Status of Women Committee on Dec. 12th, 2017

[Raji Mangat]

Do you want to go first, Jennifer?

[Jennifer Metcalfe]

I'm not aware of any increases.

[Raji Mangat]

No, and West Coast LEAF, in partnership with another legal organization called the B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre, brought a lawsuit challenging the way B.C. has underfunded family law legal aid. It's a case called Single Mothers' Alliance v. British Columbia, and it's really looking at.... Even with the limited services that are provided to women and men—everyone in British Columbia under the family law legal aid regime—they're failing. The situation is abysmal. With the cuts to legal aid over the past decades in B.C., we're seeing the impact on the ground in terms of who is constantly being left out of the advantages and benefits that are intended to be there for everyone. We're seeing that it's women, particularly indigenous women, and it's around family law and child protection which, again, connects right back into the incarceration and criminalization that this committee is looking at.

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

I note that the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, again in its report a year ago, on Canada specifically, recommended that Canada redesign its classification system for women in the federal prison system to ensure their access to work and community programs as well as to aboriginal healing lodges.

Have you seen any changes in this regard in the year since the report was released?

[Jennifer Metcalfe]

I haven't, and we're waiting for the Supreme Court of Canada and the Ewert decision that has to do with the security risk tools used for indigenous men. Hopefully, we will see some changes for indigenous women too after that decision comes out.

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

Are there any changes you've observed?

[Raji Mangat]

No. I understand that in response to the Auditor General's report, CSC has adopted or accepted the recommendations made in that report. Maybe there will be something on the horizon, but what we see constantly is a huge disconnect between law and policy and between policy and practice when it comes to CSC. The programs that are available for women in terms of employment and education are really gendered and they really don't seem to speak to the kinds of skills that women are going to need in the economy when they get out of prison—and they will get out of prison.

Programs around sewing, cooking—and I was surprised to learn—flower arranging.... We need to look at what skills we are giving people when they're in prison. Again, it goes back to the do no harm. We're putting people in a worse position than if they hadn't been in prison, by diminishing their skills, by not providing them with the rehabilitation and the counselling services they need to come out and to not reoffend.

Our whole purpose of wanting to make our society more safe and secure is being undermined by us in many ways.

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

Is there anything you want to say about jailed mothers with babies and the importance of having them together?

[Raji Mangat]

Oh, yes. There was a case that West Coast LEAF intervened in called Inglis a few years ago, which was about the cancellation of a mother and baby program at a provincial jail. If you read that decision, you find it's full of all of the evidence that shows how it's really so much for the benefit of both the child and the mom to be able to keep them together in prison to the extent possible. This happens across the world, so we're not doing anything radical here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much. That was great testimony.

Marc Serré, you're up for seven minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank our two witnesses for their testimony and the work they are doing in this area. It is really important.

As you know, we have a lot of work to do to improve the situation.

Ms. Metcalfe, you talked about the aspects of classification, security and initial assessment concerning minimum and maximum sentences. We heard from witnesses about the process that was developed about 25 years ago.

Do you have any specific recommendations for the committee to help change the way aboriginal women are classified in terms of security?

[Jennifer Metcalfe]

I think Ms. Mangat spoke about the approach being security-driven and how wrong-headed that is. I would agree with that. We really need to look at what happened to the person to bring them to this point in their life and what we can do to help them heal. That's not at all what we're doing.

As I mentioned in my talk, I think one of the biggest issues in the security classification legislation is the use of institutional adjustment to give people a higher security rating. For most of our clients with high institutional adjustment ratings, it's directly related to their mental health issues and experiences of trauma, for men and women. We really need to turn that on its head. I think there needs to be an assessment of people's mental health difficulties and needs, including trauma. We need to address those in a more therapeutic environment or outside of the prison system.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

You mentioned that Gladue reports are used against indigenous women. Can you explain to us some of the factors that are being utilized? We heard from other witnesses on the Métis side that they weren't encouraged to complete the Gladue reports—a lack of funding—but you specifically said “used against”. Can you explain a bit a more about that, please?

[Jennifer Metcalfe]

Until recently, just lip service has been paid to the Gladue factors in the paperwork that CSC generates. There might be a mention that family members went to residential school or that a person was raised through the foster care system, but then there's no connection to the decision that affects their liberty. Oftentimes those factors, issues with drug or alcohol addiction, which clearly stem from that multi-generational trauma, are used as negatives in the risk assessment. CSC is so oriented towards risk assessment, and all of their tools and policies are oriented towards risk assessment, that including Gladue factors just doesn't jive.

