Status of Women Committee on Dec. 5th, 2017

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We're going to begin today's meeting now that we have a quorum.

First of all, thank you very much for sticking around. We apologize. There were important votes that we had to go to.

There are a couple of things I want to announce. Tomorrow is December 6 and is of course the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. It's white ribbon day. I know there will be comments made in the House of Commons tomorrow, so I encourage everybody to participate and to watch some of them.

I'd also like to remind you that there was a serious incident with one of our interpreters. Unfortunately, what happened with the microphone was that there was some feedback with the earpiece, which caused some damage to one of our interpreters, so be very cautious with your earpiece. This caused something similar to a concussion. I want to ask everybody to take their time and recognize that somebody is on the other end of the mike and the earpiece. It might be my high screechy voice that's causing some of these pains, but we'll go forward.

To begin, under Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, June 20, the committee is resuming its study on indigenous women in the federal justice and correctional systems.

Today we are honoured to have with us Michael Ferguson, who is the Auditor General of Canada, and Carol McCalla, who is the principal.

I recognize that we're short on time, but I will ask if you would be able to stay for our second panel as well. That may be an opportunity for you. I don't know what your schedule is like, Mr. Ferguson.

To begin, we're going to give you seven minutes to address the group. Thank you.

[Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Madam Chair, thank you for inviting us to speak about our recent audit reports on correctional services. We look forward to helping inform your study on indigenous women in the federal justice and correctional systems. Joining me at the table is Carol McCalla, the principal who was responsible for these audits.

We have done two audits of Correctional Service Canada concerning indigenous women, resulting in our 2017 report on preparing women offenders for release, and our 2016 report on preparing indigenous offenders for release.

Our audits focused on the timely access to programs and services that support the rehabilitation of offenders sentenced to two years or more by the courts. There are almost 700 women in federal custody and a further 600 supervised in the community. Indigenous women have grown to represent 36% of the women offender population. Although CSC can't control the number of offenders who receive federal sentences, it can provide them with timely access to rehabilitation programs and culturally appropriate services to prepare them for release on parole.

Our audits found that CSC's tool to assign women offenders to security levels was designed to assess men, not women, and it didn't consider the unique needs of indigenous women offenders. CSC also used this tool to refer women offenders to correctional programs, which is problematic since the tool wasn't designed for this purpose. As a result, some women offenders were held at a higher security level than necessary and were assigned to rehabilitation programs that they didn't need.

We found that CSC didn't provide women offenders with the rehabilitation programs they needed when they needed them. Most women offenders in federal custody were serving short-term sentences, which meant they became eligible for release in the first year of their sentence. However, more than three-quarters of indigenous women offenders hadn't completed the rehabilitation programs they needed when they were first eligible for parole because they didn't get timely access to them. As a result, they had less time to benefit from a gradual and structured release into the community, which supports their successful reintegration.

However, we found that CSC increased the use of section 84 release plans for indigenous women offenders. Under section 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, indigenous organizations or communities are part of the reintegration process.

Indigenous offenders with a section 84 release plan are more likely to be granted parole than other indigenous offenders, but we also found that access to culturally specific programs for indigenous women offenders was limited at some institutions. For example, healing lodges were available in only one region and operated at nearly full capacity. Offenders who participated in healing lodge programs had low rates of reoffending upon release, yet CSC hadn't examined ways to provide greater access to more indigenous offenders.

We also found that CSC used segregation to manage some women offenders and about half of the women offenders placed in segregation were indigenous. Despite a reduction in the total number of offenders segregated each year, we found that 20% of segregation placements were for longer than 15 days, the limit recommended by human rights groups.

Two-thirds of federally sentenced women offenders have been identified with mental health issues. We found that CSC did not have sufficient capacity to deliver the mental health services that women offenders needed. Mental health teams were not fully staffed across the women's institutions, and its one psychiatric hospital operated at or near full capacity over the past two years. CSC has not yet secured additional beds within provincial psychiatric hospitals to address identified shortfalls.

