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.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
The fact remains that a crime is a crime, whether it is committed by an indigenous, white, or Asian person. When a court rules—
9:30 a.m.
Senator
But not all criminal offences are prosecuted. Not all criminal offences are reported, prosecuted, or people are criminalized—
November 23rd, 2017 / 9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
What I mean is that, once a charge is laid against an indigenous person, they are sent to prison. It's a complex issue. Ms. Gentile spoke of the colonial structure. My understanding from the witnesses' remarks is that the entire correctional system is not suited to indigenous communities, who do not accept or recognize it. I am wondering what we can do about that.
We are saying that we want indigenous people to be treated differently. What can we do? Had we not had a colonial system and had there never been any British or French colonizers, how would indigenous people handle criminals in their communities? We are chasing our tails, always ending up at the same place. Had the colonial powers never come to this land some 400 years ago, how would indigenous communities deal with this issue?
9:30 a.m.
Senator
One of the things I think you've implicitly suggested yourself is that we need to be looking at other measures as well. As we know, different provinces and territories are looking at things like guaranteed livable incomes. There are many people in prison because they're poor, and they're trying to negotiate poverty. There are many people in prison who are reacting to violence perpetrated against them. There are many people in prison who are self-represented and can't afford lawyers. There are many people in prison who have not been protected and have essentially been deputized to protect themselves.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
I agree with you, Senator.
The Correctional Service of Canada has work to do, but when it comes to everything that revolves around the correctional system, in other words the before and after, we'd like to know whether the Correctional Service of Canada can take a different approach. The government can invest millions of dollars, but that may not address the problem at its source, be it before the person enters the correctional system or upon leaving it.
The purpose of our study is to determine whether we can do other things, even though a number of measures are being taken to help indigenous people.
9:30 a.m.
Senator
Absolutely.
The parliamentary budget officer in 2010 said it cost $348,000 to keep a woman in minimum or medium security prisons in this country. If that money were being invested in different ways in the community, absolutely, we could see very different things.
I think the brother of Kinew James, the woman who died in federal custody in 2015, put it way more succinctly than I could. She was an indigenous woman who died of a heart attack, in part because she had mental health issues, and the presumption was that she was just trying to get attention when she was actually calling for help. She died of a heart attack. Her brother said there was no end of resources available to use more security on his sister, to put her in segregation, to put her in restraints, or to transfer her across the country, but when she wanted to take a university course or even a high school course, or when she wanted to do something to try to assist herself to get out and better herself, there was a whole, long, drawn-out policy and description of why that couldn't be done, or why it took so long. I think that's what we have to fundamentally change. These are policy decisions about how we decide to quickly spend money and not quickly spend money.
Part of the reason I think it hasn't been addressed, quite frankly, is it will require changes and involve investments that will cross the period of the electoral span. It can't happen between one election to the next, so all parties, and all of us, have to invest in ensuring that we're doing some of the things recommended, whether by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the royal commission, the Auditor General, or the parliamentary budget officer. Otherwise, we'll continue to try to spend on the short responses that are inevitably going to be more security types of responses, not necessarily investing in people.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
9:35 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all for being here.
I want to hear from any of you who wish to comment on this notion of how we select the type of institution in which someone is going to be placed—medium, minimum, or maximum security. The sense I've been getting since we've been hearing witnesses is that the process doesn't work and that's why we're seeing overrepresentation of indigenous offenders in maximum security prisons. This affects the programs that are offered and their availability. A comment was made about how quickly someone can access certain types of programming, when and where they're available, and to whom. I would like to hear your thoughts on that, what impact it has, and what we could do to fix it.
9:35 a.m.
Senator
You may know that before the Supreme Court of Canada now is a case about the entire classification scheme, which is really fundamental, as Mr. Freeland said, to who gets access to what programs and what security levels from the get-go. We know that in 2003 the Canadian Human Rights Commission found it to be discriminatory on the basis of sex, race, and disability. It disproportionately impacted women, those who are racialized, particularly indigenous prisoners, and those with disabling mental health issues. That was what led to the review by Moira Law, which was abandoned by Corrections.
