Public Safety Committee on Feb. 10th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We'll go now to the last two slots in our questions, and we're going to cut them back down to four minutes.

Mr. Shipley, please go ahead for four minutes.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Doctor, I enjoyed our last exchange. I found that beneficial, and I learned some. I want to follow up on one of those, and I want to move on. I don't want to get caught up on where we were.

You mentioned in our last exchange that one of the programs that could be enhanced in the institutions is the employment program. This might help. In my research we found that 60% of maximum security prisoners are employed, but almost half the positions are cleaning jobs. Notably, at one institution, the Edmonton Institution, 80% are cleaning jobs. While there's absolutely nothing wrong with custodial work, it would probably be nice to have a bit of a variety and some options. I know many times lately I've met with many trade organizations, where there's a huge deficit in people looking to get into those roles.

Is there anything being done towards expanding on employment training in the facilities, which could help integrate them once they're released back into society?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

Yes. Most of the jobs in the penitentiaries have very little value in terms of vocational skills. Most of it is cleaning. Kitchen work with the new cook-chill...isn't really that great a skill to acquire.

The best program that the service has is called CORCAN. It's a prison industry program, but it only reaches less than 10% of the carceral population, and 80% of that is in textiles. They're basically using sewing machines, and I guess it's better than idling in their cell. The skills may nevertheless provide some legitimate skills in terms of making sure that they show up at work on time. It doesn't have transferable skills to the Canadian job market. We're not big on sewing jobs in Canada, with respect to sewing bed sheets or underwear or cheap jeans.

We have to do better.

CORCAN, however, has pockets involving typically a handful of individuals who are very good and who are working with the private sector. Sometimes, depending on whether they have work releases, they can actually go to those sites, but it involves so few individuals. This is the biggest challenge, I think, for the service. It's trying to expand those and make them so much more accessible. Right now it's to the benefit of only a few, and those few typically already have skills, so they're benefiting from vocational training, but they already have the training and the rigour—

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you for that.

I'm sorry for interrupting. I have just one last question, as I'm running out of time here.

This has been on my mind since I read this. If we touched on it earlier, excuse me for missing it.

You mentioned a lot about what the official costs are yearly. In one of the documents you gave us, on page 2, you mentioned that the latest official costs are $126,000 for federal custody for men, and $222,000 for federal custody for women. Why is it so much more—$100,000 more—for women?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

It's just economy of scale. We have only about 600 incarcerated women across Canada, in five different institutions across the nation, so a lot of it has to do with still needing a lot of staff. It's much more cost-efficient to have a single institution with lots of people, than to have five, but we chose five back in 2000, and rightly so, to ensure the women would be closer to their communities. It's only, by and large, an issue of economy of scale.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We now go to Mr. Chiang for four minutes, please.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you again to our witnesses for being here this morning.

In regard to Black overrepresentation, in the recommendations throughout your report you call for various national action plan policy developments and reviews. However, you also note that much of the action already taken by the government to address ongoing issues such as racism, for example, have resulted in little more than “policy exercises that have little direct impact on the lives of incarcerated Black persons.”

How, then, do we reconcile these findings to implement effective change?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

It does raise the question. My view is that we need a great deal of involvement of Black community leaders and organizations to assist the service. There are so many barriers to accessing the carceral population to provide services and advice. That is where I think you would effect change. Let them in. Let them provide programming, counselling, cultural initiatives, music and arts. Get them into penitentiaries. Get the community members to walk into penitentiaries, assist them and guide them in those policies, so they are truly policies that have that African Canadian lens to them, so that the initiatives resonate with them and they are culturally appropriate.

At the same time, do all the other things you should do, which means ensuring that staff representation at all levels of the organization is much more diverse and responsive to the culture.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you very much, Dr. Zinger.

These recommendations, which you just made.... Are they being implemented anywhere, or are they just sitting on the shelf somewhere and collecting dust?

[Dr. Ivan Zinger]

I think I told you that I was disappointed with the overall response of the service, and I will leave it at that. There are a few things that are a bit more responsive. I mentioned health care products and stuff. We made some comments about health professionals who work for the service needing to be a bit aware of some of the cultural issues. They've responded quite appropriately and proactively, so I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to praise when the responses are constructive and meaningful.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much, Dr. Zinger.

I'm glad that some things have been done to help our correctional population. Hopefully, we'll move forward to get a positive response and positive work done.

Thank you so much for being with us today, and I hope you have a good day.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Chiang.

Thank you, Dr. Zinger and Ms. Miron, for being with us today. It's pretty clear that you have a great deal of wisdom and guidance to offer us. Thank you for your fortitude in hanging in there for two full hours, although it's also clear that we could probably make use of you for a lot longer than that. Thank you for your time, and thank you to the committee for all of your work today.

I remind the committee that the Russia study has been released, at least internally, and hopefully, if there are no issues with it, we can pass it on Tuesday at the end of our witness testimony.

That being the case, we are now adjourned. Thank you all.