Public Safety Committee on Nov. 7th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Motz.

Mr. Dubé, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here with us today, Mr. Zinger.

I would like to go back to the aspect of security and its impact. We see that there is an overrepresentation of the indigenous population in maximum security establishments.

I want to make sure I understood the comments you made in reply to my colleague's question. The offer of programs differs in those establishments, which inevitably causes rehabilitation issues. Is that correct?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Yes. It is always more difficult to offer programs in maximum security facilities. The prison population is often fragmented. That means that certain units cannot mix with others, because there are gang-related safety issues, among others. It is difficult to find enough candidates to offer certain programs. This is an operational problem for Corrections Canada.

The routines are often very difficult to manage. What finally happens is that very few programs are offered every year in maximum security establishments where the majority of the prison population is indigenous.

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

When the evaluation is done to determine the security level, does that process cause problems? Could improvements be made? Can you suggest solutions?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

I think it would be important for the correctional service to develop risk assessment tools that are more sensitive to indigenous reality. Some research work needs to be done if we are to develop tools that are better adapted to the realities of indigenous offenders, and if they are not to be penalized because of their origins.

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

Last week, representatives of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness told us that a mental health and addictions assessment had been done. However, I get the impression that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Do you agree?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Absolutely. The majority of indigenous persons that are incarcerated are cases that require a lot of work, because they bring all sorts of problems into the penitentiaries with them that require follow-up.

One of the things we highlighted in this year's annual report is that despite the follow-up given to the recommendations of the Auditor General, and despite efforts to give indigenous inmates quicker access to various programs and obtain a higher level of participation, aboriginal persons leave the penitentiaries and return to them. Their parole is suspended or revoked at a higher rate than that of non-aboriginals.

We have to wonder if correctional service programs are adapted and effective at improving these mediocre results.

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

Certain comments were made with regard to young adults who are also overrepresented.

I raised the issue with the representative of the correctional service who appeared before the committee. There are some very general programs for young adults. However, her answer showed that there aren't really any programs for indigenous youth, nor to address the issue you raised with regard to prior judicial records.

Do you have any recommendation to make in this regard? What could we do to assist young adults more specifically? As everyone knows, if we cannot rehabilitate them, this may potentially go on for the rest of their lives. That is, of course, what we would like to avoid.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Recently, we published a report entitled “Missed Opportunities: The Experience of Young Adults Incarcerated in Federal Penitentiaries”, which was about the issue of inmates aged 18 to 21.

We made 17 recommendations. We are still waiting for a reply from the Correctional Service of Canada.

What came out of the interviews we conducted with 94 inmates in that age group was that in general, there is no specific policy for that age group. In my opinion, the upcoming reforms should include a policy or a guideline from the commissioner for that age group. There are also no programs for these youths. In addition, parole officers have very little contact with those young offenders. They meet with them on average once or twice in a two-month period. We feel that there ought to be more follow-up to support these young people.

With regard to indigenous people, the most worrisome factor is the whole issue of affiliation with street gangs. There is really no strategy to distance these young people from street gangs, nor to prevent them from being recruited into them in our penitentiaries, thus jeopardizing their future lives.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Picard, you have seven minutes.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Mr. Zinger and Ms. Miron.

I'm afraid my question requires a rather long introduction, so I hope you will be patient with me.

The correctional system is not responsible for the increase in percentages. There is something or someone that causes this population to go into the system. This creates greater pressure on the correctional system, which must respond by offering programs that are non-existent or not available because they are so targeted.

In your presentation, you recommend “increasing the number of agreements with indigenous communities for the care and custody of medium security inmates.” Even in ideal circumstances, if the entire indigenous system took charge of the entire indigenous population, all we would do is displace the problem onto the shoulders of another group, which would not prevent the increase in the percentage of indigenous incarcerated persons. We would not be solving the problem at the source.

In a way, is the system not adversely affected by the limit on the application of these recommendations? No matter how many programs you have, if these people continue to join the correctional system in industrial quantities, it will continue to be overwhelmed.

What is your position? What is your reaction to this reality which seems inevitable, and about which we would like to hear your recommendations? In fact, I think that all of the parties agree that we have to improve the system. However, we seem powerless to affect the things that do not occur at your level, but upstream from that.

