SCRA Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON CORRECTIONS AND CONDITIONAL RELEASE ACT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR LA LOI SUR LE SYSTÈME CORRECTIONNEL ET LA MISE EN LIBERTÉ SOUS CONDITION DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA JUSTICE ET DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, May 13, 1999

• 0910

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Paul DeVillers (Simcoe North, Lib.)): I call this meeting to order. This is the subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. It's the study of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

We have a witnesses with us. Mr. Scott Newark is special counsel for the Office for Victims of Crime for the Province of Ontario. Mr. Newark, welcome. I'm sure you've been before our committees and subcommittees on many occasions. The format is we'd ask you to make approximately a ten-minute presentation, and that would leave twenty minutes for questioning from the members.

Mr. Scott Newark (Special Counsel, Office for Victims of Crime, Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario): Yes, sir. It is nice to be back, actually. This is the first time I've made an appearance before this committee in my new life, as it were, as special counsel. Originally I thought going to a large organization like a government would mean I would somehow have enhanced administrative capacity. Unfortunately, as evidenced by almost not being able to find the hotel and, as some of you may noticed, trying to sort out my material in the foyer outside, that hasn't turned out to be the case. Nonetheless, we do have a copy of a brief that was given to your clerk this morning, the translated version of which is also not ready but will be forwarded to you once it is.

There's a document I want to make some reference to this morning that I understand the committee has not formally been given. It is an internal Correctional Service Canada document that I was trying to sort in the foyer, which I will, again, forward as soon as it is completed. But I'll make some reference to it. I think you can then check once the document arrives.

The Chairman: Excuse me, Mr. Newark. This is an internal Correctional Service Canada document?

Mr. Scott Newark: Yes.

The Chairman: How did you come by this document?

Mr. Scott Newark: A brown envelope.

The Chairman: They're the best kind.

Mr. Scott Newark: It's ironic because I wanted to speak a little bit about that. It's why I was asking specifically if Mr. Wappel was going to be here this morning. My first appearance before a justice committee was back, I think, in 1989 or 1990. I think I see Mr. Rosen looking to remember as well. It came about as a result of my obtaining some other internal Correctional Service Canada document. It led to a series of hearings by the justice committee into what was taking place in relation to Correctional Service Canada practices. Much of what that committee examined and ultimately asked questions about unfortunately appears to be arising again. The document I'm referring to is a letter that in fact has been quoted publicly, has been in the media. I'm certain there's no privilege attached to the document.

The Chairman: Okay. The reason I asked is I'm a little bit concerned about receiving documents whose sources are unknown. But we will be having Correctional Service Canada people before us later, so we can accept it at face value, conditional on being able to ask the Correctional Service Canada people about it when it arrives.

Mr. Scott Newark: Sure. It actually bears the signature of the individual who's an old friend, or used to be.

The Chairman: Okay.

Mr. Scott Newark: I'd like to begin, if I might, by saying that our document to you contains a number of substantive recommendations in relation to improvements that we think can be made to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, as well as some ancillary legislation that deals with correctional issues. I'm going to be very brief in just highlighting them. You can peruse them at your leisure. They're probably not anything that is brand new to anybody. Many of these ideas have been around for a while. Whether you choose to adopt, explore, modify, or anything else, I would suggest to you there's a far larger issue here in relation to the law you are know examining as the legislative branch of government, whether or not that law or any amendment you make to it in fact is being administered by the executive branch of government.

As I mentioned earlier, I made a reference to my original appearance before the committee. What literally happened in that case is that as a prosecutor in Alberta, I'd been contacted by people, as I have been again, within Correctional Service Canada who were concerned about what was taking place within their own institutions, provided with information, and literally came to the justice committee, at the time almost in a naive sense, in that inasmuch as we were dealing with a federal law, the place to go to deal with this was to the lawmakers of the justice committee. It was actually an MP named Willie Littlechild, who was on the committee, who arranged for my appearance.

I brought disturbing material about what had actually taken place on a high profile inmate escape, where he had killed a couple of people. The material that had been produced by Correctional Service Canada, as you may remember, was heavily edited. The editing was not only done for the public at large but also for members of Parliament. What was fundamentally abhorrent to members of Parliament was, when they realized that as legislators trying to look into and discharge their duty in relation to examining laws, they were precluded from getting the information.

• 0915

What literally happened is I think the original material I brought simply posed some questions. What was important was that the justice committee—and this is back in about 1991, 1990—although it was a different government of the day, were ironically the people who led the charge in that sense. That committee went on to produce, by the way, 15 unanimous reports. Of the people who led the charge in the sense of asking the questions and going where the truth took them, one of them is now the premier of Nova Scotia, Russ MacLellan. One of them, I believe, is a judge, George Rideout in Moncton. There was John Nunziata; Derek Lee, who just recently wrote about the importance of the legislative branch being able to acquire information; and the other, who I was hoping would be here today, was Mr. Wappel.

The point I'm attempting to make in this long-winded introduction is that that committee, when presented with information, chose to ask questions and to continue to ask questions until they got a sufficient series of answers. They were originally blocked in it and had to go to a different House committee to get a ruling that in fact as members of Parliament, as the legislative branch of government, they were entitled to know the truth. They got that ruling and they got the information, and with the greatest of respect, since that time we've made improvements in the administration and the law in relation to corrections that have been to the benefit of all Canadians.

It doesn't really matter what your philosophical viewpoint is in relation to corrections or parole or anything else. Fundamentally, what was involved, and what is involved today, in my judgment, is who is in charge? I would suggest to you, as I will get to in a little bit, that the material that has been raised in relation to the administration of even the current act causes some disturbing questions. What I'm urging you to do is above all else take the steps to find out the truth.

Very quickly, in the material we're submitting, substantively we've raised issues of improvements that can be made about victim information at offender hearings, and as well what I originally suggested when I testified on Bill C-36, as it was then known and which is now this bill, on the role of the correctional investigator. As you know, pretty much right now it's a one-way street. You get to investigate essentially complaints of inmates. We suggested the office was such a good idea that maybe it should be allowed to investigate complaints of staff or the public at large, rather than putting crime victims... As is all too frequently the case, people who have suffered loss as a result of somebody on some form of conditional release... Allow that office to be expanded, to use the same powers, but to look into those kinds of complaints, instead of forcing, as I'm sure you know as well, the increasing numbers of civil suits or even inquests that are increasingly being held, at least in this jurisdiction.

There are some suggestions in relation to policy regulation that can be done to improve circumstances to prohibit unwanted offender contact with victims of crime. Those all fall, if I might summarize them, in the area of how the system or how the corrections legislation could better deal with people after they've been victimized by crime.

The second part of my office's mandate, and with respect I think all crime prevention, is not only how you deal with people once they've been victimized by crime, but equally what steps can we take to prevent people from being victimized in the future? It's the other side of crime prevention. In that sense, what we're suggesting that you may want to take a look at is reforming sentence calculation.

Again, let me be fair. In my opinion, and I've had some experience in this, we've made tremendous legislative progress since 1993. I actually remember it was on a case I brought to the justice committee, which was then examining these cases more routinely. It involved two guys named Foulston and Crews. I believe it would have been in 1993 because it was right before the election. The justice committee issued its 14th report. It contained a series of recommendations that came out of the examination of this case. The press conference was in what was then 130-S, when the chair, Bob Horner, and Tom Wappel and Derek Lee, and I believe Ian Waddell from the NDP, jointly held a press conference to release this report and make these specific recommendations. Mr. Wappel crossed the street and went to a press conference with the then leader of the opposition, currently the Prime Minister, to announce that this was part of the platform of the Liberal Party. I very quietly watched, wrote it all down, and when, as it turned out, they became the government, I said, remember this? Let's pass this stuff. Much of it, not all of it, was in the first Bill C-45.

• 0920

So we have made progress, for example, in sentence calculation. There remain things yet to be done. We believe it is possible and desirable to strengthen the consequences for crimes that are committed while on conditional release. In other words, differentiate between those people, fortunately still reasonably small in number, who abuse our trust by committing further crimes while on conditional release. Maintain, obviously, the overall process of parole, but apply different measures to different kinds of offenders.

I think, as I say, we've made some progress in that, but this is an opportunity to do more. Creating the offence for breach of conditional release is something that's been the subject of numerous private members' bills. For the life of me, I don't understand the logic. If it's a crime to breach a condition of probation for shoplifting, why is it not a crime to breach a condition of conditional release for murder? I have never really received a satisfactory answer. Perhaps someone else could provide that.

This may surprise some people, but I'd like to suggest some increased jurisdiction for the National Parole Board. In fact, what I'm really suggesting here is that you may want to take a good hard look at eliminating the statutory nature of statutory release to allow that to simply be part of a discretionary release decision made by the National Parole Board. Equally, if that is not something you think merits attention, I would suggest—and you may want to look at a couple of cases in particular that I can certainly give you names of. As you know, right now detention can only occur where CSC refers a person for detention. There have been a number of instances I've been aware of where the National Parole Board literally has no choice, and it may well be that if they had the ability to say, whether you refer this person or not, we have some questions about this... I say that particularly in light of some of the disturbing suggestions in the internal documents that suggest there is an active move on the part of CSC officials to reduce the number of people referred for detention.

So I would suggest that one way or the other we should give the National Parole Board some increased jurisdiction.

I gather you had a bill before you a little while ago that didn't do very well. I'm going to suggest that you may want to look at one of the provisions. It's on consecutive sentencing. I don't mean in relation to the first part of the clause, which was mandatory consecutive sentencing for sex offences, but instead, something that in fact Mr. Rock and I talked about when he was justice minister during the vitriolic debate on section 745, which was to deal with that small group of offenders, people convicted of multiple homicides, and allow a discretionary consecutive ineligibility period for persons convicted of multiple homicides. That's not strictly within the CCRA, but obviously it's a related parole issue. So I put it there for you to have a look at.

I gather that during the course of these hearings—and I ask your indulgence, since I've been out of the loop a little bit federally for a while—this committee was going to look at expanding the scope of the application of Bill C-3 on DNA data banks. I think I put it in the brief to urge you to go back and look at the original arguments that were put forward at the time on Bill C-3 that suggested it would be a very good idea and eminently justifiable to permit the sample taking as it currently is authorized under the Identification of Criminals Act, even if it's restricted to those scheduled offences under Bill C-3, but not to use the frankly artificial restrictions that are in there right now. There could probably be no greater thing that would be more effective in the ultimate solving of unsolved serious crimes and prevention of future crimes than doing that.

Finally, one that has provincial relevance... As you know, there's a discrepancy between the application of the provisions of the Prisons and Reformatories Act and the CCRA. There is no power to detain under the provincial administration of a sentence. That's a comment I think one of the people here from the Ontario Board of Parole may explore a bit further, but with respect, you may want to look at that too. It's extending, in effect, full applicability of the CCRA provisions to the Prisons and Reformatories Act for sentences of under two years. I suggest that those make pretty good sense.

I'd like to conclude, however, by returning to some of the material and giving you very briefly a little bit of a chronology with respect to this whole notion of whether or not the CCRA is being administered in relation to both the letter and I think the intent of the law.

• 0925

We first became aware of this, as did many other people, back in the summer of 1998, when, again, and I remind people of this, these were not simply documents tabled in Parliament. It was not brought before your committee; it was not raised in any form or fashion other than by a brown envelope by people concerned within the system about what was taking place.

Recently, as I think you may know, there was a conference out west where the discussion of achieving an equalization of inmates in custody and inmates out of custody was first raised. That was followed by an internal editorial, and again I remind you this was not something that other people sort of interpreted. This was literally an editorial from the Commissioner of Correctional Service Canada that appeared in their publication, which I presume you have seen. There can be no doubt whatsoever that in that editorial there is a numerical target and a date for which that target is to be achieved.

• 0930

When that became public, that was immediately, or reasonably immediately, repudiated by the then minister. I can tell you that for me, personally, and I know several other people—I was speaking with one last night, Ms. de Villiers, who had a conversation with the Solicitor General about the repudiation of that. I must admit it would cause me at least pause to wonder why, when such a policy was repudiated, the author of that was not questioned as to how exactly that came about, because that's a pretty serious seeming deviation from the government course of action.

However, that was followed by our receipt of the memo I'm referring to, dated July 3, from the most senior corrections official in Ontario, Brendan Reynolds. It refers to what's called Operation Bypass, and it refers in very specific terms to equalization. It sets numerical targets. It is virtually a blueprint on how to achieve the reduction of people in custody. It includes—

The Chairman: For your information, Mr. Newark, Mr. Reynolds was before our committee yesterday, and Mr. Wappel explored this issue with him thoroughly.

I notice your recommendation 11 says that the commissioner should be recalled.

Mr. Scott Newark: Yes.

The Chairman: The commissioner has not appeared yet. He will be appearing before the committee on May 31. With every deputy commissioner we've met in our tour, this issue has been fully explored.

Mr. Scott Newark: Okay, I appreciate that.

The Chairman: I can assure you that the committee is aware of the issue and it has been dealing with it.

Mr. Scott Newark: In that case, I'll move to the concluding things that I suggest you should be very concerned about.

I noticed in the Auditor General's report that there appeared to be an appendix attached of a list of maybe 60 offenders over the last 10 years or so who have been on one form of conditional release or another and have gone on and killed. I can assure you that if you go through that list, you will find cases that are reflective of the same kinds of principles and means to achieve the quotas that are in Mr. Reynolds' memo: not returning people when they've violated their conditions; transferring people to minimum security facilities when their behaviour does not warrant it; not referring people for detention when their behaviour does warrant it.

I have been involved in this far longer than I ever wanted to be. I became involved in it because people whose kids had been killed were asking me how on earth the justice system could have acted this way. I want to tell you that in the 10 years or so that I've been involved in this, nothing has sent more of a chill down my spine than reading this, because I felt we had defeated this kind of thinking. I assure you that if this is not stopped, people will die—a counsel who represents many of these families, a fellow named Tim Danson, who you may know of, uses this phrase—“as sure as night follows day”. With respect, I cannot see anything more clear than that.

Quite apart from the public safety issues that are involved, I would suggest to you that this is fundamentally an issue of legislative branch of government importance. Frankly, you could implement all the changes I'm suggesting here, which would be a nice thing if you did, but if the administration of that by the executive branch of government frustrates that purpose, not very much is accomplished.

Again, this may surprise some people, but I think it would be a terrible thing if we ended up having to take steps to remove discretion in the way our overall system works, but if that is what is required so that the discretion cannot be abused or manipulated to achieve artificial results, which a perusal of that memo makes clear is exactly what's intended, then that's exactly what's going to be necessary. With respect, I would suggest to you that is a monumental step backwards, and it need not be so.

This committee literally called to account the executive branch of government in matters of corrections and parole in the early 1990s. I have to tell you that I would suggest to you that it's time for this committee to take that role upon itself again, and I am very encouraged to see that you have Mr. Ingstrup coming back as a witness.

• 0935

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: He's coming before us. It's his first appearance.

Mr. Scott Newark: Yes, sir.

Those are my initial remarks, and I'll try to answer any questions you may have.

The Chairman: Good. Thank you, Mr. Newark.

Mr. Abbott, to keep it within our timeframe it will have to be rounds of five minutes.

Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay—Columbia, Ref.): Okay. That's unfortunate, but anyway.

Mr. Newark, I just want to confirm for the record that you are presently in the employ of the Government of Ontario.

Mr. Scott Newark: Yes, sir.

Mr. Jim Abbott: In what capacity?

Mr. Scott Newark: I'm special counsel to an office that was created about a year ago called the Office for Victims of Crime.

Mr. Jim Abbott: So effectively you are speaking for the Government of Ontario.

Mr. Scott Newark: No, I'm speaking for the Office for Victims of Crime.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Okay. I find a tremendous amount in your brief that you have presented to us that I'm in agreement with. I wonder if we could very briefly canvass a couple of things because of time.

On page 11, your consecutive ineligibility period for multiple murders, which of course would relate to the CCRA relative to the release date of people—there is an argument that I don't buy, but I want to put to you. There's an argument that says putting these people away for extended periods of time doesn't really accomplish anything. Speak to that argument.

Mr. Scott Newark: I suppose it all depends on what you're seeking to accomplish. Our criminal justice system has a history, evolved over hundreds of years, of developing principles of sentencing. Rehabilitation is but one principle of sentencing. In fact, if you look at most courts of appeal judgments, you'll see that in cases from shoplifting to murder there usually is a phrase that all sentences are a wise blend of the principles. Those principles include hope of rehabilitation, specific deterrence—i.e. to the individual, don't do this again—general deterrence—see what happened to him?—and also denunciation, which is where society frankly expresses its revulsion at a certain conduct. Equally—it comes from John Stuart Mill, actually—it expresses its positive reinforcement of the importance of life and everything else. Each sentence is a combination of that.

Normally we have wide discretion as to what the blend of principles should be. In murder it's different. We actually crafted—you people did, or your predecessors did. The people of Canada said this is what that blend of principles should be.

So there's no magic, frankly, in saying that a single ineligibility period somehow is better than a different ineligibility period. That is, with respect, something that I would think is for you to decide. But just because of the fact that somebody might not be better rehabilitated is not an answer to the fundamental question, which is, what is the purpose of the sentence? I would respectfully suggest that when somebody has killed more than one person, it is appropriate that the sentence reflect that, and that literally there be a recognition of each loss of life involved. So I think in effect they're asking the wrong question.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Again, let me be devil's advocate, because I don't purport to represent the questions I'm asking you, but they're the ones that are put to me. If we take an individual who has been involved in multiple murders, particularly ones that have had an exceptionally high profile, and we put them in 50 square feet of space and let them out for one hour a day, what purpose does that serve?

Mr. Scott Newark: I have some views about options to that form of sentence, but I don't think that's—

The Chairman: That's not really on the table.

Mr. Scott Newark: I don't think that's really on the table.

That's a legitimate question. I think the purpose it serves is it, as I say, demonstrates to other people that it's a really bad thing when you kill people, and it's an even worse thing when you kill a whole lot of people, and the consequence for you is pretty unpleasant. The style of cause in every criminal case is Regina versus so-and-so. It's not because it all happened in Saskatchewan; it is because what's at stake here is not just the interest of the offender. It's the rest of us who have an interest in that as well. That includes victims of crime, who I can tell you, in my experience, at least, find it very difficult to understand a justice system that says there's one penalty and the two of you just sort of get rolled into it. They find it offensive, frankly.

• 0940

Mr. Jim Abbott: On the 50-50 quota crisis—of course, it's been denied there's a quota—the argument has been that if we review all of these cases, this would be the probable outcome. Do you buy that argument?

Mr. Scott Newark: No, because I've read Mr. Reynolds' memo and it's very clear. In fact, it's almost threatening. You have to understand to whom it's written. It's written to people who don't seem to be complying with Operation Bypass. You may want to ask Mr. Ingstrup what is being bypassed. I suggest to you it's the law.

The point is, it's very clear when you see it that there are numerical targets assigned to it. Sometimes it seems to get mixed up a little bit with the Auditor General's report, which suggested they weren't processing people fast enough. I was reading through it last night, and with the greatest of respect, there were some odd conclusions in that. We are now apparently going to be processing people for release plans before we actually admit them to prison, which boggles the mind.

Just in case anybody thinks Operation Bypass isn't in effect, read the Auditor General's report. I believe it's on page 4. In the Auditor General's report it says Operation Bypass went into effect in February 1999.

The Chairman: That's the information we've received.

Mr. Scott Newark: The question is, what is Operation Bypass? I would suggest to you when you read Mr. Reynolds' memo, which is about Operation Bypass, there is no question that the goal is equalization targets and numerical targets. You can dance around the use of words, I suppose, as to whether it's a quota or not, but when you're dealing with fixed numerical direction, I would suggest to you that if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it probably is one.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

[Translation]

Mr. Marceau, you have five minutes.

Mr. Richard Marceau (Charlesbourg, BQ): Mr. Newark, I am very happy to see you once again today; we have already met in the past.

Mr. Newark, I must say that I was somewhat surprised to not find in the document that you tabled your point of view on the fast track review process. This has been an issue since the very beginning of our hearings.

Several people shared with us the problems they have with the automatic nature of the accelerated review process. If, after having done a sixth of his term, an individual hasn't committed certain crimes listed in Schedule 1 of the Act, he or she is released. I would like to have your opinion on this matter.

[English]

Mr. Scott Newark: I think I'd generally agree with the sense that you want to be very careful about what you make automatic when you're talking about something that in theory is a privilege that is to be earned. Having said that, however, where I used to work we did a magazine, and we did a story one time about corrections and parole. We interviewed a number of guards and case workers and stuff. One of the comments that stuck with me was from somebody who'd been a guard at a pretty tough institution, who said that probably the worst place to actually rehabilitate somebody is in a federal prison.

It is a legitimate and important part of corrections to actually attempt rehabilitation. I think the skill lies in selecting the right people, and I'm not sure whether automatic mechanisms are the right way to do it.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Earlier, you told us that this might surprise a few people, but that your belief is that you have a pretty good knowledge of the system.

Do you not think that instead of making the review process automatic, we should leave that to the discretion of those who are in a position to judge the situation, who would know if this person or that person might benefit from the accelerated review process? I agree with you on the fact that federal penitentiaries are probably the best crime universities around.

• 0945

Would it not be preferable to leave that to the discretion of a competent person? He or she would know who could be let out of an institution and who should stay inside. Would that not be preferable in the interest of protecting the public and in the interest of the inmates themselves than having someone decide if one is eligible or not for the accelerated review process?

[English]

Mr. Scott Newark: Yes. To add on to it, the one restriction I would make for it, I would think, and it goes back to the principles of sentencing, is to make sure it only applies to certain kinds of offences. I'll give you an example, if I could.

Somebody is sentenced to a federal penitentiary on a drinking and driving offence, for example. You have to do a fair amount to get sent to a federal penitentiary. You have to have a fairly lengthy record, like ten or so, in my experience. I guarantee you that if somebody is sent to a federal pen on just a simple drinking and driving charge, no death or injury or something, in that judge's sentencing remarks there will be something like “the public has a right to not have you on the road”.

What has always concerned me about that kind of extremely accelerated release is that if we release somebody that quickly, in effect it really contradicts what the intention was of the sentencing. I go back to those principles I talked about. Rehabilitation is not the only principle, so there is still a notion of general deterrence and specific deterrence.

I think the skill really lies... I agree with you very much that it should be discretionary as opposed to mandatory. If that makes sense at the two-thirds end, it certainly makes sense at the one-sixth end. But I think the real thing you want to look very carefully at is what offences you would exclude from that—

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Precisely, I would like to know...

[English]

Mr. Scott Newark: —like organized crime offences.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Yes. There is that problem, but there are others as well. Let me give you an example.

A few weeks ago, I was called upon to speak in some detail about a case that arose in Sherbrooke, in Quebec. An importer of cocaine or other hard drugs had been sentenced to something like 18 or 20 years. He was able to get out at the end of three years, which had brought about very strong reactions because of the product this person had been selling in the quiet community of Sherbrooke.