We also found that CSC used cells on its segregation range to monitor women offenders at risk of self-injury or suicide, without 24-hour access to clinical treatment or support.

We are pleased to note that since our audit work was completed, CSC agreed to no longer place women offenders at risk of self-injury or suicide in cells on the segregation range.

Madam Chair, this concludes my opening statement.

We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. We do have limited time. We will have enough time for the first round of questions. We will be starting our second panel a bit late.

We'll start off with Pam Damoff, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ferguson, for being here, for your report, and for highlighting the issues in corrections. I understand that the Correctional Service has agreed with the recommendations in your report.

I guess my first question is whether you are optimistic that given the fact they've agreed with it, we'll see change within the Correctional Service.

[Michael Ferguson]

When we do an audit, we make our recommendations. We get a response from the department. Just about always, the department will agree with our recommendations, because our process is such that we have time to discuss the recommendations with them.

I always reserve judgment on how much impact that's going to have. Sometimes we can come back and do a follow-up audit to see whether the department has implemented our recommendations. The departments are always responsible for preparing an action plan, which is outside of the audit, about what they're going to do to implement our recommendations.

They present that action plan to the public accounts committee so that they are on record for the individual steps they're going to do. I always encourage all committees to take the time, when you have it, to follow up with the department on whether it's implementing what it says it's going to implement in its action plan.

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

One of things you highlighted was the assessment when women come into corrections, the assessment tools that have been used, which I understand are 25 years old and designed for men. We know that women are disproportionately going into maximum security when there's really no need for them to be doing so. Because of that, they're not able to access programming. Is that correct?

You're shaking your head.

[Carol McCalla, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

The department uses the custody rating scale, and that tool was designed over 25 years ago based on a sample population of male offenders. It uses that tool to assess women offenders. Its own studies have found problems with the predictive reliability of that tool to ensure that the women get assigned to the appropriate level of security.

We found that indigenous women offenders are on average held at higher levels of security than non-indigenous women, and that is problematic for us. We did make a recommendation that they incorporate tools to consider an offender's aboriginal social history so that they can identify ways to mitigate the risks that these offenders pose, and therefore, they would not necessarily have to place them at such high levels of security.

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

I'm also on the public safety committee, and we did a very brief study on access to early release and parole. One of the things we heard was about programming in general. Because of cutbacks that were made in corrections, where there might have been individual programs for specific offenders, those were sort of rolled into a one-size-fits-all program, which doesn't necessarily address issues that.... They're not individualized; therefore, inmates are not actually accessing something that might be helpful to them. In addition to the lack of access to the programs, it's also whether it's actually helpful programming.

I just wondered if you could comment on that.

[Michael Ferguson]

I'll start and then maybe I'll ask Ms. McCalla to add something, as well.

Certainly one of the things we found, first of all, was that the same tool we just referred to, which they use to assign a security level, is the tool they use to assign programming. The tool wasn't designed for programming, so right from the beginning there's an issue about the types of programming that might be assigned.

The other thing we found often was that they just didn't start the programming early enough, so even if the programming was appropriate and was available, it wasn't being started on a frequent enough basis. I think it was in the audit on indigenous offenders that we saw it was taking up to five months, I believe, before they actually started the programming. If you have people who have a two-year sentence, for example, and you don't start the programming for that period of time, then they're not going to get their program completed by their parole date.

Maybe Ms. McCalla has something else to add.

[Carol McCalla]

With regard to the effectiveness of these programs, CSC has reviewed its programs for both indigenous and non-indigenous women. The problem it has in evaluating the programs' effectiveness is that women, overall, have very low risks of reoffending, so in taking a program, it's hard to show a reduction once they've been released.

They found for indigenous women the programs were, however, effective in reducing reoffending risk, but for non-indigenous women, they didn't necessarily find the effectiveness. We recommended in our report that they also evaluate how good their programs are at targeting the risk factors and addressing risk factors like substance abuse, which is a very high risk factor for many women offenders for reoffending. They have not evaluated how well their programs address those risks.

