Public Safety Committee on Feb. 10th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 56 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

We will start by acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, November 1, 2022, the committee is commencing its consideration of the “Annual Report 2021-2022” of the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada.

With us today in person we have, from the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada, Dr. Ivan Zinger, correctional investigator of Canada, and Hazel Miron, senior investigator. Welcome to you both.

As requested by Dr. Zinger, we are allocating 20 minutes for the group opening statement.

With that, I now invite Dr. Zinger to make his opening statement.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger, Correctional Investigator of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd also like to thank all the committee members for giving me two hours this morning. I am very pleased to be here today.

I am accompanied by Hazel Miron, a senior investigator from the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada. I should note that she also has the role of champion for indigenous issues. She has a great deal of experience in this area. When committee members ask us questions about indigenous issues, she will be able to provide additional insight and help committee members better understand the challenges facing the Correctional Service of Canada.

What I propose to do today is simply to talk to you about the content of the annual report. I have sent you two PowerPoint presentations. I'm just going to give you highlights of the annual report before I move on to my second presentation, which is on the profile of people incarcerated in a federal facility. I believe that will give you a lot of content.

I must admit that, historically, correctional issues are not a high priority. When they are, it's often for the wrong reasons.

Our annual report, which was filed in early November 2022, includes several updates on issues of importance and concern to our office, including the use of dry cells, the mother‑child program review, security escort vehicles and the Correctional Service of Canada's drug strategy.

My report also covered three national systemic investigations, including one on indigenous people, another on incarcerated Black individuals and a third on restrictive forms of confinement in federal correctional facilities.

I will now turn to the presentation focused on profiles. I will talk about it for around 15 minutes and then take questions.

I'd like to point out that I'm going to start with the second slide of the PowerPoint presentation.

I just wanted to give you the context of the profile of the offender population in federal corrections.

First, there are some things that many of you may not be aware of, and certainly some Canadians are unaware of some of the facts regarding federal corrections. The first thing is that generally, around the world, corrections is big business, and I would tell you that in Canada it is very much so. We spend an inordinate amount on federal corrections compared to other jurisdictions. The Correctional Service of Canada has a budget of close to $3 billion to manage about 12,500 incarcerated persons as well as about 9,000 individuals who are serving the remainder of their federal sentences in the community.

It has approximately 19,000 employees. If you look at why it is such an inordinate amount of money, you see that the ratio between staff and prisoners in federal corrections is probably the highest in the world, with a ratio of 1.2 staff per prisoner. That is extraordinary by any standard, and if it is not the very highest, it is certainly at the very top. I have no problem with spending a great deal of money in federal corrections, but if we spend that kind of money, we should expect outstanding outcomes and performances in every single area of correctional endeavour.

In terms of the cost per incarcerated population, if you take the $3 billion and you take away 6% of that budget to look after the community corrections component, you end up with an average cost, all-inclusive, overheads included, of about $225,000 per year per individual. The official cost in corporate documents talks about $126,000, but that doesn't cover the overall costs, like national headquarters, regional headquarters, etc. The real cost is very, very high.

I also want to point out that currently the service is operating about 43 penitentiaries, but many of them have vacancies. At the moment, there are over 4,000 empty cells across Canada. If the average penitentiary in Canada is about 500 incarcerated persons per institution, that represents about eight empty penitentiaries.

I have said it before and I even mentioned to the minister that it is maybe time to think about rationalizing those penitentiaries a bit. Three of them are over a hundred years old, and the average age of our penitentiaries in Canada is anywhere between 45 and 50 years old. It's very old infrastructure where it's very difficult to sustain humane custody as well as effective corrections, meaning a good rehabilitation environment.

With respect to the incarceration rate, I have to tell you that over the pandemic the federal correctional system saw a loss of about 10% of its in-custody residents, so we shrunk during COVID, by about 10%. This was primarily because during COVID the courts weren't processing cases as quickly as they should. There was no real attempt to try to empty our penitentiaries to manage the various waves of outbreaks.

At the provincial level, they did better, much better. They were proactive, and they were so because in the federal system we have single cell accommodation. It's not surprising, with all that empty space. For Correctional Service Canada, the way they managed the actual outbreak was to isolate people in their cells. That was the strategy. People spent an inordinate amount of time in their cells during COVID, and they still do, because of some systemic issues that are residual from those days.

At the provincial level, they have dormitories. They have overcrowding. They have double bunking, which means two people in a cell that was designed for one. They even have triple bunking, so there was a real, proactive effort to reduce the number of provincial incarcerated individuals. The jurisdictions were able to reduce the provincial prison population by anywhere from 25% upwards to 50%. I say this because despite those huge reductions, unheard of in Canadian history in terms of emptying our penitentiaries, crime rates did not go up.

