House of Commons Hansard #337 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was segregation.
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. We need to draw the line between what is acceptable and unacceptable. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is the last, blood-soaked straw. By selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Canada is supporting this murderous regime and selling its soul.
Will the government suspend its contracts with Saudi Arabia or will it remain complicit?
Chrystia Freeland LiberalMinister of Foreign Affairs
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I want to point out once again that the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi is very troubling. Canada has made that very clear. That is the message that I sent to the Saudi Arabian foreign minister. I also initiated a discussion on the subject with my counterparts in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.
We join our partners in calling for a thorough investigation to identify those responsible.
Erin Weir Independent Regina—Lewvan, SK
Mr. Speaker, in the past couple of days, Canadians have emitted a great deal of cannabis smoke. However, that is nothing compared to the emissions from energy-intensive cannabis production. U.S. cannabis production emits as much carbon as three million cars.
Has the government estimated the carbon footprint of Canadian cannabis production and what steps has the government taken to limit those emissions as it lights up this new industry?
Catherine McKenna LiberalMinister of Environment and Climate Change
Mr. Speaker, we know we need to take action on climate change. We know we need to reduce emissions. We are committed to doing that across all sectors. We have a price on pollution. We are phasing out coal. We are making historic investments in public transportation. We are investing in clean technology companies. We will continue taking the actions that Canadians expect to protect our environment and grow our economy.
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Shelley Beyak's children were abducted by their father and taken to Beirut. On September 14, the Prime Minister received a petition of over 930 names of Canadians, adding their voices to that of Shelley Beyak, imploring the Prime Minister to personally intervene and bring these children home.
If you seek it, I hope you will find unanimous consent to table this document.
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
No, there is not unanimous consent.
I believe the hon. opposition House leader has the usual Thursday question.
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the government, and I hope the answer is better than the ones we got in question period.
Can the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons tell us what the government has planned for the rest of this week and next week?
Bardish Chagger LiberalLeader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will resume second reading debate of Bill C-83, on administrative segregation. This debate will continue tomorrow.
Next Monday, October 22, shall be an allotted day. Also, priority will be given to report stage and third reading debate of Bill C-76, the elections modernization act, as soon as it is reported back to the House.
Finally, I would like to remind everybody that next Thursday, pursuant to the order made earlier this week, the House will have Wednesday sitting hours to allow for the address in the House at 10:30 a.m. by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
Statements by Prime Minister Regarding Legalization of MarijuanaPrivilegeOral Questions
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Mr. Speaker, I want to raise a question of privilege.
In response to our question yesterday, the Prime Minister misled the House by providing incorrect information. The interim leader of the Bloc Québécois asked him why the rush to legalize cannabis by October 17, and the Prime Minister replied:
The provinces, including Quebec, asked for eight to 12 weeks to legalize cannabis after the entry into force of the bill, and we gave them 17 weeks.
However, Quebec asked to push cannabis legislation back to July 1, 2019. The Quebec National Assembly adopted a unanimous motion to that effect on November 16, 2017. It reads:
THAT the National Assembly ask the Federal Government to defer the cannabis legalization currently scheduled to come into force on 1 July 2018 until at least 1 July 2019.
The Prime Minister's statement was misleading.
In addition, after the National Assembly adopted this motion, it also unanimously agreed to send this motion to the Prime Minister and to all Liberal members of Parliament from Quebec.
The Prime Minister therefore had knowledge of the resolution adopted by the Quebec National Assembly. The Prime Minister therefore knew when he was making that statement that it was incorrect.
Given that the Prime Minister's statement was misleading and that the Prime Minister made a statement that he knew to be incorrect, it seems clear to us that the Prime Minister intended to mislead the House. Just this morning we received the selected decisions from May 7, 2012, of the Speaker who preceded you. On page 31, it states:
It has become accepted practice in this House that the following elements have to be established when it is alleged that a Member is in contempt for deliberately misleading the House: one, it must be proven that the statement was misleading; two, it must be established that the Member making the statement knew at the time that the statement was incorrect; and three, that in making the statement, the Member intended to mislead the House.
Given that the Prime Minister's statement was misleading and incorrect—as we have demonstrated—and given that he knew, when he was making the statement, that it was misleading and incorrect—as we have demonstrated—what other intention could he have had apart from misleading the House by saying these falsehoods?
I repeat the Prime Minister's reply:
The provinces, including Quebec, asked for eight to 12 weeks to legalize cannabis after the entry into force of the bill, and we gave them 17 weeks.
