Public Safety Committee on Oct. 31st, 2017

[Anne Kelly]

No, when they are in our institutions, their conditions are the same, apart from the Pathways concept.

The elders look after those pathways.

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

That makes the detention conditions different. What do you mean by the Pathways concept?

[Anne Kelly]

It is a unit within a penitentiary. The cells are the same, but an elder has intense involvement with the offenders there.

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

As you mentioned in another reply, these people are incarcerated because they have been found guilty of offences. Is there a kind of social pressure on CSC? With indigenous inmates, do you feel that the CSC has to solve problems it did not create?

[Anne Kelly]

Indigenous people represent 3% of the Canadian adult population, but they represent 24% of the prison population. We can’t do anything about that. When they come to our institutions, their profiles are different. The pressure we feel is more on our involvement and our programs for the indigenous people in our institutions.

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

That leads me to my next question. At the moment, there is a psychological drama going on about the fact that these people make up 22% of the prison population whereas they are 3% of the population as a whole. I wonder whether some of the conditions make them not want to get out of prison. Perhaps, in a way, they feel good there and prefer to stay there rather than going back to their reserves where they find the living conditions to be not as good. Could that be a factor?

We often hear that people get out of prison and then commit an offence so that they can get back in. Do you see that very often with the indigenous community?

[Anne Kelly]

One of the challenges with indigenous offenders—certainly with those in the prairie region, in any case—is their affiliation with gangs. When they arrive at our institutions, we want to make sure that they are surrounded by people who behave socially, before they are influenced by gangs. Clearly, aboriginal offenders want to take part in the programs too. Those who do take part—

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

Some people think that indigenous offenders are not well treated, that the conditions of their detention are poor. From what I am seeing up to now, a lot of efforts are made to put them in a good situation.

It is also said that conditional releases are less frequent with indigenous people. Is that because they do not comply with certain conditions? That is what we are trying to find out.

[Anne Kelly]

Earlier, I talked about the profiles of indigenous offenders. Often, there is more violence and substance abuse. In terms of the needs and the risk, the situation is more serious. So, in their case, we have to work harder. As a result, it may take longer. That is the reason we now have aboriginal intervention centres, the goal of which is to prepare them more quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.

Mr. Spengemann, you have five minutes.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much.

My thanks to the witnesses for being here, for their service, and for their work.

There is a very powerful saying that any society is measured only by how well it takes care of its least advantaged. I think this is front and centre for us, not as an indigenous issue but as a Canadian issue. We're looking at one portion of the spectrum of problems within a much broader whole. I very much appreciate your expertise and your service.

I want to start by asking you if you have a sense of what the top three offences are that are leading to the numbers of indigenous persons who are incarcerated, both on the male and female side. Is that accessible to you now, or could you provide that to us? I think it would be helpful to get a sense of where those numbers come from.

[Dr. Larry Motiuk]

We can certainly provide that. As was mentioned by Anne Kelly, violence is heavily represented amongst this population, but as to the nature of it—whether it's homicide, assault, robbery—we can provide that kind of distinction.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Another area that I think is of interest to members of the committee and to Canadians is the level of representation of indigenous public servants within Correctional Service of Canada and Public Safety Canada. Can you give us a flavour of how that currently looks and what efforts are under way to increase representation, perhaps also with your added thoughts of the direct benefits that greater representation could create within the system?

[Anne Kelly]

Currently, 9.5% of our employees, our staff, have self-identified as being indigenous peoples. That's above the workforce availability estimate of 6.2%.

In terms of aboriginal staff, we have approximately 140 elders that we contract with. We have aboriginal liaison officers, aboriginal correctional program officers, aboriginal community development officers, and aboriginal community liaison officers. Our healing lodge wardens, for the most part, are aboriginal. We have an aboriginal initiative directorate at NHQ, national headquarters. The director general is aboriginal. We also have regional directorates in each of the regions.

