Status of Women Committee on Feb. 13th, 2018

[Audra Andrews]

With indigenous females, as with a lot of our offenders in the community—but especially for the women, because they have children as well—finding affordable housing is an extreme challenge for them, especially if they're leaving our halfway houses and are coming out into the community on something called statutory release. It's very challenging for them. They're usually underemployed. Having some more marketable employment skills, as I mentioned, would be extremely helpful.

As I mentioned also, having immediate access to an elder would be extremely helpful, because I've noticed recently myself that the lack of those cultural supports can really have an adverse impact on these ladies.

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

What about access to parole hearings and the need for more appointments to the Parole Board to make sure that these women actually get a parole hearing?

Is that a fair comment?

[Audra Andrews]

Yes. We are experiencing a bit of a backlog right now. These ladies are having to wait longer and longer, which has a cascading effect, because it fills up our halfway houses. Other women are often waiting inside the institutions, and these women in the halfway houses are waiting longer for their full parole or other kinds of releases. It has a cascading effect all the way back into the institution.

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

How can we attract more indigenous people to work in corrections?

[Audra Andrews]

The HR processes that are involved right now are quite long and arduous. First of all, CSC also needs to go and reach out into the indigenous communities and make it an appealing place to work. That includes listening to the staff they already have. Essentially, though, the HR processes for the Parole Board and for CSC right now are quite long and arduous in all respects.

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

You basically have to be without income for a while, I understand.

[Audra Andrews]

Yes, you do. If you're going in to be a correctional officer, and you're going into the training.... I'm not sure if it's similar to Depot at the RCMP, but you need to go without income for at least two or three months. I can't remember exactly, but you're without income for about that long if you make it into that.

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

There are no supports for you. Okay.

I will just end by thanking all of you for being part of this study. I wish I'd had more time.

I think that's it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you so much.

We're now going to move over to Stephanie Kusie for seven minutes.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Carroll, I'm wondering if you can expand upon what you mean by “community courts” and what you see as the process of evolution between the present-day sentencing system to the end result of community courts. Please, can you expand upon that?

[Lowell Carroll]

The community courts project that I was referring to.... I believe the first one was in Vancouver. I'm on the Justice Sector Constellation, where we recently obtained approval for a small grant to start a project of our own in Calgary. What we're doing right now is figuring out how that's going to work logistically.

Even before sentencing, before it gets to the stage of incarceration and all those things, the key is to start tackling the issues that have caused the accused to end up in the court system in the first place. Right now in Calgary, for instance, they've created a mental health court. There's drug court in Edmonton. These courts are extremely effective, but they seem to just focus on one problem area. We're starting to realize more and more, as we look into it, that there's an array of issues: it's housing, it's income, it's displacement, and it's mental health issues. You need an all-encompassing court that can look at all those issues. You're in the mental health court, but you may have a drug problem. That's the problem: all these pilot projects are focusing on one area, when all of us know there are numerous areas that are problematic and that cause these people to end up in the justice system.

Community courts kind of aim to tackle that, and that's why I feel it's a better system. It looks at everything, rather than just focusing on one problem area.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Andrews, I'm wondering when the private home placement program was removed, and why it was removed.

[Audra Andrews]

On why it was removed, I think the upper management of CSC could probably better respond to that. I might be incorrect with the date, but it was probably about 2008 or 2009, somewhere in there.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

You're saying 2008 or 2009. How long had it been in place prior to being removed?

[Audra Andrews]

Again, my recollection might be incorrect, but it was there for at least eight or nine years. I think it was brought about in 2000, or somewhere in there. It was in place for at least eight or nine years, I believe.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much.

You mentioned increased supports for mental health. This was the first of five points you mentioned. Can you expand upon that, please, Ms. Andrews, in terms of what you would like to see for further mental health supports?

[Audra Andrews]

We're seeing many more incarcerated individuals—not just indigenous women, but especially our indigenous women—coming in with much more complex mental health issues. Sometimes they're coming in with an alcohol and drug addiction that run concurrently with their mental health disorders. As a result, they tend to act out more, and there's more injury and self-harm and suicidal tendencies.

I'd like to see, as I mentioned, more mental health nurses and psychologists, which would reduce some of the wait-lists to access some of these mental health supports for these women, which they very much need.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

You also mentioned worker programs. Could you please expand upon what types of worker programs you think would be useful and helpful?

[Audra Andrews]

Getting more women into something like the trades would help, something that might actually enable them to support themselves and their families when they are released into the community. I think we need to aim a little higher. Trades would be one example. Assisting them to increase their education levels while they're inside and in the community would also be very helpful.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Carroll, you mentioned that there is unfortunately a cycle: they often leave feeling less well than when they arrived, when the purpose was rehabilitation. What do you feel can ultimately be done to prevent indigenous women from being criminalized?

[Lowell Carroll]

I don't feel at this point that institutions, both federal and provincial, do a good job of rehabilitating people. If there's any diversion that you can do.... There are many things, such as restorative justice, and I've already mentioned drug court, mental health court, and things like that. There are many diversions you can do to avoid someone's going to jail. Not only is it costly, but it doesn't really help, oftentimes.

I keep bringing up community courts, but we need to be looking at the issues you're in for. For instance, if you're in for theft because you're stealing because you're in poverty, maybe you need to be set up with income support, but if you're homeless, that's not going to work; you need to be set up with housing and those kinds of things.

The problem with legal aid and with many of the other institutions we have is that we don't give warm transfers. When someone is in the justice system, we tell them to go and apply for housing, and they may never get there. In the community courts, when someone gets there and you identify what the problems are, the defence works in conjunction with the crown to figure out how to tackle those issues. It's a much more collaborative way of dealing with things, rather than just punishing someone, putting them in jail, and then hoping they get better.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Poulin, what is the difference between the challenges faced by indigenous women in cities and those of women in rural areas?

[Jacinthe Poulin]

The difference is that, when women come to the cities, the social fabric is thinner. As a result, they—especially those who are released from a detention facility—are often significantly more isolated. Often, the people and family that were around them before are no longer there. The isolation is significant, and the friendship centres can help break it. Of course, in terms of hardship, the conditions are similar in rural communities and in urban areas, but the social fabric around those women is very thin.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

We're now going to move on to Irene Mathyssen for seven minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to all of our panellists. You bring a wealth of information and a wealth of experience that we hope will be applied to make things better.

I'm going to start with a confession. Eight years ago I was on this committee, and we were talking about precisely the things we're talking about here today. I feel very much that we have failed, failed some very vulnerable women and their children.

I want to drill down on some of the things you have said. I want to start with the importance of the judiciary—the judges, the lawyers, the law enforcement professionals—in terms of the training they get, the culturally sensitive competency training. Is there enough of it? Are we seeing any positive results from it?

Can any of you comment on that all-important training?