I would like to clarify that I raised my question of privilege at the earliest opportunity because the most recent information was obtained during yesterday's question period.
Finally, should you consider it to be a prima facie question of privilege, I intend to move the following motion: That the House acknowledge that the Prime Minister misled the House and ask him to correct the answer to the question posed October 17, 2018, by the member for La Pointe-de-l'Île, and to apologize to the House.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, Mr. Speaker.
Statements by Prime Minister Regarding Legalization of MarijuanaPrivilegeOral Questions
Liberal
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
I thank the hon. member for Montcalm for his intervention. I will take the matter into consideration and will come back to the House in due course.
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-83, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and another Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Mr. Speaker, first, I want to mention that I look forward to hearing the speech of my colleague from Red Deer—Mountain View, with whom I will be sharing my time. In the meantime, he is the one who will be listening to what I have to say about Bill C-83. Hon. members will notice that our opinions are quite similar. That goes without saying.
I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-83, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and another act.
It will make a few rather major changes since it will, among other things: eliminate the use of administrative segregation and disciplinary segregation; authorize the Commissioner to designate a penitentiary or an area in a penitentiary as a structured intervention unit for the confinement of inmates who cannot be maintained in the mainstream inmate population for security or other reasons; provide less invasive alternatives to physical body cavity searches; affirm that the Correctional Service of Canada has the obligation to support the autonomy and clinical independence of registered health care professionals.
It will make other amendments that I unfortunately do not have time to talk about. It is impossible to address every aspect of the bill in just 10 minutes. However, I will focus on a few aspects, including the government's desire to eliminate the use of administrative and disciplinary segregation. The government made that decision as a result of two cases that are currently before the courts. Although the government is appealing the rulings in those cases, it decided to legislate an extreme solution. It is recommending eliminating the use of administrative and disciplinary segregation to address an issue I believe could have been addressed differently. Unfortunately, like most of this government's initiatives, even if this bill passes, it is destined to fail. Doing away with administrative and disciplinary segregation will create a lot more problems in Canada's correctional facilities than it will solve.
To back up my prediction about how the government's plan to eliminate administrative segregation will end in failure, I would like to talk about some of the other ways this government has failed since it took office in 2015.
The government tried to resolve a number of issues, and every time it made those situations worse.
On the economic front, it raised taxes. It scared off billions of dollars' worth of investments by making Canada less attractive to foreign investors. Those billions have been invested elsewhere. On the border security front, everyone here knows that Quebec in particular is still grappling with an unacceptable situation. Thousands of asylum seekers have entered and continue to enter Canada illegally, yet the government has failed to find a solution, do something, or take action.
On international trade, there have been no new trade agreements with other trading partners anywhere in the world. The government has also jeopardized existing agreements. Who can forget the Prime Minister's failure to show up for a trans-Pacific partnership signing ceremony, thereby making Canada the laughingstock of the countries who were there at the appointed time?
What about the recent free trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada? Canada ended up with more tariffs than it had before. That is a first, and it is a dismal failure on the government's part.
On justice, the government refused to put Tori Stafford's murderer back behind bars. The government also allowed a cop killer who never served in the armed forces to keep receiving benefits from Veterans Affairs Canada. Every time we ask the government to do something about this, we get a vague, evasive response and nothing gets done.
No account of the Liberal government's failures would be complete without an account of its failure on the ethics front. This Prime Minister is the first Canadian leader ever found guilty of violating ethics laws. Four of his ministers have also been the subject of federal investigations over the last three years.
These failures have real consequences for Canadians. They have increased the cost of living, made Canadians less safe, and, by essentially slamming the door on foreign investment, as I said earlier, made it impossible for Canadians to do business and prosper. In addition, Canadians now have less confidence in the government, sadly.
I may have discovered why the Liberal government is having this problem. Digging through the archives and looking through books for some explanation of why a government would choose to fail on so many fronts, I found a book written a few years ago by Paul Watzlawick entitled Ultra-Solutions, or, How to Fail Most Successfully. I truly believe this book is on every Liberal's nightstand.
I will read a few comments from the postscript:
How to fail most successfully? It's simple. For each problem, just find the ultra-solution. What's the ultra-solution? “Such a solution not only does away with the problem, but also with just about everything else, somewhat in the vein of the old medical joke—Operation successful, patient dead”.