I know you're facing a lot of pressures around, for example, things like bail. The reductions in those provincial facilities were largely due to reviewing bail decisions and releasing people who normally would have remained in jail.

Just as policy-makers and legislators, think about that. We reduce the prison population and crime doesn't go up.

Of course, there are some egregious cases, and those need to be subject to significant tightening and reforms, but let's keep that in mind. Let's have a balanced view of these things.

Let me talk to you a bit about the profiles of incarcerated persons in federal corrections. If you're following, I'm going to jump to slide number eight. Let me make a few more short comments first.

Why is the profile so important? The profile can be used to make decisions on approaches to federal corrections.

You've probably heard the famous saying that you can tell a lot about a society by entering its prisons. It can tell you a lot about the degree of civility, the commitment to social justice, or human rights, by entering prisons in any society. I've always wondered, since I started my career, what it would be like to enter a Canadian penitentiary. What would you see? I hope all of you have taken the time, because the legislation provides you with the authority to visit penitentiaries.

This saying was first quoted by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was repeated by Winston Churchill, and later on even by Nelson Mandela.

The focus has always been about the treatment of prisoners. That tells you a lot about a society. I think we have to go beyond that. We have to ask ourselves, “Who are the men and women in our penitentiaries? Are they a random cross-section of Canadian society, or are they particular components of our society?”

The profile has been used, for example, by the Harper government during its 10-year presence in government to justify a tough on crime agenda. It used the profile to say, “Look at the profile. We're dealing with dangerous people who require mandatory minimum sentences, longer sentences, harsher conditions of confinement and fewer opportunities for parole.” That has been the approach taken by using the profile to substantiate that.

My argument is that the profile can be used, if you want, as a barometer to gauge the success and failures of our broad Canadian policies. It can be used to detect whether our policies are anchored in good human rights principles and are fair, just and compliant with human rights. It can be used, certainly, to focus more on helping those who are incarcerated.

Let me jump in and give you the overview of that profile.

It's clear to me that all the data suggests that the prevalence of those who are mentally ill in prison is extraordinarily high. Those in prisons have significant mental health issues. If you look at the prevalence data, it shows that nearly 80% of all incarcerated men and women have a current mental disorder. That's a very broad definition of mental health, because it includes things like addiction issues and personality disorders. Even if you narrow it down, based on CSC data upon admission, about 30% of inmates, when they enter the federal system, require psychological or psychiatric services.

There is also an inordinate number of psychotropic drugs being dispensed every day, four times higher than in Canadian society at large.

We know from CSC research that about a third meet the diagnosis of PTSD, when it comes to women. We have a lack of data for men, but I suspect that it's also extremely high. We also know that the incidence of self-injury is extraordinarily high, and that it kept increasing over the last decade.

One thing that is less known is that our prison population also has significant cognitive deficits. These take the form of intellectual impairment, brain injury, fetal alcohol syndrome, learning disabilities and ADHD. All of these make it much more difficult for the Correctional Service of Canada to implement programming that is effective, because these things are lifetime issues. They are not things you can give a pill to resolve.

On some of that, the learning disabilities, for me, are really problematic, because the service does not do anything to address learning disabilities. It doesn't assess them. It's ill equipped to deal with them. It doesn't have specialized teachers. It's a shame.

Let me move on, because I want to make sure I finish this.

Let's go to the next slide, which is slide 9, on indigenous self-government. As you know, for the last three decades, the percentage of indigenous people in federal corrections has kept going up and up. The prison population is now at 32% with indigenous ancestry. For women, the situation is worse. It is now 50%.

Indigenous people don't fare well in prison. This is drawn from my last annual report. The latest data that we have again shows that indigenous prisoners compared to non-indigenous prisoners have a higher rate of custody versus community supervision. They're more likely to be involved in use of force. They're overrepresented in maximum security institutions and overrepresented in solitary confinement or the new structured intervention units. They're more likely to be affiliated with security threats or gangs, more likely to self-injure and more likely to attempt suicide. They were overrepresented in prison suicide for the last fiscal year. They serve a higher portion of their sentence compared to non-indigenous people, and they have a higher recidivism rate and a higher rate of parole suspension or revocation.

They don't fare well. Let me tell you that for all of these outcomes, the Correctional Service of Canada has some leverage on it. When corrections tells me, “Ivan, we have no control of who comes into our penitentiaries,” that is correct, but it has leverage on correctional outcomes.

For Black Canadians, it's the same thing. We also covered in our last—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Your time is up, Doctor, in two minutes.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Okay.

It's the same thing with respect to the correctional outcomes, and they are as poor.

With respect to the drug strategy, 75% of our prison population has a history of substance abuse.

