Status of Women Committee on Dec. 5th, 2017

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

As I listened to you and read that, I thought it was two individual things. What you've done is you've tied it together. When you read this, it sounded like you were talking of two things: one, the security level; and two, the programming. What you're saying is that they're tied together.

That isn't clear in the way it reads. It sounded like two separate things.

[Carol McCalla]

They should be using two separate things.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Right, but you've tied it together.

I'll go back to the psychiatric services. In the public health sector, psychiatric specialists are the rarest of rare to find. How would you find more for this sector?

[Michael Ferguson]

That is obviously an issue that the department's going to need to deal with. Again, a high percentage of the people they are dealing with have mental health issues or serious mental health issues. Certainly trying to match that demand for those services with the supply for those services is a particular challenge.

I think the first thing is just to recognize that they do have to deal with this population. They're not really very well set up to deal with a population that has a high level of mental illness, people who are at risk of self-harm or of attempting suicide, but they have those people whom they have to deal with.

Obviously, there are only the service providers out there that actually exist, and as you say, there will be competing demand for them. Correctional services have a high population of people with serious mental health issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move on to Sheila Malcolmson for her seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses, and thank you to the Auditor General for the work that you've done.

Last week, we had witnesses from Correctional Service of Canada. The senior deputy commissioner was here, and she said:

Our approach to working with indigenous women is holistic and women-centred, and is built to address their unique needs and contribute to their safe and timely reintegration into the community. ...CSC has a stream of correctional programs specifically designed for them....

Does that line up with your findings?

[Michael Ferguson]

What I would say is that I think it would line up with what they told us they were trying to do. I think we identified a number of places where they're not there yet.

Again, when the tool was to assign security levels, it was one that was based on assigning security levels to men offenders rather than women offenders. When you see the issues that Ms. McCalla just talked about in terms of the programs that were assigned, women indigenous offenders in particular don't have the same access to healing lodges. The healing lodges are only available in a few places.

I wouldn't dispute that this is what they are trying to do, but I think we identified that there were a number of places where they haven't yet succeeded in doing it.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks.

I read a report from this summer from the Native Women's Association of Canada. It found that not only do federally sentenced indigenous women not have access to adequate programs and services while imprisoned, but the programs that do exist are neither culturally appropriate nor geared towards reintegration.

Does that line up with your findings?

[Michael Ferguson]

I'll ask Ms. McCalla to provide details.

Again, we found that the Correctional Service does have culturally appropriate programs in place, but not all women offenders are participating in those programs. Sometimes they choose to participate in the general programs rather than the culturally appropriate programs. It may be, in some cases, that if the general programs are available earlier on, then it would speed up the chance of the offender being prepared for parole if they take the general rather than the culturally appropriate program.

I think they did spend time preparing culturally appropriate programs, but not all women offenders participate in those programs.

Again, I'll ask Ms. McCalla to provide more detail.

[Carol McCalla]

We found that the challenge the Correctional Service has in offering its culturally specific programs, which it has developed and has found to be effective, is the low number of women offenders in some of its institutions. The majority of indigenous offenders are in the prairie provinces, and in its other regional institutions there are small numbers of indigenous offenders. Therefore, they have a challenge in having enough offenders ready to start a program at one time, so they may opt to take the general stream of correctional programming so that they can get it sooner.

We've made recommendations to CSC to come up with some options so that they can provide the programs to indigenous women who are interested in taking them.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks.

I can't remember which of you referenced that first nations women are held at a higher level of security than non-indigenous women.

Did you find a rationale for that?

[Carol McCalla]

We had looked at how many indigenous women offenders in general overall, over the last three years, were assigned to higher levels of security. We found, in general, that indigenous women offenders were held at higher levels of security on average than non-indigenous women offenders.

When we brought that to CSC, they told us that indigenous women and indigenous men in general pose higher security risks, and that's how the tool rates their security risk. It looks at factors like age at first offence and whether there was violence involved in their offence. Those are the factors it weighs in determining the security classification.

Our argument in the indigenous offenders audit, which looked at that, stated that there should be other considerations used to weigh the results of the tool to consider the offender's aboriginal social history in order to identify alternatives to those higher security ratings.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I am elected in British Columbia. There is a drug epidemic, opioid overdose and addiction epidemic that, in the Downtown Eastside, has hit indigenous women particularly hard. Some of the treating doctors have said that they have not seen a single one of their patients who was not a victim of childhood sexual abuse, that there is such a link between that early trauma damage and addiction.

In any of your investigations, have you come across that kind of correlation—childhood trauma and the role of mental health in entering the criminal justice system?

[Carol McCalla]

We definitely saw that the incidence of physical and sexual abuse was very high among women offenders.

They, themselves, have been victims of crime, in some cases at a very early age. We didn't examine that specifically, but we did notice it in the files. That was, in part, to be addressed by the correctional programs that CSC offers.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Did you get feedback from those incarcerated that they were getting access to that help while being held?

[Carol McCalla]

We didn't meet with offenders as part of our audit, but we did meet with the elders who were working with the indigenous women, and they told us that this is primarily the very first thing they deal with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We are now going to move on to Emmanuella Lambropoulos for her seven minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Hello. Thank you for being with us today.

I have a couple of questions.

First, you mentioned that, generally, women have a low reoffending rate. Is that what you said?

[Carol McCalla]

Yes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Okay, I'm just making sure.

I want to know whether you noticed a significant difference between women who participate in healing lodges and those who don't, if already the rate is pretty low.

[Carol McCalla]

We did find that offenders, not just women but men, who participate in healing lodges have very low rates of reoffending upon release.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

You do see a difference between those who do and those who don't.

[Carol McCalla]

Yes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

You also mentioned that there are culturally specific programs that are often offered in healing lodges but also in other institutions. Is that correct?

[Carol McCalla]

Yes.