Public Safety committee  Food is also really important. Because the food is so unappealing, most now complement their diet with the canteen. The canteen looks like your local IGA or Metro or Sobeys. They sell protein there. They sell chicken, pizza—all sorts of food. Institutions no longer cook for 100%

Public Safety committee  Many countries have tried, and it's virtually impossible unless you shut an institution down completely. Human ingenuity, greed, will always be a step ahead of you. I think that question you can certainly ask to the commissioner of corrections. She may have some views on this.

Public Safety committee  Let me just go back, because I want to make sure, proactively, that I'm not getting into trouble. I am going to Rome, but all the expenses will be paid by the International Development Law Organization, and it's to provide legal training on human rights and develop material that

Public Safety committee  The answer is no. Tobacco is considered contraband, and you can be punished. Tobacco is obviously a legal substance in Canadian society. When introduced in penitentiaries, a pouch of tobacco can go for as high as $800 in the underground market—

Public Safety committee  We have to look beyond the drug trade and at conditions of confinement in general if we're going to impact this. Part of the problem is that if you had programming that was meaningful, addressed substance abuse issues and reduced some of the demand, that would be very helpful.

Public Safety committee  What I can tell you is that we spend an inordinate amount of money per prisoner per year. Could that money be better used to try to address substance abuse in the community? That would be one way of dealing with it. If you were more proactive in the community in addressing chro

Public Safety committee  Thank you. This is something that certainly plagues the Correctional Service of Canada. I'm very preoccupied by it. In order to be effective, you need to have a wide spectrum of initiatives to try to reduce the drugs coming into the penitentiaries, as well as the demand. We call

Public Safety committee  Dry cells are used when it's suspected that a person has ingested drugs or concealed them in body orifices. They wait for them to be flushed out. These are cells with dry toilets.

Public Safety committee  In this case, it was a Supreme Court ruling, a decision the government had to act on within a certain timeframe. So clearly the minister was being proactive until such time as new guidelines are put in place to mitigate the problem at hand. I will give you an example of what I'm

Public Safety committee  That's a very good question. This is of great concern to me. With respect to the effectiveness of the office, I would point out that we only have the power to make recommendations, which is not binding on Correctional Service Canada, the government or the minister. That's the ap

Public Safety committee  We raised this issue many years ago, and certainly we did when there were some political decisions to try to restrict access to those programs. We included it this year, thanks to you, because we knew there was Library of Parliament research that was conducted on this that was co

Public Safety committee  Again, I have to admit there are some challenges, absolutely, in terms of introducing a needle exchange program in federal corrections, so much so that my annual report says that right now the program is in name only; it involves so few inmates because Correctional Service Canada

Public Safety committee  To conclude, the danger is this: If you don't have it, there will be dirty needles everywhere, and when correctional officers search people, they can prick themselves. That's where the risk is. That's what other jurisdictions have demonstrated: You can reduce the risk of dirty ne

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much. Hopefully, this will give you a good background.

Public Safety committee  Yes. We've documented some of the concerns in this annual report. Absolutely, there is a lot of fear out there. This is an issue that my office raised back in 2005 in terms of introducing it into penitentiaries. Under the pressure of litigation, Canada eventually introduced it