Public Safety Committee on Feb. 1st, 2021

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

In any institution, I think that it usually takes several failures before a decision is made to completely abandon a practice. In the situation at hand, you said that the issue involved an isolated case and that you had never seen anything like it in your career. However, the decision was made to immediately eliminate this practice.

Perhaps in this case, rather than pointing the finger at the people who made a bad decision, the goal is to discredit Quebec's practices. As we know, these practices are different from the practices in other parts of Canada.

Do you think that blaming Maison Painchaud is a bad excuse as we try to resolve the situation?

[David Henry]

As you said, it's a very special case. It isn't always possible to make generalizations based on a very special case.

Maison Painchaud has been around for 53 years. You can imagine the thousands of residents who have been housed and guided by Maison Painchaud over the past 53 years. As far as I know, in 53 years, only one person has committed a murder during their stay at the halfway house: Eustachio Gallese. It's really a special case. I find it unfortunate that generalizations are being made based on the case.

The direct supervision model has been implemented and tested in Quebec since the 1980s. Year after year, the assessments conducted by the CSC with organizations that carry out direct supervision have always been very good and complimentary regarding the work accomplished. The work was accomplished as a result of the joint efforts of the CSC staff, the parole officer and the parole officer supervisor.

If direct supervision weren't working or had serious shortcomings, the recidivism rates would be much higher than the rates presented to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madam Michaud.

Mr. Harris, please go ahead for the final five minutes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

I'd like to direct this question to the parole officers.

I'm looking at the report that was prepared in May and released in June 2019, which I have a copy of. I note that workload is a very important issue. As you pointed out, Mr. Stapleton, in your evidence, 70% of parole officers reported that they don't feel they can adequately protect the public given the current workload.

I think it is important for anyone listening to this to know that we have parole officers in the institutions who are assessing the capability of someone for parole, and there are parole officers in the community as well. You people are perhaps the ones who are assessing the risk more than anyone else in terms of each individual's potential for reoffending.

I see that some of the workload issues are identified here in responses to questions as staff reductions, lack of resources, parole officer positions being left vacant, insufficient clerical support despite increased workloads, other support positions being left vacant, and cutbacks to funding, all of which speak to an inadequate number of people doing the jobs you do. Yet we heard from the correctional investigator that the ratio of correctional officers to inmates in our prisons is higher than it is in almost any other comparable institution.

Could you square that circle for me? Are we dealing with a misallocation of resources? Are we dealing with a lack of spending the money in the right place, or are we dealing with a lack of money altogether?

[David Neufeld]

I'll quickly comment on that.

Ms. Damoff indicated earlier that about 6% to 7% of the overall Correctional Service of Canada budget is spent in the community, and the vast majority is spent on institution structure and of course dynamic security. I think it's very important to understand that how much money we invest in reintegration is absolutely important. In terms of overall work in the Correctional Service of Canada, I would say every employee plays a very practical and important role in the reintegration of offenders, but it's very important to understand that if you're not investing in the community at the same time, that's where the rubber meets the road. For the offender who's living inside the institution, it's not like life on the outside, and it's important to understand that anybody can do time. I don't know if you've ever heard that saying, that anybody can do time. It can be a very hard time, but when you come into the community, you have to now live again and have a bank account and work and support your family, perhaps. For whoever's a part of your life, there are always problems.

If resources aren't put in the right places, it's absolutely an issue. I really do believe that CSC needs to take a look at how much money it's investing in the community. The institutions are absolutely important but there needs to be more money invested in terms of how we're doing supervision in the community.

I'll turn it over to Stan.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I would just add that one of the parole officers replied to the survey by saying, “I don't have enough time to see my offenders on my caseload and write reports. It's important to meet regularly with offenders...so you gain a better understanding of the person you are working with. The workload doesn't allow for that.”

That seems to say it all, Mr. Neufeld, in terms of the consequences of an inadequate level of community service support for the parole officer and the community risk.

Rather than go to Mr. Stapleton on that point, I would like to discuss another point that is raised in your report that has to do with a lack of resources for assessing offender risk. Speaking of offenders, for example, the CSC methodology for assessing risk ends up with an overrepresentation of certain offenders, primarily indigenous offenders, and higher levels of security classification; and that affects their ability to get effective programs or opportunities while serving time. That was pointed out in a Globe and Mail article in recent days, and you say that too many offenders don't qualify for programs and actually need them.

Again, in terms of assessing the risk and the ability of someone to operate in the community, they do have to have access to programs within the institutions as well.

Would you or Mr. Stapleton care to comment on that problem, the lack of actual programs available in the institution for people to prepare themselves to be able to live on the outside?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I think that's a very important question, but Mr. Harris unfortunately has not left you any time to answer. However, we do have a minute or two left, and I would appreciate an answer to the question if I can get it within a minute from one of you. Both would be even better.

[Stanley Stapleton]

I will take a stab at this one.

First, I want to make sure it's clear that we don't represent the correctional officers within the prisons. We represent the program people and parole officers. Within the prison system, one of the problems we had in the past when offenders came in is they had to wait to enter a program. With the integrated correctional program module, which I don't think is as good as the old system, they're able to get the offenders into a program right away, so your short-timers will have some programming before they get out.

Unfortunately, people who are doing medium term take these programs, and it is my opinion, based on responses from program officers across the country, that this program is not as effective as the old programs we used to have that were focused on the individual problems that the offenders needed help with. Of course, to deliver as many programs as we need for all the offenders, we need to increase our program staff and the program capability we have within the prison system.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Stapleton.

Unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it all there. We have a virtual meeting coming in behind us, so the clerks need a chance to get things organized here.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for your time, your patience and your co-operation. This has been a very difficult study. We appreciate all the efforts that all three of you put in on a daily basis to make the public safety of Canada that much stronger, so thank you for that, and on behalf of the committee, thank you for your appearance here today.

Colleagues, with that we'll call an adjournment. Unless things change, I don't anticipate a meeting on Wednesday. Maybe we could have some offline discussions as to what needs to happen after that.

With that, unless my clerk says otherwise, the meeting is adjourned.