Evidence of meeting #83 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 offenders.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
I call the meeting to order. I think we're close enough to 9:45 to get started.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Well, I haven't changed my clock yet; I'm from Saskatchewan. Don't you know that Scarborough is part of Saskatchewan?
Before we ask our witnesses to speak, I want to acknowledge that YOUth in Office are in our committee room. I see some of them at the back there. Maybe they could just stand and wave at us.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
These are students from the Boys and Girls Clubs and Big Brothers Big Sisters. They're accompanying MPs for the day. We got our picture taken in front of Instagram's #KindComments; I think maybe that should apply to members and that we should try to make kind comments over the course of our day.
Welcome to all.
Before I call Mr. Zinger as our main witness, I want to acknowledge that I have received on your behalf a letter from the Minister of Public Safety directly relevant to one of the recommendations Mr. Zinger makes in his report, in which he is asking us to commence a study. I want to acknowledge receipt of that.
I also want to say, Mr. Zinger, that for my sins I was reading your annual report on the airplane. I want to compliment you on its being so accessible. You made really good points. It was clear, accessible, and highly readable. I thank you for making those efforts for us.
Without further ado, we have Mr. Zinger.
Dr. Ivan Zinger Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you for the invitation to appear. It is a pleasure to be here.
I'm joined today by Hazel Miron, senior investigator with my office. Hazel's caseload includes healing lodges. Of note, her great-great-grandfather was one of the signatories of Treaty No. 8. Hazel is a band member from the Sucker Creek First Nation of northern Alberta. As correctional investigator, I often seek her advice on matters involving indigenous people and federal corrections. I invite members of this committee to benefit from her experience and knowledge as an indigenous woman working in correctional oversight. You may certainly direct your questions to her.
I commend the committee for taking on what probably is the most challenging issue in Canadian corrections today. Indeed, overrepresentation of indigenous people in Canadian jails and prisons has to rank among this country's most pressing social and human rights issues.
As my office has often noted, a history of disadvantage follows indigenous people of Canada into prison and often defines their outcome and experience there. As ombudsman for federally sentenced offenders, my remarks are limited to how people of aboriginal ancestry fare in federal custody and what could be done to bring about better results.
Let me take a moment to remind members of my office's role and mandate. Under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, my office is mandated to conduct investigations into the problems of federal offenders related to decisions, recommendations, acts or omissions of the Correctional Service of Canada.
The Office is an oversight, not an advocacy, body. Staff members don't take sides when resolving complaints against the CSC. The office independently investigates legitimate complaints and ensures that federal offenders are treated fairly and in compliance with the legal and policy frameworks. We view corrections through a human rights lens, and we make recommendations to ensure safe, lawful and humane correctional practice.
With respect to the concerns of this committee, I would begin by noting that the failings of the criminal justice system with respect to indigenous people have been extensively studied and documented. Corrections did not create the problems of indigenous overrepresentation in Canada’s criminal justice system, nor will it solve it on its own. As the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples concluded more than 20 years ago, high rates of aboriginal over-incarceration speak to the peoples' loss of culture, identity, and spirit. That conclusion still holds true today.
That said, for the period of time that a person is under federal sentence, it's fair to say that the Correctional Service of Canada has a role to play in addressing the factors that brought that individual into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place. On that score, the office has concluded that federal corrections is failing indigenous people.
In January 2016, the office reported that federal corrections had reached yet another sad milestone. At that time, indigenous overrepresentation in federal corrections had just surpassed 25% of the total inmate population. Less than two years later, today, indigenous people represent 27% of the total federal inmate population. Overrepresentation is even more entrenched for federally sentenced women of indigenous ancestry, who now represent 38% of the total female population in federal corrections.
The pace and intensity of this problem is quickening and deepening as the non-aboriginal inmate population declines. In fact, any net growth in the federal inmate population since 2012 is almost exclusively attributed to new or returning admissions of indigenous offenders.
Assuming all other things remain equal in indigenous and Canadian society, the year-on-year increase in the number of indigenous admissions to custody can be expected to get worse. Young indigenous people are coming into contact with the criminal justice system at rates that surpass even those of their parents. In 2015-2016, Statistics Canada reports that 35% of all admissions to youth correctional facilities in Canada were indigenous youth between the ages of 12 and 17.