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

Have the programs gone through both a gender-based analysis and also a cultural appropriateness analysis to ensure that programs for indigenous women are, in fact, culturally appropriate and designed for women versus men?

[Carol McCalla]

Yes, in our indigenous offenders audit we looked at how they had developed their correctional programs for men and women, and they did a lot of consultation and ensured that the programs were culturally relevant. We met with elders at various penitentiaries and they all spoke very highly of the programs.

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

Okay. Was there gender-based analysis done on the programs, as well. Do you know?

[Carol McCalla]

I'm not aware of one, no.

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

It doesn't sound like it, from what you're telling me, if its programs are also designed for men, but—

[Carol McCalla]

They have specific programs for men and specific programs for women, so they have done a lot in developing correctional programs that meet the unique needs of women offenders. Our concern was that they weren't getting quick enough access to these programs so that they completed them by the time they were ready for parole.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

We're now going to move over to Martin Shields for his seven minutes.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here today. I appreciate your information.

As you've indicated, there's been change in the prison population. How has your auditing function changed to account for that, the rubrics you're using to evaluate it?

[Michael Ferguson]

When we do an audit like this, we set an objective to look at the program and, in this case, primarily to see what the department was doing to prepare women offenders for release. We've now done three audits on preparing offenders for release. We did one that looked at the population in general, then we did one that looked at indigenous offenders, and then we did one looking at women offenders.

In each case, for each of those audits, we considered those different subpopulations when we got to the indigenous offenders and the women offenders to try to identify what might be the unique issues or the issues that are of more importance to those types of populations. For the indigenous offenders, it was the culturally appropriate programming and it was also understanding the aboriginal history. Those were a couple of things that were unique about that population.

With the women offenders, it was the fact that such a high rate of them have mental health issues. That's how we make the adjustments in our audit, by looking at the individual populations and deciding which factors are most important for those populations.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

As you're developing the auditing mechanisms, part of the process is that you are evolving as well. You have a different scenario or objectives that you're looking for. It's evolving. It's flexible enough. It works for you. You have staff to do this. Does it work as you evolve it?

[Michael Ferguson]

Every time we do one of these performance audits we're going into a program, and I think all government programs have their own unique aspects.

We have a basic methodology of what we try to do. First of all, we establish an audit objective, then we establish criteria, and we base that criteria on sources of information, perhaps government policies or those types of things. Then we go through a planning phase. We prepare draft reports and we share that with the department. We have a whole methodology that we go through that is the same for every audit.

But on the other hand, every audit is unique, and we need to consider it uniquely because no two programs are exactly the same.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Good point.

One of the things you mentioned was a higher security level. The other one you mentioned was being assigned to rehabilitation programs that they did not need. I find that interesting.

How did they get assigned, or how did you determine that it was what they didn't need? That's an interesting piece.

[Michael Ferguson]

When offenders enter into the system—in that audit it was particularly women offenders—the first thing that happens is that they get evaluated using this rating tool. That's the rating tool that we mentioned was designed 25 years ago based on a sample of men. It was really designed for how you assign a security level for men offenders: should they be in maximum, medium, or minimum security.

They use that same tool, even though it was a security tool, to assign programming. It wasn't designed for programming, and it was also designed for men offenders. On the basis of that, it's not a good predictor of the types of programming that the women offenders need.

Again, I'll ask Ms. McCalla to add any details.

[Carol McCalla]

They use the custody rating scale to assign programs. We found that when they do the security classification, about a half of the women offenders are determined to be low risk, so they're sent to minimum security sections of the penitentiary. If they are low risk, then they would not normally be assigned a correctional program. We found that 70% of women offenders were assigned a correctional program. That's 20% more than we would have expected.

As well, the department has developed a new tool, the CRI, to assign correctional programs to women offenders, and to indigenous offenders. They have piloted the use of that tool and found that it will result in significantly fewer women being assigned to its moderate-intensity correctional program, but also many more, twice as many, will be assigned to high-intensity correctional programs.