Thank you. I'll take a minute to let all that sink in.
I want to apologize. As you may know, I have just come from the endodontist and have had a root canal, so I'll try not to drool all over my papers and to be as articulate as possible.
I want to start by acknowledging that we are on the unceded territory of the Algonquin people.
I've spent the better part of the last four decades going into, but most importantly, unlike Mr. Freeland, being able to freely walk out of prisons, first for young people, then for men, and for the last 25 or 26 years, for women. The impact of colonization on indigenous peoples in this country is painfully obvious. I think Mr. Freeland has very succinctly expressed the whole complexity of that, so I won't try to in any way reframe that.
I'd like to talk a bit about what is possible with the current legislation and what's possible for your committee as well as the committees in the Senate that are looking at this issue. It's important to know that the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, when it was introduced, was part of a human rights legislative scheme. It was seen as human rights legislation, a primary component and objective of which—if you go back and read Hansard from this place and also the other place—was to de-incarcerate in particular indigenous people, but more generally to reduce the numbers of people in prison. This was started with the Daubney report and resulted in the CCRA being developed as legislation that was aimed from the get-go, from section 4 right through, at getting people out.
I want to talk about a few of the sections that have been not just underutilized but developed along policy lines by the Correctional Service of Canada in ways that absolutely restrict the legislative intent of those provisions.
In particular, I want to talk about section 29, which allows for the transfer of people out of prisons into health and other facilities, particularly those who have physical health issues. This could also apply, and has been applied, to those with mental health issues. There are exchange-of-services agreements between the Correctional Service of Canada and all of the provinces and territories. Primarily though, these are around emergent physical health types of care. There need to be agreements in place for mental health care.
The first thing you'll hear back from Corrections is that they've tried to do that but that there are inadequate services in the community. That's partially true and partially not true.
I have been in discussion with some of the same health services that the Correctional Service of Canada has been in touch with, and I'm told that the stall is on the federal side. You will hear from the Correctional Service of Canada that the problem is on the provincial and territorial side.
I don't pretend to tell you exactly where the problem lies. I do know that with an investment of the resources that are currently being used to jail people, those resources could be in place in provincial and territorial settings to provide mental health services, which I dare say would benefit not just those who are in prison right now but also those who might face prison, or the community as a whole.
In addition, there is section 76, which requires Corrections to actually develop from the day someone enters prison—and I'll just underscore here what the Auditor General said in chapter 5 of the most recent report released this week. They're supposed to be working on developing community release plans so that everything about what's happening with the individual in prison is designed to assist them to ultimately integrate into the community in a way that's safe for the community, for themselves, and for others.
Section 77 requires that the Correctional Service of Canada consult with and involve women's groups and those who have expertise. This was because of the start of the influx of women into the system at the time that the CCRA was coming into effect, something which, as I'm sure Ms. Gentile has already covered, continues to this day. In fact, it's the women, particularly indigenous women and women with mental health issues, and if they all intersect, they are the fastest-growing prison population. Section 77 hasn't been fully implemented.
Section 80 requires the same for indigenous communities. There is supposed to be consultation and involvement of indigenous communities.
Then we have sections 81 and 84, which I think you've already heard a bit about. Section 81 allows for individuals to serve their sentences in the community. Section 84 allows for individuals, particularly indigenous prisoners, to be conditionally released into the community.
If you look at those policies, you will see that, in fact, they have been severely restricted from what the legislation allows. The policies will indicate that only individuals at minimum security.... You heard from Claire Carefoot, who runs Buffalo Sage, earlier this week, I believe. She would talk about the fact that we need to see more of those institutions. I would encourage you to look at the legislation and what the legislators intended and recognize that part of the reason we haven't seen full implementation of those provisions, in my view, is that over the last couple of decades—it's 25 years since the legislation was introduced—very few indigenous communities have even known about those provisions, and if they did, they were told that they had to build institutions in order to implement them.
That is not accurate if you look at the legislation. It is accurate if you look at the policy decisions. In fact, anybody, at any level, including Mr. Freeland when he was in custody, could have been accepted into their community if their community applied to the Minister of Public Safety and requested to have a section 81 agreement. An agreement could be built and resources developed around the needs that Mr. Freeland himself, as he has very ably articulated, would have desired to participate in. That is not the way it's being characterized to indigenous communities and it's not the way the policy has been developed.
What Ms. Carefoot didn't tell you is when they first opened only the second healing lodge for women in the country, initially no indigenous women were qualified to go there. None of them had low enough security. None of them had access to the types of programs. In fact, they had to be reclassified in order to get indigenous women there. The corrections policies at various levels interfered with a very good intent to open one new facility, but then not have any women eligible to go there.
I commend to you the sections of the Auditor General's report that talk about the fact that from day one the classification system was problematic, and the manner in which individuals were able to access programs. We know from the most recent correctional investigator's report that more than half of the women who are classified as maximum security are indigenous women.
That is all part of the same trajectory. As Mr. Freeland has articulated, part of that stems from the static factors that exist in most indigenous people's lives. Remember, it was only in 1990 that Mr. Justice Cawsey in Alberta did a review of the number of men—he didn't look at women—who had been in the criminal justice system, and found that 90% of the indigenous men who reached the age of 30 had criminal records. We're talking about vast overrepresentation.
The other issues that are identified are a lack of adequate grievance processes and complaint processes, a lack of access to justice, period, and lack of oversight. In terms of security classifications, in 2004 and 2005, the Correctional Service of Canada actually hired someone to look at the classification scheme for women in particular. They hired a woman named Dr. Moira Law. When she came back a year later with a recommendation to start all women prisoners at minimum security, which she determined after she had interviewed staff, prisoners, and outside individuals, including the correctional investigator, it was never implemented. Yet, in the response to the Auditor General's report, the Correctional Service of Canada says they will now be undertaking a review. They have excellent research at their hands that they have never completely implemented.
As I know my time is near a close, finally, I would like to propose that this place and this committee, or presumably this committee, and the Senate committee jointly conduct oversight reviews at least on an annual basis. The correctional investigator reports to the Minister of Public Safety and the report is then tabled in Parliament. We need judicial oversight, but in the interim, in order to ensure that the legislative mechanisms and intent are both adhered to and implemented, I would propose that we look at a mechanism whereby all parties and a cross-House and cross-chamber committee could actually look at that kind of oversight on an annual basis.
I look forward to your questions.