The problem with the Liberals is that they always find the ultra-solution. There was a cannabis problem, so they found the ultra-solution: they legalized it with total disregard for all the problems, all the dissenting opinions they heard from police forces, psychiatrists, and municipal and provincial officials. The ultra-solution was chosen to solve a very real problem in Canada. They decided that the ultra-solution was to legalize it across the board. We could apply this logic to every decision this government has made from the beginning.
Getting back to Bill C-83, yes, there are problems with segregation, as we have seen. There are problems with respect to the various groups or different communities, such as indigenous peoples, who are placed in segregation, for preventive purposes or for security. Rather than trying to come up with solutions to specific problems, the government chose the ultra-solution and decided to simply eliminate administrative segregation.
I have an article here dated September 28, 2017. It talks about Ivan Zinger, who was the correctional investigator of Canada and who conducted an investigation into segregation. To his great surprise, “[the] new strategy to limit prolonged segregation has had the unintended consequences of more violent attacks behind bars”. That is what he himself acknowledged. This is what is happening because, indeed, since 2014, the penitentiaries have tried to send fewer people to segregation.
According to the data compiled by Mr. Zinger, the number of inmates kept in segregation at any given point in the year has gone from 800 to fewer than 300 since 2014. However, over the same period, the number of assaults committed by inmates against other inmates spiked by 32%: there were 719 incidents last year versus 543 incidents in 2013-14. The number of incidents involving prison guards remained stable.
That is exactly what I am trying to explain and get across to the government By wanting to pass a bill seeking to eliminate the problem and everything that goes with it, the government is creating other problems that are sometimes worse than the ones they are trying to fix. That is why I cannot support Bill C-83.
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable for his comments.
Every federal department is supposed to submit a plan that includes cost estimates. The Correctional Service of Canada plan proposes to cut staff over the next four years. There is also a proposed 8.8% reduction, over the next four years, in the financial resources that help the Correctional Service do its work. However, the government's bill proposes to increase services received under the new inmate detention system.
Can my colleague talk about what will happen to our correctional system given these budget plans?
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very pertinent question.
As I mentioned in my speech, the bill, as cobbled together and proposed by the Liberal government, does not take these cuts into account. What is going to happen? They will fail once again.
They are likely endangering prison guards and the people who work in these institutions. Those people are there for the good of the inmates and the public. They keep dangerous criminals behind bars. Sometimes, we must protect criminals from themselves, to prevent them from attacking others. Unfortunately, these cuts and the Liberals' improvisation are likely to cause more and more serious incidents in our prisons.
Alexandre Boulerice NDP Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
We are going to oppose this bill, but our reasons for doing so are not the same as those of my colleague, as he can well imagine. We find it rather strange that the Liberals, compelled by the courts, have started referring to administrative segregation as structured intervention units, and that they are reducing the maximum number of hours spent in segregation from 22 to 20, but they are still allowing inmates to be kept there for an indefinite period of time, as was the case before. In our opinion this bill is a waste of time. No real changes are being made. The government is not abiding by the court's decision.
What does my colleague think about the fact that 42% of inmates in administrative segregation are indigenous? Is that not a form of systemic discrimination?
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Madam Speaker, that is exactly what I said in my speech. This bill is an “ultra-solution”. The government thinks that it is going to solve all the problems through a small clause in a bill when there are very different solutions that could have been implemented in a very different way. Unfortunately, the Liberals completely ignored them. They chose a single solution to very different problems.
Yes, there are problems. Yes there are different populations that warrant different solutions. Unfortunately, in this bill, the government treats everyone the same and does not take into account the differences, the causes, and mental health conditions. We are just being told that the same formula now applies to everyone. In that regard, I agree with my NDP colleague, even though he does not seem to like it.
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Madam Speaker, I think that the Conservative and New Democrat members' comments complement one another. They do not necessarily oppose the same things, but they do complement each other.
I want to thank my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable for his great speech. I learned a lot, and I think Canadians did as well, about why it is important to plan well and have a vision when introducing a bill. It seems clear that this is not the case here, based on the points my colleague made in his speech.
Correctional Service Canada has told us that there is absolutely no budget for this bill. The government did not do any budget forecasts.
Since my colleague was once a mayor, I would like to ask him a question. Would he have ever introduced a by-law, law or new approach at city hall without knowing how much it would cost?
The Assistant Deputy Speaker NDP Carol Hughes
The member for Mégantic—L'Érable has time for a brief answer.
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Madam Speaker, it was a remarkable speech of my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable, and certainly I hope that I can live up to the expectations he had.