Several months ago, I tabled a private member's bill and the people from Sherbrooke were quite pleased. The purpose of this bill was to draw up a comprehensive list of the crimes for which the accelerated parole review process would not be an option. You mentioned organized crime; I had included in this bill drug trafficking and money laundering.

Would a broadening of the list including these two crimes be a good idea? Secondly, could you mention other crimes that in your opinion should prevent their perpetrator from benefitting from the accelerated parole review process?

[English]

Mr. Scott Newark: I think the answer to both is yes, although I haven't looked at it closely enough to be able to give you, frankly, an intelligent answer as to what it should be. I would urge you to do that, and I'd be happy to do that myself and get back to you and give you my thoughts about it.

Let me just add that the thing I still think causes more public consternation about the whole justice system is exactly the kind of case you mentioned. Somebody reads in the newspaper one day about a high-profile case and they see that somebody gets this long sentence. Then somehow, without any notice or knowledge or anything else, in a reasonably short time period, the guy is back on the street. That is particularly so, I would suggest, with people who have a long history.

The single feature of our justice system, which I know Mr. MacKay knows as a prosecutor as well, and I'm sure anybody who works in it does, is there's a disproportionately small number of offenders who are responsible for a disproportionately large number of crimes.

I think we have made real progress since 1993 legislatively in effectively targeting some of that group. With respect, I think some of the work of this committee in the past, in particular about detention, where we've actually kept the worst offenders off the street longer, it's no accident... If you look at the numbers, you will see that as the detention rate increased—and when I last looked it was at about 4%; it had been below 1%—as we kept the worst offenders longer, the most serious crime rate also dropped.

It's not real complicated, and obviously there's a certain point when the marginal rate of return ends and you don't get any more of the benefit, but that kind of an approach actually does work when you target that group of offenders.

• 0950

As I say, I think we've made some real progress since 1993. I think there's more that can be done in that, still keeping—and I want to make sure that's clear here—the fundamentally obvious value of conditional release. The trick has always been, with conditional release, getting the right people and making sure you do the proper supervision. I'll look into that, sir, and get back to you.

The Chairman: Thank you. Merci, M. Marceau. Mr. MacKay for five minutes.

Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC): Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Newark. Your insightful comments once again enlighten the committee and give us a unique perspective. You've had a broad range of experience in this line of work.

You talk about targeting the right criminal element and the personnel that are involved in the commission of offences. Is it fair to say there is an extremely important value that should be placed on having the right people in position, such as the National Parole Board and CSC, in terms of finding the right people who have the right philosophy, I suppose, about the effects of rehabilitation? I guess this sounds kind of harsh, and it's not a popular opinion in some circles, but recognizing the fact that there are certain individuals in our society who cannot be rehabilitated...

When you talk of sentencing principles, all of the sentencing principles you have mentioned to the committee—and the fact that there has to be a balanced approach—in my opinion, are overridden by the most important sentencing principle of all. That is the protection of the public, those who choose to live a lawful lifestyle as opposed to those who don't.

I guess that long rambling question to you is, what can we do as a committee to ensure that those who are actually making the decision, those who are taking any legislation we might draft or change, are applying the proper principles and philosophies?

Mr. Scott Newark: There are a number of points in that. Why don't we try to go through them in the order you made them? You mentioned the National Parole Board. I was corrected in this some time ago, when some of these cases would occur, and I think generally the National Parole Board would attract much of the public focus. When you looked a little closer, however—and I had a former chairman of the National Parole Board remind me of this rather directly one night at dinner—the National Parole Board makes decisions based on information it receives from Correctional Services Canada: quality in, quality out; garbage in, garbage out. That's a fundamental truth that everybody needs to be clear about. In particular, if the National Parole Board is receiving information that has a particular slant to it, that's worrisome, I would think, for them.

You asked about a philosophy of the people who occupy the positions. I would only suggest one characteristic, frankly: that they know how to follow orders. I'm overstating it to make the point, and it may be a little corny, but we actually do pass laws and we expect people to follow them and not find ways to bypass them. That's the quality I would look for in senior management—people who follow the direction of what the law says.

Your point about the principle of protection of the public is quite accurate. In fact, I remember a debate about it in this same committee, back in 1991, I think, when we were discussing Bill C-36, as it was then called. There was a real discussion about including in the bill those principles. It's there; if you look in the CCRA it is there.

The Chairman: That's correct.

Mr. Scott Newark: In fact, the material I provided for my new employers suggested it is so clear as to the obligation, both in decision-making and as well on the service in the actions it performs and the duties it is given under the act, that reliance on any artificial quota, or any artificial extraneous material, would not only be unwise, it would be illegal.

As you know, if you're given any kind of administrative discretion and you're given a list of things you're supposed to consider, if you consider something outside of that, it's illegal. It doesn't make any difference if it said everybody with blonde hair doesn't get parole. The point is the law is set as to what the criteria are, based on risk assessment and risk management and the wise blending of factors I think that are generally in there, and not some kind of numerical reference or desired target goal, frankly.

• 0955

That is what I would suggest. You may need to—and I put this as one of the recommendations, actually—look at that and in fact make it just a little clearer as to what the obligations and the duties are.

Let me just give you one final twist to that. I've started to look at the effect of non-compliance. Section 126 of the Criminal Code makes it a criminal offence for somebody to wilfully disobey an act of Parliament, other than the Criminal Code, or to fail to comply with a duty imposed on them. You may wish to make it crystal clear as to what the obligations are in conformity with the act and in ensuring that all relevant information is included on file and not excluded in any form or fashion, just so there's no misunderstanding.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Mr. Newark, you yourself were a former prosecutor. When you're looking at this situation of an alleged quota system—which has been adamantly denied at all levels since this has emerged—within documents that you have tabled here today and other documents that were penned by the commissioner himself, Ole Ingstrup, there's reference to a 50-50 split, 50% of inmates in the community, re-integration agendas, equalization, institution-community population, reduction of prison population, goals, ratios, and targets. Those are all words that I've taken out of documents penned by either Mr. Reynolds or Mr. Ingstrup.

If you were presenting a case in court and you had documents with that kind of evidence—it doesn't matter what semantics you use—does that not indicate to you that this quota system was not only proposed but has actually moved forward and is in effect as we speak?

Mr. Scott Newark: I described Mr. Reynolds' document as a blueprint for implementation of the equalization goals. I've read it many times. For the life of me, I can't see how somebody can deny... In fact, we've actually written... it's in the materials as an appendix. I would suggest that here's what needs to occur if this is something that is not the case: all of the specifics in this document of July 3, I believe, should be repudiated, as the original statement was repudiated.

Then, perhaps, somebody within the executive branch of government might ask what on earth is going on with senior management at CSC that they are doing these things. But that's not necessarily a question for you. I would suggest that what is a question for you is that you get crystal-clear repudiation of what's contained in this material—or crystal-clear confirmation.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. MacKay.

Mr. Grose, five minutes.

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Newark, I'd like to congratulate you. You always seem to be able to get me further down the road than anyone else can before I say whoa, just a minute.

Let's go to recommendation 7. That's the reef I keep sailing my ship onto time after time. I'm interested in that. It seems to be another way of getting around what I adamantly object to, and that is the consecutive mandatory sentences.

You put the word “may” in, which pleases me no end. But I'm wondering why... As much as the judge can impose consecutive sentences now if he wants to, and he still may impose parole ineligibility if he wants to, I'm wondering what the mechanics of this thing are. If you're a multiple murderer serving one sentence, how in the world would parole ineligibility be imposed if you had completed the first sentence?

Mr. Scott Newark: I'm not sure that I understand. Do you mean—

Mr. Ivan Grose: Well, I don't understand—

Mr. Scott Newark: —somebody convicted of multiple murders at the same instance?

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes.

Mr. Scott Newark: Let's use a real case as an example. When Justice LeSage sentenced Mr. Bernardo as the law directs, he said, “I sentence you to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 25 years”. Now, I think we all know that's actually not true, that he can apply for judicial review after 15 years, although I'm very pleased to see that amendment in the federal legislation in relation to victims, that it is now actually going to—take your pick—“allow” or “require” a judge to tell the truth, because they're going to say, but he can apply after 15 years—

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes.

Mr. Scott Newark: All that would happen is that the judge would say—

The Chairman: Excuse me, Mr. Newark. The amendments that were made to section 745 were because of multiple killers and—

Mr. Scott Newark: It doesn't catch him.

The Chairman: Because he was before that?

Mr. Scott Newark: Right.

The Chairman: Sorry.

Mr. Scott Newark: As you recall, we tried to make it retroactive but somebody said we couldn't do it.

All that would happen is that the judge would say, “I considered all of what has taken place in the evidence and I sentence you to life imprisonment, and in light of the circumstances of this case...” We can even define... The Americans have aggravating circumstances, for example. The judge would say, “I direct that you not be eligible for parole until the expiration of two terms of 25 years equalling 50 years”, or 25 plus 10 or whatever the numbers would be. But at the sentencing, it would allow the judge to apportion an ineligibility period for each death the person caused. Mechanically, that's how it would work, I think.

• 1000

Mr. Ivan Grose: It's exactly the same as consecutive sentences, in effect.

Mr. Scott Newark: It is. The difference is that right now the law, as you know... Let's go back to Bill C-251. The idea in the first clause of that bill was to make consecutive sentencing mandatory on sexual offences. Right now it is discretionary, and the court can, if it chooses, make them consecutive... except on murder, where the court can't. There's a life term and you can't; if the person's killed once, twice, or five times, it's the same sentence.

• 1005

All this amendment would do—and you're quite correct, it's discretionary—would be to allow a court, in a case like Bernardo, where there are very separate and distinct instances as opposed to a single act that ends up killing a couple of people, to say, all right, having heard all the evidence, I'm going to apportion a separate penalty—and let's be blunt, the penalty here, or the punitive portion, if you will, is the time in custody—I'm going to say there's a consecutive, additional penalty for the individuals you've killed.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Okay, we'll leave it at that. I understand now what you're trying to do.

This is probably more of an editorial than a question. This quota thing keeps coming up and wasting our time. As far as I'm concerned, if we achieve the 50-50, it's so inconsequential, compared with the record in Europe where you're looking at 80-20 or 90-10, that it really doesn't matter. It's neither here nor there. Our record at the moment, as we found out yesterday, is about 60-40. I would like someone to try to achieve the European figure, the 75-25 or 80-20.

Mr. Scott Newark: Mr. Grose, it isn't the numbers, frankly, that bother me. To be perfectly honest with you, I used to keep track of this stuff—namely, the proportion of those in and out of custody. I didn't know at the time, when I first saw it, whether it was already 50-50. It isn't necessarily the numbers or the results that should be of concern.

As well, with respect, I would suggest that the issue is not a waste of time here. It's about the legislative branch's overall authority.

The issue here is what means you use or employ to achieve that goal. If, applying the proper risk assessment and quality control decision-making, the end result is 50-50 or 40-60, I don't think any of us have cause to complain. The issue, however, is when we jettison those principles, those lawfully mandated principles, in order to achieve the result. That, I would suggest, sir, is when we're going to have severe problems.

Mr. Ivan Grose: That's the answer I wanted. Thank you very much.

Mr. Scott Newark: Okay.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

Mr. Newark, thank you again.

I have just one clarification on the commissioner's appearance. The commissioner was before the standing committee on the estimates, but he hasn't been before this committee. I'm sure this whole issue of the quota issue will be fully explored.

Mr. Scott Newark: I certainly hope you have more time to question him than you did me.

The Chairman: Well, this is a busy day.

Mr. Scott Newark: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you.

The next witnesses will be from the Ontario Board of Parole, Mr. Louis Théorêt and Mr. Dennis Murphy.

• 1010

[Translation]

I will allow you ten minutes to make your presentation after which committees members will have about 20 minutes to ask you questions.

Mr. Louis Théorêt (Senior Member, Ontario Board of Patrol): I am very much aware of the time constraints. I believe the previous witness had more than half an hour. We will be as brief as possible.

[English]

Good morning, and thank you for inviting the Ontario Board of Parole to appear before the subcommittee and share our concerns on the subject of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

Dennis Murphy and I, as senior members of the board, will speak to you on behalf of Ken Sandhu, the chair of the board. Unfortunately, he had a previous, out-of-province commitment and was not able to attend today.

The Ontario Board of Parole is convinced that Canada's conditional release system could be improved through meaningful changes to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I will address the issues outlined in the chair's letter of January 5, 1999, to the subcommittee, delivered through a formal response from the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services.

Before I speak to our concerns, I'd like to draw your attention to the mission statement of the Ontario Board of Parole, as follows:

The Ontario Board of Parole as part of the Canadian criminal justice system has legislated authority to grant supervised conditional release to adult offenders sentenced to Ontario provincial correctional institutions. The Board, which has representatives from the community, welcomes input from victims of crime, in making independent, fair and objective decisions. It pursues its primary goal of protecting the public by releasing only those offenders considered to be a manageable risk.

Our mission statement was revised last year to reflect our wish to enhance the role of victims in the parole process and our focus on the protection of the public. We believe these issues must also be enhanced in the CCRA.

Please allow me to be more specific.

The Ontario Board of Parole agrees with the guiding principle that directs that the parole board “take into consideration all available information that is relevant to a case”. Consistent with this principle, the responsibility of such other bodies as police, courts, corrections, and institutional health care service providers to provide federal and provincial parole boards with relevant information should be reinforced to enable these boards to function more effectively.

In other words, legislation pertaining to police, courts, corrections, and health care should be amended to ensure that these areas understand their responsibility to provide relevant information. It is insufficient and one-sided for the CCRA to simply state that the parole board should have the necessary information.

We also recommend that the CCRA be amended to ensure that parole boards have access to relevant health records, especially for offenders with a propensity for sexual and/or physical violence. Of interest is information that may be held by health care agencies—external to correctional institutions—that reflects an offender's psychological or psychiatric history as it relates to public and personal safety in order to complete a more effective assessment of risk.

As well, we recommend that the Criminal Code of Canada, which requires courts to forward information to Correctional Service Canada, should be broadened to include provincial correctional systems. Our experience has shown that having such information contributes to better-informed release decision-making.

The part of the guiding principle that directs that “parole boards make the least restrictive determination consistent with the protection of society” is problematic for the Ontario Board of Parole. It is open to varied interpretations, and may be inconsistent with paragraph 101(a), where it says, “the protection of society be the paramount consideration”.

• 1015

The least restrictive notion is perhaps more of an issue at the front end of the criminal justice continuum, by police and judges, and less so at the corrections and parole decision-making end. The Ontario Board of Parole recommends this principle be either reworded or removed altogether.

Federal offenders who are deemed likely to commit an offence causing death or serious harm to another person, a sexual offence involving a child, or a serious drug offence before a sentence expiration may be detained by the National Parole Board in prison until final warrant expiry pursuant to sections 129 to 132. These detention provisions do not apply to offenders serving provincial sentences. The Ontario Board of Parole has in the past expressed its concern about the release of similar provincial offenders who have not been paroled and who we believe present a very serious risk to public safety when discharged from custody.

As part of its continued commitment to the safety of the public, the Government of Ontario passed the Community Safety Act in 1996. This legislation gives police and corrections officials, including the Ontario Board of Parole, the legislative authority to release information to other justice jurisdictions, victims, and the public about such high-risk offenders.

Incorporating similar provisions in the CCRA would reinforce the need for all parts of the Canadian justice system to take action, particularly by sharing their information toward the common goal of public safety. The Ontario Board of Parole has concerns about the current system of statutory release and the relatively poor rate of success of federal offenders released under this system to the community, according to the consultation paper.

We believe community interest is better served through a release system that is based on thoughtful and comprehensive risk assessment, with community supervision appropriate to the needs and the risks of the offender for the full term of the sentence.

Sections 125 and 126 of the CCRA provide for a process of accelerated parole review and the release of offenders serving their first federal sentence who have not been sentenced for a schedule 1 offence or for a schedule 2 offence, where parole eligibility is delayed to one-half of the sentence. We believe these provisions suggest these offenders are perhaps less experienced criminally or less of a risk to the community. In fact, while such offenders may be serving their first federal sentence, they more than likely have served multiple previous provincial community sentences and terms of incarceration.

Just as an aside, I can tell you I sit on hearings, and my colleague here, Dennis, sits on hearings as well, and we've had cases where people come into the system and appear before the board with 60 previous convictions; that's not including those charges that have been withdrawn. So eventually when they get into the federal system, they're a first-time federal offender and they're eligible for the accelerated parole review, of course depending on the schedule of the offence, and that we find problematic.

While administrative procedures for handling these cases more expeditiously may be warranted, different review procedures may not be. We believe this is reflected in the poor success rate of accelerated parole review cases, as reported in the consultation paper.

In addition, we believe this review or presumptive parole causes a great deal of consternation to the public, whereby the public feels that offenders are getting automatic parole without full risk assessment. The Ontario Board of Parole recommends that the accelerated parole review provisions be removed from the CCRA.

Finally, the Ontario Board of Parole strongly supports increasing the role of victims in the conditional release process. We recommend that provisions be expanded in the CCRA to enable uniformity and structure in federal and provincial processes concerning victim rights, victim participation in parole hearings, and victim notification in matters of conditional release. We strongly recommend that provisions be included in the CCRA to protect the confidentiality of information provided by a victim where it is felt that disclosure of the information may lead to harm to the information provider.

In closing, we believe the CCRA should generally be enhanced to enable improved information sharing among criminal justice partners, comprehensive risk assessment at all levels of release, decision-making, and greater victim participation.

• 1020

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit our comments to the subcommittee concerning the CCRA and how we believe it would be more effective. We'd be pleased to answer any questions you might have about these concerns or the Ontario parole process.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Théorêt.

Mr. Abbott for five minutes.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

I want to take up most of my five minutes on the issue of statutory release, but before I do, I want to refer back to your comment that, “We further strongly recommend that provisions be included in the CCRA to protect the confidentiality of information provided by a victim...” What about confidential information provided to a victim?

In your judgment or in your experience, is there some way the legislation could be tightened up or written in such a way that when there's confidential information about the offender at the time of parole, if that information is part of the hearing, we don't see some type of muddifying or a breach of confidentiality in terms of what's going on in the process? How can we do that in practical terms?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I think, Mr. Abbot, anything we can do to protect and enhance victims' rights would certainly be welcome from our perspective. We did not reference that particular aspect of victim notification, if you want, in the way you describe it, but I certainly support, and agree, that it would be useful to have something in the legislation that would provide protection in terms of interaction or contact, or information sharing to the victim.

Mr. Jim Abbott: There has to be full disclosure in order for the situation to be balanced and for it to appear to be fair. Appearance is an issue in this case. I'm just wondering if you could give some thought as to how to best make sure the system doesn't get derailed with the inclusion of...

By the way, my party and I would be fully in favour of your recommendation of more involvement for the victim. Let me state that for the record. At the same time, though, we also have to recognize that this brings along its own caboose. We want to make sure that caboose doesn't derail the whole train by inappropriate information getting out into the public domain.

Anything you could possibly recommend to this committee, perhaps in writing later, I'm sure would be gratefully received.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I appreciate that opportunity to do so, sir.

Mr. Jim Abbott: On the issue of statutory release, again, it's something my party and I are very concerned about, but you're talking about the fact that there must be thoughtful risk assessment, which of course is the whole parole process after one-third of the term. Then we reach two-thirds of the term, where, if the inmate hasn't reached a point of comfort on the part of the parole board that he should be released, it seems as though there's a push to put him out of the door anyway.

I have a deep concern about that, but I also have a concern about how we would deal with the argument, “So, is it the option to take the person to the end of his term and then shove him out the door at the end of his warrant?”

How do we deal with that?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: In the provincial system we have probation provisions that can be imposed at the end of the actual sentence.

I guess I can answer it in two parts. One is, okay, do a flip, do away with statutory release if you want. Right now the parole board can deal with cases where people have been referred to them by Correctional Service Canada for detention until the end of their sentence. Perhaps they should be doing something differently from just referring those people who ought to be considered for release. If a guy doesn't meet the provisions for early release at one-third of the sentence, and they're releasing him at two-thirds, certainly in the provincial side we're concerned. There are no strings attached. We have no control over these people.

Perhaps what they ought to be doing is imposing certain conditions. If he doesn't agree to them, he doesn't get released.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Would you have a particular schedule of offences that would apply to?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I think not. I think we would do it across the board. Certainly those higher-needs offenders ought to be identified.

But you're asking me to think out loud here.

• 1025

Mr. Jim Abbott: What do we do with a person who has received a 12-year term, a very serious term, for particularly a violent offence and who acts out badly in prison? You're saying, well, at the end of the twelfth year, the end of that month, we're going to give the guy a dollar bill and a suitcase—

Mr. Louis Théorêt: No.

Mr. Jim Abbott: —and stand him at the door. I mean, how do we get away from that?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Perhaps I'll have to be more clear.

You end up further aggravating the situation if you just detain that person for four more years. We're saying a comprehensive and full risk assessment should take place at the two-thirds. There's no question there. These people should be equipped somehow so that they're less likely to reoffend.

The trouble is, how do you identify those people who are going to reoffend at either the two-thirds or the end of their sentence?

Mr. Jim Abbott: The only thing we would accomplish—and this is my concern—according to proponents of maintaining the statutory release is to effectively delay another offence for the last third of the term. Do you buy that?

The Chairman: This will have to be the last response, Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Again, I think it depends on the risk assessment tools you use. I think what we're advocating is that people should not be released unless there's some type of procedure or process that could be implemented for a full and comprehensive risk assessment instead of turning them out, cold turkey, at two-thirds of their sentence.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I don't know if that answers your question, sir.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Not really, but...

The Chairman: Mr. MacKay, five minutes.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Mr. Théorêt and Mr. Murphy, we appreciate your presence here today, and your presentation and information.

I'd like to follow up on some of the questions posed by my colleague. Certainly sentencing itself is not an exact science. Oftentimes, you're right, you see an individual who, although viewed by the federal system, is certainly no newcomer to the criminal justice system. They're very well versed, and for one reason or another they've never found themselves doing more than two years plus a day.

One of the problems, too, that you would be more than aware of is that at the provincial level, there's very little in the way of programming with any institution, if at all. A lot of provincial institutions do simply warehouse people.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I'll comment later. I'll let you finish your sentence, sir.

Mr. Peter MacKay: I suppose that leads me to the broader question of resources within our penal system. It's never a politically astute argument to make that we should be doing more to attempt to put programs in place in federal institutions—or provincial institutions, for that matter—but I think it does tie into the concern everyone taking part in this subcommittee has with regard to how effectively we can rehabilitate an individual when we are simply asking them to do their time. We're talking about how much time they actually will do in relation to the sentence that's been imposed.

A simplistic term that's often thrown around these days is “truth in sentencing”—namely, if the judge says 18 months, you do 18 months. Again, I guess that goes to the rehabilitation aspect and the way in which a person has to behave while on the inside.

