Evidence of meeting #86 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 community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
How do we fix that? How do we try to get the elders involved with the young people in the community, before babies are born even, if that's what the issue is?
10:05 a.m.
As an Individual
You need to approach the elders in a good way. You need to ask them.... See, when I want an elder to help, I go with tobacco because that's the way it's done. If I want an elder to take part in Kim's family because she's going to have children, then I go with tobacco and I ask the elder to help. Not every family is going to do that every single time it has a child. There aren't elders for every single family. Our people just don't have the resources with the elders anymore because of residential schools, because of the sixties scoop, because of the ongoing taking of our children. There needs to be a way to promote the teachings, the language, and the medicines by society at large for the native people. I think....
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
I'd like to focus on Mr. Freeland because I think he has many of the answers that many of us would look for.
Do elders come forward? How do you know who an elder is?
10:05 a.m.
As an Individual
Elders don't necessarily come forward in the traditional sense, like a Roman Catholic priest; an elder doesn't come forward and go to school to be an elder. There are some priests, obviously, who feel it inside themselves and know they're going to be a priest, so that's what they do with their lives. There are native people who know that they're going down that spiritual path, down that path of medicine people, so they work at it. Then there are others who just live their life that way, and they're recognized by the community as being compassionate, as being respectful, as living by the seven grandfather teachings, as living by the medicine wheel teachings, as living for the community and doing everything for the community. Then the community recognizes them and says, “You know what? We're going to come to you because you've always been there for us and you've always helped us.”
An elder isn't necessarily somebody who sets out to be an elder. All the elders I know don't particularly like calling themselves elders because it's not a title. It's not a prestigious thing. It's a responsibility. It's a burden. It's something that you carry and that you live, because you have no real choice but to do that. That's what you are. That's what you've always been, and that's what you grow to become.
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Freeland, a couple of times you mentioned something about involving families. One of the things that I've heard when I've talked to parole officers is that an issue for many indigenous offenders when they're getting out is that they don't have that family structure. If it's a privileged white person who's gone to prison, when that person gets out, Uncle Fred gives them a job. They stay with their brother. They have a whole support system. An indigenous offender who gets out ends up in a homeless shelter in a major urban centre.
What do you do if you can't involve the family, whether it's because of generational trauma or whatever the reasons might be? If it's difficult for you to answer, I'm fine if someone else wants to respond.
10:10 a.m.
As an Individual
I think you touched base on that: indigenous offenders are released to urban centres. If you take them from the reserve, if that's where they're coming from, if they're entering the criminal justice system from the reserve and they're not being released back to their home community, then they're not going to have their home community with them.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
What if they've come from an urban centre? They've moved there to go to school or high school, stayed in the urban centre, and don't have a community to go back to. I think that's one of the things that Corrections was trying to deal with in terms of giving some money to these community development officers.
Senator Pate touched on finding ways to send offenders somewhere where they can learn the ways of their culture, and then perhaps integrate back into the community. It just seems like there's a vacuum there for offenders when they get out.
10:10 a.m.
As an Individual
There can be. I'll speak about Ottawa, because that's where I came to. Ottawa has the Odawa Native Friendship Centre. The Métis Nation of Ontario is here. The ITK is here. Wabano Centre is here. They have mental health resources there. The Native Women's Association of Canada is here. The AFN is here. CAP is here. There are a lot of indigenous resources for offenders getting out here. Grassroots organizations such as Odawa have a lot of programming built around the community. It's for the community.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Would it make sense for Corrections to be working with those types of organizations to try to provide those supports when people are getting out of prison?
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Senator Pate, you mentioned something about rewarding wardens. One of the concerns I have in speaking to people in the system is that the programming—and we've heard testimony on this—used to be that, if you were a sex offender, you got this program. There were a number of programs, and in order to cut costs they were all lumped into one program.
The programs themselves may not be effective for people who are in the system, so rewarding someone to complete a program that isn't going to help them.... Mr. Freeland, I think you spoke to that as well, doing programming that isn't.... You touched on making sure that we have culturally appropriate programming. I wonder if you could expand on that. Also, I would give a caution that completing just any program isn't going to be effective.
10:10 a.m.
Senator
I would start by saying, first and foremost, that any connection you can make to the community from the beginning, the first day of a sentence.... If you can't prevent someone from ending up in prison, then starting the community connections from the first day is really important. That was the model that was outlined by the task force on federally sentenced women back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It was outlined that way because it had merit. I think that too often we go to what look like broad-based cost savings, but, in fact, if we looked longer term than just a few years, we'd see they are massively costly in terms of human costs, social costs, and fiscal costs. I think that is what has happened with the programming within the Correctional Service of Canada and the focus on bringing everything inside.
As Mr. Freeland has said, there are many connections in communities. Really, one of the models that was examined when we were doing the Canadian Human Rights Commission review was an examination of someone who comes with this constellation of issues, whatever they may be, the resources attached to those issues, and the individual having some say in who they work with, whether it's an elder or a particular therapist.
Very few times has that happened, in my experience, but when it has, those have been the instances where everybody says, “This is amazing.” I was just at a parole hearing on Friday where there were exactly those such responses. They said the responsiveness of this person to an outside therapist who came in was amazing. It was not amazing to those of us who have been around the system for a very long time; it was absolutely predictable.
We need to be continually looking outside, and if the person can't go outside for whatever reason, then bring the community in. But, yes, the cookie-cutter approach to these programs has been largely ineffective. It's not that they don't teach good skills, but they're living skills, life skills approaches that preferably would be taught.
I want to just—
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Before you do, we're well over Ms. Damoff's five minutes.
Mr. Dubé has the last three minutes, so you might very cleverly and skilfully respond to one of Mr. Dubé's—
10:15 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
It won't be cleverly. It will just be flat out, if you want to complete the thought.
10:15 a.m.
Senator
Thank you.
To the earlier question about what we can be doing earlier when it's provincial and territorial jurisdiction, we have the ability to create national standards, which have largely been eviscerated over time. That's one thing.
Also, when we're talking about indigenous people, particularly those under the Indian Act, there are ways to attach resources. We spend a lot of money when we take people out of their homes. There are all kinds of resources in child welfare and foster systems, but virtually no money goes into their homes while those children are there to assist their families to deal with the issues that are facing them, whatever those issues are.
I would encourage that when you're looking at some of those long-term issues, we actually talk about how we keep those resources in the home so that families can bring those individuals in. It's horrendous, the number of people I've known and walked with over the years whose parents, in their home, were desperately trying to get supports for them, whether it was for learning disabilities or behavioural issues. Whatever it was, the minute they were put into foster care there was a whole phalanx of professionals apparently made available, not always in a positive way. The fact that those resources aren't made available in the home to start with is a travesty, quite frankly, and one of the things we should all work towards changing.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
It falls to me to thank each of you for your testimony here this morning, particularly Mr. Freeland for the power of your lived experience. We seldom hear that in this setting. Thank you in particular for your contribution.
With that, ladies and gentleman, we will suspend and go in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]