Public Safety Committee on Nov. 21st, 2017

[Terry Teegee]

Thank you, Matthew.

One of the things we wanted to see were police interactions with indigenous people, such as in Saskatchewan and with the municipal police force. They are exempt from freedom of information legislation. If Regional Chief Bobby Cameron wants information in regard to how many people are incarcerated in Saskatchewan, he can't find out that information, and I think some jurisdictions would not provide that information.

It would be useful to have some way to see what kind of interactions are happening. Is it stopping for suspicion, or is it stopping him because he was drinking and driving? Looking at the statistics of why some of our people are incarcerated and why they are stopped by the police is vital to understanding what is going on.

That's just one case that we know of. I'm sure there are many more out there.

[Dale LeClair]

Mr. Chair, Monsieur Dubé, I think there are a lot of statistics out there. The whole matrix, whether we look at it within the context of the judicial system, the policing system, or the correctional system, I think it's all there.

When we take a look at other educational outcomes, take a look at children in care, or take an understanding of drug and alcohol treatment centres and those kinds of things, we see there's a tremendous amount of information out there for us to act upon. I think we always tend to take a narrow focus. You know, we get into our little sectoral views and say that this is the problem, something like recidivism rates of first nations men and women or Métis men and women coming out of prison. We get stuck on that, and then we analyze and rationalize why they have been brought back into the system.

I think it's time for action. As for compiling data to understand poverty, understand racism and colonialism, I think it's there. It think it's just to act on that now.

The fundamental basis for recognizing the issues is there. I think we need to take that and use that and analyze those stats to say where some of the targeted areas are that we need to focus on.

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

With regard to young people, a lot has been said about education and child care in the comments you've made, and certainly those things are very important. However, one thing that certainly shocked me was hearing department officials from Correction Service of Canada say that despite all the programs they offer for those who unfortunately are now in the system, in the penitentiaries, there are no programs tailored specifically to younger offenders to help them, the ones who risk even higher rates of recidivism.

Given the large youth population, would you feel there should be programs specifically tailored to helping those folks deal with perhaps addiction issues or mental health issues? After all, with a young person who gets out, when we want to reintegrate them into society, it's even more important, because—and it sounds crass to say—they have many more years ahead, and we want them to be full members of our community.

[Terry Teegee]

I think here is a really difficult situation for many of the jurisdictions.

I can speak for Carrier Sekani. Depending on that person's lineage and ancestry, you need somebody there for that culturally appropriate rehabilitation. If that person is Métis, we need a Métis person there.

This is where we need more resources for our children connecting back to our culture, connecting back to the land. I know for a fact that these young offenders—I wish I had statistics for it—have more of a chance of breaking the cycle once they have culturally appropriate restorative justice—

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

Pardon me for interrupting, but my time is limited. In the context of those culturally appropriate programs, do you believe that there should be a specific aspect for young offenders?

[Terry Teegee]

Yes, and this is part of it. As young offenders, they need to have a culturally appropriate program. If they're Carrier, they should have one that's culturally appropriate to a Carrier, and the age of that person really doesn't matter, because to me, if an elder is speaking to me, whether I'm my age now or as a younger person, the wisdom that I get from that elder, whether I'm a chief or not a chief, is quite important.

I think the access to the right people, the right culture, is vitally important.

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

Do you have anything to add?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have the proverbial 40 seconds.

[Dale LeClair]

The absolute clear answer is yes. I think the regional chief has expressed the other aspects of correctional programming.

If stats tell me anything.... It's a very well-known fact that when you're in prison and you talk with an aboriginal inmate, if you say, “How long are you in for?”, he says, “Well, I'm just doing life on the instalment plan.”

We have to do better work, especially with young people. We have to do a better job outside the system with young people as well.

The answer is clearly yes.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Ms. Damoff is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for being here. I appreciate all your testimony about the issues in communities and with young people and colonialization and residential schools. This committee looks at corrections, so that's why our study was focused on what we can do for people who are in the system to make sure that they are accessing programming and early release, because that's just not happening now.