I wonder if you could just comment on a few of those points, particularly the programming, and, further to that, the ability to recognize, when a person is reaching this point, whether they're even open to rehabilitation let alone going down that road.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Thank you, sir. I think I'll let Mr. Murphy comment on the programming aspect.

Mr. Dennis Murphy (Senior Member, Ontario Board of Parole): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. MacKay, I cannot speak about other provinces, but in the province of Ontario there are many programs in correctional centres, especially in such institutions as the Ontario Correctional Institute and Vanier Centre for Women.

They do participate in the programs. Granted, yes, they have a short time before their release date, but in our system they are not warehoused.

So I think there are programs there. I just wanted to make that point.

Mr. Peter MacKay: I'm glad to hear that.

• 1030

Mr. Louis Théorêt: In terms of the other point, the ability to recognize the person's potential rehabilitation, if I can term it that way, it comes down to the basic issue of risk assessment and the role programming has played, and of course nature, to the extent of the person's background.

We do have offenders who waive their programming opportunities and would rather sit and serve their sentence and take their chance before the parole board. I can tell you that those offenders who have not completed, who have not taken programming, are less likely to have a successful or positive decision in terms of their grant appearing before the board.

Also, I think what's terribly important is the release plan for these offenders once they go from the institution back into the community. What net is available, if you wish, to support them? Often we will look for elements such as continued programming in the community, because I think the data show that programming in the community, continued programming once they are released from the institution, is very effective. It's probably more effective than what they start in the institution, but at least they start something in the institution.

My experience is there are different types of programs at some of the institutions—for instance, the correctional treatment centre next door to my office, which has five-, ten- and fifteen-week programs. I'm not going to sit here and mislead anybody and say that this will change a person's lifelong vocation, but I think in many instances it's probably the first time they've had a comprehensive opportunity to deal with some of these problems that have caused their criminal behaviour in the first place.

A huge percentage of the people we see—I don't have precise data, but I would venture to say at least 75% to 85% of these people—have substance-abuse-related problems. These problems are related to their criminal behaviour. I think if these people can successfully complete a program at the institution and continue the programming in the community, and with proper supervision by a parole supervisor, it enhances their ability to lead a normal, more pro-social life, which is what we look for, and it would be less likely to have them come back into the system. There's usually an open window of about six months. Usually if they get past that six-month phase they tend not to come back into trouble for a period of time.

Mr. Peter MacKay: You identified information sharing as one of the key problems that you see implicit in the system right now. I take it from your remarks that you certainly endorse the idea of greater participation for victims right through the system, including the parents, as I take it, before a parole board at a hearing. Is that correct?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Yes. We haven't totally finalized it yet. We're working on a policy right now as to the precise role victims could play. We want to do some consultation with victims. I don't think we would envision an adversarial-type process where a victim would be taking on an offender, if you want, but certainly we would need to have a system where the victims feel they have input and influence and feel—I hate to use a cliché—empowered, if you want, as part of the process.

These people never asked to be part of the system and they were made part of the system unwillingly. Sometimes, throughout the investigation, the court process and so forth, they might feel somewhat powerless and neglected. So we would like to have a process where they have an opportunity to address a quorum that would hear an offender's parole hearing and provide information on how the trauma, the incident, affected them at the time, how it affects them now, and what they would like to see in terms of special conditions imposed to try to control this person's behaviour.

Mr. Peter MacKay: I have a very quick question on one of the many considerations I know you take into account. How much, if you can quantify it, emphasis do you put on the original pre-sentence report and sentencing recommendation of the judge and/or the prosecutor? How available is that to you in your final determination? Is it always available?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: A lot of value, basically, is the short answer. Those are core documents that we really rely on when we're doing our risk assessment, because some information comes out from the judge's reason for sentencing. Do we get the judge's reason for sentencing all the time? No. We wish we had it on a more and more frequent basis, to be honest. It's coming, it's improving, but we're not there yet.

• 1035

I recently met with my chair and I met with the judges from eastern Ontario to try to emphasize and promote that with the judges. The pre-sentence report is another useful document. It gives you an idea, a snapshot, of what was going on at the time, of the continuum of the offence, if you wish, at that time. So it provides information. Any information we can get helps. There's no question there.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. MacKay.

Mr. Grose, five minutes.

• 1040

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to assure you...

[Editor's Note: Technical Difficulty]

...federal offences that have absolutely no previous convictions or charges, and this group may be the most eligible for early release. The only reason I state this is that I've seen this written and heard it so often. I know the word “majority” is always used, but as Herr Goebbels said, if you say something that's untrue often enough, it becomes the truth, and eventually people will leave out the word “majority”.

The other thing is this release of information bothers me because it strikes me as being a patch that we're putting on the system. We delight in putting patches on a body until you can't even see the body at all and we've forgotten what the original purpose of the body was. If this individual is being released into the community and he's still dangerous, why in the world is he being released into the community? Why wasn't he sentenced to an appropriate sentence at the beginning? That is the duty of the judge, or whoever is convicting him, to give him an appropriate sentence. If he gives him a partial sentence and the rest of the responsibility rests on the community to police and parole supervise him, I don't think that makes sense. Give him the proper sentence in the first place. If he's going to be a danger for life, then make sure he's incarcerated for life. This part-time stuff doesn't work. And this patch doesn't work either. It divides communities, and I don't think it serves any great purpose. I look at a picture on the lamppost and I wouldn't recognize the guy five minutes later.

In any case, I might have your opinion on that, inasmuch as you said the federal people should go to the provincial system.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I presume, sir, you're referring to notification when you're talking about patches.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Pictures on a lamppost—

Mr. Ivan Grose: It's a bad example.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Yes. There are degrees of notification, is our point, in terms of releasing an offender.

Mr. Ivan Grose: But if the public needs notification, why is he released? Why didn't he have an appropriate sentence in the first place?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: We're dealing, and the correction officials are dealing, with the administration of the sentence, and once they have the fellow they have to administer it. If he's released at some point of the sentence, either at two-thirds, or, again, at his warrant, I think there's an obligation and a duty on the corrections official to take the appropriate steps to try to target or notify officials of the guy's eventual release, where he's going to be staying.

Mr. Ivan Grose: I obviously haven't made my point. I don't think he should be released.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I see.

Mr. Ivan Grose: If he's released at the end of the sentence he was given, why wasn't he given an appropriate sentence in the first place?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: I agree, and I think that's something you should take up with the judges.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Fine. That's the end we should work at. Putting a patch on the end I don't think solves the problem. But in any case, I think you and I understand each other.

You mention no release if an offender doesn't agree to certain conditions. Were you talking about at the end of expiry of warrant?

• 1045

Mr. Louis Théorêt: No. We're talking at the continuance sentence, not beyond a warrant.

Mr. Ivan Grose: So it'll be inside the sentence, probably at parole time.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Yes, it will be a residency requirement or something along those lines.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes, that makes sense. I think that pretty well covers what I wanted. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

I have just one point on the question of a victim's involvement at the parole hearing. We had a session yesterday with the members of the National Parole Board. They expressed concern that having victims present at parole hearings might make the hearings into adversarial situations and could lead to the revictimization of the victims by cross-examination. Could you just respond to those two concerns?

Mr. Louis Théorêt: We're very sensitive to that. That's why we're taking all the steps necessary to get comprehensive consultation. We will be working through the Office for Victims of Crime to try to develop a comprehensive policy that will certainly be sensitive to the needs and concerns of victims.

Our desire is certainly not to retraumatize these people and impede the parole hearing process. As I indicated to Mr. MacKay, we're not trying to set up an adversarial system; we're trying to allow these people to have input and be involved and get any additional information that might be forthcoming and useful. We'll certainly try to develop a system that will respond to their concerns and respect the proper procedures and rules governing a parole hearing.

The Chairman: Okay.

[Translation]

Thank you very much. I much appreciated your appearing today.

Mr. Louis Théorêt: Thank you.

[English]

I'll get back to Mr. Abbott with the questions we talked about.

Mr. Jim Abbott: That would be helpful.

The Chairman: Thank you.

The next witnesses will be Mr. Thomas Mann and Mr. Rowbotham from PrisonLife Media. I'm also told that Valerie Phillips will be assisting. Come forward, please. If you can give us a presentation of approximately 10 minutes, that will leave us approximately 20 minutes for questions from the members.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham (President, PrisonLife Media): Super. I'm Robert Rowbotham, and my colleague, Tom Mann, will be making our presentation. I'll hopefully be called upon for questions and answers in the 20 minutes after our presentation. I want to thank you, ladies and gentlemen and honourable members, for giving us this opportunity.

The Chairman: You're welcome. Thank you.

Mr. Mann.

Mr. Thomas Mann (Chair, PrisonLife Media): Thank you and good morning. I'd also like to thank you very much for the privilege, for myself and my colleague, of addressing this committee. However, we'd like to underscore one point before we begin. Although we spent considerable lengths of time as federal prisoners, we were privileged in a number of ways not typical of most of the men and women who serve federal sentences. We were raised in supportive, middle class homes and were always empowered with a sense of future. Regrettably, we embarrassed and tormented our families and society as a whole, quite frankly, as a result of our actions. Yet our families were always a constant source of support and positive role models.

Once released, we had a place to go and the constant encouragement to lead positive, pro-social lives. Sadly, for the majority of federal offenders this is not the case. In this spirit we're here, not to represent the incarcerated, but as Canadians.

Our peers are often from broken homes and have acute substance abuse problems, yet they also have siblings, husbands, wives, and children. Many have lived in former residential schools, juvenile homes, and orphanages, but eventually will be our neighbours in communities across Canada. Many incarcerated Canadians suffer from mental illness and have abuse issues, but ultimately will be free to travel anywhere they please. Most Canadian prisoners are under-educated, with no marketable vocational skills, but will soon have to struggle to support themselves in Canadian communities.

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My point is that Canadian prisoners are not just someone else. They are brothers, sisters, children, and parents of Canadians. They eventually will be our neighbours, associates, and co-workers; it's not us and them. Prisoners, parolees, and individuals with criminal records are not a subgroup or subculture. We're all Canadians. We're all just one society.

There are really so many issues we'd like to address that we didn't really want to be superficial with a number of them, so we chose two areas of real concern for us. First is health care, and I think that's something again that is a pressing concern for all Canadians.

Uniting the prisoner and prison official, and most certainly the public, is the very contentious and contemporary subject of health safety. Regardless of one's livelihood or a criminal sentence of incarceration, access to professional health care and a sense of confidence in one's environment are fundamental rights, not privileges. With the rise of potentially fatal diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, and various strains of hepatitis, serious concerns must be addressed. These realities are here to stay and, sadly, will most certainly rise in numbers.

Public safety, linked with positive outcome corrections or reduction in recidivism as a result of a period of incarceration, is a difficult enough challenge in itself. To do so with the fear of contraction of a potentially fatal disease can cause serious workplace tension. Regrettably, but a statistical eventuality, are CSC employees infected with dangerous diseases. Hopefully the diseases will not be contracted in the workplace, but regardless, infectious diseases will be present. Are these staff to be dismissed, confined to special institutions, or identified publicly? Prisoners share these fears and questions.

Although there are a large number of highly conscientious and dedicated health care professionals working within Correctional Service Canada, they're commonly overextended, with few resources and limited support staff. Their clients have common histories of low socio-economic backgrounds, low self-esteem, and acute substance abuse, all of which contributes to generally poor physical and mental health.

Stress in the correctional health care workplace is often extreme, due to the physical environment, clientele, tension with the other prison staff and officials, as well as the torment of knowing Canadians are dying as a result of inadequate policies.

For the prisoner, it is very difficult to concentrate on pro-social change while coping with a potentially fatal disease or the fear of contracting such a disease. In some Canadian prisons, hepatitis C is reported at a rate of close to one-third of the population, and the HIV rate is over 2%. Medical professionals conclude that these figures are indicative of a crisis of epidemic proportions. There is no question that with the current policies in place, these numbers will continue to dramatically rise.

Inadequate treatment does not stop with infectious diseases, but is commonplace. Hundreds of examples can be presented of prisoners being put in serious jeopardy because of poor policies and implementation. The typical and widespread solution of all ailments within CSC is the administering of Tylenol 2. This may be fine for the occasional headache, but there are many documented cases of men and women, terminally ill from AIDS, in excruciating pain, being denied adequate nutrition and palliative care, as well as pain control. Heart attack victims have had to wait four to six hours before receiving medical attention. X-rays have been delayed for weeks for obvious broken bones. Individuals can wait months for prescription glasses, dental care, specialist appointments, and prescription drugs. Easy access to Tylenol 2 will not help any of these problems.

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In most institutions, many with populations exceeding 500 prisoners, no health care at all is available between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Access to emergency services could take many hours in some circumstances. Skeleton correctional staff are not trained as medical staff and also are represented in reduced numbers. A number of deaths have resulted recently from heroin overdoses that, tragically, could have been avoided with the administration of the drug Narcanon. Prison staff are not allowed to administer this drug; only health care professionals, who weren't on duty.

An obvious question that comes to mind is, how can Canadian prisoners consider changing their lives if their physical health is declining or threatened?

Drug use. In the 1970s and 1980s an international war on drugs was adopted and encouraged by the western world. Instead of limiting the drug trade, it fueled the widespread epidemic of cocaine and heroin abuse and the tragedy and violence associated with this plague. Generations of Canadians have been and continue to be destroyed by crack, cocaine, and heroin abuse. Health care professionals and government officials now struggle through harm reduction programs to minimize the human toll.

The war on drugs has directly resulted in a modern-day genocide and is clearly a total failure. If we could only turn back the clock and have to worry only about the marijuana our national police chiefs' association has recently recommended be de-criminalized. In the 1960s, the drug world was dominated by hippies. Now, with the war on drugs, we have narco-terrorists, cartels, and international motorcycle gangs. These groups clearly indicate failure.

While health care professionals world-wide are struggling to reduce infectious disease transmittal by implementing harm reduction methods, CSC is clearly promoting disease transmittal through its zero tolerance drug strategy. Canadians are dying and diseases are being transmitted throughout our country, all with the encouragement of government policy.

Illicit drug use will never be permitted within Canadian prisons and most certainly will never be encouraged. However, prisons will never be drug free. Over 80% of prisoners have been estimated to have substance abuse issues and many of them are traffickers and importers. Methods to smuggle illicit substances are infinite. Dozens of individuals and groups travel in and out of our prisons daily. Until drug use ends in society, drugs will be found in prisons. The challenge is to reduce the long-term harm caused by drug abuse, to reduce addiction rates resulting in safer, more productive and effective terms of incarceration, and less recidivism.

With the current urinalysis drug testing program in place within CSC, penalties are equally rendered for the use of marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. However, it is well known to prison officials, as well as the prison population, that the testing is not as effective at detecting heroin and cocaine use. Many then choose to escape their despair or cope with their addictions by hard drug use. The reality is that many prisoners who entered prison as marijuana and alcohol users are leaving prison and returning to Canadian communities as heroin and cocaine addicts, and often with dangerous infectious diseases.

Not testing for marijuana during urinalysis would not inspire drug use, but it would dispel drug abusers from using and often trying for the first time potentially fatal drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Access to hypodermic needles and condoms is not encouraging drug use but reducing the economic and human cost inflicted on all Canadians by drug abusers.

Statistics have clearly shown methadone programs have had very positive results in battling heroin addiction. However, heroin addicts must have treatment regardless of where and when they become addicted. Prisoners are being denied access to methadone programs across Canada. The result has been many drug-related deaths by overdoses, drug violence, suicide, and disease. A Fresh Start pilot project has been implemented in Joyceville institution, but similar programs must be made accessible across the country. Delays will result in high human and economic costs.

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Another subject we're very concerned about is education within prisons. As we previously mentioned, common to most prisoners are low socio-economic backgrounds and low self-esteem. They are under-educated and with few marketable skills. Many have spent years in various government institutions and have been involved with numerous social support agencies. Very few have had the privilege of a secondary school education, much less have studied at a post-secondary school level.

Historically, there were positive programs in place for offenders to actively pursue advancing their level of education while incarcerated. Primary, high school, some college, and some limited university programs were available. The current CSC mandate is that all prisoners must attend school until they reach a grade 10 level. Unfortunately, this does not provide for many marketable opportunities.

A remarkable statistic is that over 95% of all post-secondary school graduates while incarcerated—historically, I might add—have not reoffended. It's a fantastic indicator of the success of education with prisoners, yet these programs no longer exist.

The cessation of vocational training programs, such as electrical, framing, sheet metal, welding, and body repair, in lieu of programming, is also very non-productive. Certainly, prisoners need to address their misdeeds, such as anger and substance abuse, but they also must be able to support themselves after their incarceration. Giving them the skills to do so wouldn't be coddling them; it would be better preparing them to become pro-social members of society.

We have a few recommendations at the conclusion of our brief here, and I'll just read them quickly.

We would hope for: immediate study of the current shortcomings of the health care services now available to prisoners within CSC and the rapid implementation of resources necessary to increase services to a humane level; immediate implementation of harm reduction socio-medical methods to treat drug addiction, as opposed to the zero tolerance policy in place; immediate distribution of hypodermic needles within federal institutions—it would drastically reduce the spread of infectious disease; immediate implementation of methadone treatment programs within federal institutions; establishment of voluntary drug-free federal institutions; stop the closure, or pending closure, of Sault Sainte Marie's highly effectively northern treatment centre; immediate cessation of urinalysis testing for marijuana; re-establishment of education and vocational training programs; promotion of work release programs within federal institutions; and implement legislation necessary to have the correctional investigator report to Parliament as opposed to the Solicitor General.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. We'll go to questions.

Mr. Abbott, five minutes, please.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

First, let me say the area in which I am in full agreement with you concerns the people who are in various stratas of life, including those who are caught up by their own actions in the criminal justice system. As you say, they are Canadians, and I often say, but for the grace of God, there go I. I agree with you.

I have also seen statistics that have indicated that as high as 10% of all Canadians will have had a brush with the law, that is to say, the criminal justice system, during their lifetime. I've seen that statistic, though I can't verify it, but I am in agreement and empathy with where you're coming from.

I would like to deal with the drug use issue specifically. First, on page 6 you say:

If we could only turn back the clocks and have to worry about the marijuana our National Police Chiefs' Association has recently recommended be decriminalized.

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I think there's something of a misunderstanding in the public about that and what they have proposed. The decriminalization is to say that it would not be a criminal act, but it still would be a ticketable offence. In fact, the penalty would be easier to administer if there were a financial penalty involved—$100 for the first time, $300 for the second time, $1,000 for the third time; whatever was set up. So the fact that it would avoid the court system, some of us see—myself included—as being worthy of consideration, to take a look at the ramifications of that. Nonetheless, that is not to say that suddenly marijuana is going to be a free substance on the street. Therefore, I'm just wondering if the inclusion of that in your brief possibly gives a mixed message to what you're trying to say.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: I'll answer that. I agree. We're not saying to diminish anything to do with marijuana. What we are saying is that instead of the zero tolerance that they have inside the Canadian penitentiary system now, if they were to treat marijuana differently from how they treat heroine or cocaine, that would make more sense. As it is now, there are sanctions against prisoners if they show any drug use. The thing is, marijuana use is treated the same as heroine or cocaine use within the institution. The problem with that is that marijuana stays in your system for 30 days. Cocaine and heroine stay in your system for three days.

Risking a chance to lose parole, jobs, visitations with family, socials, etc., means that people are no longer smoking marijuana in prison. The dangerous thing about that is that they're using heroine and cocaine instead. I'm not condoning the use of heroine and cocaine. Actually, I hate the drug. It's very evil. Everybody sees the damage it does upon society. I'm not diminishing marijuana or anything, but there is a difference.

The only problem with the rise of heroine and cocaine use is, if you look at the beginnings of the urinalysis, it's a failure. It's a failure inside Correctional Service Canada because everybody now is using heroine and cocaine. What's the problem with that? The problem with that is that we now get into the health issue.

Before I deal with that, we deal with people who have no fear of violence, people who may be in there for bank robbery with violence, who are prone to violence, have no problem being violent, and are coming out of our penitentiary systems with a monkey on their back. They're coming out of the penitentiary system with cocaine and heroine addictions. There are hundreds who could look at you right now and say, “I got addicted while in prison in Canada”.

The health issue about that is this: there are no needle exchange programs for fear of looking like we're condoning drug use. The simple fact is, you can't stop it. If you take drug dealers, drug importers, drug traffickers and put them into prison, I don't care what government is in power, who the warden is, or what security you have, you're not going to stop drugs coming into prisons. It's a reality. There's nothing we can do to stop it. Now, with that drug use, they're using homemade needles, or a syringe that one or two get into the institution. As a result, you have 50, 60 to 70 people using that same needle.

From a study that was done recently in Joyceville by Dr. Peter Ford in Kingston, you will see that 30% to 50% of the population have hepatitis C and 2% have HIV, and they're not coming out and going into our health care system. That's from another planet. We, as taxpayers, are all paying for all of the complications that go with that.

Again, we're not diminishing marijuana, but that's what the zero tolerance, this urinalysis, has pushed, and that's what we're dealing with. We're simply not addressing the problem. We're not addressing with Fresh Start, methadone maintenance, or needle exchange what is done in the street as basic human rights. It's not done. The health care system knows what to do, but their hands are tied politically.

The Chairman: Thank you. That's the five minutes. Is there something really quickly that...

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Mr. Jim Abbott: Yes. I just wanted to say on recommendation 3, “immediate distribution of hypodermic needles within federal institutions”, that it would say basically that the government is saying okay, that's fine, we're now prepared to condone what we consider to be or what is considered in law to be illegal.

The Chairman: A brief response, please.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: I've talked to guards from the prairies who have done searches themselves, have accidentally pricked themselves with the needles, and have been scared to death that they have HIV and that they're going to give it to their wives and their families. That fear is very real. I've had officers talk to me in penitentiaries in Ontario, because they're not allowed to speak. They say, “Rosie, do something. You work for CBC, so expose this, do something, help us.”

Now we hear politicians saying that's not what they're saying, and I'm getting a different story. They've tried it in Switzerland. They've tried it in European prisons. It has been tested. What happens is that if somebody is a hypodermic user, they have the hypodermic in a case inside the cell. The guards know where it is and the inmates know where it is. If the guards search that cell, that's where it had better be. If it isn't, there are disciplinary charges. It has considerably reduced the amount of hard-core drug use and it has also lowered the rates of HIV and hepatitis C.

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Of course, it's not condoning the use of drugs, but our policies are based on fear of what the tabloids or certain political parties may say. It's time for all parties to cross the line and deal with a very tragic and serious problem.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. MacKay, five minutes.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Just to follow up on that, I am having a bit of a problem with the rationale that we would actually provide needles if we're trying to get them off drug use or drug addiction. Recommendations 3 and 4 seem to me to be somewhat contradictory. In regard to “immediate implementation of methadone treatment programs” within the institutions, I couldn't agree with you more. If there are those going in who are hooked—and based on what you've told us here today, there are those who are becoming addicted while in the prison—by all means this is a step that has to be taken.