Aside from improving the system so that people transit through it faster, may we expect the correctional system to make recommendations that will help reduce the number of people that enter it?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Your analysis is quite correct. The problems are upstream, in society. In my opinion, the basic problem has to do with the social, economic, cultural and political rights of indigenous people. I think that when people are equal and when we have reached a level of recognition and an equal partnership, all of these problems could be solved upstream, once again.

As for criminal justice, the Correctional Service of Canada comes in at the end of the process. And so it would be unfair to ask it how to solve these societal problems. However, we have to pay close attention to what happens in the correctional universe. Indeed, we can observe the impacts of broad Canadian policies there. We can observe them and take them into account in our penitentiaries.

What do we see in our penitentiaries? We see that there is an overrepresentation of indigenous persons, serious mental health problems, and an overrepresentation of black inmates. The level of addictions is incredibly high. The average educational level attained by our inmates is grade 9. All of these problems have not been solved in society. And yet, it is there upstream that they must be solved.

To get back to the criminal justice system, I think it is the responsibility of police forces, prosecutors, judges and the correctional service to break down these barriers and not perpetuate this unfairness and injustice.

For my part, my role is limited to corrections. My legislative mandate is to investigate inmates' problems.

May I reiterate that solutions must be implemented, because if we continue to do exactly the same thing at the correctional level, we will not improve the performance indicators that are under the control of correctional services.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Ms. Miron, did you want to add something?

[Hazel Miron]

I just want to add to that.

I think one of the missing pieces here, as I've said before, is that in overseeing all of the healing lodges, there's a drifting away from the MOU. The community is very much waiting to be included in the memorandum of understanding that they signed with CSC. Some of the specifics in those memorandums have not been met. I understand that they're going to be meeting again to discuss some of the specifics that they need in order to go forward.

There's an under-representation of indigenous staff working at the healing lodges, especially in senior-level positions. Elders do not have the decision-making authority that they're supposed to have.

I'm speaking from experience. I worked in a healing lodge for 10 years. You can't run a healing lodge with the colonial style of thinking. You need to run it from aboriginal ways of knowing. Once that is fulfilled, I think you'll get some really good results.

I'm not saying that CSC is.... They've made some gains in that area, but I think they need to return to the table, return to the community members and chief and council, talk to them, and start working on a relationship that is positive and inclusive.

They need to consult. One of the big problems we hear about in the paper all the time is that there's no consultation with the indigenous chiefs or indigenous people. I know from speaking with some of the chiefs and councils when I do my visits at the healing lodge that they are ready. They want to make a difference in terms of reconciliation.

If we don't start having that discussion, that dialogue, then I don't think there'll be any kind of remedy going forward in terms of CSC and helping our indigenous young offenders or the ones who are already incarcerated.

Programs have to be completed and initiated within the frame of reference of indigenous people, from indigenous ways of knowing. They need to have wardens and staff members who are role models for indigenous inmates and young offenders. In my role as senior investigator, I always hear the comment, “Wow, it's so good to see an indigenous senior investigator.” I'm proud of that, because at least I give a voice.

I don't play favourites because I am a person that walks the two worlds. I walk in the white world and I walk in the indigenous world and I take the best of both. I'm speaking from my heart today because, as you know, there is a big crisis for our indigenous inmates. I am a survivor of the effects of residential school. I am a survivor of sexual abuse. There are a lot of things I can speak to.

I started working in 1995, when the model in “Creating Choices” started being used. They drifted away from “Creating Choices”. Edmonton Institution is now basically a maximum security institution. I went back for four months to see it, after “Creating Choices” sort of eroded, and it was just a prison system. There are not enough indigenous staff members to offer assistance or to act as role models for indigenous inmates there. I know that when we started with “Creating Choices,” about 70% to 80% of the women working there were indigenous, and we had success.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Miron and Mr. Picard.

Mr. MacKenzie, you have five minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the members for being here today.

First, I have to say that I agree with Mr. Picard. I think one of the problems we would all agree on is that if we cut it off before people end up there, for whatever purpose or whatever reason....

It was interesting when at one of our last meetings one of the presenters indicated that only 30% of the aboriginal community had had any feeling of tribal history or a connection to it. One of the things I was trying to bring back was that relationship between the community and the offender.