I invite you both to come to the status of women committee, because we're studying indigenous women in corrections, where our mandate will be much broader and include access to justice and that type of thing.

You touched on the deputy commissioner and whether we should have that. The other issue that has come up is the need for indigenous corrections officers and parole officers, and the lack of people who are getting into that profession. When the Union of Solicitor General Employees was here, they said that it would be really good to have people from corrections actually go into the community, and also to provide resources for people to access the courses they need. Not everybody can support themselves for three months without income to do what they need to do to be able to work in corrections.

Do you agree with that sentiment in terms of doing recruitment by actually going into the communities? Do you have any other suggestions on how we can recruit more people to work in the system?

[Dale LeClair]

That's a great question and observation. When we talk about the corrections issue, as you may or may not know, at one time there wasn't an assistant commissioner for women. Certainly after the Arbour report and growing further with the service developing Okimaw Ohci, which is an indigenous female healing lodge in Saskatchewan, I think the focus is necessary. While I was there, I did put pen to paper into a national aboriginal hiring program. We were successful in Saskatchewan in growing the numbers, but not successful in relation to the rate of incarceration, certainly.

I've always used the adage, in speaking with thousands of offenders, that it's easy to blame the system in that a white person arrested you, a white person put you in jail, and now you have a white jailer, so you're just mad at the system. You develop these negative tendencies toward white people. I'm putting it bluntly.

When we developed the healing lodge concept and the program, these were facilities that were run by indigenous people. Pê Sâkâstêw has 60% to 70% indigenous employees. We took that reasoning and that blame away from them. I would say the same thing.

As a senior correctional official I also spend time working within the system, solving employee-on-employee racial disputes. I can be totally honest with the committee: when I started the healing lodge program, I was told by wardens and regional deputy commissioners that they would never build a healing lodge in their region. They just didn't think it was the right way to go. However, slowly and ever more slowly, I guess, eventually the healing lodge concept, the Pathways concept grew, and as we saw more and more indigenous men and women coming to the system, I think we did see incremental success. I would say to your question, yes, there has to be another concerted effort.

I haven't been around for 10 or 12 years in the correctional system, and both the deputy minister now, Gina Wilson, and I worked very hard, along with our team, to push these things forward. I think there's time for another review and another task force to look at these issues, because corrections is about a human system. It's not about bars and concrete. It's about a human system and those people working in those systems. We need to go out there and identify people who understand indigenous people, and those can be indigenous people or non-indigenous people. The more we fill our systems with indigenous people who want to help and understand the system, the better.

I would say you need to go out there and reinforce. The only problem is that most people don't think the first place they want to work is in a prison, because you get inundated—

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

But they do. If you know—

[Dale LeClair]

But there's a horrible environment. I don't mean to argue—

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

No, but we're not—

[Dale LeClair]

People get jaded.

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

When I was in Winnipeg, I was actually surprised when I went to Stony Mountain and saw how many people did consider that a good career and how many people had worked there as summer students. That's because they live in a community where it's considered a good career. I think it depends on.... You and I could go on all day with this.

[Dale LeClair]

The only thing I want to say is, let's get that message out, because I think you are right. As I was saying, it's not your first choice to go to Stony Mountain or Kent Institution, but you might want to go to Pê Sâkâstêw or Okimaw Ohci.

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

I don't know if you're aware that in the last budget the government committed $65 million to provide more resources for community development officers, so there has been more money put into it.

Did you want to add anything to that, Mr. Teegee?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have one minute.

[Terry Teegee]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I am sorry about the time.

[Terry Teegee]

I think having more indigenous people within the system would probably be a good thing. One of the issues we're dealing with in the indigenous communities is policing. We have indigenous police forces that are grossly underfunded, with no pay equity and outdated equipment. That's within the correctional system, and in this whole system we're already seeing inequities in regard to our people who are trying to police many of our communities.

I know that's a little bit different, but it's kind of related. I do believe that if we have more indigenous people within the correction system, perhaps they could provide insight to you, as a committee, if we brought indigenous people in to let us know what the problems are within the system. I think that would be—

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

We had an indigenous parole officer here at our last meeting.

That's my time.