We still have that process in place, and in fact, a man named Mr. Ewert has taken the Correctional Service of Canada to court. We're waiting for a Supreme Court of Canada decision now. The Elizabeth Fry Societies and the Native Women's Association of Canada, as well as a number of other groups intervened in that court case to draw attention to the fact that we need to fundamentally rethink how we classify people and how they get access to programs.
Most indigenous people, because of all the things that Mr. Freeland has already talked about, are more likely to be classified at a higher security level from the get-go on the basis of factors they can do nothing about. You can't change where you came from or what your family history is. You can't change those things. So you end up with a very narrow band of things that can be changed and that's what gets assessed. Then it's viewed through the eyes or ears or interpretation of people who are not necessarily well-skilled in that area. As we've seen from the most recent Auditor General report, 37% of security levels, even after they're done, are changed upwardly, particularly for women and indigenous women. They're increased. It's as if suddenly some person decides that, although the prisoner actually comes out as minimum security, they should really be medium. The arbitrariness of it is—
9:35 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
I want to hear from the others on this point as well, but my understanding of that statistic is that those are often cases where there are mental health issues in play.
9:40 a.m.
Senator
That is correct. Almost all of them are housed in segregation. A women's prison is multi-level so you actually have a super-max inside there.
I would encourage this committee, if you haven't already decided to do so, to go to the prisons. As I'm sure all of you know, judges and parliamentarians have a right of access to the prisons. As Louise Arbour reminded many of us a year and a half ago, any of us who are making decisions about this, whether it's this legislation that you are looking at, or studies, shouldn't be making decisions...judges shouldn't be sending people to prison and parliamentarians shouldn't be making decisions about laws if they don't know where people are going. Visiting can't give all of it to you, but visiting and meeting with people like Mr. Freeland and others who are still inside can give you some insight. If you haven't already decided to do this, I encourage you to do it. If I can assist with that, I'd be happy to.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
My time is running short, but perhaps others want to speak to this point.
9:40 a.m.
Director, Advocacy and Legal Issues, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
I would like to invite any of you to coordinate with the Elizabeth Fry Societies. We have regional advocates across the country who go into the prisons regularly. One of the major impediments to understanding what is going on inside, when you visit as a parliamentarian or as anyone else, is the lack of trust. Fortunately, as regional advocates going in regularly, we have built up that trust over a number of years and women share more freely with us. We welcome any of those invitations and we'd be happy to coordinate that.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
Sorry, pardon me for interrupting. If I may, I have a last question I want to ask with the time that's left.
Mr. Freeland, I think you commented on “lost generations” was the term you used, and graduating to adult prisons. I'm particularly concerned about that element, because it feels as if young offenders.... We're talking, say,18 to 35. I don't know what the official age bracket is.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
For someone who's over 18 but still relatively young, you would say, in a federal penitentiary, should we have any specific programs tailored for those young people so that they're not coming out and becoming recidivists and returning, and then essentially perpetuating this cycle?
9:40 a.m.
As an Individual
Native people actually were the ones who created that restorative justice. Colonial society adopted it and put it into the correctional system.
It's long been a belief of indigenous people that if youth are committing crimes against the community, the community should deal with it. They should be addressed by the community, and the healing would take place within the community. There is a wide variety of ways that native communities have done this.
Depending on the severity of the crime, it may have been something as simple as the individual working for the other family, providing for that family, and giving back to that family. Food, shelter, all that kind of stuff would be part of it.
For more serious things, people would be put in exile for a short time. They would be looked after by the community, but they would be living outside of the community, learning how to take care of themselves again. They would be talking with the elders to learn how to reintegrate their spiritual beliefs before coming back to the community.