But acknowledging it and going one step further and enabling them to actively inject themselves... I don't say this in a facetious way, but the next recommendation is that you actually give it to them. I don't see it as an answer to provide them with the ability to actually actively partake in whatever drugs have been smuggled into the institution. That's a complete abdication of the responsibility to try to prevent it.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: Should I answer?

The Chairman: Yes, please.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: I agree with you. Looking at it at face value, there seems to be a contradiction, a paradox, but dealing with drug addicts is not like dealing with the average, rational, thinking person. You have to approach this problem in many tiers and at many levels. We want to lower the use of drugs. Nobody's condoning it. It's a very brave move for the government and the administration to take. Knowing that we can't stop drugs in prisons, and seeing these rates going up, skyrocketing, becoming almost, in medical terms, an epidemic, we have to seriously step back and take a close look at this.

By giving needle exchanges, which they do on the street, the governments here on the street are not condoning drug use. They're saying, let's deal with it humanely, as a health issue. They're not condoning it. By putting it in prisons, we can stop the spread of AIDS and HIV, at least for the ones who are going to do it.

The next step is the Fresh Start methadone maintenance program, which isn't done. The present policy now is that in the first stages, if doctors prescribe methadone prior to incarceration, they'll let them keep on doing it. Therefore, they're not responsible for it or they don't look like they're condoning it or getting involved with the methadone maintenance program. However, I've seen people scream and plead to the doctors. They say they want to stop doing heroin, that they don't want to be addicted, that they want to turn their life around, that their family is supportive.

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I've seen wives and inmates go for help, with the inmates taken to a higher security prison. A friend of mine, Peter Frustik, was murdered two weeks ago in Collins Bay for asking for help to get methadone maintenance. An individual committed suicide in Joyceville; he asked for methadone maintenance.

What's good about methadone is that if you have HIV and you start taking methadone, you're not doing heroin any more. You're not using needles and you're not passing on that deadly disease.

Mr. Peter MacKay: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but is methadone treatment available in most cities in Canada now—on the outside?

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: Yes, even in small communities.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Okay. I follow the logic of your argument. I suggest that it would also identify who is using it on the inside. It would just pull the cover off it, whereas now it's all done in hallways and in the corners of the institutions—

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: And the violence that goes with that.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Yes. But philosophically I still have a problem with actually facilitating it. It's openly facilitating it to give them the needles and say, okay, we don't want you to do this, maybe you don't even want to do this, maybe you're hooked beyond your ability to control yourself, but here's the means to do it.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: Well, for 30 years we've been trying something else.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Yes.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: It hasn't been working. Everybody in the country is looking for leadership and looking for people to be progressive and do something different. It's difficult being this close to the United States, with their world policy on drugs. If you look to Europe—

Mr. Peter MacKay: Is it happening there?

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: They are using it in Switzerland.

Mr. Peter MacKay: No, but in North America... Are the United States prisons providing needles?

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: No, absolutely not. But look at the United States prisons. They'll build prisons on speculation: build it and they will come. I'd like to think that Canada would think as Dostoevsky did in judging the humanity of a country by entering its prisons. I think that's true.

Mr. Peter MacKay: May I ask one other quick question?

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Peter MacKay: On your recommendation 10, again, I couldn't agree with you more in terms of the accountability that would be brought about by having the correctional investigator report directly to Parliament. Can you just expand on that for us a little as to what went into that recommendation? I'm not saying it's inconsistent, but it's off on a tack that is completely different from the others.

Mr. Robert Rowbotham: I'm going to let my colleague answer that, but just to give it a cover, the correctional investigator, under the mandate now, politically doesn't have the teeth to deal with Correctional Service Canada and needs to be given different mechanisms so they can handle solutions.

I'll turn it over to Tom.

Mr. Thomas Mann: Again, I agree that it's a little out of right field, but we wanted to put in the recommendation nevertheless, in that in order to really make our correctional system work, the correctional investigator has a key role, and at this point—it has nothing to do with the correctional investigator's personal integrity or intentions or his office—he really isn't getting anywhere.

It's not just health care. General human rights concerns within prisons are really falling upon deaf ears. Very valid complaints are being addressed to the correctional investigator. CSC is quick to boast about this human rights initiative that's in place, about a grievance complaint process that's in place, but anyone with any real experience within the prisons is at the point where they ignore the correctional investigator's office. If they really want to get results they do an end run around the whole process and file in the Federal Court. Why have such an expensive and actually quite progressive and potentially positive office that, again, really has no teeth? It has no bearing. Again, he could really address, in an articulate and intelligent manner, a lot of concerns, concerns of all Canadians.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. MacKay.

Thank you very much. We appreciate you taking the time to come here and share your concerns. We find your recommendations very clear and very specific, and that will certainly help us in our deliberations.

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Our next witness is Professor Anthony Doob, who is from the Centre for Criminology at the University of Toronto.

Thank you for attending, Professor. Perhaps you could make your presentation in approximately 10 minutes or so. Then we could get to the questions.

Professor Anthony N. Doob (Centre for Criminology, University of Toronto): Thank you very much. I'd like to make two separate points. The first really relates to sentencing, and it will be very brief. No matter what words one uses, the various forms of discretionary decisions that are made as part of a regime of conditional release are modifications of the way in which punishments have been imposed by the court. That's what they are and that's what they're supposed to be.

Whether or not one likes the fact that court-imposed punishments are modified, that is what this aspect of our laws is really about.

However, I'd suggest that the way in which this modification takes place is really a result of factors that are largely outside the control of the offender. They relate to the efficiency of the correctional system in providing programs that correctional administrators deem to be necessary to reduce the offender's likelihood of reoffending, and the characteristics of the offender, such as criminal record, age, current offences, and so on.

I'm not saying these things to criticize either the law or those charged with the responsibility of administering it. All I'm saying is that we have set up a system where much of the variability and what happens to an offender is predictable at the time his sentence is handed down.

One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist nor does one have to know the details of the CCRA to know which of the two following offenders is most likely to be released on parole: an accountant who embezzles a lot of money from his employer, serving a three-year sentence, or a robber with a previous record who's serving a three-year sentence. Our system is clearly designed to ensure that the three-year sentences that each of these two hypothetical men are serving will be served in quite different ways. They may both hear in court that they're sentenced to three years, but they know and we know that they'll get out at different times.

My second point is also a simple one. The rules that govern this modification of a sentence do so in a way that protects the criminal justice system and those who are accountable for its failures, but do not ultimately focus adequately on the task of protecting the rest of us.

Before I go any further, I want to make one point very clear, and that is, I do not equate the protection of the public from offenders with locking them up in prison for long periods of time. My view is that the protection of the public is empirically and probably economically driven.

I would like the Government of Canada and the provincial governments to use public safety dollars, if such a group of dollars can be identified, in a most effective way. We have to remember that most prisoners are released at some point in their lives.

The challenge I would like you to take on is to make the rules governing conditional release consistent with its purpose. I know you've been looking at the CCRA for a long time, but a couple of sections deserve close scrutiny.

First, if you look at the purpose of conditional release, it says:

The purpose of conditional release is to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by means of decisions on the timing and conditions of release that will best facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens.

It seems to me that this is a perfectly reasonable statement. And the first principle that's supposed to guide parole boards is equally reasonable. It says:

The principles that shall guide the Board and the provincial parole boards in achieving the purpose of conditional release are

(a) that the protection of society be the paramount consideration in the determination of any case;

The problem arises when one holds these protection concerns in mind and then turns to the criteria for granting parole. The board or provincial parole board may grant parole to an offender if, in its opinion, the offender will not, by reoffending, present an undue risk to society before the expiration according to law of the sentence the offender is serving.

I want to make a simple and obvious point about this set of sections. The focus of the parole board is on the period of time prior to warrant expiry. By implication, the parole board is supposed to be looking only at the possibility the person will, before warrant expiry, reoffend. You in fact heard that this morning from the Ontario parole board. You heard the same kind of thinking from Scott Newark.

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I'm not criticizing them, because what they're doing is talking about the act.

Using the stated legal criteria then, there are two problems. First, long-term safety and security are deemed not to be relevant. Secondly, reoffending before warrant expiry can be used as evidence that the parole board made a mistake, but reoffending after warrant expiry is deemed not to be evidence of a mistake. There is a built-in conservatism that is almost certainly not in the interest of overall safety.

I'm skipping to page 4. Surely this is wrong. It would not be difficult to change the law. The parole board should be told to look for the best way to reduce the long-term risk of reoffending. Moving to tighten up parole or some of the other things you heard this morning really aren't focusing on long-term safety. They're focusing on what happens before warrant expiry.

There's another problem with looking at the short-term protection of society. We don't take into account costs.

One of the most unconsciously irresponsible types of statements made in the area of crime control is that if one life were saved by whatever policy, it would be worth it. This type of statement is repeatedly made. If one life were saved by holding people until warrant expiry, or by giving longer prison sentences, or by imposing minimum sentences, or by some new firearms control, or whatever it might be, then the suggestion is that it would have been worth it, because we cannot place a dollar value on a human life.

The reason I find this type of statement to be spectacularly irresponsible is because it ignores the fact that there are other choices that can be made on how scarce resources are to be used. If one life could be saved by holding a certain number of people in prison longer, but two, three, or four lives could be saved by using these same resources in another way, why would anyone choose saving one life over saving two or more lives? The political problem is that the one life that is saved when a prisoner is released is more salient to everyone than the more than one life saved through a sensible use of resources for prevention.

In my area, researchers are often moving beyond the question of whether or not a criminal justice policy works to a different kind of metric. How many serious crimes are averted per million dollars spent?

Look at it this way. Prison often becomes a very expensive way of protecting the public. As you know, in the last five years we've had more and more people released from federal penitentiaries, either at the statutory release point in their sentences or at warrant expiry. In other words, there is ample evidence that the National Parole Board has been very conservative in its decisions. This seems to be inevitable, given the current criminal justice climate and the current law.

In the end, if we want to ensure there are no tragedies committed by offenders before their sentences end, it would be easy to accomplish this goal. We would simply release nobody. That would mean we would not read any news stories about crimes by those on parole. It is also very likely to mean that we will have more crimes committed by those who are not given the opportunity for supervision and support in the community before being incarcerated.

We do have a problem in Canada. The Commissioner of Correctional Service Canada has noted that public safety would be enhanced if more of our prisoners were supervised in the community rather than being kept in prison. Another way of saying this is that we're not getting the full benefit from our criminal justice dollars. I'm suggesting that the wording of the CCRA may be partially to blame.

I'd like to return to the example of the two three-year sentences. The embezzler will undoubtedly be released first, but it's the robber who's most likely to need the benefit of supervision and support. In other words, we often give reintegrative opportunities to those least in need of them. Conversely, the people who are in most need of control and support in the community get the least of it.

In conclusion, I'd like to urge you to examine carefully the principles and criteria for granting parole and modify them such that the board has the responsibility to focus on long-term rather than short-term security. If you were to do that, you as responsible legislators must participate in the process of educating Canadians about what you're doing. Explaining the trade-off between short-term and long-term risk is not going to be easy, but it is important. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

We'll have Mr. Abbott for five minutes.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Good, thank you. I appreciate your brief and your presentation. I find it's good mental gymnastics to stretch from time to time, and certainly this has done that.

• 1135

I'm referring to page 4, however, and I'm having some difficulty with this mental exercise I'm involved in. In the third paragraph from the bottom you say the political problem is that the one life that is not saved when the prisoner is released is more salient to everyone than the more than one life saved through the sensible use of resources for prevention. Clearly, that's true. I accept that totally at face value. The use of our meagre government resources to prevent an act clearly are preferable to those post-event.

I am having some difficulty with the concept. If we go to the third to last paragraph on page 5, where you're comparing the robber with the embezzler, what you're saying there is that the embezzler will presumably get out earlier than the robber. Isn't it the robber who remains in the system, hopefully taking various programs? Is he not benefiting, in fact, by staying in the system and being exposed to those programs?

Prof. Anthony Doob: The issue is really whether you believe in gradual release and support, whether you believe in the reintegration of people who've spent time in prison. Let's just look at it from the public's perspective rather than from a humanitarian perspective of the prisoner.

The worst possible thing that we can do is to hold that prisoner until warrant expiry and let him out cold without support and without any supervision. Who do we do that with? At the moment, we do that with the people whom we have the most concerns about. And why do we have concerns about them? Because we're concerned that warrant expiry is there, and they might commit an offence between whatever date we're considering for them and warrant expiry. Quite frankly, we don't care what happens to them after warrant expiry, because they're not a criminal justice concern. They've served their sentence and that's the end of it.

It's true we try to do whatever we can with prisoners, but when we're talking about federal prisoners who've spent a substantial amount of time in prison, it doesn't seem to me to do anybody any good to say let's really not spend many resources integrating that person into society, giving them support and giving them control. Let's hold them as much as we can, completely, and let's let them out cold. That seems to me to be counterproductive, if one accepts the idea of gradual release.

My worry is that the parole board looks at the law and looks at this person and says this person is a risk. So going back to your concern about what I said on the bottom of page 4, do we take a short-term risk for a possible long-term gain? Do we let this person out before warrant expiry, understanding that those of us sitting around the table don't have the same risk to commit violent offences in the community as this person does? They are a risk to us.

Do we take a short-term risk? That person and society are obviously at risk during this period of time between the decision point and warrant expiry. After warrant expiry, only society is at risk. Do we take that short-term risk, knowing that something might happen, because we believe in the idea that people need to have support and supervision and so on as they're being reintegrated into society?

It's the same kind of analogy as if you're taking a dangerous but effective medical drug. It does have a risk to it, but it's worth taking because there is a long-term benefit.

Mr. Jim Abbott: If it is my wife or grandchild who is offended by this person while they are still under warrant expiry, your academic argument rings very hollow.

Prof. Anthony Doob: Of course it does. Your political argument rings hollow if it's my wife or my child or my parent who is killed by that person three days after warrant expiry, where you can wash your hands of it, because we say we kept this person until warrant expiry. So that's the problem.

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I think the difficulty is that the criminal justice system and in a sense all of us are saying we have control of this person during this period of time and we're going to minimize risk during this period of time, but quite frankly, we don't care what happens after warrant expiry. That seems to me completely irresponsible.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Just a short question.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Okay.

Prof. Anthony Doob: I'm not saying you're irresponsible. I'm saying the system as we have it is irresponsible.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I understand that. It's just that we have to understand that we are charged with the responsibility of looking at the CCRA. This committee is not charged with the other responsibility. In that context, I agree with your assessment that we have to take a look at long-term protection. But dealing with the CCRA is what our committee is charged with.

Prof. Anthony Doob: That's why I referred to section 102 of the CCRA as the major problem that leads to this kind of thinking.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Marceau, you have five minutes.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too would like to thank our witness.

On page 4 of your brief, under the title Prison vs. other choices, you discredit in rather strong terms an argument that we often hear: if but one life is saved, then it is worth it. We hear that regularly, at least once per meeting of the subcommittee, and it is the same thing for the Justice Committee.

You then say that we should think about other choices, but you only mention them in a very general way. I would very much like to know what these other choices might be.

[English]

Prof. Anthony Doob: There are really two sets of things. In this particular case, the one life that could be saved in the context of conditional release is usually if this person hadn't been released or if some number of people hadn't been released. If we really believe in the importance of conditional release to ensure that people are reintegrated into society, then what I'm saying is that we are doing a balancing act, and for those people who at the moment we're holding until warrant expiry, we may be reducing the likelihood that they would be committing offences before warrant expiry, but we may be increasing their life likelihood of committing offences. In other words, the trade-off—and it's a terrible trade-off—is between their hypothetical one serious crime before versus four serious crimes after warrant expiry.

My choice would be to say it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me if I'm attacked on the day before warrant expiry or whether three of us are attacked after warrant expiry; the three sounds worse to me than the one. So the one serious crime averted isn't good enough.

On the arguments, for example, of increasing imprisonment, as one criminologist pointed out, if you take any million people in the United States and lock them up, those million people won't be committing crimes on the street. It will reduce crime a certain amount. The question is, what is it that one can do?

In the kinds of studies that have done a comparison of use of imprisonment, of holding people longer in prison, or a comparison of other things, they compare them to social programs, which don't have the sexiness that building prisons or modifying conditional release do, but programs that, for example, focus on kids who are having problems in late adolescence in school, and working on keeping them in school and getting them jobs afterwards. Actually, per dollar spent, those sorts of things are a much better investment in reducing violence. There is a large number of those sorts of things. They just aren't as salient as locking people up.

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[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Unless I am mistaken, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act doesn't talk about prevention.

I mention this because it was never dealt with directly by the subcommittee. Do you believe that the committee should make a recommendation in order that part of the act be devoted to prevention? Should there be a clause dealing specifically with prevention and what should it provide for?

[English]

Prof. Anthony Doob: Let me answer that question indirectly. It relates to something that came up earlier and I guess has come up a number of times in your own deliberations, the issue of the so-called 50-50 split that the Commissioner of Corrections has talked about.

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One way in which the CCRA might want to talk about prevention would be to say it's the responsibility of the government to use its correctional resources most effectively to reduce the number of crimes committed by people under its control. This would put a responsibility on CSC and the National Parole Board to try to say it's costing a certain amount of money to hold a person in custody and it's costing a certain amount of money to supervise them in the community, so what do we get in the long term from use of different kinds of resources? What do we get from different kinds of programs? What is really the crime prevention value?

It's a terrible kind of statistic that one sees in research literature now, where you talk about the number of serious violent crimes averted per million dollars spent. It's a very cold statistic. But if you're running a billion-dollar operation, it seems to me that there is a responsibility to have, in a sense, that kind of statistic in mind. So I think CSC and the National Parole Board, in the responsibility that exists in the CCRA, do have a general crime prevention responsibility. I would say that if we were driven by effective use of that billion dollars or so, we would probably be making different kinds of decisions.

My very narrow point in this situation is that we should be looking at the criminal behaviour of people during their lifetime, not necessarily during their time only up to warrant expiry.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

[English]

Mr. MacKay, you have five minutes.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Doctor, for your presentation and your very informative approach. It's one I suppose I have some questions about in terms of the whole philosophy of long term versus short term, because I see that a lot of this has already been tried, and to some extent this is what the entire act has attempted to accomplish.

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If you want to put it in blunt, practical terms, the CCRA, and by virtue of the next step, the parole board, do exactly what we're talking about here. They take an individual who has been sentenced to a set period of time and in essence shorten the sentence and put conditions in place that are supposedly aimed at reforming them on the outside.

Having the person stay incarcerated to their warrant expiry and holding them there so that they're not back on the street and using the blunt instrument that they are unable to commit further offences if they are removed from society is one goal that's been achieved for whatever period or length of incarceration is taking place, but that's then shortened and conditions are put in place.

Do you think there would be value in making this—I don't want to use the word “contractual”—that there should be greater emphasis put on the prisoners to buy into this wholly, that they're not going to be released until they agree to these conditions? I see this aimed at this long-term rehabilitative process you're talking about. The emphasis here is not to simply remove them for the period of time the judge has deemed appropriate, but to look beyond the expiry of their sentence, beyond the expiry of their conditions of probation—if we're talking about it in a provincial scenario—and say we are going to dedicate more time to this long-term approach that I think you quite rightly have identified is what the entire system should be geared toward.

Prof. Anthony Doob: As you point out, my view is that what we should be looking at, in effect, is the lifetime risk this person represents to society. I mean, everybody is a certain level of lifetime risk to the rest of us—we may drive badly, we may commit offences, we may be likely to commit very serious offences. So what we should be doing is looking to minimize the long-term lifetime risk of this offender. That's one point, I suppose.

The second point is that I'm a very firm believer in fixed sentences, in the sense that I don't believe in indeterminate sentences for a large number of reasons, which I don't think we have to go into right here. What that does is to say to CSC and the National Parole Board, working independently—and quite frankly not always in tandem with one another—that I would like them to say how best we can lower the long-term risk for this person.

The problem—and it's one I agree with—is that the control of these institutions, at CSC more specifically, has a fixed period. There is a fixed period of time, and that's the way I think it should be. So what we have to find out is how best to do that. Now, if the prisoner doesn't buy in and doesn't want to reduce that likelihood, that's another challenge to us. But if we're thinking of a three-year or a four-year sentence, we still have that warrant expiry date facing all of us.

Mr. Peter MacKay: I guess what I'm suggesting is... I agree, I think the fixed sentence is the process we have, but it places very artificial signposts on a specific individual. I don't know if I can articulate this right, but I guess it's not so much indeterminate sentences that I'm referring to, but the ability—and this might be completely radical—after a person sentenced for violence, for example, is three or five years into an eight-year sentence, for the Correctional Service to have at their disposal the ability to reassess and decide, in essence, to resentence this person in the community and attach conditions, perhaps, that weren't necessary or weren't envisioned by the sentencing judge at the time this person appeared before the court five years ago.

I realize this gets us into all kinds of constitutional implications, to talk about resentencing, and that's not the appropriate word to use. I'm speaking in very fuzzy terms, but what do you think of that concept of... I know that reassessment takes place throughout the process, but what do you thing about putting new conditions in place?

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Prof. Anthony Doob: We're getting into a very big topic. My starting point, I think, is that I believe very strongly that people should be sentenced at the time, and that the length of time for which a person should be sent to prison should be determined, in large part, by the seriousness of their act. That's my starting point. And then I say we have an obligation and an interest in trying to use that time effectively. How we modify and how we manage that, it seems to me, should be done under various forms and principles.

I say in the sort of preface, which I didn't read, that... I suppose you should remember that I'm personally not a huge fan of discretionary relief in the form in which we have it, of parole. I publicly endorsed a different model of relief 15 years ago, and I still believe that would serve us all better.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Is that the... The truth is the same thing: five years is five years.

Prof. Anthony Doob: If the Canadian sentencing commissioners recommended that discretionary parole, as we know it, should be abolished and all prisoners should be released, depending on how you define it, at between two-thirds and three-quarters of their sentences, and that would be all prisoners. Now, if that were also tied to a sentencing regime where sentences would be controlled and again proportional to the seriousness of the offence and that you couldn't really do the latter without the former, you couldn't just change the parole provisions without also changing sentencing or controlling sentencing. The idea of that, in large part, was consistent with what we're talking about, which is that we do believe in reintegration and we do believe in the importance for many people of having these kinds of supports and control, and we want to ensure, particularly for those who are most in need of it, that they actually get it, rather than having the system we have now.

The Chairman: Sorry, we're going to have to move on.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Yes, that's all right.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. MacKay.

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Doob, to begin with, I'm a great fan of paroles, early release, any way at all to get the offender out of the system as soon as it is safely and economically possible. If we get the offender out of the institution, we save big bucks.

In your opinion, do we spend enough of these big bucks on supervising, helping, assisting, continuing training of people released from our institutions?