In your estimation, is one of the problems that these people have become detached from their history?

[Hazel Miron]

I believe so. In speaking with the indigenous fellows at the healing lodges, I hear a disconnect from their history.

Oftentimes they leave the reserve and get into conflict with the law, and then there are some issues. When they finally start going to programs that are indigenous-related, speaking with the elders and learning about their culture, they take another mindset in terms of their offending. There are a lot who go out of the prison system and don't come back once they've made that connection with their culture.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I thought I heard you say also, as I think Mr. Zinger indicated, that many of these aboriginal individuals, perhaps more on the youth end, do not wish to go back to the reserve but wish to be released into a more urban setting. There seem to be two disconnects in that whole situation.

Our problem as a society may very well be not the disconnect but how we work with young people so that they're not in conflict with the law in the first place. I don't know whether that's an area that you wish to comment on. It seems to me—and I think that's what Mr. Picard is saying—that unless we can find those solutions, these numbers are just going to keep escalating. There has to be a reason that it's going down in the one population and going up in the other. Ultimately we will end up with only aboriginal community members incarcerated, and that doesn't seem right.

Do you have any comments or suggestions on how we can work together to fix that problem?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Again, these are obviously very complex issues.

For the last 30 years, governments have not been able to stop or, even better, reverse the gross overrepresentation of indigenous people in jail. The incarceration rate is extraordinary. It keeps growing year after year. Various governments over that 30 years have, I think, attempted genuinely to address the issue.

I am encouraged by some of this government's approach in terms of a truly equal partnership. This certainly resonates with me. I'm quite focused on section 81.

Section 81 was introduced by the Brian Mulroney government in 1992. Those provisions under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act were seen at the time as extraordinarily creative, inventive, and so on, and they were looked at around the world as best practices.

However, , after 25 years, there have been only four agreements for a bed capacity of now just over 100 since some additional beds have been provided. In a way, by handing over to indigenous communities the responsibility—and you have to do this with the proper funding and support—of managing the care and custody of indigenous people, it parcels out and takes out all the issues with respect to culture and spirituality, because now you don't have to train your people to be more sensitive. You don't have to deal with issues around prejudice or racism. I would hope that these agreements would become the norm, not the exception.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Dr. Zinger. Thank you, Mr. MacKenzie.

Ms. Damoff, go ahead for five minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much.

Dr. Zinger, I'd like to start by commending you on your report. I know you had big shoes to fill after our previous corrections investigator. I particularly like your use of pictures in it. You commented on that yourself, but I think it gives the reader a far better sense of what is happening in corrections. Thank you for what you did with your report.

Unfortunately, I have only five minutes. I was encouraged by what you were saying about what our government is doing on this issue, because I think we would all agree that the government, in the way it views corrections in general and in particular with regard to indigenous peoples in corrections, sets the tone for everything that flows through CSC and the people who work there. As you probably know, we recently committed $65 million towards the indigenous community corrections initiatives. That's a start.

Do you think that more investment in those types of programs would be useful?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

It's difficult for me to comment. What I can tell you is that tweaks are probably no longer the required action that needs to be put forward. The government has to be bold here, because many governments before yours have attempted to tweak the system. When you say, “Well, let's do a little better on the Gladue decision”, the Gladue decision dates back to 1999 and has not made a significant dent in slowing it down. Maybe it has, but it's fairly minor. We know that the previous government, with its tough-on-crime agenda, only made things worse in terms of the composition of the inmate population, with lots of mandatory sentences as well as harsher sentences. It's time to be bold, as opposed to making minor tweaks and minor investment here and there.

If it were me, I would focus on the young people. It might take a generation, but focus on the young people so that they have what is required to live positive lives that do not drift into the criminal justice system.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

While all of us recognize that there's a concern with people before they get into corrections, the focus of our study is access to programming and the inability of indigenous inmates to access early release.

In terms of parole, my understanding is that there used to be circles that were done with elders, and those were done away with in order to do it by video conference to save money. Are you familiar with that change, and do you see a benefit in going back to the way it was done previously?

[Hazel Miron]

The circle would be beneficial, because everybody involved is there and it's done really well. There would be a benefit to going back. However, in remote areas, they do have to go with the conferencing.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay, but you do see a benefit to using the actual circle with an elder.