The Odawa Native Friendship Centre has a form of restorative justice program for adults who end up in jail. It's the community justice program, actually. What this means is that instead of serving time, before they get sentenced, they take the community justice program. They're seen by a circle of elders and community members who decide how to best handle the situation, and that person does what is recommended. Then their sentence is commuted or quashed altogether.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Thank you, to all of you. It's been really helpful to hear from all of you about your experiences and your knowledge.
I have a bunch of questions.
I want to start with you, Senator Pate, about something you raised.
You talked about oversight and developing a parliamentary Senate committee oversight system. I have a series of questions about that. The first is, what would the ultimate oversight system look like? You said you would prefer that it not be a parliamentary Senate, that it would be judicial. First of all, what would that look like?
9:45 a.m.
Senator
It's not an original thought, I have to say. Louise Arbour came up with it after she looked at what happened at the Prison for Women in 1994, after a series of incidents resulted in her conducting an inquiry. She recommended that in situations where the treatment of a prisoner amounts to the mismanagement of a sentence, where basically a person ends up in segregation, accumulating more sentences, or being mistreated in the ways that Mr. Freeland has described, in fact that is not what the judge contemplated when he or she sentenced that person to prison. So wherever those kinds of allegations are made, there should be a mechanism that allows for individuals to go back to court to have their sentence reconsidered. Particularly where someone spent.... She was looking at a case where women had spent more than a year in segregation, for instance, and they had been stripped, shackled, and all the rest.
As to that kind of judicial oversight, in my view, I would support what Louise Arbour recommended. That would mean that a judge would also have the authority to reduce a sentence or to end a sentence and to recognize that the purpose of the sentence was not to continually punish someone. That's one. In terms of what I was thinking of, given that that has not been implemented to date, if this committee wants to recommend it, I think there would be at least some support in the Senate.
One other measure would be to have the kind of accountability where you could do some visits and actually see some of what happens and have a body responsible for routinely calling to account, not just through the Auditor General and the correctional investigator, but on all of these measures, whether it's security classifications, whether there's a robust grievance system, programming, releasing, or whether people are getting out at their dates.
Also discussed during the inquiry were things like people being rewarded for the positive things they do. A greater release rate for a warden would be a positive; greater access to programs, work releases, conditional releases, section 81 agreement, and section 84 agreements would be mechanisms whereby you register someone's success as a correctional officer or as a warden. I think the opposite is true. We have created a system that has become more and more risk averse. I say “we” because it's a collective issue. It has become more and more repressive. If you look at even the model that was supposed to be in place for the prisons for women, you'll see they were supposed to be community based. Initially they had very little program space because the presumption was that people would be going into the community for programs, and community groups would only come in and work with those individuals who could not enter the community because of their sentence.
For instance, if you went to Truro, you'd see it was one of the first ones built. The gymnasium is right at the front door because the presumption was that community members would be coming in and participating in events. That has virtually never happened. But this committee could go and meet there and hold a public meeting, for instance, because it has the gymnasium built in that way. All of the rest of them now are behind razor wire and eye-in-the-sky cameras and security devices, but that was not how it was intended.
Many of us recognize that part of the reason enhanced security happened was that, as the Arbour commission was happening they were moving people into those prisons when they weren't ready, and people did take off. They were all found. They were all returned. Some of them turned themselves in. Some just went home. There wasn't an increased risk to society, but that became a rationale for a continuous increase in security.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Thank you.
I now actually have a paper version, rather than having to refer to my phone all the time for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action. One of them I wanted to refer to was call to action number 36.
Mr. Freeland, it seems to touch a bit upon something you mentioned. Call to action number 36 says:
We call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to work with Aboriginal communities to provide culturally relevant services to inmates on issues such as substance abuse, family and domestic violence, and overcoming the experience of having been sexually abused.
There's a bit of a dichotomy. We have two issues. One is less focus on programming and more on decarceration, and I take that to heart. As long as we're talking about the programming piece as well, you had mentioned about bringing community in to be part of the programming, if I understand correctly. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about that.