Prof. Anthony Doob: The fairest answer to that is I really don't know about whether we're spending enough dollars. I guess my concern from some of the reports of the Auditor General is that we may not be using whatever dollars, whether they're enough or not enough, in the most effective way. I suppose that comes from my reading of the Auditor General's comments on the variations that seem to exist for no apparent reason from region to region in the way in which supervision takes place.

As a member of the community, my starting point is that sentences expire and that we do want to ensure that everything possible has been done to reduce the long-term risks an offender presents to the community. It usually is in our benefit.

In terms of reading about things, let me give an example. It's the sort of thing that challenges both the way in which we think about things and certain kinds of even constitutional issues. I was reading some research recently on employment programs. One of the things some of the research seemed to be pointing to is not only the importance of what might be called employment readiness, which takes place in terms of training people when they're in prison, but also employment programs to get the person the job, to really seriously help the person get the job, but then, furthermore, sort of helping a person with employment later on.

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They may get the job, but this means in many cases sort of ensuring that they learn what we would call basic work skills, of getting to places on time, and if there are problems, calling up and explaining those problems. Further, if they lose the job for some reason or another, for example there's a general layoff and they were the last person in, this prison-based employment program kicks in again.

We would have great difficulty with such things, especially if it went beyond warrant expiry, but those are the sorts of discontinuity I suppose we've built in. If I had a new million dollars to spend for public safety in relationship to prisoners, what I'd say almost certainly is let's try to work harder at reintegration of the most difficult people. In that sense I would try to see how I could allocate money, or allocate new money, in order to accomplish that overall long-term goal, again looking at the long term, well beyond warrant expiry.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you.

I always have mixed emotions when someone mentions the Auditor General. I sit on the public accounts committee, and it's amazing how many times I have a divided opinion on this committee.

What you said was it would be very difficult to continue assistance beyond warrant expiry. I think that's a case where politicians have to screw up their courage and do it, because I think—I'd be happy to know whether you agree with me or not—that in the long term it would probably be financially the best way to go.

Prof. Anthony Doob: I agree. It always does strike me, as I said, that we have various discontinuities. We have discontinuities between the way in which programs occur in the institutions and in the communities, and then we have discontinuities when you get to warrant expiry, except for informal arrangements that occur, or some very special programs. We just cut people off, and that doesn't seem to me to be in the interests of anybody.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Professor, I have just one point of clarification. In your submission, the last sentence on page 4, where you're talking about the decisions of the National Parole Board, you said “This seems to be inevitable, given the current criminal justice climate and the current law.” I wonder if you could explain what you're referring to there.

Prof. Anthony Doob: The current law I've already referred to, of course, and that's where I'm talking about section 102 of the CCRA.

The criminal justice climate I think is the view that complex problems of crime can be solved with simple solutions, like locking people up longer, do this, do that. These are complex social human problems, and the view you heard this morning before me, not immediately before, obviously, but from Mr. Newark and from the Ontario Parole Board... The Ontario Parole Board, for example, will give us the power to hold people for a few months longer, and the implication is crime will go down. That's a very popular kind of thing, because it's a very quick, simple solution: lock up a group of prisoners for a longer period of time and the problem will disappear.

Mr. Newark told you, and I think he's absolutely dead wrong on this, that the reduction in crime that we've seen during this decade is in part due to the increase in the number of detentions. I think if you looked at the numbers, you'd actually see that this couldn't possibly be the case. But those are the sorts of simple solutions that are very attractive, and the criminal justice climate is that we're going to solve crime by tinkering with the criminal justice system.

I think we know from an enormous amount of experience in this country and elsewhere that tinkering with the criminal justice system won't work. But the criminal justice climate in this country is that we're going to solve problems by this, we're going to solve the crime problem, not so much necessarily with the CCRA, but by tinkering with the Criminal Code, by changing various release procedures, by working on 745, whatever it might be. I think we really know that's a fraud.

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The Chairman: If you were the dictator of Canada, with complete power, and you had the choice on the issue of detention, of detaining people until warrant expiry and releasing them at that point, without supervision, or releasing them at statutory release, looking at it from public protection only, how is the public best protected, letting them out earlier with some supervision, given that these are usually the people who have been resistant to treatment and to programming, etc.—that's why the CSC wants to detain them—or keeping them there for that extra period of time when obviously they're not going to be reoffending because they're still incarcerated? So the trade-off... I think maybe Mr. Abbott touched on that in his question.

Prof. Anthony Doob: I'd get rid of detention, without a hesitation. I was opposed to it in 1986. I think it was the most bizare parliamentary charade I've seen in a long time that Parliament was recalled in 1986 for emergency reasons to bring in detention. I thought that was completely bizarre. It was completely bizarre, but I'm sure politically sensible, in the sense that we're saying we're going to detain these people and we're going to let them out cold. Nobody is facing the fact that there's a warrant expiry date.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean we have to let them out under the same conditions as we let out the hypothetical embezzler that I described in my comments to you. It does mean, however, we have to face the fact that there's a long-term risk that some of these people do present. What we have to do is look to the ways in which we can reduce that long-term risk.

On the preface to your question, as you know, the group of people who are detained until warrant expiry or detained for shorter periods of time is quite a heterogeneous group itself. You also remember, as I know you've been reminded by such people as the Canadian Bar Association, that in 1986 we were told this was a very small number of people who would ever be detained.

But the real issue, it seems to me, is that the detention provision suggests the administrative failure of our system to provide the kinds of programs, the kinds of support, the kinds of supervision, the kinds of control it should be providing to obviously a very difficult group of people. The point I keep coming back to—and this is why I found the Ontario Parole Board recommendations that they wanted detention powers as well to be completely bizarre—is that these people are getting out.

Now, Ontario is saying somehow we're going to make us safer if we detain people for... What is Ontario talking about, four to eight months probably? Various people are talking about it; it's sort of putting a longer pipe on, and then they're going to start dumping out the end anyway. I think it's really incumbent on the system to face the fact of warrant expiry and to do everything it possibly can, within the period of time that's available because of the sentence of the court, to provide services and rehabilitative services, and control and support in the community—not just control, but support, because that control ends too.

The Chairman: Good. Thank you very much. We certainly appreciate your attendance here today.

Our last witness before lunch will be Michelle Murphy from Spirit of the People.

Ms. Murphy, if we could have a presentation of approximately ten minutes, then members would have questions. Thank you.

Ms. Michelle Murphy (Executive Director, Spirit of the People): Okay. I'm here to represent the aboriginal community. We work with ex-offenders and offenders in the prison system.

My apologies that I haven't a written submission at this point. I'm just going to read off some of the summaries from the section 81 portion under the act.

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Within it are already the directives that are needed, which are increase the native-run alternatives to imprisonment programs; develop institutional programs run by native instructors and/or teachers; provide non-native instructors with cross-cultural training; see that the native brotherhoods and sisterhoods are adequately resourced; accord native elders and spirituality the same status and recognition as other religions; increase the number of native employees or enter into further contractual agreements with native organizations to assist release plans and application for early release.

Where possible, the National Parole Board should conditionally release a native offender to his or her home community or reserve where the community is willing to and capable of providing assistance and supervision to the offender; governments should fully support the expansion of native-run programs and halfway houses to accept native offenders upon their conditional release; and the National Parole Board should examine the implications in imposing disassociation conditions prohibiting offenders from associating with people having criminal records.

Correctional Service Canada and National Parole Board should jointly establish an advisory committee on native offenders, which would include major native organizations involved in criminal justice. And where numbers warrant, Correctional Service should ensure a proportionate representation in the citizens' advisory committees attached to the institutions and direct parole offices.

Our aboriginal men have 700 times the chance of becoming incarcerated and our women have 131 times the chance of being incarcerated in Canada, compared to the regular population.

In working with the aboriginal people who are in the prisons, the sentence is harsher for the crimes that are being committed within the justice system. So they're going in for longer periods of time. Once in the institution, very little of this is being done. Section 84 has never been done. Section 81—there have only been twelve done, and it's been in place for I think it's eight years.

When they do come out, there are no resources. The particular program we run, Spirit of the People, is the only one of its kind in Canada and the United States. We have a budget of under $100,000 to be able to work with the ex-offenders when they come out. We go into the prisons and we provide sweats and cultural training twice a month to three institutions. The other institutions are also doing the same.

The problem is that the programming we do when we go in is not recognized under the regular programming. One of the things we have been able to find out is that if the aboriginal person in the prison is able to identify or to find some roots, we have a better chance of helping them reintegrate into society.

In the preventative end there isn't anything either. The problem is that we see generations. I'm working with a young boy in St. John's School whose mother and father are both in institutions in other parts of Ontario, whose grandfather was also in one of the institutions in Ontario. So our population spends a lot of time in the institutions.

If we were allowed to do what has already been recommended and we had the resources to be able to do it with... Our recidivism rates are already better than CSC by about 20%. The reason for that is we're able to start building family. That's one of the things that's lacking, and that's one of the reasons our guys are in prison in the first place. I was in Joyceville two nights ago, and they were complaining about that exact thing—there's no aboriginal programming in the institution. They have to take all non-native programs.

A lot of them are refusing to take the programs—they just won't, which of course makes them have to stay until warrant expiry. They don't want to go to halfway houses—we only have one. With a population of 60,000 to 100,000 just in Toronto alone of aboriginal people, one halfway house in Sudbury isn't going to cut it.

We have to be able to start coordinating efforts to save money. We go into some of the halfway houses and parole offices, etc., and work on some of the pre-release plans, being able to work with them when they come out before warrant expiry. If they do come out, they don't want to go to the halfway houses of the different places that are available because they're required to take programming that has no aboriginal content.

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If there is aboriginal content, we can keep more of our people out of prison. It's more of our people you are paying to keep in prison. So if we were allowed and we had the resources to do what we're supposed to do, which is already in the CCRA, we would be able to make some inroads. Basically, it's all there; it's just a matter of putting those things in place and making sure they're being taken care of.

I know there's one aboriginal person—one and a half—in Ontario on the parole board that's not reflected. At the conference I attended last week, I would say about half a percent of us were of the aboriginal population, and we know there's more than that in the prisons in Ontario. The representation is something that also has to be taken into account. It's already all in there; it just has to be implemented.

The Chairman: Thank you.

We'll go to questions then. Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: This is excellent. I really appreciate your input, certainly for myself, to get some good information.

You made the statement that the aboriginal religions do not have the same status as other religions. Could you expand on that? I've been of the impression that, particularly in western Canada—and I realize we're talking about Ontario, but I'm familiar with some of the institutions in western Canada—there seems to be a fair predominance of aboriginal religious opportunity. You're saying that's not necessarily the case in Ontario?

Ms. Michelle Murphy: You're right. As far as the west, the west does have... I don't know if it's a greater respect, or more availability of elders, etc., that are going into the prisons.

The Chairman: A lot of the elders come from the east, we're told. Half the elders that are in the prisons in the west are from the east, and of course they're not from the same aboriginal culture as the western aboriginals. So that's the problem there.

Ms. Michelle Murphy: That's also happening there, yes. We're not having so much of a problem with having the men accept, because some of ours come from the west and some come from the east and some are central. There are, in North America, 151 different nations, so you can't really lump them.

The Chairman: Yes.

Ms. Michelle Murphy: We're not having a problem with that, but what we are having a problem with is yes, we do not have as much of the spirituality—it's not a religion, it's spirituality and a culture—as the west. But also it's not being recognized in the programming, and that's a large problem, because if someone is in cog-skills, if we convince them to take a program so they can get out, and they want to come to one of our sweats or they want to come to one of our teachings, if they miss three days of that program they're penalized and they do not get the credit for attending that program. That's what we're arguing right now—then they can't participate. So what's the point in providing it if you're not going to credit it toward the programs they're taking, because we're the ones convincing them to take your programs in the first place?

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Mr. Jim Abbott: On the dissociation provisions, I'm assuming that's on parole. It's logical that if a person has had some bad influences—bad friends and bad associations—it would be helpful if that person were not associating with those people when they got out. Your comment seems to be contrary to that.

Ms. Michelle Murphy: Currently my staff is made up of two ex-offenders and three who have never been in the justice system. One of my best staff members is an ex-offender himself. He is the one who does the best work with our clients when they come out. The non-association clause would make him unable to work with the client, when he's the best person available to work with him. So I need to have the non-association clauses altered. I did one of those this morning. I was working with the parole officer on a pre-release plan to say that in specific instances we need to be able to have that clause taken out.

I understand what you're saying. He shouldn't go downtown and hang out with drug pushers and such, but in certain instances, including where he may be living, there may be an ex-offender there. I'm putting that person in the best possible place to not re-offend and to get his life on track. With the association clause, I can't do that. A lot of our people are ex-offenders.

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Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Marceau.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Ms. Murphy, thank you for having come to speak to us this morning.

I am a bit embarrassed to admit it, but it is nevertheless the truth: I have learned more about native culture since becoming a member of this committee travelling throughout Canada and visiting prisons then I knew before. It is unfortunate, but it is the truth.

In the beginning, I was very enthusiastic and in favour of the idea of a strong spiritual native presence in prisons, and I'm thinking here of the wise people, of the elders. At the very beginning, I had many positive comments to make, up until I met with a group of native people in Vancouver who told me that several of these elders weren't really wise people, which created a lot of problems.

You talked about the diversity of native peoples in North America. I know that there are 11 just in Quebec. But I don't know how many there are in the rest of Canada. Several native people, in prison, have told me, "The elder in my prison wants to impose upon me spiritual customs that aren't mine". It's a little bit as if I, as a Francophone and Catholic Quebecker, were spiritually accompanied, in prison, by a Scottish presbyterian. It's as strange as that.

What can we do to solve this problem? Is this a problem you are aware of? Secondly, is there some way of "satisfying" all native groups, despite their diversity?

[English]

Ms. Michelle Murphy: On your first point, we are aware of the problem with self-proclaimed elders and corruption or fraudulent behaviour amongst them.

On your second question, of how to resolve that, the Aboriginal Advisory Committee is made up of elders who have a great deal of respect from the aboriginal community to do native awareness. When I'm doing aboriginal awareness, even with our own people because some of our people don't know the culture, I tell them if they are racists, they're not good elders. When an elder says “only our people are the best”, then you know right away this person has problems, because that's not part of our spirituality.

So aboriginal awareness has to be done. That will help pinpoint those who are using the system for power and to control issues, where you were saying he was trying to impose his beliefs on somebody else. That's the kind of thing a true traditional person would not do.

• 1235

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: He didn't want to force the issue, but his first example was that of the sweat lodges; I don't know the French term. We were told that in British Columbia, native peoples didn't have sweat lodges. This tradition was imported from Eastern Canada.

People told me that that bothered them somewhat; that is was fine, but that it didn't fit in with the spiritual practices of their nation.

It wasn't forced upon them—I don't know what other term to use—but to a certain extent the way in which native peoples should live their spirituality was imposed upon them; this custom didn't exist in British Columbia.

[English]

Ms. Michelle Murphy: In that case we would go back to aboriginal awareness. It is not a custom in B.C. The sweat lodge is a custom of our area and the east. It is a matter of knowing the cultural beliefs of the Haida and the Nisga'a in that area and how they perform. You should be going to the Haida and Nisga'a if you're in B.C., and you should be going to the Cree or the Dene if you're out west. The Inuit should be taking care of the Inuit.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: That is the question.

[English]

Ms. Michelle Murphy: The question is...

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: For example, there are not only Aboriginals from British Columbia in the jails of that province. There are Crees, Inuits, Metis, people from everywhere. You say we should talk with the Nishga Council and some other councils.

Is it possible to satisfy everybody? That's the real issue. In an institution where we have members of 25 nations, how do we ensure that all 25 nations will be well-represented? Is it impossible or can we appoint one person to be in charge of aboriginal spirituality? Wouldn't we end up having a mishmash that would be totally meaningless because it would try to integrate the customs of different nations?

[English]

The Chairman: This will be you last response.

Ms. Michelle Murphy: You can't have just one person. In Ontario we basically do what you're talking about—a mishmash. I have three different teachers—Sioux, Iroquois, and Ojibway, but that's the Ontario population. They are more open to it in Toronto. They are not as open to it out west and they're definitely not open to it out east.

You will have to judge each area individually, as you do each person. If you can't support 25 different brotherhoods, you should be able to find a medium ground and say “Okay, we can only deliver five different ceremonial ways of doing it. Get together as brotherhoods and find out which ones you will accept. That's all we have. That's all we can do. That's how it works.”

If you're going to put one person in there for 25 groups, you might as well not waste your time, money or effort because you will just frustrate and waste money doing it. You should try to go with the group you're working with.

As I said, those three areas are very different. B.C. has one way, the east has another, and in Ontario, we're pretty open to accepting other people's ways.

The Chairman: Mr. MacKay.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Like Mr. Marceau, and I think all members of the committee, we have visited institutions and heard what you have reinforced here today about the disproportionate number of aboriginal Canadians who are currently in our prison system. It's certainly a disturbing fact we're coming to grips with.

You've also identified a number of things, if I can just quickly state them. There are insufficient aboriginal programs. The programs that exist are not to everyone's satisfaction, and there doesn't appear to be a formal recognition within the system. That is to say, if you take an aboriginal program you won't receive the same credit, at least in the eyes of the prison warden, the prison officials, or the parole officials, that you would if you took the more traditional programs for education, anger management, drug and alcohol treatment.

• 1240

So those are all significant problems. But I think if you said one thing in your last remark that resonates, it is the word “money”. I suppose at the end of the day, when it comes to legislative change or initiation of new programs, all of this is going to hit the brick wall when it comes to the allotment of resources. So to that end, and it is somewhat of a follow-up to your last answer, is there a way to, for lack of a better word, streamline aboriginal programs? We're hitting on a very important area here.

I come from the east coast, where there are Mi'kmaw, and the majority of Mi'kmaw inmates do have access now, luckily, most recently at Dorchester, Springhill to some extent—they are able to access sweat lodges, healing circles, and other forms of counselling from elders. But keeping in mind what you've said—151 different aboriginal nations—how do you envision the system reacting to these immense diversities? Is there a way that we can find some middle ground to provide the services that are required by these very diverse aboriginal nations?

Ms. Michelle Murphy: You spoke of money. That's one of the things. We were brought together in Ottawa—Quebec, the east coast, and there were three or four of us from the Ontario region. There were traditional teachers, there were elders, and there were native liaison officers. We took a program called SOAR. I would assume it cost Corrections Canada maybe $30,000 to bring us together for two weeks to pick up the SOAR programming, which is a combined program. It's aboriginal-specific, but it's combined to be able to incorporate a constant program in drugs and alcohol and still incorporate the spirituality into the program. We finished the program. There's one week of program relapse that we're supposed to take, and somebody higher up decided they were going to scrap the program.

That particular program would cost a lot less money, would incorporate the different components of spirituality, as well as give them an aboriginal program that they could take and be happy with... but they scrapped it. Not only that, but they were able to coordinate an effort involving Quebec, the east coast, and Ontario, and we were able to talk about what we're doing in our different prisons, how our people are doing, and share with each other. So if I had an influx of Mi'kmaw into Kingston Penitentiary or Joyceville, I could phone them and say, I want you to do something for the guys. That would be good for them. They'd say okay, well, once a quarter I'll fly him up from the east coast to do something for you. In the meantime, we'll just give you the goods on the culture and the spiritual as we know it here in Ontario.

If they're an Inuit... I now have an Inuit contact, so I can say okay, we'll bring in the Inuit elder once every quarter so that you have a chance to talk to her. They don't mind sharing. They're learning about each other's culture at the same time. If they're truly on the traditional path, they're open to others. They just don't want to be excluded.

Mr. Peter MacKay: How would you respond to the suggestion of having a federally funded office for an aboriginal correctional supervisor, investigator, somebody who would, as you've put it, share information or facilitate the sharing of information from coast to coast?

Just as a follow-up to that, how do you respond to what I view as the most basic difficulty of all, and that is the after release, where the contact, the non-association problem... I'm aware of very small native communities in my part of the world where you're talking about 400 or 500 people. To say go back to your community but don't associate with your old crowd—it's virtually impossible. You're setting a person up to fail.

• 1245

Ms. Michelle Murphy: Most of the pre-release plans are setting them up to fail, in the sense that you must get work and you must do this. I'm fighting for this one particular man who has been in jail for 10 years. Don't make him go to work in three months. You're not doing him any favours. It's the same thing with the association clause. You're right. It's impossible to be able to do that. It's resources again. We keep running into the resource problem.

As far as having a head office, I go back to what Mr. Marceau said, in that we have to be really careful. I think that would be a fantastic idea. We have to be very careful who we put in there, simply because of the reasons around it.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. MacKay.

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Murphy, I dare say your meeting in Ottawa cost more than $30,000. It seems to cost us $30,000 to hold a one-day meeting in a telephone booth.

Let me play the devil's advocate here for a moment—not an unusual role for me. Yesterday we heard from an inmate in an institution who outlined pretty well all the programs you have said are in effect or should be in effect. He took the attitude that they're all in effect, which would be wonderful if it were so. He went on and on at great length about this and said this program is... compared to his cultural group, for which there is nothing. The inmate was black. Would you please help me with this? It's a problem we have to face. What do I tell this man?

Ms. Michelle Murphy: For starters, I don't know what cultural group he is from, because if he's black, it's not a cultural group.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Let's assume West Indian.

Ms. Michelle Murphy: Okay, so he's West Indian. As I said, we have two sweats a month that go into the prisons. I know because I do three of the institutions. We have a native liaison officer three days a week in most of the prisons—not all the time. Bath Institution had the Way of Life program. It's not running right now. But other than that there isn't any of the aboriginal programming, so I don't know what he's talking about, for starters.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Let's assume what you've just mentioned is all there is. His perception is what matters because that's what we have to deal with. Let's assume that the program you just outlined is the sum total, and I have no reason to quarrel with it. What do I say to him?

Ms. Michelle Murphy: To the West Indian?

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes.

Ms. Michelle Murphy: First off, first nations people were the first people in Canada. The reason our people are in the prisons in the first place is because of the government, because of the residential schools. That's one of the realities we have to deal with. The other reality is that we have a very high population of aboriginal people in prison. If you want to save money, we have to get them to the point where they're not going back to prison, and that's what we want for our people. You're going with the first nations people, the first people of this country. That's my argument to anybody from another country who's visiting here and complaining that our first peoples are getting attention, when they're not even getting the kind of attention proportionate to the numbers of our people who are in prison.

Mr. Ivan Grose: That's a good answer. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

Ms. Murphy, we thank you very much for your attendance here today and your time. We were a little bit late in getting to you—we apologize for that—but we're trying to stay on schedule. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Ms. Michelle Murphy: Thank you.

The Chairman: Before we adjourn, members, I just want you to be aware of a change in the schedule. We have an add-on witness at 1.30. We had two cancellations, the Ontario Halfway House Association and CAVEAT. They had to cancel, but at 1.30 we'll be hearing from Julian Falconer, who is a lawyer representing the family of an individual by the name of Gentles. This is a fairly sensitive situation because there's a coroner's inquest going on. I think there was a cell extraction involved with Mr. Gentles, who was an inmate. I believe there were also some charges laid by the family against some guards, etc., so it's very sensitive in that sense.