On education, the average educational achievement of prisoners coming into the system is a grade 8 education. Also, most of them—over 60% of them—were unemployed at the time of the index offence, and they have very poor vocational skills.

Finally, we'll go to the last slide. On harm reduction, we know that there is a much higher rate of HIV, as well as hepatitis C, although hepatitis C is being brought under control with new medication. Interestingly, despite the fact that we have had some attempts at harm reduction, we have about 25% of our incarcerated individuals who are now on methadone or Suboxone.

Women are one of the fastest-growing segments of the inmate population. We have to remember that the great majority of them reported sexual, psychological or physical abuse. Some questions need to be asked as to whether all of them should be incarcerated the way they are.

Aging is another issue. It's a growing segment of the inmate population. Twenty or 25 years ago, about 15% were aged 50 or over. Now we're looking at 26%. We did some systemic investigation on this and found an inordinate number of people who have dementia and Alzheimer's, who are palliative, terminally ill, have great mobility issues, are hooked up to oxygen tanks or are bedridden. In my view, these individuals have no place in penitentiaries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Could you wrap up, sir?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Thank you very much.

Hopefully, this will give you a good background.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you for that excellent presentation.

We will start our first round of questioning. We will go to Ms. Dancho for six minutes.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Zinger and Ms. Miron, for being here with us today. Thank you very much for your hard work in advocating and providing oversight of our correctional facilities, and certainly for advocating for the dignity of all those who are in our corrections facilities.

I recently travelled to Stony Mountain penitentiary, which is outside of my community. A number of corrections officers who are employed there are from my riding. It was my second journey to visit the penitentiary and learn more about many of the issues that you've brought up today and some of the issues that our corrections officers are facing.

An issue that they have brought up twice to me in the last three years when I have visited is the prison needle exchange program. I would appreciate your perspective on this and if you could address a number of the concerns that have been raised to me.

For those who aren't aware—of course, you are—the prison needle exchange is a program where needle kits are provided to inmates who are injecting these illegal drugs that are being smuggled in, to the benefit of criminal organizations and gangs in Canada.

One concern raised by the corrections officers is for their own safety. Of course, a needle is sort of like a tiny knife that could be used to do a number of harmful things to other inmates and to corrections officers. I would describe what I've heard as considerable fear from corrections officers at Stony Mountain penitentiary that this prison needle exchange is coming. They have concerns for their own safety and the safety of other inmates.

Can you respond to that in short form?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Yes. We've documented some of the concerns in this annual report.

Absolutely, there is a lot of fear out there. This is an issue that my office raised back in 2005 in terms of introducing it into penitentiaries. Under the pressure of litigation, Canada eventually introduced it in penitentiaries. The whole idea is to prevent harm. We know that—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

To clarify, it's to prevent harm from the spread of HIV, hepatitis and things like that from an inmate using a makeshift needle or a needle they were able to smuggle in. If they share that needle, they could be passing on various diseases.

Is that what you're referring to in terms of harm reduction?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Absolutely, you're quite correct.

The countries that have introduced it have shown a great deal of success in reducing the spread of infectious diseases, but have also witnessed—and this is what's most important, but a hard one to sell to correctional staff—that it actually made the prison a safer place for correctional staff.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much.

If you wouldn't mind tabling that data specifically to the committee so we can review it, that would be greatly beneficial to our work here.

I have limited time, but I think that's an important piece of evidence that we should be reviewing.

I appreciate the laudable goals you provided to the committee just now, but there are also concerns from inmates themselves. I'm sure you're very familiar with the Edmonton women's institution, where they wrote a letter of their own accord, petitioning against having this program come to their prison.

In particular, they said that there is no such thing as safe injection in prison. They wrote that they need to heal and not to let the federal government introduce this program. They said that they matter; they are people and they don't need needles; they need staff to help them safely reintegrate.

They went on to say a number of things. They have considerable fear, and there are a number of names on this petition. This is from a women's prison.

I'm wondering how you rectify the fear and address the advocacy from the women themselves about introducing this program that they don't want.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Again, I have to admit there are some challenges, absolutely, in terms of introducing a needle exchange program in federal corrections, so much so that my annual report says that right now the program is in name only; it involves so few inmates because Correctional Service Canada has made it so hard to participate in the program. Because of that, it actually causes more harm and risk to correctional officers. The few inmates who now have those kits are renting them to others or being bullied to get those needles—needles that are now clean, hopefully.

That's something you need to do a lot more work on: appeasing the culture of correctional officers, as well as the prisoners themselves, and demonstrating the validity and safety of it.

Absolutely, there are other programs. It's a half measure and not ideal. For example, the safe injection site pilot is showing a great deal of promise. It's still not being rolled out quickly enough, however. It's only in one penitentiary, at Drumheller. The union and correctional officers are more at ease with that program, but unfortunately it only works during the daytime, when health care is open and can supervise the safe injections.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I'm out of time, so I'll thank you for your remarks. I appreciate your perspective very much.