In terms of our efforts to hire staff, obviously we go to colleges and schools to recruit, but we've also just developed a succession planning plan. This is really to assist employees who are part of the aboriginal continuum of care that I just mentioned. We want to retain their expertise, but we also want to prepare them to take over more senior positions.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

As far as your recruitment efforts are concerned, is it your sense that there is a good pull of indigenous students into the relevant programs by universities and colleges—corrections, crime and deviance, sociology, the programs that would ultimately lead to careers in Correctional Service of Canada or Public Safety? In short, are you getting the numbers you are looking for from those institutions, and if not, what can we do to help increase enrolment?

[Anne Kelly]

When the director general of aboriginal initiatives goes to some of the colleges, she is extremely passionate about what she does. There is one in Prince George, I believe, that's mostly centred on aboriginal people. People get interested. I think there are some people who apply as a result of hearing about what we do. It would be nice to have more.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks very much.

I'm going to take the remaining minutes to ask you about an issue that I may have a chance to circle back to in the second round, and that's the classification of indigenous offenders as “maximum security”.

What are the dynamics around that? Is it your sense that this is one issue that may lead to the removal of potential releases into indigenous communities, simply because they are designated as “maximum security” and communities might be reluctant to consider having such an offender in their midst following their release?

[Anne Kelly]

Larry is the expert on classification.

[Dr. Larry Motiuk]

In terms of classification for indigenous people who come into the federal correctional system, how they are assessed depends on their profile. We have a very comprehensive assessment process at intake, upon admission into our institutions. Everything is taken into consideration: criminal history, the severity of the offence, and the amount of harm that's done to victims. We also take into consideration their needs. We call them “dynamic factors”: employment history, educational background, marital family dynamics and situations, right through substance misuse and personal, emotional kinds of factors, which would include things such as impulsivity or the ability to self-regulate. It's all of these factors, as well as attitudes.

All of this is combined in coming up with an accurate assessment and gauging the risk for adjustment inside the institution. We have two factors that we have to consider by law: escape risk, or public safety risk, and institutional adjustment. Many indigenous offenders upon arrival find themselves in a higher area of concern for management, particularly through gang affiliations, violence, and whatnot. They may find themselves in maximum security initially, relative to non-indigenous people.

However, what we—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Spengemann.

I'm sorry, Mr. Motiuk. You can probably work it back in on another question. I'm sure Mr. MacKenzie will give you an opportunity to finish that response.

Mr. MacKenzie, you have five minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the panel for being here today.

I've always found it very interesting. The committee previously toured many of the facilities, including the healing lodges. I'm not sure that I had any understanding of what a healing lodge was until I went there. I would suggest, Mr. Chair, that if we have members who have never seen a healing lodge in operation, it wouldn't be a bad idea for us to visit one.

I am also of the opinion that by the time an offender gets to the institutions, we as a society have already failed. We have not broken some other chain of behaviour. I'm wondering whether, within the indigenous communities, there are some that are better prepared to deal with their young people through a variety of means.

What I'm looking at is whether there are areas where, as a result of their upbringing in those communities, far fewer people run afoul of the law and end up in your institutions, or are we looking at everything being the same? I rather doubt that. I suspect there are some areas that are far better. Might we better spend our resources, or some of our resources, imitating the communities that are working better with their young people?

[Anne Kelly]

When I was in the Pacific region, at Kwikwèxwelhp, the relationship we had with the Sts'ailes community was excellent. The community, I believe, had the capacity to deal with some of the challenges.

You're quite right: there is absolutely no question that there needs to be some investment at the front end in terms of education, employment, substance abuse, housing, health, and prosocial contacts.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Did you have any comments?

[Angela Connidis]

I want to add that it definitely varies among the different indigenous communities. We find this especially with our community safety planning. In the context of the missing and murdered indigenous women file, the RCMP did a risk assessment of the communities, so we have a sense of where the high-risk communities are located, and we try to target them because they have the most needs. When they do their community safety planning, we find that it's not that we need more police or more alternatives to corrections, but that we need things for our youth. We need some sports facilities. We need addiction facilities. They could repurpose some of their other facilities to start doing that. If we could get the front end, we'd all be that much farther ahead.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

You mentioned the gangs. When they are released, or even before they go in, they're associated with gangs. What are these gangs? What do they look like? Are they just indigenous gangs, or are they mixed races?