• 1250

I have exercised the discretion of the chair and said we would agree to hear them if his comments are restricted to CCRA. No doubt he'll be drawing on his experiences, but I'm going to make it very clear that we're not here to deal with issues that are before other tribunals and the courts. As an individual who has picked up experience from the system, I think it's important to hear him. So I'd ask for your support in dealing with that issue, and I'll make that clear to him and be prepared to cut him off if he's getting off line.

Thank you. We'll adjourn till 1.30.

• 1251

• 1354

The Chairman: We'll reconvene this meeting.

We have Mr. Julian Falconer with us.

Mr. Falconer, I trust you understand that this is a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We are charged with the review of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. We're in the process of touring the country, visiting as many institutions as we can and speaking to as many people involved with the operation of the CCRA as we can. We're in the process of doing that. We'll be preparing a report. It will go through the standing committee and then on to the House with our recommendations.

I understand you represent the parents of Mr. Gentles and that there are some outstanding issues now before other tribunals. In consenting to hear your submission, I just want to make it clear that we're here to hear you or your client's experiences with the CCRA and how that might affect our review. We're not here to deal with those other outstanding issues that might be before other tribunals.

With that, if you'd like to make a submission, we operate here with about a ten-minute submission. That leaves time for the members to pose questions.

Mr. Julian N. Falconer (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of the committee, for hearing me.

There is a package that I must say was hastily put together, as I received instructions and your consent to appear only today. It's in a green folder. At the front of the green folder the first document included is a brief statement that I propose to read into the record, if that meets with your approval.

The Chairman: Okay.

Mr. Julian Falconer: I thank you for your indulgence in hearing me on behalf of the family of Robert Gentles, an inmate who died following his restraint by correctional officers in October 1993.

• 1355

While I attend in my capacity as counsel for the Gentles family, I respect the fact that this is not a forum to advocate a specific client's case. Rather, as I understand it, you are addressing any potential systemic concerns that arise from the current operation of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. It is on this basis that I was asked to make a submission to you.

I'm a litigation lawyer who has been practising in Ontario for the last ten years. Through my work I've had the honour of acting for many private citizens and public interest organizations on issues that include the use of force by law enforcement officers in the course of their duties. These cases invariably test the varying degrees of accountability that exist in the particular institution under scrutiny. The coroner's inquest into the death of Robert Gentles is no exception in this regard. This year-long inquest represents the most in-depth study of correctional service ever undertaken by a coroner's jury, and I'm referring to the federal correctional service. Two commissioners have testified, current commissioner Ingstrup and past commissioner Edwards.

• 1400

Your mandate to review the adequacy and effectiveness of the CCRA must, by definition, I would suggest to you, involve the consideration as to the adequacy and effectiveness of the current accountability mechanisms in place in the current statute.

Disturbing evidence has been heard of how the death of Robert Gentles simply represents a link in a chain of systemic lapses, going right to then Solicitor General Herb Gray. The 1996 Arbour report that CFC and the Solicitor General promised to follow is deliberately being disregarded in absolutely essential areas. Evidence has emerged through minutes of meetings, which are now a matter of public record—meetings between the Solicitor General and the commissioner's office—setting out how the current commissioner and then Solicitor General Gray ultimately agreed to disregard Justice Arbour's key conclusion that CFC requires oversight by outside bodies.

Commissioner Ingstrup testified at the Gentles inquest two weeks ago. He testified that he did not accept the Arbour report's premise that they require additional oversight through parliamentary controls and judicial supervision. Ultimately, evidence at the inquest has emerged that the current commissioner has rejected several of his own current task force reports urging accountability in how inmates are segregated through independent adjudication.

A 1994 memo—and I'll take you through these documents. The documents I refer to in this statement are attached. A 1994 memo on the Gentles case from ex-commissioner Edwards to his deputy commissioner Andrew Graham is now part of the public record at the inquest. It reveals Commissioner Edwards' views that Robert Gentles' death did not have to happen and that unnecessary force was used in the case. In fact, Commissioner Edwards in the memo links the death of Robert Gentles to the 1990 death of Gordon Henry Taylor, another inmate who died at KP in suspicious circumstances.

The commissioner refers to the collusion of some of the guards after the Gentles death as hampering the investigation. Evidence from both commissioners now reveals that CFC made a decision in undertaking to the union not to discipline any of the guards involved in the Gentles death until the conclusion of any judicial proceedings, including the coroner's inquest. This form of agreement with the union is not subject to any real scrutiny, as there is no oversight body asking questions. These problems simply touch the surface of what is coming out at the inquest concerning CFC, Kingston Penitentiary, the culture of guards, and the culture of senior management. You need to know about this.

Final addresses summing up the evidence heard at the inquest start late next week. Transcripts of major parts of the evidence are already available. Attend the final argument. Read the evidence. You need to ask serious questions and you need to demand answers. Change is necessary. Your vigilance in ensuring that any jury recommendations that may be made or subsequently followed is essential.

• 1405

Having put that statement formally to you, I want to very briefly tell you what I've attached to the statement. Again, these are matters that are of public record that have already proceeded.

I respect and understand that you are not adjudicating a case, but you will respect and understand that a coroner's inquest of this nature, not dissimilar to a royal commission, will go into systemic issues that transcend a single case. I would suggest to you, with great respect, that your job is very similar, to look at systemic issues, the transcended single case, and ask important questions as to why things happens.

A perfect example of that has to be the evidence of ex-commissioner Edwards, that in his view, on reflection, the death of Robert Gentles reflects systemic lapses that have plagued the system for some time. The documents that follow the statement are minutes of meetings between the commissioner's office and then Solicitor General, the Honourable Herb Gray.

What you will see and notice is that on both October 24 and November 4, as reflected in the minutes, Minister Gray opened with comments—and you'll see this on page 2 of the October 24, 1996 minutes. This is the first time that Commissioner Ingstrup—not previous or predecessors, acting commissioners, and so on—who resumed office in 1996 after the Arbour report, took office and stated, or the minutes state:

Minister Gray opened with a comment that he is not in favour of any oversight committee or court role with regard to CSC compliance with policy and law.

Then, on November 4, at a meeting again attended by Commissioner Ingstrup's office and the Solicitor General, he qualifies that in the second paragraph of the minutes:

The Minister noted that, although he is not in favour of an oversight role for the Court, he would like to see an analysis of an Inspector General role, similar to the IG, CSIS.

You should know that Commissioner Ingstrup testified that was never ultimately pursued, that nothing on paper was created, nothing formal was created, and ultimately that has been left behind.

Here's the point, and I don't mean to get overly detailed: We have to always wonder whether the current CCRA does the job in terms of accountability and oversight of CSC. If we're not wondering that, then I'm going to respectfully suggest to you that the right questions aren't being asked.

Some might see it as doing the job; others might not. That's a live issue. But what is troubling is that someone who I would suggest is highly credible and extremely experienced and respected, certainly not only now in the Canadian community but in the international community, in 1996 didn't think it was enough and did not think it was doing its job.

In that regard, of course, I'm referring to the report of Madam Justice Arbour. I've attached that extract from that report as the last document in the green folder. I'm not going to read that, which you no doubt are very familiar with, to you at length. But there are some choice passages that really make the point and give context to what I'm going to suggest arises as a systemic problem reflected in the CCRA.

• 1410

If you flip to page 174 of the report, it says:

The deplorable defensive culture that manifested itself during this inquiry has old, established roots within the Correctional Service, and there is nothing to suggest that it emerged at the initiative of the present Commissioner or his senior staff. They are, it would seem, simply entrenched in it.

—Of course she's referring to Commissioner Edwards and his term—

I believe that it is also part of that corporate culture to close ranks, and that the defensive stance of senior managers was often motivated by a sense of loyalty to their subordinates. This otherwise admirable instinct should, however, always defer to the imperatives of scrupulous commitment to the truth, which must be displayed by those entrusted with people's liberty.

If you flip to the next page of the package, page 179, she has a subsection that is aptly entitled “Breakdown of the Rule of Law”:

The breakdown of the Rule of Law in corrections has been denounced in the past, often in the most forceful terms.

She quotes from the 1977 MacGuigan report, and then—if you'll flip the page—she quotes from the Solicitor General's advisory committee in 1984, and then states in 1996, four years after the CCRA was passed:

In my view, if anything emerges from this inquiry, it is the realization that the Rule of Law will not find its place in corrections by “swift and certain disciplinary action” against staff and inmates. The absence of the Rule of Law is most noticeable at the management level, both within the prison and at the Regional and National levels. The Rule of Law has to be imported and integrated, at those levels, from the other partners in the criminal justice enterprise, as there is no evidence that it will emerge spontaneously.

Then, if you flip over to page 181, to the last line of the top main paragraph, it reads: “The Rule of Law is absent, although rules are everywhere.”

At the bottom of page 181 is the last quote I'm going to read to you:

In light of the obvious difficulty at all levels of the Correctional Service to appreciate the need to be obey both the spirit and the letter of the law, I suggest that there should be more cross-fertilization between the Correctional Service and the other branches of the criminal justice system.

Then finally, on that same page, page 182, under “Developing an Effective Sanction”, she says:

Ultimately, I believe there is little hope that the Rule of Law will implant itself within the correctional culture without assistance and control from Parliament and the courts.

There is a further quote, on the last page of the package, where Madam Justice Arbour yet again says:

In terms of general correctional issues, the facts of this inquiry have revealed a disturbing lack of commitment to the ideals of justice on the part of the Correctional Service. I firmly believe that increased judicial supervision is required. The two areas in which the Service has been the most delinquent are the management of segregation and the administration of the grievance process. In both areas, the deficiencies that the facts have revealed were serious and detrimental to prisoners in every respect, including in undermining their rehabilitative prospects. There is nothing to suggest that the Service is either willing or able to reform without judicial guidance and control.

I would respectfully submit to you that the theme that Madame Justice Arbour brings across, that the service suffers from such serious fundamental deficiencies that it can't fix itself and requires judicial and parliamentary controls, is replete throughout the report. The public position the Solicitor General took at the time of the issuance and release of this report was that this report would be given serious consideration, that the spirit of this report would be followed. Yet I would suggest to you that the minutes of the meetings with the commissioner reflect something very different.

To be fair to the facts, I don't want you to think I'm suggesting that they have taken no steps in face of the Arbour report. That is not true. They have. But what I suggest to you is that they have missed the boat, and it is not surprising. They have made the small changes, but they do not understand nor do they appear to comprehend the big changes that are necessary.

• 1415

If you look at the CCRA, for example, through sections 3 and 4, it enunciates platitudes on principles that should be followed in the rehabilitative and corrective aspects of incarceration. It announces platitudes and principles that should be followed. But if there is no oversight mechanism for ensuring that indeed these platitudes are followed, they become simply that, just platitudes.

The CCRA has an important section on the development of the Office of the Correctional Investigator. Yet the Office of the Correctional Investigator has no power over CSC directly. The correctional investigator can simply file reports with the Solicitor General. There is no oversight body that has expertise in corrections matters that regularly monitors the Correctional Service. I say that with great respect to the justice committee and to this subcommittee. The truth of the matter is, as Commissioner Edwards testified at the Gentles inquest, they are not accountable to the justice committee. He said, and I quote, “They are answerable, but not accountable”. You cannot force or order Correctional Service to do anything. You can ask them questions.

Proof positive of the failure of the oversight system as presently delineated in the CCRA and elsewhere, I suggest to you, is the fact that in the Gentles case, a case which received national attention in 1993-94, if you look through all of your minutes of your standing committee meetings you will find only five lines: a question by then chair Warren Allmand and an answer by Commissioner Edwards. This was a question as to what would happen with some of the officers as a result of the existence of charges, and the answer that they'll be dealt with after the charges. That is the only reference to the Gentles case anywhere in any exchanges between the standing committee and the commissioner. So who is asking the questions? Who is asking the questions is a live issue, and it leads me to the other materials I have for you.

It appears that the only person who was asking the questions, as was his duty and responsibility to do, was Solicitor General Herb Gray. Who is asking the questions is reflected in the minutes of meetings between Commissioner Edwards in 1994 and Solicitor General Herb Gray, who was also Solicitor General at that time. If you flip through the package you will find minutes that appear in large type. I believe the young lady previously had pulled those out.

These minutes are a meeting dated September 12, 1994, between Commissioner Edwards and Solicitor General Gray. What you will see is a question posed of the commissioner as to what happened in respect of Robert Gentles and why no disciplinary action was taken. You'll see in particular in the second paragraph of the first page under the title “Gentles Case”, Minister Gray asked why this inmate could not have simply been left in his cell. It was explained that when there is tension in the area of a prison one inmate who persists in causing a disturbance can set off a larger incident involving other inmates.

In other words, it was explained to the minister by the commissioner why the actions were justifiable. If you go to the previous paragraph, it says Minister Gray has reviewed the communications materials prepared by CSC. He asked why no disciplinary action was taken, in view of the indication that the use of force in this case was unauthorized and unplanned and failed to follow all the relevant directives. Commissioner Edwards explained that the fact that it was found that there were directives that were not followed would not have affected the outcome, and the relevant institutional standing order was ambiguous and could not have been followed. Although senior officers with overall responsibility for the operation have been counselled, taking the incident as a whole, no basis for disciplinary action against individuals was found.

Fair enough. So Commissioner Edwards, on September 12, 1994, to the only person asking him questions, has taken the position that there are reasons they haven't taken disciplinary action, as there wasn't a basis for it, and there are reasons he had to be moved, and it's justifiable.

I would ask you to pick up the other document that appears in front of this document. It's a memo dated July 25, 1994, less than 60 days before this meeting between the Solicitor General and Commissioner Edwards.

• 1420

On July 25, 1994, Commissioner Edwards wrote a memo to his deputy commissioner. This memo sets out an extremely disturbing set of factors that the commissioner found about the death of Robert Gentles. On July 25, 1994, less than 60 days before this commissioner met with the Solicitor General, he set out his view that the death of Robert Gentles had factors about it that were quite disturbing. He advises the deputy commissioner, who was Mr. Graham at the time.

You should note that the evidence is that Commissioner Edwards in no way changed his view between July 25 and the September meeting. Commissioner Edwards has testified that he remains of the view that this memo reflects today. The July 25, 1994 memo states in no uncertain terms his view that both inmates were very belligerent but under control in their individual cells. He's linking two deaths: the death in 1990 at Kingston Penitentiary and Robert Gentles' death. He expresses his view that both were being subject to transfer to dissociation using force, while other means of handling the situation could have been considered. He expresses his view that in both cases there was likely collusion of staff in their testimony. So a lot of questions are left unanswered and consequently there is a negative image for CSC, given the unexplained violent deaths at the hands of staff.

On page 2 he says there's no significant corrective action, either security or disciplinary, that has been taken in order to have some comfortable assurance that it won't happen again. In other words, there was no evidence that real lessons were learned, with the current culture at Kingston Penitentiary, attested by the recent staff survey, continuing. The last paragraph: there are undoubtedly many other issues related to this tragic incident.

What you should understand is obviously Commissioner Edwards was asked about this memo. He pointed to the fact that this memo was accurate and he pointed to the fact that his view was that the death of Robert Gentles reflected a series of systemic lapses that he was trying to highlight. How on earth could he be saying that on July 25, 1994, but on September 12, 1994, as reflected in the minutes, assuring the Solicitor General there was no problem? I would suggest it is absolutely obvious that the oversight and accountability mechanisms that exist at Correctional Service Canada are replete with deficiencies.

In fairness to Commissioner Edwards, because he's not here and I am, he testified that he thought the minutes were inaccurate—that is, the minutes between him and Solicitor General Gray. He then testified that they might be accurate. He then got very confusing. But I wanted you to know that was one of the things he said. Commissioner Ingstrup testified that in his experience, minutes of these meetings are generally accurate. I wanted you to know that was said by him.

The bottom line is that's the accountability mechanism working. It's not working. Madam Justice Arbour recognized it in 1996. What the year-long inquiry into the death of Robert Gentles is showing us is that the only time the light of scrutiny happens over CSC is when tragic incidents, such as the strip searches at the Prison for Women, such as the death of Robert Gentles, turn that light switch on. The minute these tragic incidents are over, the light switch goes back off. There is no mechanism in place for real accountability or oversight. You have the opportunity to contribute by creating some mechanisms. I would suggest they're called for.

The Chairman: On that point, Mr. Falconer, do you have any specific recommendations for this that we might consider?

Mr. Julian Falconer: Yes.

The Chairman: And they are...

Mr. Julian Falconer: I apologize, because of the last-minute nature of this I couldn't put them in writing.

The Chairman: No, that's fine. We have a record here; it's transcribed.

Mr. Julian Falconer: The first thing is that when you consider oversight and accountability, I think it's very dangerous to use the terms in a vague way, so now I'll try to be specific. Accountability and oversight happen at different levels. They happen at the investigation level into a particular incident. Then they happen at a broader level when you're looking at how to run an organization. So I'm going to start narrowly, from an investigation point of view.

Right now the present system creates an Office of the Correctional Investigator. But as I pointed out before, he has no power to override or in fact order CSC to do anything. What the Arbour report tells us is that even though he had concerns in the past, they weren't being listened to. He was being disregarded. I would suggest that at the investigative level, the boards of inquiry—they have an internal mechanism for investigating themselves, they're boards of inquiry—much like a police legislation, should be the subject or capable of being the subject of review.

• 1425

By “review”, what I'm saying is that there should be the right for an affected party to review a board of inquiry report to the correctional investigator, who should have the mandate and the power to assess the findings, potentially reverse them, and produce his own report—or not touch it at all.

The ability to review the board of inquiry reports will create several benefits. First, it's not just families or inmates who are potentially affected. Correctional officers who may be unimpressed with the work of a board of inquiry would have that same right to appeal to the correctional investigator.

Secondly, it would preserve the ability, which any institution should enjoy, to first look internally at a problem. They would keep the ability to do that, but it would be subject to scrutiny. The board of investigation report in the Arbour case, the Prison for Women case, suffered from serious deficiencies. The board of investigation report in the Gentles case, not surprisingly, failed to highlight serious breaches of the law by correctional officers. It failed to highlight serious breaches of orders, including the failure to fill out use-of-force reports and the failure to follow non-collusion standing orders.

The board of inquiry failed to outline the easiest thing that could have been done with this inmate. They failed to even refer to it. The easiest thing that could have been done with this inmate, which in fact had been done in the past, was to turn off the power to his cell so that his radio was turned off. They don't even address it.

So there are problems with credibility and problems with some of the board of inquiry's work. I don't suggest there's an evil conspiracy that reigns everywhere. Please appreciate that these submissions are not made from the point of view that everyone operates in bad faith. The reality is, some people do, but many don't. Many are very hardworking individuals in a system that is simply not geared to producing good products.

My submission, my idea, is that by creating the correctional investigator as that review mechanism, you would up the ante in terms of the integrity of these reports. That's the first point, on an investigative level.

On an oversight level, at the present time there is no ombudsman for the correctional service. In fact, you'll see that in the minutes of November 4, 1996, there is a reference to the Solicitor General, in discussions, toying—and I use this word with great respect—with the idea of this notion of inspector general as it relates to CSIS. That went nowhere, as testified to by Commissioner Ingstrup—and I'm not suggesting Commissioner Ingstrup didn't do what the Solicitor General asked him to do. He looked at it, but then they let it go.

An ombudsman who has real teeth could ensure accountability with an ability, one, to investigate systemic lapses and, two, to provide reports, much like the Auditor General's reports—and they should not be to the Solicitor General but directly to Parliament. I emphasize that because one of the great failings thus far in the system—that is, the correctional investigator that exists—is this notion of reporting to the Solicitor General. With great respect, the accountability mechanism should be to the House. So the correctional ombudsman is the second point that I raise by way of potential answers.

The third area that I think needs serious consideration is the creation of a fixed form of oversight body. CSIS, cloaked in secrecy with potentially national security issues operating all the time, is governed by a civilian accountability body in the form of SIRC. Why on earth is the correctional service not? The justice committee has a huge mandate. It does not possess a specialized expertise, though some people do, and I appreciate that, but not by requirement or mandate. It is essential that the correctional service be reined in through that form of oversight. Simple municipal police forces are. Police service boards are the rule across Ontario. How on earth do we have a correctional service that isn't under the same kind of constraints?

There is no proper oversight. Madam Justice Arbour spoke to this in detail. I'm sharing this with you to make a point and to close.

Commissioner Ingstrup is a very eloquent speaker. He spoke about the notion of good corrections and the importance of mission statement. He spoke about the ideals that are inherent to the correctional service and he should well be proud of them in terms of stated ideals. He took a key role in drafting them in the late 1980s.

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Of course principles and—a value-laden term—platitudes are one thing; action is another. He has also acknowledged that, but here's the reality. I put to him whether an important feature of corrections was not the notion that the offenders they're dealing with often do not have insight into their own problems. He agreed that of course the offenders they deal with do not have insight into their own problems. I asked him whether it is not true that the offenders they deal with often do not appreciate the need to follow and obey the spirit of the letter of the law, and he agreed with me that it's a problem for offenders.

I asked him if that inability, that lack of insight, is not something that he understands as a matter of good corrections means helping them from the outside to fix themselves, because they can't fix themselves on their own. He agreed with me that of course that's a good principle of corrections.

The problem is, that's what the Solicitor General has done with the correctional service: they have left them to fix themselves on their own. Commissioner Ingstrup testified that he thinks the bottom line is that correctional services deserves another chance to fix themselves. I asked him where he could find that in the Arbour report. He couldn't. They're being left to fix themselves.

I have no doubt that they can point to bringing different people in to talk to, but I am talking about oversight and accountability. When Madam Justice Arbour said that judicial supervision is required, she didn't say that a second chance is also a good idea. The Arbour report is being disregarded in key ways.

• 1435

In addition, I've included passages from the task force reports that this commissioner, Commissioner Ingstrup, recently convened. In those task force reports, both the Yalden report and the other task force report—I've included passages from both—they recommend independent adjudication over segregation. Both of those recommendations—narrow oversight in one area—were rejected by the present administration.

Serious questions arise as to whether bringing in former commissioners who are identified as parts of the problem and keeping former administrations who are identified as parts of the problem means that they can realistically and credibly be parts of the solution. My concern, on behalf of the Gentles family, is that this ultimately impacts at the individual level in terms of inmate welfare and, as hard as this may be to believe, I take this position in regard to correctional officer welfare as well. The reality is that without the proper leadership at CSC, those with the toughest job, the correctional officers, and those with the terms to serve, the inmates, ultimately suffer. You have to do something to fix it.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Falconer.

Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I have just a couple of quick questions.

In your submission on page 4, you said that the memo

reveals Commissioner Edwards' view that the Robert Gentles death did not have to happen and that unnecessary force was used in the case. In fact, Commissioner Edwards in the memo links the death of Robert Gentles to the 1990 death of Gordon Henry Taylor.

