Public Safety committee  Well, I'll give you an example of another program in Alberta that deals with sex offenders. It also won't receive people as a sentence-receiving institution, but it certainly receives people who are on parole. The issue is that these are people you normally wouldn't necessarily

Public Safety committee  You know, I honestly wish I had a pithy, sharp response to that to say where the problem is. Very little of what we have talked about is new in corrections. These tensions and issues have been a feature of corrections for as long as we've had corrections. The problem, if I coul

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much for the line of questions. It would be terrible on our part if we presented anything that was misleading. Of course, we don't have the predictive ability to look at what these new, latest interventions may result in, in terms of red

Public Safety committee  Thank you. I think the important point for my office to you as you undertake your study is to consider the limitations of interdiction alone and to consider the limitations of interdiction based on dealing with just the offender population, because there are lots of ways that dr

Public Safety committee  I think those priorities would have to include changing the governance structure of the Correctional Service of Canada so that there is the most senior level of attention being paid to the special needs of aboriginal offenders; making women's corrections facilities directly accou

Public Safety committee  I want to get back to the CORCAN program, the vocational component.

Public Safety committee  First of all, let me say it's uneven across the country. In some regions and in some areas it's easier than in other areas. You have more problems in the Prairies than you do, for example, in British Columbia; more problems in Ontario than perhaps you do in Quebec. So there are s

Public Safety committee  Maybe I can give a little bit of a quick perspective on that. At the regional treatment centres—there are five of them across the country—the bed space is equal to about 5% or 6% of the population. The Correctional Service of Canada, when it did its own census, estimated that thi

Public Safety committee  If there's a safety issue, there are many interventions. The problem with segregation is that it's a 23-hour lock-up in conditions of deprivation, which are the most austere conditions the Correctional Service has. If people are at significant risk of self-harm, you may also put

Public Safety committee  I just visited one of the treatment centres myself and had that very discussion with their management team. Of course, their challenge is that they're trying to prepare people for new vocational work and other institutional work, and these people have cognitive impairments or oth

Public Safety committee  For those where there is a treatable diagnosis, yes, but keep in mind we're not talking about the brain-injured.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  There are issues to do with testing and with stigma and with how that information is used. But even given that, we do know that the current estimate for hepatitis C infection rates across the system is about 30%. In some institutions it's considerably higher. I must say that th

Public Safety committee  I would agree that a number of policy changes in other jurisdictions have resulted in populations of the mentally ill being in the community. For some of those folks, they come into conflict with the law. For some of those folks, they find their way into federal penitentiaries. I

Public Safety committee  I don't know. We have recommended to the Correctional Service of Canada that they immediately engage in a consultation looking at alternative mechanisms for delivering health care generally and mental health care specifically. We know that there are some very interesting models t