Public Safety committee  I don't know. That's a truthful answer, because we never assessed whether that.... There were no complaints. We were never asked to look at whether or not the Correctional Service acted appropriately in this case. We never investigated. We never made any recommendation with respect to cascading Mr.

Public Safety committee  I'm not sure I understand your question.

Public Safety committee  That is correct.

Public Safety committee  I don't recall. You would have to ask him. If you ask me—

Public Safety committee  This is hypothetical. I'm not sure I'm best placed to respond. I can tell you that the criteria brought in by the Harper government that dealt with “necessary and proportionate” were likely to be interpreted as the “least restrictive” measure, which is consistent with public safety.

Public Safety committee  —becomes an interpretation—

Public Safety committee  —because it is something that.... “Least restrictive” is a pillar of principles that Canada and many countries around the world have adopted. It is grounded in international human rights law. It is reflected in, for example, the standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners, which were redone in 2015.

Public Safety committee  I think this is speculation. I don't know.

Public Safety committee  I think “least restrictive measures” is a pillar, as I said, that is not just applied to transfers. It applies to things such as searches, use of restraints, use of force, placement in secure intervention units—

Public Safety committee  It's yes and no. Thank you for your question. As you know, we're an independent ombuds office. We investigate complaints and we focus on compliance with the law. Typically, when it comes to transfers, the complaints we receive are usually related to a denial. We investigate to see whether the denial is justified.

Public Safety committee  It's just economy of scale. We have only about 600 incarcerated women across Canada, in five different institutions across the nation, so a lot of it has to do with still needing a lot of staff. It's much more cost-efficient to have a single institution with lots of people, than to have five, but we chose five back in 2000, and rightly so, to ensure the women would be closer to their communities.

Public Safety committee  It does raise the question. My view is that we need a great deal of involvement of Black community leaders and organizations to assist the service. There are so many barriers to accessing the carceral population to provide services and advice. That is where I think you would effect change.

Public Safety committee  I think I told you that I was disappointed with the overall response of the service, and I will leave it at that. There are a few things that are a bit more responsive. I mentioned health care products and stuff. We made some comments about health professionals who work for the service needing to be a bit aware of some of the cultural issues.

Public Safety committee  Yes. Most of the jobs in the penitentiaries have very little value in terms of vocational skills. Most of it is cleaning. Kitchen work with the new cook-chill...isn't really that great a skill to acquire. The best program that the service has is called CORCAN. It's a prison industry program, but it only reaches less than 10% of the carceral population, and 80% of that is in textiles.

Public Safety committee  I can concur with what Dr. Shaw mentioned, and I suspect that some of the stories come directly from what we were able to gather. The problem, as I said, is threefold. There has to be a statutory obligation to refer the cases so that my office becomes aware; there needs to be oversight in this business.