Now, my understanding is that there has been some fairly strong inference and some outright statements that this was an issue that had a strong racial overtone, so I just need this as a point of information: Was Gordon Henry Taylor also a visible minority?

Mr. Julian Falconer: Gordon Henry Taylor was, I believe, of aboriginal descent.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Okay.

Mr. Julian Falconer: I appreciate the question. The linkages in the deaths on numerous levels... The bottom line is that it all arises out of this notion of a form of excessive force and a way of treating people that is somewhat of a throwback.

Commissioner Edwards' evidence was quite striking. I attached some of the coverage, for example, to your materials. “Extraction was a throwback,” the ex-commissioner said. He's referring to a throwback of how we used to deal with inmates in terms of very quick physical responses.

The short answer to your question is that I don't have sufficient familiarity with the Taylor case to be able to say whether racism did or didn't play as a factor. I can tell you that obviously there continue to be serious concerns about the death from the point of view of counsel for the family, etc. There was an inquest that lasted 14 days—I'm sure many envy those shorter days—but the truth of the matter is that what is obvious from the July 1994 memo is that there are many more questions than there are answers.

Mr. Jim Abbott: One last quick one is...

• 1440

Mr. Julian Falconer: By the way, Ms. Folkes, who speaks for the Black Inmates and Friends Assembly, was also a party at the Gentles inquest, so she may well be able to address your question also, in a much better fashion than I just did.

Mr. Jim Abbott: While I have a strong feeling of tremendous sympathy for what you have put forward, and I say that in all sincerity, the other side of the coin, it seems to me, that I'm aware of and I think perhaps the committee is aware of, is the feeling that there is a growing imbalance. There perhaps has been historically too much force or too much on the side of the guards, so that in fact the pendulum in the minds of some people in corrections—and I'm not necessarily talking about management—has swung so far to the other extreme that they can't really get at doing their job without going through all sorts of hoops.

How do we reconcile what you're suggesting against that perception, which I believe to be a very real perception, on the part of people on the front line?

Mr. Julian Falconer: I think it's an excellent question.

I think one of the things you should appreciate, by the way, is that the family just two weeks ago called evidence that in part was expert American evidence from a very renowned penologist, Dr. Kelsey Kauffman, who's written a book called Prison Officers and Their World, which I commend to you if you haven't read it. She speaks to the plight of prison officers, and we called that evidence. She speaks to the realities they live in, and one of the realities you've just described is something she addressed.

It seems to me you create rules people can live under, rules they can manage under—it's a practical matter—and recognize that the use of force is a reality in the prison setting, that use of force is sometimes going to have to happen. So I start with that assumption.

The problem is—and it's a problem for many officers who do their jobs very well and get into no difficulties in terms of outrageous allegations or in terms of outrageous behaviour—that if you do not have an effective mechanism for cleaning house with officers who don't understand the balance, then what invariably occurs is what I would suggest is this sort of unfair focus on everything everybody does. There has to be a means for setting examples, so that the obvious rules aren't broken. Then you don't run into the problem you're describing, where you're just loading everybody with so many rules they can't do their job. Right now Correctional Service has no effective mechanism for cleaning house.

Let me give you an example. Unlike police forces that have to do it all the time, they can't suspend anybody with pay. So if a correctional officer is suspended today it must be without pay. That is, you're taking someone who has a family and kids, and you're giving no money, even though they haven't been found guilty of anything. So what's the natural reaction by a fair-minded managing person? Well, he's not going to use the tool. So they never get suspended. All right?

This is all to make a point. Bad officers don't get removed. We don't have a mechanism in place for dealing with them. So there's a swing in the general rules because we haven't figured out how to deal with bad officers. I don't know if that answers—

Mr. Jim Abbott: Yes. I appreciate that. Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Mr. Chairman, I'm very confused trying to fit this into our mandate, and wondering whether or not it's really in the mandate of the entire committee.

The Chairman: I think we have some very specific recommendations for some amendments to the CCRA.

Mr. Julian Falconer: Absolutely, and I want you to know that I went through the CCRA in some detail out of a great fear this morning that I missed something. And I didn't miss anything. It's just not there. There is such a... They created section 3, the Office of the Correctional Investigator, and that is an accountability mechanism, a real one, but it sits beside CSC, not over top. The justice committee, with great respect, is not the answer... Why wouldn't they use them for CSIS if it was the answer?

The Chairman: In practice, the only time the justice committee gets to review is at the time of estimates, when the commissioner or the Solicitor General are before the whole of the justice committee. The justice committee, in its defence, is usually busy dealing with legislation, reviewing legislation, etc. So I agree it's not the mechanism that...

Mr. Julian Falconer: And look at Madam Justice Arbour's report, and look at how many people believe the report has merit. That is, we're not talking about the idle meanderings of a lawyer on behalf of a family that's ticked off. We're talking about real problems that the courts have recognized.

• 1445

You should look at the judgments that have arisen. My office will be happy to provide them to you if you want them. The Gentles case has been the subject of two judicial reviews in the middle of it. So courts have had to rule on the issues that are being considered.

Each time we've gone up, the courts keep talking about the problems at CSC and how something has to be done. It's become a notorious reality. It was a great surprise to me. I have included, as part of the package, a portion of the action plan that CSC has put in place regarding the Arbour report. When I say a portion of it, it's quite long. I did that for two reasons. One, I thought it was very important that you know that such a plan exists about the Arbour report so that I'm not taken or understood to be suggesting you're doing nothing. All right?

What you'll find is I included the pages... Page 17 has the title “Rejected”. It's a draft document. The only specific recommendations Madam Justice Arbour made on the oversight issue was that you should be independently adjudicating segregation. So in that case, women were left in segregation for eight months. There were no control mechanisms. That's page 17 at the bottom. You'll see the title “Rejected”. You'll see the reference to their task force that said the same thing again, again rejected.

In all fairness, because he's not here, Commissioner Ingstrup said he doesn't think the word “rejected” was right. He thinks the wording should have been “not accepted”. I just wanted to be complete by way of what was stated.

The bottom line is this. The CCRA doesn't have it. You can put it in. That's how it fits into the mandate, I'd suggest to you.

The Chairman: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Falconer. I think we have to move on with our agenda.

Mr. Julian Falconer: Thank you.

The Chairman: We appreciate your taking the time to come and share this with us. We will certainly be reviewing your recommendations when we are writing our report.

Mr. Julian Falconer: I would ask you to pay some attention to the conclusion of this inquest. I think the arguments being made by CSC and other parties are of direct relevance to you.

The Chairman: Okay. Thank you.

Our next witnesses are the Black Inmates and Friends Assembly. Bev Folkes is here as the executive director. The other witness is Everette Dehaney.

Welcome. If you could give us a presentation of approximately ten minutes, then that would leave some time for the members to ask questions.

Ms. Bev Folkes (Executive Director, Black Inmates and Friends Assembly): Thank you.

Firstly, I wish to thank the committee for giving us an opportunity to address you regarding the CCRA.

In the package I have given to you, you will see some enclosures. One is from the black inmates group at Collins Bay Institution. The other is the commissioner's directive on ethnocultural offenders programs. This will bear out some of the arguments I will have regarding how things are working.

The Black Inmates and Friends Assembly Ontario is a culturally sensitive community organization that serves black and Caribbean law offenders. Through ongoing interaction and advocacy on behalf of these respective groups, we have developed a keen interest in issues and concerns that have long-, medium-, and short-term policy implications. One such concern is the role, responsibility, function, and scope of correctional investigators.

• 1450

The purpose of this submission is to highlight some of the salient concerns and their relevance to correctional procedures such as UTA and ETA, and to seek fair processes and equitable decisions on behalf of our client group. This will request that the revised CCRA will add its members and other ethnocultural offenders in the same category as in section 20, “Special Groups, Special Needs”, and “Aboriginal Offenders”, sections 79 to 84.

I'll touch first on the correctional investigator. By this time you know who they are. I would like to add that in 1997 the deputy justice critic, Myron Thompson, suggested that the report from the Auditor General analysing the correctional investigator of Canada was an indication of the waste of taxpayers' dollars:

The Correctional Investigator is an independent body that investigates the complaints of inmates in our federal penitentiaries. It is totally unnecessary and a waste of 1.3 million taxpayers' dollars.

Thompson further pointed out that inmates have several other channels for their complaints, including the inmates' grieving process, where an inmate even sits on the investigating board.

Beyond this they have numerous groups at their disposal like the John Howard Society and the Citizens Advisory Committee, just to name a few.

Although I disagree with Thompson's motive behind this observation, it is my opinion that the observation is correct. In fact, I would even go further, to suggest that it would appear that even though the idea of correctional investigators is an important one, in its present form it defeats its own purpose. The reason for this is twofold.

One, there are approximately 6,000 complaints filed every year by inmates in correctional institutions. There are only ten correctional investigators, which means that each investigator has an average caseload of approximately 600 cases.

Two, correctional investigators and correctional facilities both fall under the jurisdiction of the Solicitor General of Canada, which implies there is the possibility of vested interest, hence biased investigations, conclusions, or recommendations.

We go on to temporary absences. Under these headings I will be speaking to you regarding the ETAs, UTAs, and so on. My position on them is that in the case of the inmates I serve or the organization serves, very seldom are we accorded these privileges, like UTAs and ETAs. There is merit to inmates receiving these ETAs and UTAs, as in some cases they are able to come out, seek employment, and so on. Work release is another.

Accelerated parole review... In the case of female offenders, it seems to me that female offenders have been accorded the accelerated parole review more than the male offenders. Once again I address that particular group that I serve.

This writer is fully aware that not all first-time offenders are eligible for accelerated review. The National Parole Board will exclude from its review offenders serving in categories such as murder or for being an accessory after the fact to murder, other life sentences, a schedule one personal injury offence, an offence for attempting to commit a schedule one offence, or a schedule two serious drug offence where an order has been made for parole eligibility at one half of a sentence. Moreover, any offender whose day parole has been revoked is also not eligible for accelerated review.

• 1455

On the matter of the one half of the sentence, judges have a responsibility or can impose on a convicted person that they serve one half of their sentence, but this does not necessarily lend itself to fairness. The judge sees the individual before he enters the correctional facility. The judge does not have any idea what sort of rehabilitation has taken place for this person—programs and anything—to indicate there has been some change in his lifestyle and habits.

Administrative segregation is a final and extreme option, as I stated when I appeared before the committee for the first time on April 18. If some research were done, we would find that there were more black inmates in administrative segregation as some form of punishment than maybe even the aboriginal people, in the Ontario region—not for other regions that do not have the kind of population we have in Ontario. In the Ontario region, we have a total of 690 black men and women, so that is a fair size. It is the second-highest group behind the Caucasians.

As I said before, segregation is a final and extreme option and indicates that all other reasonable alternatives have been considered as being unavailable or ineffective. It is the responsibility of all correctional administrators to create an environment where meaningful alternatives to segregation are established norms, and where all personnel and offenders alike are committed to the pursuit of options that minimize the need for such drastic intervention. If properly managed, administrative segregation can result in healthier and more productive environments for personnel and inmates.

Whereas the above privileges are well established and should be understood and practised by all institutions, the following represents some of my observations and inferences. They are based on my 18 years of experience in federal and provincial institutions. They are also based on one-on-one and group dialogues with inmates, especially inmates from minority backgrounds.

Most, if not all, privileges accorded to inmates in correctional facilities are administered differently, according to their racial background. The levels of advocacy and support given to inmates in correctional institutions are disproportionate, depending on one's racial background. Direct and indirect racial prejudice play a major role in the administration, review and management of minority cases.

At this time, many of the inmate groups we serve have gone past their mandatory release dates because their case management teams have not completed their reports and reviews. They're being asked, on several occasions, to waive their paroles because their work has not been done, with the threat that “If you refuse to waive your parole, we will not support you for parole”. So in that vein, the inmates are being made to waive their parole once or twice before they come up there, even though they have completed the program.

Inmates of racial minority backgrounds are becoming more aware of their rights and privileges, and are consequently more apt to take actions to deal with real or perceived acts of racial discrimination. Given the reporting structure of correctional investigators under the jurisdiction of the Solicitor General, their impact, effectiveness and relevance are compromised.

Due to the inability of the appropriate body to address problems in correctional institutions, it is safe to infer that either the office of correctional investigators is not taken seriously, or their recommendations are not considered important.

• 1500

In light of my observations and inferences, it is necessary to adopt, implement, reinforce and monitor mechanisms that are designed to improve the conditions for racial minority inmates in correctional institutions in Canada.

Consequently, I would like to recommend that every correctional staff member becomes familiar with the policies and procedures regarding privileges that are available to all inmates of correctional institutions.

Steps should be taken to ensure equitable compliance with all policies and procedures of Correctional Service, and where there are noticeable breaches, managers should be held accountable.

Correctional Service management and staff should receive ongoing training and awareness in managing the daily responsibilities of a correctional institution, including but not limited to diversity management, grievance mechanisms, human rights, trends in correctional management and the benefits of a rehabilitative approach to correctional management.

• 1505

Alternative forms of conflict management and problem solving techniques should be explored, to ensure a healthy and safe environment for all inmates. Alternative problem and conflict management dynamics should include mediation, dynamic and proactive case management dynamics, and advocacy and sensitivity to cultural and racial dynamics.

In order to better serve the diverse prison population, management and staff of the correctional institutions in Canada should mirror the population.

All institutional review processes, especially review boards, should have a representational composition that reflects the diverse population of Canadian society.

Complaints and grievances that significantly affect the rights and freedoms of inmates must be assigned priority for investigation, resolution and response. Inmates must be provided with complete written response to issues raised in their complaints within a reasonable time period.

The reporting relationship of correctional investigators should be examined and consideration should be given to relocating it to another jurisdiction or allowing it to have self-governing status.

• 1510

As I pointed out before, I have also provided you with the document from the inmate population of the Collins Bay Institution. I wish to add that this is not just the plight of inmates in the Collins Bay Institution, but it is the plight of all the inmates in the Ontario region that we serve.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation, Ms. Folkes. It's always helpful when we have presenters who make clear and precise recommendations to us.

So we'll go now to questions.

Mr. Abbott, you have five minutes.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

On your recommendation of mirroring the population, are you thinking of mirroring the population in general in Canada or mirroring the population in the given institution? I suspect that the two wouldn't necessarily be the same.

Ms. Bev Folkes: It would be more or less. There really should be a mix in all institutions, but it doesn't matter seriously if in some of those institutions there's not such a large mix of racial minority inmates. It doesn't matter that we have people who are from the same racial, cultural, or ethnic background, whether they be black, Chinese, or whatever. I know Corrections right now is recruiting people in those categories; however, I do not know that the recruitment is successful in terms of who I see come in at other offices.

Mr. Jim Abbott: The reason why I asked the question is because, as we discovered earlier when we had our first nations people here before us, in the same way, they have many different cultures across Canada. Just because people are of a particular group of a visible minority does not mean they have the same cultural experience. They may have been subjected to discrimination in society in general on the same level, but nonetheless there will be important distinctions. Just because a person is black or is East Indian, or whatever, there will be nonetheless important distinctions in their experiences.

So without getting too precise, if you have a lot of inmates, for example, from the black community, originating from the Caribbean, you're saying it would be preferable to have a person of that visible minority, but, more precisely, of that Caribbean background, as opposed to an American background or whatever?

Ms. Bev Folkes: Yes, the same racial and cultural mix.

I would like to add that there is a dialect that comes into play in institutions, and it is often misunderstood by the staff and administration. There is a body language that is somewhat different from the Canadian way, and it is often misunderstood. It is the cause of many altercations and problems that exist within the institutions.

For instance, on several occasions, I have been called to do damage control in some of the institutions where there's a racial problem, whether it's between inmates and inmates or inmates and staff. Even the programs that exist within the institutions are, to some extent, culturally biased. I would even go further to say that even the tests the psychologists are using do not necessarily paint the correct picture of the inmate who is facing it.

Mr. Jim Abbott: This document you gave us from Collins Bay is really quite interesting. During your presentation I had a chance to skim through it. It was dated January 15. On page 2 it says:

...lack of ETAs and UTAs for “ALL” Black members of Collins Bay Institution (this can be proven as all UTAs are recorded, statistics will show no passes were given to members of the Black population at (CBI)

What can we do within our review? It strikes me that we should be able to do something legislatively to address this issue.

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First off, did this just come to you? Secondly, has this gone through the CSC, and if so, what has been the response? Thirdly, what can we do legislatively to help in a situation like this where there's very obvious bias?

Ms. Bev Folkes: At the outset I indicated that I seek equitable solutions to some of the problems. Whatever it takes to get an inmate an ETA it should be given to all inmates, regardless of their race, colour, or ethnic background.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Absolutely.

Ms. Bev Folkes: Most of the black inmates in the Ontario region are from Toronto. There are oftentimes people who are eligible for these ETAs and they're told they have nobody to escort them. There is always a lack of staff to escort this particular population.

Again, it should be right across the board if we are seeking justice, fairness, and equity. All the rules, regulations, and policies should be enforced or should be acted on in the same manner. Actually, there should be more meaningful race relations training for the case management teams who are working in these institutions, because there is a stereotypical image of what this particular inmate population is, what they will do, what they have been, and where they will go.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

Monsieur Marceau.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Mrs. Folkes, I want to thank you for coming before us today.

During our travels across Canada, we haven't yet had an opportunity to hear a perspective like yours. We had lots of aboriginal witnesses or people who knew about those issues, but very few people from your cultural background. I find this very refreshing and I thank you for it. You are raising issues which I believe deserve to be looked at very closely.

I would like to ask a few questions that seem to be rather essential. You state in your brief that

[English]

most, if not all, privileges accorded to inmates in correctional facilities are administered differently according to their racial background.

[Translation]

I'm a layman but this seems to me a very strong statement. Do you have any evidence that could help us out? You mentioned the Collins Bay institution; it would be worthwhile to have some figures. You mention ETAs and UTAs. It would be useful to look at these figures. I would be interested to see them.

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Do you have any concrete and documented examples of this kind of thing? If it really happens, it needs to be denounced very strongly, but to say "most if not all privileges" seems a bit much.

[English]

Ms. Bev Folkes: With regard to the proof you have asked for, we have had inmates do some informal studies in terms of who is going out, who is coming in, UTAs, ETAs.

We asked that one such study be done at Joyceville Institution, and we found that, yes, it is a fact. There were fewer black inmates—and we're talking about institutions that have large black populations.

In Collins Bay, for instance, within the last three years or so... we were somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 19% of the population of over 600 people. I have in fact actually asked the inmates to go and keep looking, keep the figures for me, so that I can provide them in this situation. So far I have not received all the figures. These figures are an eye count from the inmates who have seen other inmates come and go and who have even had their parole revoked and yet they're allowed ETAs and UTAs much faster.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Do you have access to those figures? You say these are observations by inmates. Do you have those figures?

I would like to see accurate figures. For example, you say an informal study was done in Joyceville. Could we get those figures? Can you provide them? If this sort of thing is really happening, it would be useful for the committee to get some real facts.

The Chairman: We can ask for them, but our researchers say that no statistics on race are being kept. We will ask to see if they have...

Mr. Richard Marceau: Very well.

I'm not saying there is no racism in our system, because I am convinced there is, but there is a difference between saying there is and saying all privileges are based on race. Before reaching such a conclusion, personally I would try to get some precise figures.

It made me smile when you quoted Myron Thompson and said you agreed with him, even if your agendas are entirely different. What it boils down to is that you say the correctional investigator is useless. In your view, is having an investigator a good idea?

I want to make sure I understand what you say. Are you saying we should give the investigator's office more powers and more resources and that we need more investigators?

[English]

Ms. Bev Folkes: Yes, I'm saying that the investigator's office is useless in its current form. First, they're reporting to the same Solicitor General, which is in fact a self-governing body. As has been seen with the case of the police in Ontario, we as a community lobbied very strongly for an independent body to look over what the police were doing, which is the SIU. We got that. I'm saying that in the correctional facilities, the correctional investigations office should be strengthened, made meaningful. In other words, as I said before, they have no teeth.

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The investigator has spoken. “Yes, we have made recommendations,” he's told me, “but they're not followed.” There is a lack of accountability on the part of the powers that be.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

[English]

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

One thing that disturbs me first is the ETAs and UTAs at Collins Bay. It disturbs me for two reasons. Number one, if it's true, that is disturbing in itself, but then we're going to have a difficulty here, I think, because, agreeing with the researcher, I don't think they're allowed to keep records by race. So it's going to be difficult to get the numbers. In any case, I guess we'll just have to do the best we can.

Am I right there, that there will—

Ms. Lyne Casavant (Committee Researcher): There's no data based on race in Canada. They decided not to gather data based on race in Canada.

Ms. Bev Folkes: This is not necessarily a contradiction, but some time ago—

Mr. Ivan Grose: Well, I've been contradicted before.

Ms. Bev Folkes: Me, too.

Some time ago there were problems with police and the black communities. It continues. At that time there was a police inspector who told us at a meeting we had with them “We do not collect formal data.”

Mr. Ivan Grose: I know the story. It happened right here in Toronto.

Ms. Bev Folkes: Right.

That blew up just about a day after he told us that, because Staff Inspector Fantino released documents on race. So I would suggest that it is the same. I know I have been a strong opponent of statistics based on race, except in some cases.

If you're going to tell us about how many black inmates there are and the percentage versus the population percentage, then tell us about the kinds of crimes they have been committing. Who is doing what? Why are their sentences harsher? Why are they serving a longer time? Why are so many of them being gated? Why are they not receiving the privileges everybody else receives?

Mr. Ivan Grose: In case you wondered why I laughed when you mentioned Mr. Fantino, he and I have an ongoing dialogue.

One thing I would like to congratulate you on—and this is a well prepared document you have brought us—

Ms. Bev Folkes: Thank you.

Mr. Ivan Grose: —but what I'm more impressed with is in your recommendations you make recommendations for all inmates; they should apply to all inmates rather than narrowing them down to a particular group.

Ms. Bev Folkes: That's right.

Mr. Ivan Grose: I admire you for that.

Ms. Bev Folkes: Thank you.

Mr. Ivan Grose: And I thank you. To me, they seem like reasonable and doable recommendations. Thank you very much.

Ms. Bev Folkes: I certainly appreciate that. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Grose, and thank you very much, Ms. Folkes and Ms. Dehaney. We appreciate your coming and providing us with this information. We'll certainly review your recommendations when we're preparing our report.

Thank you.

Ms. Bev Folkes: I just wish to answer one of the concerns you raised.

In my brief, where I mentioned “Most, if not all privileges accorded to inmates in correctional facilities are administered differently according to their racial background”... I'm looking to see if I said “all”. I don't think I said “all”. “Most, if not all...”. Yes.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Our next witness from Operation Springboard, Margaret Stanowski, please, come forward.