Similar numbers are reported in provincial adult corrections. In 2015-2016, 75% of all admissions to provincial custody in Saskatchewan were indigenous. In the same year, 73% of all correctional admissions in Manitoba were indigenous. The rate was 31% for British Columbia, 70% for Yukon, 86% for the Northwest Territories and 100% for Nunavut.
Federal corrections mirror these broader regional and demographic trends. Today, 50.5% of the federal inmate population in the Prairie region is Indigenous. In fact, some institutions in that region can be considered “indigenous prisons”.
For instance, at the regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, 62% of residents are indigenous; in the Stony Mountain Institution in Manitoba, the figure is 64%; there are also 64% in the Saskatchewan Penitentiary; and finally, 61% of offenders are indigenous in the Edmonton Institution for Women.
In the office's latest systemic investigation, which looked at younger offenders aged 18 to 21 in federal custody, we noted that nearly two in five younger people in federal penitentiaries were of indigenous ancestry. Many of these youth reported previous contact with the youth justice system, some of the lowest levels of educational attainment, and the highest degree of involvement with child welfare authorities, including foster homes.
We titled the report “Missed Opportunities” on the basis that the Correctional Service of Canada was doing very little to turn the lives of these young people around. By the way, the majority of these young persons were serving their first federal sentence, and many indigenous young adults reported being gang-affiliated or pressured to join a gang within the walls of the penitentiaries.
In my 2016-17 annual report tabled in Parliament last week, I reported that indigenous people in federal corrections are released later in their sentence; are disproportionately overrepresented in segregation placement, use of force intervention, maximum security institutions, and self-injury incidents; and are more likely to be returned to prison due to suspension or revocation of parole. In fact, on nearly every indicator of correctional performance, indigenous people fare much worse than their non-indigenous counterparts.
Despite faster entry into correctional programs and higher completion rates overall, indigenous offenders are still being released later in their sentences and having parole revoked far more often than their counterparts. The majority of indigenous offenders are still being released from custody at their statutory release date, having reached two-thirds of their sentence. Most of these releases are still carried out from a maximum security or medium security facility, meaning indigenous offenders are released more often without the benefit of a graduated and structured return to the community.
In the context of overrepresentation, these results seem to defy reality. It bears reminding that the majority of indigenous people entering federal custody are serving a relatively short sentence of three years or less. Even so, the Auditor General reminds us that just over 10% of indigenous offenders had their case prepared for parole hearing at their earliest eligibility dates.
The Correctional Service has still not developed tools to assess how culturally specific interventions for indigenous offenders, such as elder services, healing lodges, Pathways, and partnership with community groups and organizations, contribute to safe and successful reintegration. There's still not adequate guidance or training on how aboriginal social history should be considered in case management decisions. As a consequence, not nearly enough attention or understanding is applied to Gladue factors in the administration of an indigenous person's sentence.
On the reintegration side, the space in the community to support indigenous offenders remains far from adequate. There are no agreements in place in British Columbia, Ontario, Atlantic Canada, and the far north. Three of the four aboriginal-run healing lodge facilities are on reserve land, yet indigenous offenders are being released to urban settings. Inexplicably, there continue to be substantial funding discrepancies between healing lodges operated by aboriginal communities under section 81 and those operated by Correctional Service of Canada. Finally, all section 81 facilities are designated minimum security, yet indigenous prisoners are predominantly classified and released from medium and maximum security institutions.
In my office's latest annual report, I recommended that the Correctional Service of Canada review its community release strategies for indigenous offenders with a view to, one, increasing the numbers of agreements with indigenous communities for the care and custody of medium security inmates; two, addressing discrepancies in funding arrangements between CSC and aboriginal-managed healing lodge facilities; and three, maximizing community interests and engagement in release planning for indigenous offenders at the earliest opportunity.
CSC appears to be responsive to these recommendations, though a clear sense of urgency, leadership, priority, and top-level engagement in these matters still appears to be lacking. I would note that CSC still resists the suggestion that it should create a deputy commissioner for indigenous corrections, a position that would be solely responsible for and dedicated to improving correctional outcomes and accountability for federally sentenced indigenous offenders.
