we could also play counsellor; we could be an officer trying to talk an inmate out of committing suicide, because at four o'clock, all the professionals are gone. It's us; that's it.
It's a great question, and I appreciate it, because we really want to work at educating the Canadian public about what we actually do in the course of a day. As I said earlier in my testimony, we are all of three of those occupations inside the institution.
I described to you some personal circumstances in which I have performed CPR on inmates, I have cut inmates down, I have pulled inmates out of cells who have slashed themselves. I have talked inmates out of committing suicide. We have evacuated ranges. It's one of those things that the public doesn't understand.
That's the stressor. A correctional officer is here at one moment; the next minute he's here; and the next minute, emotionally he's up here again, depending on the events of the day.
Then there's the stress of the clientele we're dealing with. We're walking down ranges on which the inmate behaviour is unpredictable. In general society we like to think that people act in a certain way, but we can never, when we're walking down a range or inside an institution, predict how an inmate is going to react. I hope that gives you a little bit of—