I am honoured to speak to Bill C-83, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, because located in the centre of my riding is the Bowden Institution, which is presently a medium security prison built on an open campus model. It was opened in 1974, being built on the site of former RCAF Station Bowden, a World War II British Commonwealth air training plan facility. Although it is a medium-security prison, recently a considerable contingent of violent gang members have been transferred there.
During my 34 year career as a teacher in Innisfail, just a few miles north of the pen and during my wife's 10 year teaching career in Bowden, we both had many interactions with families who had relatives incarcerated at the penitentiary, as well as interactions with community members who worked as guards, psychologists, or teachers in the institution.
In my role as the member of Parliament, first for Red Deer from 2008 to 2015 and then for Red Deer—Mountain View, concerns about the activities that take place not just at Bowden but at correctional facilities across Canada often end up on my desk.
The morale of prison staff is so important because for them to function in a way that can be helpful to both the inmates and themselves, they need safe conditions and positive direction. I will start with one of the issues that has weighed so heavily on their minds, and that is the disastrous Phoenix pay system. No worker should be forced to sell their vehicle, move out of their homes, deal with marriage breakdowns from financial stress and declare personal bankruptcy simply because the government cannot get a properly calculated cheque to them. However, those are things that have happened and are continuing to happen.
No worker should have to deal with drug addicts inside a prison, especially when those drugs are fentanyl, which can be lethal if one just breathes it in. In July 2017, a corrections officer was hospitalized after finding fentanyl in a car in the parking lot. Drugs are hidden in flower beds, come over the walls in tennis balls, and are brought in by visitors, many under threat of violence to their loved ones if they do not comply.
In November 2017, half a million dollars of drugs, mainly methamphetamines and THC, was seized by staff. Imagine how people feel when the concept of needle exchanges and heating spoons also finds its way in and how that discussion occurs. It simply illustrates to the public just how dangerous and unmanageable the situation is.
Corrections staff are not only expected to deal with these dangerous issues, but they also have their hands tied even to the extent of being subject to monetary penalties if they take actions against an inmate, even if they are protecting themselves.
As far as Bill C-83 is concerned, the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers intends to spend a lot of time reviewing this legislation. Jason Godin, the national president, said:
Bill C-83 will require serious consultation and resources to make it work.... As correctional officers, we want to make sure that we have the proper tools to ensure staff and inmates safety. In that sense, Bill C-83 must include structured intervention units, which would operate as a population management tool that they can ensure staff and inmate safety.
With regard to consultation, resources, and proper tools to make it work, I don't think many people believe that adequate resources management is, or ever has been, a Liberal priority after the way the government rolled out its marijuana program.
The union emphasized say that the new bill must not sacrifice disciplinary segregation as a tool to deter violent behaviour. It said:
We need alternative sanctions to disciplinary segregation, ensuring that inmates displaying dangerous and violent behaviour have some consequences for their actions. Since CSC has limited its use of segregation with new policies, there has been an increased report of assaults on inmates and staff.
For example, Mr. Godin said:
At RPC (Regional Psychiatric Centre) we have had over 100 assaults on staff in 12 months and that they need to get this under control.
It is my assessment that the introduction of SIUs may pose a risk to prison guards, inmates, particularly those for whom solitary confinement is used for their own safety. Additionally, the stripping of the ability to use segregation for discipline makes prisons more dangerous for the guards, since they will now face having to deal with the worst of the worst, the most volatile, being out and about from their cells for four hours per day.
Bill C-83 also goes further than what was raised in either of the Supreme Court decisions by banning administrative segregation and changing it to this SIU model. This is just another example of how misplaced Liberal thinking is when it comes to criminals, give them all the breaks and putting the screws to those charged with keeping control.
Conservatives will always stand strong by supporting workers' safety and victims' concerns over increasing the rights and privileges of criminals.
Another aspect of this bill, one that I am in agreement with, is the introduction of body scanners. For those who travel as much as we do as members of Parliament, it is just second nature. What are those scanners designed to do? It is to keep everyone safe, to restrict dangerous items, to prevent the possibility of mayhem. Where could that be more important than in a prison? The union also welcomes the introduction of body scanners to prevent contraband, saying that “Our union has advocated strongly for the implementation of body scanners. We are satisfied with the results.”
I agree that body scanners are a good idea, but we will be proposing amendments to extend scanning to anyone who enters the institution, other than employees. Personally, I would go so far as to say that if everyone had to go through the scanners, and inmates knew this was the way it was going to be, then the resulting recognition that nothing could come in would go a long ways to ensuring safety for all.