Let me conclude by noting that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for the elimination of overrepresentation of aboriginal people and youth in custody over the next decade.
Over the years, similar calls to action and government commitments have been issued. For corrections, one thing is clear: we should not expect more of the same to produce better or different results.
Thank you for your attention and interest in the work of my office. We would be happy to take all of your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Mr. Zinger.
Go ahead, Mr. Spengemann, for seven minutes, please.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Mr. Chair, thank you very much.
Dr. Zinger, Madam Miron, it's great to have you in front of the committee.
Madam Miron, I think it's special privilege for members of the committee to have you here and to hear your views this morning on this very important issue.
I'd like to thank you for being so frank and so compelling in your comments. I think this is a problem that the committee is very well aware of and seized with, but that Canadians also are very concerned about. We have to be mindful that we're not inadvertently allowing some of the horrors of the residential school system to creep back in through the Correctional Service. Thank you for your work and your service.
I want to start by drawing your attention to chapter 4 of the “Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator 2016-2017”. At the end of chapter 4—I'm just going to read them briefly—there are three recommendations:
i. increase the number of Section 81 agreements to include community accommodation options for the care and custody of medium security inmates;
ii. address discrepancies in funding arrangements between CSC and Aboriginal-managed Healing Lodge facilities, and;
iii. maximize community interest and engagement in release planning for Indigenous offenders at the earliest opportunity.
Dr. Zinger, there is no recommendation that is specific to gender issues, even though you, in very compelling terms, had highlighted that 37.9% of the population of female inmates is indigenous.
Is the fact that there is no specific gender recommendation a result of the conclusion that gender applies equally across those three recommendations, or, if you were asked to be a bit more precise, are there specific issues that relate to gender, especially female youth? Girls, as you pointed out, are disproportionately represented, even more so than women, in the corrections system.
Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
Thank you for your question.
I have to say there's no shortage of recommendations my office has made over the years on issues related to indigenous people in prison. My office has established six corporate priorities, and one of them is of course indigenous people, but another priority that is included in my annual report is women in corrections. Under that chapter we're certainly quite sensitive to the situation of women in general, but also indigenous women.
In this year's report we were very concerned about how women who are classified as maximum security and housed in what are referred to as “secure units” are being treated within the facilities of the Correctional Service of Canada. I would say anywhere between 50 and 60 women are classified as maximum security in federal penitentiaries, and nearly half of these women are actually indigenous in their background.
I think one thing we are also very sensitive to is that the rate of trauma among indigenous women is very high, extremely high. I would argue that, yes, they are offenders, but first and foremost they have also been victims. The rate of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse is extremely high. The rate of trauma is also extremely high. The rate among indigenous women with respect to self-harm and suicide attempts is off the charts, much higher than for non-indigenous women. The service confines these women in an overly restrictive and harsh environment when it comes to secure units. There is no therapeutic approach and certainly no trauma-informed approach to address the high needs of these women.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you very much, Dr. Zinger.
Madam Miron, I would like to take you to the 2012 report, “Spirit Matters”. A conclusion in that report states that there is “Limited understanding and awareness within CSC of Aboriginal peoples, cultures, spirituality and approaches to healing.”
We're now five years down the road from that report. I'm wondering if you could update the committee on whether that still holds true and what progress has been made on this particular issue, taking into account the disproportionate overrepresentation of indigenous women.
Hazel Miron Senior Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
I'd like to thank Ivan for the nice introduction.
I think there has been a little bit of progress in terms of the healing lodges and in corrections today. However, there seems to be, in my opinion, a drift from the cultural aspect and focus of the healing lodges and the institutions. There is a shortage of elders. For section 81 facilities especially, there's not enough money and resources to do the work that needs to be done.
In terms of the culture, they've drifted away from it. In the women's facilities a lot of incidents have increased. There is a little bit of improvement, but not what we should be seeing at this time.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Thanks very much, Madam Miron.
Would it be possible for your office to provide the committee with a geographic mapping of both the current healing lodges and the elders who are involved in the corrections process? That would give us an idea of how broadly the country is covered through those two very important elements.
Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
Absolutely.
There are basically nine healing lodges, four of which are operated under section 81. I will remind the committee that section 81 allows for the Minister of Public Safety to enter into an agreement with an indigenous community for the care and custody of indigenous offenders. Only four such agreements, with a bed capacity of about 97 individuals, have been struck. Recently there was increase in capacity for women, with I guess now an additional 12 women at the Buffalo Sage institution.
We can certainly provide the committee with details on those facilities and on the number of elders.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
I would remind members and witnesses to perhaps keep an eye on the chair. I have the unfortunate task of trying to keep things on track here.
Mr. Motz, I'm sure you'll help me keep things on track. You have seven minutes.
Conservative
Glen Motz Conservative Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Zinger and Madam Miron, for being here today.
One thing I've always been curious about with regard to the overrepresentation of indigenous people in Canadian jails and prisons is their origin. Is the criminality occurring on reserve or is it occurring predominantly in urban settings? I've never been able to determine exactly where it's coming from with regard to the contact with law enforcement.
Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer that question. My mandate is specifically related to the administration of federal sentences. My expertise certainly lies more in that realm.
I will tell you that part of what we see is that many federal offenders, upon release, are interested in going back not to reserves but to urban centres. That's more the scenario that we see on a daily basis.
Maybe Statistics Canada can provide you with a better response.
Conservative
Glen Motz Conservative Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB
Right. Thank you.
You concluded that “federal corrections is failing indigenous people”. How do you see that occurring?
Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
Well, their correctional outcomes are poor, and I think that's what they have control over. As I said in my remarks, the Correctional Service of Canada has no control over who is being admitted into their facility. The only control they have is to make sure that they do good case management, which allows offenders to take programs to address their needs, to reduce their risk of reoffending, and to be cascaded from the highest security to the lowest security and then back into the community. That isn't being done as rigorously as it should be.
That's one example of these kinds of failings.
Conservative
Glen Motz Conservative Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB
That brings me to another question. You also reported that federally sentenced indigenous persons are more likely to be classified in maximum security institutions than their counterparts. Why would that be?
Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
One of the things now being debated in the courts, which we have written about in our annual reports, is that the Correctional Service of Canada has never validated its actuarial tools to assess risk. It did validate the tools, but they never created tools specific to indigenous people. They're using tools developed for the cohorts, but they never looked at indigenous factors to develop tools from the ground up, so the risk inherent in the tools they're using is uncertain.
When the CSC looked at the reclassification tool for women, they developed a new tool from the ground up that was able to reduce classification by 20%, so we have a previous example that can be used to declassify people who do not necessarily need to be classified in this way.
We have many individuals who are classified in maximum security because they have significant mental health issues. There's a high prevalence of indigenous offenders with FASD. There are some severe addiction issues. People are being put into a higher classification than needed, rather than into a therapeutic environment where trauma-informed therapy is provided, where sustained addiction issues are being addressed, and where mental health issues and cultural needs are being looked after.
Conservative
Glen Motz Conservative Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB
Is programming for indigenous people as available in maximum security as it is in medium or minimum security?
Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
Access is one thing, but whether it is provided is another. The best results, the kind you see with healing lodges, are usually provided in lower-security institutions. That's where the programs have the highest rate of success. As you go up, it's more difficult to provide programs. They may have a program, but it may run only once or twice a year, so you find many offenders on a waiting list to complete programs in their correctional plan.
Conservative
Glen Motz Conservative Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB
I appreciate your saying that corrections did not create the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples in our justice system and that it won't necessarily be able to solve it either.
Ms. Miron, we know that young indigenous people are coming into correctional facilities and the justice system at rates that surpass those of their parents and those of other populations. What are the main drivers of criminality among our indigenous youth?
Senior Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada
You have the residential schools and the trauma coming down through the families. If we go back three generations, the grandparents were affected by the residential schools, and this was passed on to the parents. These kids are suffering from the residual effects of trauma from the residential schools. I believe the last one closed in 1970.
Also, if they're coming off reserve and into the urban centres, I believe they get into conflict with the law simply because of cultural differences. There is overrepresentation, but on the upside there are also indigenous youth who are going to school and being successful.