Charmaine Borg on Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

With respect to the conditions inside federal penitentiaries for correctional officers and inmates: (a) will the government implement any of the 71 recommendations produced in the 2010 Report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security entitled “Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol Addiction in the Federal Correctional System” and, if so, which ones; (b) will the government implement any of the 71 recommendations produced by the Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) in its 36th Annual Report to Parliament (2008-2009) and, if so, which ones; (c) what is the government’s plan to address current and future levels of prison overcrowding; (d) does the government anticipate an increase in prison population by 2015 resulting from the enactment of Bill C-10, An Act to enact the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and to amend the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other Acts, and how will this factor into the aforementioned plan to address current levels of prison overcrowding; (e) does the Correctional Service of Canada have a plan to address the double-bunking crisis in Regional Treatment Centres and Regional Reception Centres; (f) what is the government’s response to reports regarding the practice of double-bunking in segregation; (g) does prison overcrowding have a role to play in the increasing rates of violence in federal prisons; (h) what have been the measurable results of the two-year, $21.5 million investment initiated in 2007 and the continued yearly $16.6 million investment into Institutional Mental Health Initiative (IMHI) intended to improve mental health programs in prisons, (i) have the investments measurably improved mental health treatment and intervention services, (ii) to what extent have the Primary Mental Health Care teams addressed the mental health needs of inmates, (iii) will any of the IMHI investment be directed towards the Intermediate Care Units to treat offenders with mental illnesses not admitted to Regional Treatment Centres, (iv) will an accountability framework and needs and gaps analysis be applied to the IMHI investment, (v) has an evaluation been conducted on the effectiveness of the two-day mental health training package delivered to correctional officers, (vi) will the IMHI investment meet the growing mental health services demands based on projected growth in the incarcerated population; (i) will the government increase CSC correctional programming funding above the current level of 2.7 percent of the total CSC budget and increase the percentage of health professionals on the CSC staff above the current level of 3.7 percent; and (j) to address the current overrepresentation of the mentally ill and the addicted in the correctional system and the security concerns this creates for correctional officers, will the government commit to, in collaboration with the provinces, investing in upstream interventions in order to stem the flow of people suffering from mental illnesses and addictions into the correctional system?