One of the things that I have been acutely aware of as a resident of central Alberta is the issue of criminality. We have a penitentiary, but we also have criminals from all over this country. I have heard from other members that there are issues regarding the special circumstances of indigenous inmates and concerns about inmates from ethnic or religious minorities. These are all issues that need to be carefully addressed.
There are also issues with people who have drug addictions, who feed their habit through criminal behaviour, and those special cases where inmates with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder are engaging in criminal activity because they are manipulated by con artists, some within the institutions as well. These are circumstances where effective mental health protocols and interventions need to be used.
The formalization of exceptions for offenders with mental health conditions of special circumstances, when done properly, would truly be fair. As a matter of fact, our previous Conservative government championed the improvement of mental health treatment for patients, by ensuring faster mental health screening through the creation of mental health strategies, by extending mental psychological counselling and improving staff training.
This was not hard on criminals; it was compassionate and effective. Granted, much more work still needs to be done. However, just throwing up our hands like the Liberals are doing, hoping they can move criminals out of prisons faster by simply reclassifying them, does not make sense, and it surely does not protect the public.
Policies such as classifying a single prison cell in a minimum-security facility to become a maximum-security cell sounds more like an administrative solution than a strong security decision.
In conclusion, we want to see the risk to prison guards, the institutions' staff, and the general public completely eliminated. Isolating offenders who attack other inmates or are harmful to themselves and others should not always be second guessed. Making prisons drug free with the use of technology and strict enforcement should not be considered an impossible task. Ensuring that the right mental health treatment gets to the right inmates as quickly as possible should be the goal of everyone involved.
Hopefully those witnesses who are clamouring to make the Liberals see the light will get a fair hearing when this goes to committee, and amendments will be accepted to make this legislation effective.
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Madam Speaker, I congratulate my former fellow member of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on his wonderful speech.
The hon. member mentioned fetal alcohol syndrome. I have read and heard that upwards of 70% to 80% of people who are incarcerated have two common indicators: one that their mother drank while pregnant, and the other that they have not finished high school.
Has the member looked into those statistics to see how people with those two characteristics might be rehabilitated?
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Madam Speaker, I would first say in response to both of those items that, as a former teacher, they are important. I know, for example, that in Bowden we have great staff working with individuals. It is a much more difficult situation to work with those who have FASD, but it does work. If they do not have a lot of extra distractions around them, it is a lot easier for them to manage under those circumstances.
However, one of the critical and key parts is that often other criminals will want things done inside the prison. Therefore, it is not just a case of what they did on the outside, because we find that many of them end up getting charged for other activities they have committed on the inside because someone told them they were good guys and asked them to do something for them, that everything would be great. However, the former are the ones who get caught and end up having to serve extra time. That activity is still going on. Therefore, if someone wants to move drugs from one person to another and he or she sends someone else to do that, obviously that person would be the one who would suffer the most.
Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet NDP Hochelaga, QC
Madam Speaker, at the end of the day, this bill offers nothing more than a change in terminology. What used to be called administrative segregation will now be called structured intervention units. This is not much better. The government also wants to reduce the number of hours in segregation from 22 or 23 hours to 20 hours. This is a difference of two or three hours.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia and the Superior Court of Ontario have ruled that the existing segregation regime is unconstitutional, and, as I just mentioned, not much is changing about this regime, other than the terminology and the number of hours.
Does my colleague agree with the courts?
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Madam Speaker, the definition with respect to an inmate's rights in the bill states that an inmate in a structured intervention unit has the same rights as other inmates, except if they cannot be exercised due to limitations specified for the SIU or security requirements.
First of all, the opportunities for inmates to spend a minimum of four hours a day outside their cells or to interact for a minimum of two hours a day with others through activities, including but not limited to some programs, and going through interventions and services that encourage them to make progress, all of these things sound like a great opportunities. Although the inmates are given a certain amount of leisure time, it seems as though the Liberals are trying to dictate how those four hours would be dealt with. There are even points in the bill where inmates have to make sure they have spoken with a certain person during the time of day that is listed. Whatever the situation is and the relationship this has to the Supreme Court's decision, I believe that the Liberals have gone too far. I know that the unions are extremely frustrated by this. In my speech I mentioned a lot of different situations where the unions are saying that they need this tool. Therefore, notwithstanding what the Supreme Court says, and I do not think we are going there but that is the situation many people are indicating, this is causing a lot of nervousness in the corrections system.