Public Safety Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2017

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

I have to ask this one last question. I have one minute left. I don't know whether you're going to have time to answer it. The government is going to legalize marijuana in another year, and this might be a moot point: if drugs that are legal should be allowed to be taken in, how do you feel about that?

[Irene Mathias]

I guess I feel the same way as I do about its being legalized outside. I think that criminalizing it is not helpful. I don't know whether it would help to have people—

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Let me ask you this question. Do you think it's fair to restrict an inmate and not restrict an 18-year-old?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I think we're going to have to leave that one.

[Irene Mathias]

I don't know.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We have reached our time limit.

Mr. Spengeman, possibly you have an answer to that question.

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

Mr. Chair, thank you very much. I'm going to attempt to delegate at least some of my time to our visitor, Mr. Levitt, so I'll be brief and precise. I'd like to direct my questions to Professor Hannem.

Professor Hannem, has there been any appreciable impact in your research from the perspective of gender? Have you detected any differential treatment in what we're experiencing here with respect to male versus female prisoners or transgendered prisoners?

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

I have not seen any evidence of that. The machines are used at both men's and women's prisons.

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

You have no basis to even recommend that gender be studied in this context. There is no appreciable basis for it.

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

I don't believe so, although we know that there are high numbers of women incarcerated for drugs.

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

Thanks very much for that.

Correctional facilities aren't just about corrections. There's also law enforcement activity going on in and around prisons. Is it conceivable that at least some of the interest is not so much in what quantity of drugs is making its way into prisons but in the contact inmates have with the outside world, especially through organized crime and actually directing narcotics operations elsewhere? Also, correctional facilities serve as a basis to glean information about whom inmates are in contact with. If that's reasonable, would it explain some of the problems we're discussing here?

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

All visitors to federal institutions are subjected to a CPIC report, and they have to be approved first before they're even allowed in. It would be mind-boggling to me to think that CSC would allow anybody who had a known tie to organized crime into a federal prison. I can't even imagine their allowing it.

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

Unless they were informers and presumably would be known to the authorities already?

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

Yes.

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

Okay.

Do you have any information about what happens to the data on positives, whether false or not? How is CSC collecting that data? Are they sharing it with anyone?

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

I don't believe so. They seem to have incident reports. The Office of the Correctional Investigator says that there were 3,532 incident reports involving visitors from February 2015 to April 2017, and 25% of those were positive hits on the ion scan. That seems to be the total sum of information that's available. I've done multiple requests for information and can get no better information than that.

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

Individual data, to your knowledge, is not collected in terms of the individual personalities who are—

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

It stays on their record. It's on the visitor's record and they keep electronic records of people coming in and out of institutions, so it would stay connected to that individual name, yes.

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

But we don't know what happens beyond that...?

[Dr. Stacey Hannem]

No.

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

Okay. Those are my questions.

I'm going to delegate the rest of my time to Mr. Levitt.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Levitt, welcome to the committee.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all of you for your comments. I don't know whether it's that great minds think alike or that fools seldom differ, but I was going to ask the gender question as well.

Ms. Cattral, you talked about your grandson's experience. We know about the struggles for those who are incarcerated, especially for those with mental health issues, and I can only imagine that having access to one's kids is a huge source of support while incarcerated.

I'm interested in your perspective—and then maybe also yours, Professor Hannem—on the impact on children in facing these kinds of false positives and also in terms of the impact of being denied interaction with one's children.

You can probably speak to this personally, Ms. Cattral, but how does this impact the inmates and set them up moving forward after an incident like that? It strikes me as really poignant.

[Anne Cattral]

Yes, it was quite devastating for all three of us. I tested positive on the day we went in. I had my grandson with me and was cleared to bring my grandson in to visit his father. We ended up getting a closed visit. I won't go into it, because it's like PTSD: just talking about it takes me back.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

We don't want to open up old wounds for you.