Public Safety Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2017

[Neal Freeland]

Any program that deals with an indigenous offender right now, if it was breaking barriers or cognitive skills, it's just with that inmate, that convict. Plus, you're the ones in the program. I think if you want to change the individual, then you're going to need the community. The community raises individuals. In our community, that's the way it's done. I think any time you bring in native elders, the indigenous people listen, whether they're male or female. If you involve their families, their mothers, their fathers, their brothers and sisters, you'll create a family unit that operates on the same level. If they've all taken breaking barriers together, the mother and the father, the brother and sister, and the children know what that means, so every step of the way that individual has a support system already in place for them out there that knows what they've been through, what they're expected to do, what they've learned, and has the tools to deal with that individual just as that individual does, so the inmate has the tools and his family has the tools as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Dabrusin, and thank you, Mr. Freeland.

Mr. Motz.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our three witnesses for being here today.

I want to make a statement up front, and then I have some specific questions related to some existing programs.

Ms. Gentile, you stated that the focus should be on getting indigenous women out of prison, and I would suggest that our focus should be on working to ensure women and all indigenous people don't end up in conflict with the justice system in the first place.

Having said that, we heard earlier testimony from a witness who suggested that their band receives more than enough funding from the federal government. Their conflict is that this money doesn't trickle down from chief and council to programs on reserve. Programs and opportunities do exist.

From all of your experiences, is the aboriginal head start in urban and northern communities program an effective program?

[Neal Freeland]

My understanding is that the aboriginal head start deals with preschoolers. Am I correct?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Yes. It mostly focuses on youth to get them accustomed to their culture.

[Neal Freeland]

I don't have any experience with that, sorry.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

That's all right.

[Savannah Gentile]

If I could just comment on your earlier statement about funding, on-reserve child welfare receives, on average, 38% less funding than elsewhere, so funding discrepancies exist as well that need to be addressed.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I won't get into a debate on that particular issue. My constituency has the largest reserve in Canada, and I spend a lot of time with them. They've become great friends of mine. I hear of a lot of things that work and that definitely do not work. One of the things they make very clear—not chief and council, but many people who have lived through the things we've heard about in this committee—is that we need the programming that can be available; however, the federal money that comes to that reserve for those programs is diverted elsewhere.

What about the aboriginal skills and employment training strategy? That program has been around for a while. Is it working? We've heard repeatedly from witnesses that.... My focus has always been on once they're in conflict with the justice system, absolutely there appears to be some systemic prejudice, and we need to work on that. We understand that, but my focus has always been on how we prevent people from being in conflict to begin with.

We've heard repeatedly that there are poverty issues, education issues, a lot of issues. The aboriginal skills and employment training strategy has been in place for some time, and I'm just wondering, from your experience, whether it's effective.

[Kim Pate]

It depends on where and when, and by whom, absolutely. Those are—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

When you say “by whom”, do you mean by who delivers it?

[Kim Pate]

Yes, and who's involved with it.

In communities where, in particular, to go back to Mr. Freeland's point, the elders have been consulted and have been really part of driving the initiatives within communities, whether it's justice initiatives, early childhood initiatives, or dry community initiatives, in my experience those are the ones that have been most effective.

Earlier this year I was in New Zealand meeting with some folks. One of the things that a number of Maori communities have done, which I know that some of the indigenous communities are looking at here, is taking resources that have previously been used for criminal justice issues and redirecting them to things such as early childhood education support services. They're seeing a huge difference in the rates of young people who are engaged, or more to the point, not engaged in criminal justice and are creating hope.

That was the same message we heard from young people in this country from up north when Senator Sinclair, Senator Boniface, and I met with some young people a few weeks ago. They want those kinds of investments made with their elders and with their communities for them to be able to have greater opportunities.

Mr. Dubé raised a question earlier about young people in the system. One of the areas that you need to be aware of and part of the reason we have a jettisoning of young people into the adult system is that we changed the youth system back in 1984 and actually stopped allowing young people to lose their records when they finish their time as youth. That might sound like a minor thing to some people or it might sound like a big thing, but it was a major issue because many young people, as we know, age out in terms of behaviour. Young people would be able to start as a first time.... They would get a new option. Most of those young people, as you would know from your former career, then would not continue on.

Therefore, we've also created systems that actually provide almost trajectories into the adult criminal justice system, and that's part of it. Those who already start with the greatest degree of marginalization are more likely to end up in the system as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Motz.

