Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, my name is Tony Van De Mortel. I am a corrections officer at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre in the Yukon. I have been a correctional officer for three and a half years. The Whitehorse Correctional Centre—from this point I'll call it WCC—is the only territorial corr

Public Safety committee  Yes, I did go back working the floor for about seven months after my injury. That was before knee surgery. I had a lot of troubles in those seven months. A lot of the feedback from inmates was good. They did not like what happened. They said they wanted us to lock them in a room

Public Safety committee  Yes, I think it did. There are other inmates in that cell block, and there was one who was not drinking locked in the cell with them. He was scared. He was in the corner trying to stay out of everything when it was all going on. Word spreads fast in a correctional centre. They we

Public Safety committee  As a front-line staff member, I can say we spend a lot of time with the inmates. It needs to be drug free. It has to go right out of the system in order for them to make the proper choices, move forward with healing, and create a safe environment. There are a lot of pressures in

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  We need a lot more training on addictions, more of the social aspect of dealing with these, to be more educated on everything that surrounds the addiction and how it would help us to help them.

Public Safety committee  Something along those lines, yes.

Public Safety committee  There are courses, but there can always be a lot more.

Public Safety committee  At the moment we are full, and that's why this new facility is being built. We've got, I think, a $67 million facility that's just being built. We should be moving into it this spring. At that point, it should be single bunking.

Public Safety committee  We are in a dorm situation where everything is double bunked. We've got 26--

Public Safety committee  That was a central cell block. It wasn't full, but, yes, there were four people in that one cell.

Public Safety committee  No, not at all.

Public Safety committee  Yes, I would agree with that; it sounds pretty close to right on. Even in Whitehorse—the small area that we are—that's pretty accurate.

Public Safety committee  No, actually, I don't. I'm more inside, dealing with that. There can always be more, in Whitehorse anyway. There's not enough help for them on the outside.

Public Safety committee  Double-bunking had nothing to do with it.