They recently revised the policy on incorporating Gladue factors. I'm not sure if those CDs have come out yet, but we have commented on them. Any time there's any amount of discretion given to CSC decision-makers, in our clients' experience it's used to the highest degree of control and deprivation of liberty.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Mangat, you talked about administrative segregation. Are you aware that our Minister of Public Safety has tabled legislation, which has now been forwarded to our public safety committee, to look at limiting the use of solitary and administrative segregation? Do you have any comments on that?

[Raji Mangat]

Yes, I'm happy to see that's happening. Again, I said that sort of cynical thing, that CSC doesn't often volunteer to change. I think this is another example of media attention to particularly egregious situations like those of Ashley Smith, Eddie Snowshoe, and others really shedding a light on what's happening.

Administrative segregation has been happening for a very long time. We're now talking about it, and I'm happy to see some legislative changes being proposed, and not only changes to the commissioner's directives, because as Ms. Metcalfe said, those are very discretionary instruments. They're not in the legislation, so that makes it very easy for them to change. It makes it very easy...maybe not very easy, but easier for them not to be applied in the sort of spirit that we think they should be applied.

In terms of legislative change around administrative segregation, I think we should also be very cognizant that CSC takes very technical positions. It's administrative segregation; that has a particular term of art for them. There are other ways in which people are confined, secluded, or isolated in their confinement. By focusing on administrative segregation, sometimes what happens is that it just changes what they call something. It may be that it will be taking place under a different guise, but it's not administrative segregation anymore.

I'll be very interested to follow the study of that bill, because I think there are some really important things in there, and I'm cautiously optimistic, as I always am.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

For the last question, you have 30 seconds each.

You indicated about restoration, about programming. I want you to talk a bit about that versus punitive minimal sentences. Can you comment on some of the disadvantages that it has had for indigenous women?

I'll ask Ms. Mangat first.

[Raji Mangat]

You want me to comment on the disadvantages of mandatory minimum sentences.

Yes, I think that mandatory minimum sentences strip away what the sentencing judge is supposed to do. They undermine the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code asks our sentencing judges to set a fit and proportionate sentence, and we're supposed to be looking at the Gladue factors when we do that. When you set a mandatory minimum, you take away the judge's ability to do his or her job. Unless someone is able to mount a successful constitutional challenge to that mandatory minimum sentence under our charter, the judge has to apply it in that way.

You have people who maybe would be better managed under a conditional sentence. There are ways in which you could have them serve some time during the week, but be able to spend time with their families on the weekend. Creative alternatives to sentencing do not exist in a scheme where mandatory minimums are the norm. I think when we take that discretion away from judges, we're really undermining what our Criminal Code was intending to do with those sentencing principles.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we don't have time for the rest of the answer.

We will now move back to Martin Shields as we start our second round of five minutes each.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the conversation and the information you're giving us. One of my questions goes to what you were finishing up with, when we talk about staffing.

I'm very aware of a sense that the justice system and the police services have attempted to become more ethnically diverse, and the move to make our judges and prosecutors.... Has that made any inroads that you know of in the staffing within the prison system?

[Raji Mangat]

Ms. Metcalfe might be better positioned to answer this because she spends more time in prisons.

I know they've made commitments to increasing the numbers of indigenous staff, elders, and those sorts of things. I think that's good. That certainly is better than not having those initiatives in place.

I think that falls more within tweaking the system and less within the sorts of things Ms. Metcalfe was speaking about in terms of working with this dual system of corrections that's steeped in indigenous cultural traditions, communities, and healing.

Maybe I'll let her speak to that more directly, because it's more in her bailiwick.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Absolutely.

Ms. Metcalfe, you were the one who mentioned it, so ...

[Jennifer Metcalfe]

Yes. I agree with Raji that we really need to be taking indigenous women, and I think also men, out of the correctional system. It's a system that's broken, and we need to take them out.

I think one of the problems.... We've noticed a lot of.... We're talking about getting rid of solitary confinement, but there's also a lot of increase in security at all of the levels. I think having men working in the front lines in the women's prisons has contributed to that. It sort of takes away from the trauma-informed approach that was the foundation of “Creating Choices” and which our provincial women's prison uses....

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

As we all understand, governments are like large ocean liners. To get them to change it takes until an hour later in their course and many miles down the road. You mentioned silos. I think this is one of the biggest challenges. When you want to turn any department, you're driving an ocean liner and they're headed in one direction. Do you believe this is important?

[Raji Mangat]

I do. I think if we look at some of the challenges that the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has experienced around that, they've managed to come up with some sort of process that might cut across those jurisdictional, ministerial, or departmental mandates. I appreciate that challenge. I'm not completely blind to it at all. I think it's going to be one of the hardest things. I think the will is there, but we're so set in some of the ways we work. How about we look at housing as a part of this pathway? That seems really radical and crazy but it is so much a part of that because if people don't have safe places to go they're not going to stay out of prison. Maybe it's going to require some very brave and creative people. I think they're out there, and I think the will is there.