This panel is particularly challenging to the clock.

Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all of you for being here today.

I want to ask about culturally appropriate approaches here. I think it was Mr. Freeland who used that phrase. I want to use that as a way of getting to the issue of Gladue reports, their utility and their potential, to what extent you think they're effective in addressing, frankly, some of the injustices you've seen. That's open to whoever wishes to take the question.

[Neal Freeland]

From what I know of Gladue reports, I think a recent article said that about 80% of the time they're just ignored or they're not implemented by the courts. More often than not, Gladue reports are written not by somebody who's trained in Gladue writing. They're written by the same parole officers. Once a person is convicted of a crime, is already sentenced and in prison or in jail, a Gladue report is then written on them. It was my understanding that the Gladue report was meant to be written after they're arrested and before they get sentenced or before they have a trial. That needs to be implemented if they're going to be effective at all.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Senator Pate.

[Kim Pate]

I've tried this everywhere and I'll try it again here. I'd like to see us not call them “Gladue reports” anymore. Jamie Gladue never got the benefit of this provision, and in fact, that provision was used to hide the racism and misogyny that was visited on her. But that's another story for another day.

Paragraph 718(2)(e) of the Criminal Code, which is what we're talking about, is where the genesis of the idea of the Gladue reports comes from. Paragraph 718(2)(e) was implemented for the same reason the CCRA was implemented. Part of it was a sentencing principle not just for indigenous people but particularly for indigenous people to try to reduce the number of people who were going to prison. Now it's being applied not just to judges who are sentencing. It's supposed to be looked at by police officers who are examining whether to charge someone. It's supposed to be looked at by parole officers who are determining what programs people should have access to and their release options. It's supposed to be looked at now by the entire system. But the provisions in the Criminal Code say that where individuals have had all of these strikes against them to start with, we should be looking at a capacity-building model, not a deficit model. Some very good Gladue reports will describe all kinds of things we should be doing differently, but essentially they list all the deficits that people have had in their lives and all the horrible things they've experienced without necessarily then prescribing the remedy of how we prevent them from ending up in the system at all, or further, and then how we get them out.

I think one of the things we should do is go back to paragraph 718(2)(e) and ask what the legislative intent was. It was designed to actually reduce the numbers and encourage us all to figure out how we build capacity, whether it's in classification schemes, security schemes, or sentencing, and focus on the deficits.

If we focus on a deficit model, we take something that is a need, like housing, or something like sexual abuse, and say that actually creates a risk. We translate it into a risk factor and then you get a prison sentence. Say, we take a capacity model. There are a few examples in this country where we've done it with young people and with women, and I'd like to see more examples of it done with men as well. We actually say that if the main issue is that you were sexually abused and responded to that by reacting, by having to essentially be deputized to protect yourself—so you started to use instrumental violence as well—and you really had no place to live, then what we should be looking at is how we build those supports around you. We shouldn't send you to prison for punishment for that, but build those supports around you, and then expect some individuals to work with you to model the type of behaviour we want to see. It's much more labour-intensive, but it's way more productive in terms of lower overall human, social, and financial cost.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.

Mr. MacKenzie.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you to the members of the panel for being here today.

Mr. Freeland, I'm very interested in your life in the whole picture of society. One of things that we've heard, and something you've probably illustrated as well as anybody, is the role of the elders and what it really means to people from your community. You've indicated that part of the problem with the elders in the prison system is that the prison system chooses who the elders are and that goes against the grain, and I understand that. It certainly makes sense.

What could we hope for, and how could we enhance the elders being involved more in the community before young people get into conflicts with the law? Is there something bigger society can do to enhance that?

[Neal Freeland]

Stop taking native kids from native families. There are more native children in child and family services custody now than there was in the entire sixties scoop. Those children aren't going to access native elders at all.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

It would be the family. That's what I'm wondering. How do we get the elders involved in the whole family picture before those children are removed and eliminate or at least minimize the need to remove them from provincial...?

[Neal Freeland]

The problem is that it's not that the children are removed when they're five years old or two years old; it's that they're removed when they're born. You're a native person and your child is removed from your home because you're native. Child and family services are more often than not waiting for your child to be born, and then it's taken.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

But that's a provincial issue by and large, right?

[Neal Freeland]

It's a societal issue.