Public Safety Committee on May 17th, 2016

[Stanley Stapleton]

Thank you.

Some of the legislation needs to be related to workers' compensation, WSIB, WCB. We do have a federal workers' compensation bill, but it really defers the responsibilities to the provincial pieces of legislation. Unfortunately, I believe only Alberta and Ontario—I could be wrong there—really have legislation that recognizes the difficulties of first responders with regard to PTSD. However, we would like to see that expanded to include public safety officers, because as we explained earlier—and I could certainly give you lots of examples—working in these kinds of environments does take a toll mentally on an individual. To have that type of workers' compensation benefit available to members would assist them in their transition as they heal and get better, as well as something we recommended, more psychological assistance for federal employees who work in this.

[David Neufeld]

Yes, I certainly would support legislation that would address occupational injuries. I think one of the things that isn't realized by a lot of Canadians is the type of work we do, and the fact that this is a cumulative effect. As I mentioned in the presentation, this isn't just necessarily a one-time incident; it can develop over a series of years, or over a career. We really need to make sure there are supports in place for people in these positions. As I mentioned in my presentation, it does have the ability to change you and how you see the world. I can say, even from my own perspective of having been a parole officer, my wife over the first number of years of marriage would say, “David, why are you so particular on this? Why do you have to lock the front door when we're home? Why are you on me about setting the alarm?” It's simple little things like that, but you really start to understand. In my presentation I talked about how I had lived a sheltered life. When I came into this job I realized that the world isn't necessarily as friendly a place as I had thought.

So I think, certainly, we need to make sure the people who are doing this type of work, these other occupational groups that aren't as well-known as police and firefighters and paramedics, are taken care of as well.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I think a number of people can relate to the anecdote you just shared with us when it comes to the exchanges with some of our better halves.

But let me move on to Mr. Kent.

[Richard Kent]

Yes, we're very happy that this is coming to light, and we hope something is going to be done for our first nations communities, because we really need something federally put in place. As was mentioned, Ontario and Alberta have presumptive legislation. But that is provincial legislation. It's like the Emergencies Act, but within the provinces. Those are provincial acts that don't necessarily have anything to do with first nations, because first nations are not provincial. We do need something federally so that it falls under the blanket of the federal government to look after PTSD and emotional problems within our first responders. We know we have a problem there. We just don't know how bad the problem is in regard to first responders in first nations, because we just don't have the amount of material and the studies done to give us that information. That's something we really need to look at.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

That's very good.

You actually pre-empted one of the questions that I was going to pose: namely, how is it that not having federal legislation may continue to promote a gap to certain first responders? You provided a very specific example in the first nations community and in our indigenous communities.

Are there any other areas or gaps that continue to be unaddressed in the absence of some kind of federal framework that would address a presumption of OSI for first responders?

Mr. Stapleton.

[Stanley Stapleton]

I certainly think we have to look beyond the traditional view of first responders. For example, if you work inside a prison, oftentimes you're not considered a first responder, but the reality is that you are.

I'll give a personal example. When I was a program officer and my task was to liaise between the inmate committee and the warden and senior management, if there was trouble, I was one of the first ones sent.

I was sent to the kitchen one morning at 7:30 because there was something brewing. I got there. I talked with the chief of food services. We heard a scream. We looked over to the inmate coffee area, and one inmate had poured what we thought was water on the back of another inmate. The screaming didn't stop, so we ran over and were the first ones on the scene. It had been boiling oil from a deep fryer, and you can imagine when he pulled his tee-shirt off.... We were there. We were getting control of the other offenders who, as you can understand, were agitated.

We're not considered first responders, but the reality is that we are in many situations. Certainly within an institution, we are the first responders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.

Mr. O'Toole.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you to all of our witnesses, and apologies for the disrupted schedule with votes today.

Mr. Stapleton, I think we had a very good session with prison workers and prison guards last week, describing I think in their words, that one day they could be a paramedic, one day they were like a police officer, another day they're a firefighter, depending on the needs of the situation.