Moving forward, I urge you to ensure you're considering fully the protection of our hard-working corrections officers and the inmates themselves, in particular the women who have very significant fears and concerns about this program coming to their penitentiary.

Thank you very much.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

To conclude, the danger is this: If you don't have it, there will be dirty needles everywhere, and when correctional officers search people, they can prick themselves. That's where the risk is. That's what other jurisdictions have demonstrated: You can reduce the risk of dirty needles lying around and officers touching them accidentally when they conduct searches. This is what I'm hoping the unions, as well as correctional officers, will realize.

Thank you.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you for your insight.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Dancho.

We'll now go to Ms. Damoff for six minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Zinger and Ms. Miron, thank you and your whole team for your dedicated work for many years, and your helpful insight into what's going on in our correctional institutions.

I want to ask you about the mother-child program. I visited the mother-child program at Grand Valley, last year. The Library of Parliament did an outstanding report—I asked them to—on the mother-child program. Some of the information in that is quite shocking. In 2011—I'm sure it's worse today than it was in 2011—StatsCan said 48% of children residing in foster care were indigenous, and the majority of those children had incarcerated mothers. In that same year, no indigenous mothers were approved for the mother-child program in federal prisons, and to this day the program continues to be underused by Correctional Service Canada.

For those who don't know, this program not only connects moms to newborn infants but also—for the moms I saw—maintains their contact with older children. One of the challenges, though, is this: One of the moms I met was in Kitchener, at Grand Valley, and her children were in Flin Flon, so the ability for them to see each other was close to zero.

One of your recommendations states that CSC should “review the program requirements and eligibility criteria”. Those were changed during the Harper years, making it much more difficult for indigenous women to participate. I'm wondering whether you can talk a bit about the benefits of the program and what CSC should do to allow more women to participate.

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

We raised this issue many years ago, and certainly we did when there were some political decisions to try to restrict access to those programs. We included it this year, thanks to you, because we knew there was Library of Parliament research that was conducted on this that was consistent with our own findings. We took the time to reflect on it.

We found that were certainly things like it's very difficult, and the service has a poor ability to track the number of participants. The data we have shows an extremely low participation rate. The criteria are, as you said, too restrictive and of a discriminatory nature when it comes to indigenous women. There are inconsistencies across the country and across the five different regional facilities for women. Also, we know that there has been very little done about the impact upon the children who are part of those programs.

The program, as it's set up now, is limited to minimum security institutions, and there are very few indigenous women who make it to minimum security. The bulk of them are in maximum or medium security. In maximum security, my annual report states that 60% of those who are in the secure units, which are maximum security for women, are indigenous. It prevents mothers of indigenous ancestry from having access to the program. That's why we think there's a need to review the program.

I'm going to turn it over to Hazel to speak from her perspective, because she has an awful lot of experience with women's institutions.

[Hazel Miron, Senior Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada]

Good morning, everyone.

To touch on your question, Pam, in looking at the criteria for accessing this program, they are very restrictive for indigenous women. There's nothing cultural about the criteria, and it's almost a barrier for them to access this program. Family is very important for indigenous people, so it's a program that needs to be encouraged, and the criteria need to be overhauled to include a cultural perspective.

I've been to Buffalo Sage in Edmonton and have travelled across Canada to the various institutions and healing lodges. I've witnessed mothers with their babies at Buffalo Sage, and the effect and the impact that this has on the other women is astounding.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I have only 30 seconds left.

Does this lead to better outcomes for the women who are in prison? It's not just a nice thing to do for them. My understanding is that these women end up with better outcomes as well.

[Hazel Miron]

Yes, they have better outcomes, because they're not always worried about their family. They see their child, and they want to do more for themselves because they start building that mother-child connection. They want to do more for their children. In that sense, to me, it's really effective, but the criteria need to be revamped and have to take into consideration the cultural aspects of this access.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Motz.

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Zinger, thank you for being with us today and for doing your job so thoroughly.

I want to ask you some questions about the authority of the Office of the Correctional Investigator.

In your report, you expressed some frustration with action taken by Correctional Service Canada in response to your recommendations. It seems that, for quite some time, the recommendations you make have been copied and pasted from year to year or simply reworded, because changes are not necessarily being made.

We might think that Correctional Service Canada is not acting on these new recommendations because they don't have enough resources or they are short-staffed, for example. However, according to the profile you gave us at the beginning, you say that the ratio of correctional officers to prisoners is one of the best in the world. You also say that Correctional Service Canada has a budget of almost $3 billion. So we can do away with those assumptions.

In your opinion, why is Correctional Service Canada not acting on your recommendations year after year?