Public Safety committee  There are—

Public Safety committee  —certainly examples of employees of the Correctional Service of Canada, of people under contract to the Correctional Service of Canada, and of visitors and others who have legal reasons to be in the institution. There have been examples over the years of all members of those cate

Public Safety committee  There are really three major issues there. Number one, there has never been a prison that I am aware of anywhere in the world that has been able to be contraband-free, including illicit drugs. Canada does not stand alone in that challenge. Two, we don't have a good baseline of i

Public Safety committee  Segregation or solitary confinement has been a feature of modern corrections as long as we've had penitentiaries. The essential questions around segregation are who goes in, the length of time they stay there, and the circumstances under which they get out. Segregation is being

Public Safety committee  If segregation placements are going to be continued for administrative or disciplinary reasons, then we believe that they need to only be continued based on external independent adjudication of those decisions to make sure that all other alternatives have been exhausted and that

Public Safety committee  Certainly the experience in Edmonton, Alberta, in the healing lodges run by the Native Counselling Services of Alberta, both Buffalo Sage for women and Stan Daniels for men are models. I won't put words in the mouths of the operators of those programs, but I think they would tel

Public Safety committee  Culture change requires leadership. The Correctional Service of Canada is a large, distributed organization, with 18,000-plus staff across the country, 53 custody sites, and I can't remember how many community corrections sites. It's a big, dynamic organization, and it operates f

Public Safety committee  That person would sit at the executive committee of the Correctional Service of Canada, which is the committee that makes all of the governance decisions and directs the operations of the Correctional Service of Canada. That person would become accountable for the strategic plan

Public Safety committee  Right now, Gladue training takes place, but again, the implementation of Gladue is a little haphazard. The Correctional Service of Canada itself, in response to one of our recommendations, actually did a study, some research, into how Gladue principles were being used in decisi

Public Safety committee  Sure. Thank you very much. It's a tremendously complicated area of inquiry. There is no one first nations perspective. There are a number of first nations, so one of the very first things to understand is that one size will not fit all. The Correctional Service of Canada is cha

Public Safety committee  Thank you. As a review body, of course my office falls under the public safety portfolio. However, we operate completely independently of the Correctional Service of Canada, the department, and the Minister of Public Safety. The minister is not involved in the day-to-day operati

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you. It feels luxurious having two hours before your committee this morning. I am quite looking forward to it, which maybe tells you something about my own mental health or something, but I'm really pl

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, and in fact, thank you for that. I was going to focus on recommendation 3 and healing lodges and to point out that the “Spirit Matters” report, the special report tabled in the fall of 2013, is in large part about eliminating the barriers to healing lodges. In some ways, for

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here today.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much for your question. I think it is our first meeting, so hello. In my reading of the TRC report and the “way forward” statements, it is of course clear that it's highly aspirational. It's also clear that this is a marker that has been laid down for not just thi