I have to be honest, Mr. Neufeld, I've never considered parole officers to be first responders per se. How would you best describe the role?

[David Neufeld]

That is something, again, even within our own world of CSC, we've been saying for many years that people don't understand what we do in corrections, and in particular what parole officers do.

As I mentioned earlier, I started off as a community parole officer, and the learning curve was very large. What I learned very quickly is that we don't fit in as a police officer. We don't fit in any certain niche. We have a very unique job. We have a job that has, in some ways, more power than police.

The example I will give is that when we are supervising offenders on the street and we are continually assessing risk—again, our focus is on reintegration and rehabilitation—our focus is trying to make sure that when the offenders are under our supervision, that is done in a safe way and that the public is safe. We are often making judgment calls and assessing where the offender is at and whether it is safe for them to be on the street. There's a lot of accountability and responsibility that comes with that.

To answer your question, Mr. O'Toole, it's very unique. It doesn't fit in to a first responder job. Although I will argue that there are times...and I can think of a specific incident that happened with me. I went into a fellow's home and he became very volatile in the moment that I came into that room. The offender I was working with could have lost his handle on the situation, and it could have been very ugly. In trying to calm down the situation, I leaned that in a way I am a first responder. If I hadn't been there, I don't know what could have happened.

In terms of parole officers, they're very unique. They're often compared to police because there's nothing to compare them to. Again, the powers that come under the CCRA and under policy that we follow are very unique.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

I remember in your remarks that you said your grade 6 teacher predicted a future for you in social work, and you mentioned there are aspects of your role that have shown that to be true.

In your case, is that aspect of the role and the occupational stress from that a sort of vicarious trauma from dealing with someone who's committed horrendous crimes? Is that repetitive exposure what you feel people within your profession are exposed to?

[David Neufeld]

Absolutely. Again, it's such a unique job in everything that you do whether it's reading the file information, or dealing with offenders who have come from very unique circumstances. In the prairie region, we have a lot of aboriginal offenders in our institutions and in our communities. They too come from very traumatic backgrounds. When you're working with them and you're learning about where they've come from, and we focus on section 81 and section 84 releases and we try to prepare them for that release.

There are many things you see in this job that maybe you didn't learn going through high school or university. The job is so large and it goes in so many different ways that it does impact you. It gives you a broad knowledge of who we are as people in this country. We like to think that we're a very empathetic group, parole officers. But, of course, like I mentioned in my presentation, we cannot be sympathetic because there's the rule of law, which keeps us all safe.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

I'll divide the remainder of my time for my colleague, Mr. Rayes.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here with us. We also apologize for the disruption this morning.

Can you explain to me what happens from the moment when an employee is experiencing stress and wishes to receive assistance? At this time, what means are in place in each of your organizations to deal with this? What procedure is followed? Is there some sort of support and do the employees have access to tools afterwards? Do the organizations have the necessary openness to help them?

[Stanley Stapleton]

We do have an employee assistance program and from that you can access limited counselling, usually four to six sessions. Unfortunately, with the counselling that you get through your employee assistance program, the psychologist, if it happens to be a psychologist, whoever it happens to be, cannot provide a sick note, for example, saying this individual will be off work for two weeks. They would have to go to somebody outside of that.

They would have to cover the cost of going, if it happened to be a psychologist. Sun Life does provide limited resources for that, and of course there is the family doctor. But the resources from something like the employee assistance program are very limited.

[David Neufeld]

One of the things that I think is important for the committee to understand as well, and we were talking about gaps in terms of level of service for federal government employees in these positions, is that if you end up going off on long-term sick—and I'm talking about up to the two-year mark, when you're on Sun Life— part of the difficulty is that if that trauma is extreme and you are not able to go back to work, then the question is what happens to you. Does that mean you have to resign from your position? Does that mean you have to go on medical retirement?

Vicarious trauma, there's no specific definition on how much time it takes to hit that point where you may be ill and you aren't able to do the job anymore. I think this is something that would be good for you, as a committee, to look at and say how do we make sure that we do take care of those people when we get to the point where long-term disability is just no longer available to them.

There is a point at which the employer has to make a determination as to whether they are able to come back to work in some capacity. I am, again, speaking from a correctional background. Sometimes that may mean you can't work in an environment where there are offenders. That has its own nuances in terms of trying to help manage that. That's what I would like to add in terms of Mr. Stapleton's answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Mr. Neufeld.

We will continue with Mr. Dubé.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here with us today.

My questions will be addressed to you, Mr. Stapleton and Mr. Neufeld, and will deal with your recommendations.

We have talked about treatments a lot. That is important, and I would never deny it. However, I think it is desirable to provide resources to avoid situations where someone has to suffer from post-traumatic stress. I am thinking for instance of your recommendation concerning the number of officers.

Currently there is a resource problem. If I understand what you said correctly, if we solved that problem, we could avoid more serious problems in future. In that way we would use prevention rather than reaction and treatments.

[Stanley Stapleton]

Yes, certainly we have had staffing reductions over the past number of years. In particular, parole officers in the institutions, I can speak to that very well. The ratio of offender to parole officer has been increased significantly in our opinion. What that has done is it has reduced the amount of time that a parole officer can have face to face discussion with offenders.

Oftentimes we're very good at telling the offender what their needs are but we're not so good oftentimes at listening simply because we don't have time. So if you're a parole officer doing a plan and you haven't had time to really interact with the offender you may make the mistake or you may not really understand the needs of the offender. That causes stress when things go south.

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

Mr. Neufeld, what do you think?

[David Neufeld]

From a community perspective, through the deficit reduction action plan, another thing we had witnessed within the Correctional Service was a reduction in spending in the community. One of the issues that came up was the increase in workload at the community correctional centres, which is the federal halfway house.

Previously, prior to the deficit reduction action plan being implemented in 2014, the ratio was one parole officer for every eight offenders. It is now one to 13, which is a significant increase. I think our members would certainly want the committee to be aware that they want to spend more time interacting with the offenders and assisting in their reintegration efforts. Those offenders living in community correctional centres are the highest risk offenders that we manage in the community. There's a reason they're in that federal halfway house, and in our opinion that's why we need to make sure we're spending as much time with them as possible.

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

That would certainly have consequences on rehabilitation. Obviously it would also be positive for the officers. It would allow them to work in a more complete way, if I can put it that way, and perhaps to be safer. Is that correct?

[David Neufeld]

That would be correct.

One of the things we hear consistently from our members in the institutions primarily is about the ratios that were changed under the deficit reduction action plan. In a minimum security institution there's one parole officer for every 25 inmates. In a medium security institution there's one parole officer for every 28 inmates; and in a maximum security institution there's one parole officer for every 30.

Prior to that it was 1 to 25 across the board, but that was changed. One of the challenges we face, and something we brought to the Correctional Service as well is that we feel there should be a resourcing formula similar to what we have in the community, which we've had for a number of years now, and where we measure the activities of a parole officer throughout the management of a particular case. Then the resourcing is attached to the previous years' indicators.

That is something we feel would be very helpful for our parole officers in the institutions.

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

You mentioned that the externally mandated study was another recommendation. One thing that's come back many times over the course of this study is the question of the lack of data outside of.... When we talk about Veterans Affairs, for example, they've improved over the last number of years in gathering data, but I'm assuming from that recommendation, and you've mentioned it a few times, that it's still a problem when we look at what could arguably be called non-traditional first responders, for lack of a better way of putting it.

[Stanley Stapleton]

Yes, that's correct and that's why the USG is embarking on its own study of vicarious trauma and operational stress injury that is impacting our members. Hopefully, we'll be able to gather data and be able to share that with both our partners in the departments as well as people around this table.

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

That's great.

Mr. Kent, you talked about always keeping in mind particular traditions that can exist specifically in first nations communities when we tackle these issues.

I'm wondering if there are any challenges in how first responders are asked to do their work. Keeping on that same theme, we talk a lot about post-traumatic stress, but is there anything we can do to make the work easier, to try to avoid getting to that point to begin with?