Welcome, Ms. Stanowski. Perhaps you could give us your presentation in roughly 10 minutes. That would leave time for questions.

• 1530

Ms. Margaret Stanowski (Executive Director, Operation Springboard): I believe you have a copy of my remarks. I've not formally presented a brief. I wish I'd had time to do so, but I'll provide these remarks for the record.

Thanks for having Springboard here today. We're very pleased to speak about some aspects of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Established in 1969 by two ex-offenders, Springboard is a non-profit charitable organization committed to making our communities safer by designing and providing services and programs encouraging law-abiding behaviour for 7,000 individuals each year.

We believe that in certain cases institutionalization is necessary, but that prevention and correction of criminal behaviour most effectively takes place in an involved community.

Springboard supports the principles of the act because experience and research demonstrate that reintegration of most offenders at the earliest stage in their sentences to well-run community programs promotes safer communities.

Given our success in designing a successful community engagement model, my remarks today will focus on broadening public support for the act and diversifying the range of safe, accountable release strategies for federal offenders.

We all know that legislation governing the release and management of offenders is a touchstone for contentious debate, albeit not always informed. You've heard evidence from expert criminologist Tony Doob, from the Centre of Criminology at U of T, on 1997 market research on citizens' views of crime and the criminal justice system. This research was commissioned by Springboard.

Our findings confirm that when asked simple questions such as, do you think we should be tougher on offenders, the public supports harsher punishment. However, when given the most basic information about the realities of longer prison sentences or the success and cost of community programs compared with longer periods of incarceration, and when offenders are given a human face, public opinion changes drastically to support accountable community alternatives to prison.

Building an informed public will be critical if the act is to achieve its principles, including consistent and strategic implementation of its provisions. Otherwise, the act will be subject to reactive legislative changes and challenges, discouraging CSC and the National Parole Board from making timely and informed decisions on offender releases.

Lack of public support also limits the range of options for offender reintegration. Research confirms that halfway house residency is often key to successful reintegration. You've also heard from other expert witnesses, however, that mandatory residency, such as for statutory releases, can be counterproductive when accountable alternatives and often less costly options are available.

To be effective in promoting public safety, release strategies must consider the offender's background and needs and provide a reasonable and diverse range of options, such as alternative housing options, treatment and training opportunities. Halfway houses have been successful in broadening the range of non-residential programming, and their role can be safely expanded.

CSC and the National Parole Board have clearly acknowledged the importance of public education for building understanding and support for offender reintegration. Both have produced good educational materials on what works in achieving public safety through offender reintegration.

More collaborative efforts with the voluntary sector in the development of educational materials as well as reliance on market research findings on what will influence public support need to be prioritized. We have the networks and the local contacts that will bring significant legitimacy and efficiencies to community outreach.

• 1535

A commitment by Correctional Services Canada and the National Parole Board to public education, however, must also extend to an articulated plan and financial resources for citizen engagement strategies. A culture of positive, proactive public outreach should replace the current reactive posture that often prevails.

Effective citizen engagement or community mobilization strategies require a significant investment of time with limited short-term results. It needs to be acknowledged that building sustainable public support for offender reintegration is a long-term, incremental process requiring dedicated resources and strategic partnerships with community groups.

Although CSC and the National Parole Board will require staff resources to build community support for its works and the act, I would caution against the propensity to hire more government staff for community development purposes. This approach can often lead to building community around government, rather than having the government become part of the community. Voluntary agencies and groups representing community interests are, in my experience, best positioned to provide leadership in citizen engagement.

Furthering public safety strategies requires one to be part of a community to understand what is affecting people's safety and their perception of feeling safe. Forging problem-solving partnerships with public and private agencies, citizen and victim groups, businesses, police, and the courts around community concerns builds trust and often starts with more low-profile matters such as park safety or graffiti removal. The trust and partnerships forged at this level will enable collaboration and appropriate citizen participation on the tougher issues affecting community safety, such as the release of penitentiary offenders, including those serving long-term sentences.

Springboard has had good success in localizing our citizen engagement efforts to areas where our programs exist. We have 14 locations in Ontario, by the way. We participate and help organize neighbourhood meetings with businesses, police, public health, parks and recreation, and collaborate on problems affecting safety. Our clients volunteer to help clean up local parks, cut the grass, and shovel snow for our neighbours. People get to know us, our residents, and often want to volunteer in our programs.

Our current volunteer force of 400 has tripled since 1990. As the public witnesses the success of our programs, and as we are seen to be contributing to community safety and well-being, we are seen as not being part of the problem. When problems occur, which are inevitable in this business, we are able to have informed discussions on resolving issues.

CSC's efforts in establishing citizen advisory committees represents a localized approach for citizen engagement but can still be seen and perceived as government building a community around their agenda.

Sometimes government staff choose whom they think best represents community interests. This approach can only backfire when contentious issues arise. By broadening their participation in local meetings and undertakings concerned with public safety, they join forces with their community in crime prevention and reduction and develop invaluable opportunities to educate and engage citizens in their work. Although it may not appear at first relevant to CSC's mandate, let alone the act, building these partnerships on less threatening issues, such as local park safety, can reap significant benefit to long-term citizen engagement strategies.

• 1540

Partnership building within communities builds support for a diverse range of options for federal offenders, including alternatives to halfway houses, employment and training, counselling, and volunteer work. Research has repeatedly shown that when the individual needs of offenders are addressed through effective community programming, recidivism can be significantly reduced. By involving non-governmental representatives in the development and delivery of community-based programs, we not only further collaboration and problem-solving for crime prevention, but also enhance understanding of what works in offender reintegration.

In summary, Operation Springboard believes the CCRA provides a good framework for sentence management and correctional programming, and this review should serve to improve and renew its provisions.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Abbott, you have five minutes.

• 1545

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you. On your first page, where you say prevention and correction of criminal behaviour most effectively takes place in an involved community, I concur completely. I have the good fortune of having some very dedicated, committed people in a small community in my constituency, the community of Sparwood. They have led the way. You would be familiar with their program.

While I agree with that, I'm also taking a look at my perception of what Mayor Giuliani has done in New York, where it seems to me that he perhaps went ahead of community involvement and said, this is the way it's going to be, that's it, off comes the graffiti, and if you walk across the street or drop chewing gum, you're in trouble—that kind of idea. It seems to have worked there.

I'd appreciate your response to that, because again, I also agree that if people are not involved in the process and don't understand the process, there is a lack of support. But agreeing on that, let's talk about those two models, because they appear on the surface to be diametrically opposed.

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: Would somebody please time me on this issue, because it's a very contentious one and not always informed?

I believe the New York model you're referring to is referred to as the “broken window” theory. When you see social decay in neighbourhoods, it makes people feel fundamentally unsafe. They feel threatened, and they tend to close up and insulate themselves from their communities. You see bars come up. People do not feel safe to walk in neighbourhoods and enjoy park safety. They don't spend money in their neighbourhoods. They leave. It's a real concern for the business community. It's a concern that people don't have that privilege of having leisure and play in a safe, responsible way.

Again, I would support what works, but in the response of New York to that problem, what I see is zero tolerance. There is zero tolerance in trying to remove panhandlers from the city. Lock people up and punish them for what they've done. I don't see that the strategy has outlined any process for how citizens are engaged. I think they're saying this will result in lesser social decay, so, community citizens, you will feel safer and you will feel freer to go out into the community and spend money and enjoy yourselves. It has not engaged community in the process of how to effectively reduce and prevent social decay.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I met a young lady and her husband, both of them international models who moved from Canada to New York. She said she will leave downtown New York after 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. and be on a subway at that hour and feel completely safe going home, whereas she didn't before. My understanding of the Giuliani model is a zero tolerance thing. I'm trying to reconcile Sparwood to Giuliani.

• 1550

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: Again, I believe Sparwood is a very homogeneous community, with not a significant cultural diversity, and I think their response has certainly been admirable in terms of trying to provide a community response to crime, in essence, if I may—

Mr. Jim Abbott: Exactly.

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: —take the liberty of describing a program such as that.

What we believe in a model of citizen engagement is that citizens, when informed, can act in a very thoughtful, balanced manner and can come up with balanced solutions to preventing crime and social decay. We don't believe that any model prescribed by government or by police independent of the community is necessarily a sustainable model. When community is engaged, when Sparwood community is engaged and informed and providing a community response to youth crime and its unacceptability—

Mr. Jim Abbott: But Sparwood has 3,500 people and Toronto has 3.5 million—

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: Exactly.

Mr. Jim Abbott: —so the question is, with 100 times the people, is your model actually workable for 3.5 million? We know it is workable at 3,500.

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: I can't tell you how pleased I am that you asked that question, because this is exactly what we're dealing with. All of our programs, with the exception of two... we have two young offender homes, one in St. Catharines and one in Sault Ste. Marie, a very northern community, again, very homogeneous and very much like St. Catharines, and again, with high degrees of unemployment, albeit. In Toronto, where our programs are working in the citizen engagement, we've been doing this for 30 years.

We've opened group homes for federal offenders where others have not been able to. We have opened young offender residences, which is, you will also appreciate, probably the most touchstone issue for debate—the Young Offenders Act, coupled with an act such as this. We have had success when we engage communities, first, in understanding what works, second, in understanding what the role of reintegration is, and third, in what the role of a group home is in making people safer.

We've also had significant success in Scarborough, which my demographic information indicates is probably the most diversely populated community in Canada, the most broadly represented, with the most individuals from diverse cultural-linguistic backgrounds. Our success has been that we do not choose individuals who we think represent the community; we enable a process that allows the community to determine who can best represent the issues and concerns of their community and how they can most effectively come up with some solutions, with police, with the courts, on what will reduce the crime problem. Once they understand those issues, they can develop informed responses.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

Monsieur Marceau.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: I would first of all like to thank Mrs. Stanowski for appearing before us today. I must say that I found your presentation very interesting in several respects.

First, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention it, I like the philosophy behind your organization. I believe it is the proper one. I would also like to stress something I read in your brief and you mentioned and which unfortunately is lacking in many presentations, the importance of public opinion.

• 1555

People often overlook that we, MPs, are elected by the people. The importance of public opinion in what we do is often overlooked. It is important that the laws we make reflect the values of the society for which we legislate.

When you say that the Corrections and Conditional Release Act should be better known and better explained, I can only agree with you. Very often people get the wrong idea. They are very quick to say that we should jail offenders and throw away the key and forget about them. But when we look at statistics, we see that this is not the right solution. I wanted to stress this because it is important.

I would like to get back to an issue I raised several times: the citizens advisory committees. I don't always find them very representative of the community surrounding an institution. This is regrettable; it seems to me their whole purpose is to have the citizens in the community represented and to establish a positive interaction between the community and the local institution.

What can we do to ensure that citizens committees become more representative of the community?

[English]

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: I think that's a very astute observation—because I agree with it, it must be astute.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: I should also add that I've been in corrections for 26 years. I was with Correctional Service Canada for 12 years. It's very much of a challenge. I want to make that clear.

In regard to citizens' advisory committees, the philosophy there is a very admirable one: you make efforts to engage. I think I pointed out earlier that I think it's well intentioned when governments reach out to communities and say they want people involved, but again, they reach out to people they know already or who they have perhaps been meeting with on other issues, so they're actually perhaps inadvertently choosing who they best think represents the community.

Based on our three-year experience in the area of engagement of community around justice councils, we have found it takes a lot longer, but we need to have and to tap into existing groups wherein there are community leaders, wherein there are groups who are representing community issues and concerns and diverse ethnocultural populations. We need to enable those groups to choose—elect—who they think will best represent the issues of concern and the issues affecting their safety and their group's safety.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: I agree with you.

As legislators, we have to produce a report. What can we do to facilitate this? I always thought that such a committee should have a representative of the municipal government. It should have what I call people of influence, such as a priest, a minister or a rabbi. These people are in touch with the community. It could also be a member of the Optimist Club in the area of any other person who wields influence and who is well-connected to the community.

Should we specify in our report that it is important for the community to take charge and to end up selecting its own representatives but that in the meanwhile the institution or the government should reach out to community leaders? I gave you a few examples. Will this help make those advisory committees more representative?

• 1600

[English]

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: I'd like to be succinct on this. I would like to see a recommendation that very clearly indicates an investment of financial and human resources that would support Correctional Service Canada and the National Parole Board in perhaps contracting with, working with, community groups, to assist them in developing citizen engagement strategies, which would include criteria and efforts to appropriately choose or enable community representatives to choose representatives.

Look at the Manitoba model, at the success they've had with their youth justice councils. I'm sure many of you know about that. They've had criteria that provide for appropriate and representative involvement of community in providing a response to issues of youth crime. In very much the same instance, criteria and community groups could be engaged to help CSC to work with the National Parole Board in ensuring that citizens' advisory committees become representative. Secondly, and as important, is that correction services tap into what's there now, into the existing groups in the community, and not necessarily form new infrastructures.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

[English]

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to disagree here. We've been getting along too well lately.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Ivan Grose: I love your report. The best thing I can say about it is that you're singing my song. This is what I try to relate to the community, and I know how difficult the job is, believe me. They have this idea of incarcerating wrongdoers and throwing away the key and that, of course, we know doesn't work—and it's also darn expensive.

Having said that about your report and your attitude, I think you're doing an absolutely wonderful job, but I don't agree with your comment on the CACs. We've seen CACs from coast-to-coast. Some of them I perceive to be doing not very much. Some I perceive to be doing a lot, and they are really enthusiastic. I have not perceived this government interference or that they're chosen by government. In fact, some of the individuals that we've seen on CACs certainly wouldn't have been chosen by the government; they were quite independent thinkers.

If I might make a suggestion, I don't think you and the CACs are in the same business. Why don't you just leave them alone and let them wither on the vine if they don't work effectively or let them enlarge the area in which they're working? I think you're in a different area altogether and I think you're going to lose some support if you seem to be in competition with CACs. I don't think you have to be. Quite frankly, you would lose some of my support, because I think it's unnecessary for you to do that.

That having been said, I don't think the CAC idea has come to full fruition yet. That was my impression: it isn't doing as much as it could be doing. Now, I did ask your national people if you have a speaker's bureau, because I was getting at what you were talking about, getting the word out to the huddled masses, so to speak, which is something that I've found is sadly lacking. You mentioned that the parole board and CSC should be doing this. I agree, but I was checking to see whether the CACs are doing it, and I don't think they're doing much of a job.

If you can do it, I think I'd rather have you doing it than—again, getting back to what you said—the government organization. People don't trust us. We're part of the government. Once they elect us, we then become part of the government and they don't like us. But if a group such as yours, which obviously has community confidence, were to bring out the message about just what the correctional system is, what it does, and what prisons really are, I think it would be a worthwhile endeavour.

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: We are currently doing that. If I may, Mr. Chairman...

The Chairman: Yes, certainly.

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: Again, I'll endeavour to be succinct.

• 1605

I do want clarity on this because I believe every and any effort to engage community, whether it's your community advisory committee, is admirable; however, I think it's very important on perceptions that I do not see our work in competition with with CACs at all. I see what we're trying to deliver today as a message of how to effectively build community, public support, and understanding. I believe there are some excellent CACs functioning. I think there can be a reception when governments form CACs that they build those committees around their agenda.

Over the 26 years I've been involved in corrections, I've seen, as you said, very many people on that committee be adversarial, challenging, and to be negative. That is again a good part of a process. I think to be even more effective there have to be efforts made at the front end. And again, in a community as diverse and urban as Toronto, the challenge is much different from very small, homogeneous communities such as Sparwood. Representation, and diverse representation, on those committees means the government has to be connected with that community in order to ensure that efforts are made to engage the appropriate and most representative people. We can work effectively with government. Community groups like ours, John Howard, St. Leonard's, many of which you've heard from through your rounds of consultations, can work with us and actually engage in other forms of consultations and meetings that will get them to the heart of what the community fears, what the community perceives to be affecting their safety.

So I do not see it as a competition. I see it as a process of balanced engagement of citizens.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

Thank you, Ms. Stanowski, for your time and your presentation.

Ms. Margaret Stanowski: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

The Chairman: The next witness will be from the Metro Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children, Marilou McPhedren.

Welcome. Perhaps you could give us a presentation of approximately 10 minutes, and then I'm sure the members will have some questions.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren (Chair of the Board, Metro Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children): Before I begin the presentation, I'm going to make a comment on a surprise I had walking in, and I'd just like you to have it for your consideration.

I've been involved for 20 years now in the process of trying to create a healthier air environment in this city, and I was very surprised, as someone who's very allergic to cigarette smoke, to basically not be able to deal with the initial encounter with your committee except through a haze of cigarette smoke. So I want to draw that to your attention.

• 1610

My name is Marilou McPhedren and I'm a lawyer. I'm also a volunteer in a number of non-profit organizations. Those organizations are dedicated to countering violence against women and children in our society. This presentation is made on my own behalf as chair of the board of METRAC and also on behalf of the founding chair of METRAC, Jane Pepino, who is in a hearing out of town today and simply could not get back in time. It's adjourning by 6 p.m. these days. So we decided it was important for me to come and speak to you on behalf of METRAC.

We are volunteers. We founded METRAC about 15 years ago, and we have a very focused mission. To the best of our knowledge, we're the first non-profit organization in Canada founded to focus on work as a catalyst for systemic change. The systems we address are particularly law, health, and education.

As I mentioned, Jane is the founding chair and I am the current chair. I've attached to the back of this statement a list of some of the work METRAC has done in the field of violence against women and children.

I want to thank you for the outreach we experienced in being able to come here today. Very often non-profit organizations, front-line organizations that work as advocacy groups in our society, have to, when there is a committee of this nature, proactively and quite aggressively negotiate just to have a space at the hearing table. That did not happen with your committee. We received an invitation. You reached out to us. I want to express our appreciation for that and let you know that it's quite rare.

We have only a couple of key points to make to you today. In addition to our thanks for your outreach, we have really one primary point to make. It is clear from a review of the CD-ROM that was sent out that this committee has invested a great deal of thought and public money in the process of conducting this review. It's a very serious issue. It has huge ramifications for our whole society, and it certainly merits the extensive investment you are making on behalf of the people of Canada.

However, we want to draw to your attention that from our review of this, there seems to be a need for an additional approach to be made to much of the material you have. It's certainly not too late to do this. The short form for what we're recommending is that you apply a gender analysis to the research and the commentary you've already gathered.

It's clear that women bear an unequal and disproportionate burden of violent victimization, and I've referenced both research by Professor Rosemary Gartner as well as one of the Supreme Court decisions that outline this.

At page 12 of your review materials, the report entitled “Provisions Relating to Victims” , we note your statement on Ontario and Quebec figures that demonstrate that:

of the victims of violent offences (excluding sexual) requesting notification and/or information, approximately 50% are victims of domestic violence.

This is a strong alert for you to bring a gender impact analysis to this review. We urge you to approach this next stage of your review by adopting a policy of zero tolerance for risk of violence to victims and other members of the community. To do that, you would need to apply a gender analysis.

The Chairman: Excuse me. As a point of clarification, on the document you're referring to, was the review done by the previous Solicitor General—his consultation, his process?

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: Yes.

The Chairman: It's not a document that belongs to this committee. This is the parliamentary subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, and we are doing an independent review. That was some of the background information.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: Thank you. Are you referencing any of the material? Have you looked at it? Are you incorporating the material into your consideration?

The Chairman: Yes. We're aware of it and we're using it as a base.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: Great.

The Chairman: There aren't any conclusions that we have come to thus far.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: That's a very helpful clarification. I think it nevertheless allows our point to stand and our recommendation to stand.

• 1615

The Chairman: Oh, yes. I'm not disputing the point. I just want to clarify the origin of the document.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: Thank you.

It is METRAC's position that the governments of our provinces and territories, like the Government of Canada, are constitutionally obliged to promote and attempt to ensure that all persons' rights guaranteed under sections 7, 15, and 28 of the charter are respected. Similarly, given their role as guardians of the public interest, employees and consultants in Correctional Service Canada, the National Parole Board, and the correctional investigator must conduct proceedings in accordance with charter values and bring to the attention of any court or adjudicator all relevant charter values, including those enshrined in sections 7, 15, and 28 of the charter, so that the rights involved may be balanced with other values and interests that in sum can be described as the public interest.

The footnote at the bottom of that page gives you some specific references to support our position.

• 1620

This review by your parliamentary subcommittee is one critical instrument with which the Government of Canada can articulate its policy choices about who will receive the benefit and protection of the corrections system and hold its service accountable, to ensure that women obtain de facto equal protection and equal benefit of the law.

We wish to place our comments in a somewhat different timeframe than the five-year review you have undertaken. For us it is more of a ten-year review. Jane Pepino was the founding chair of the board of METRAC in 1984, and in 1988 Jane was appointed to chair the federal inquiry under the Penitentiary Act into the release and disappearance of Melvin Glen Stanton. Jane concluded that while no one person was to blame for the death and destruction Stanton brought the community upon his early release, no one in the system was blameless.

Following the inquiry, Jane was asked to report on legislative reform, and in February 1991 filed her recommendations for the legislation that became the act of Parliament you've invited METRAC to comment upon today. So that is why we approached the review with reflection over a ten-year period. These are our key points today.

First, any consideration of release must always be subject to identification of and withdrawal from the conditional release stream of offenders identified as continuing to be at risk of committing dangerous offences.

Second, lest there be a misunderstanding of the first, halfway houses and similar programs are reaffirmed by us, but only for candidates who are thoroughly screened and assessed using the best available knowledge, such as lethality indicators and psychopathy checklists, and of course subject to the condition above. We have heard some concerns about a decline in the capacity of the corrections system to utilize the best resources, due to cutbacks, and we want to identify this as a particular concern.

We challenge the seeming deference to victims being able to provide information “if they wish” on page 2 of the provisions report I mentioned earlier. We ask you to consider why the system puts the community at risk collectively by placing the onus—really it's a burden—on victims to take the initiative in making these reports. How can we realistically expect the victim to be safe enough, strong enough, resourced and organized enough to follow through on delivering to the system this invaluable information? Why is there not automatic collection, analysis, and follow-through on information from victims?

• 1625

We'd very much appreciate an answer to these questions when you're able to address them, and we'd appreciate them in writing. We think this is a very important review, and it has great potential for improving a situation that has been significantly improved over the last ten years. I think this is a demonstration of when things can be looked to as successes in the parliamentary system and in the implementation of parliamentary values.

We are here today to make suggestions to improve them even further. By taking a gender analysis of so much of the information you already have, we submit to you that you will be in a position to review and recommend far more effective changes.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Abbott for five minutes.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

Let me state at the outset, being 6'5", 250 pounds, and of the male persuasion, I've always been used to walking through walls and going wherever I wanted to in Canada. So one of the things that has bothered me the most throughout my entire life is the issue you're dealing with here. Just because of my size and the fact that I'm a guy, I have privileges the average woman in Canada doesn't have. So I have an unbelievable amount of sympathy for what you're trying to drive at.

But I need some help from you on some concepts that are quite consistently thrown back at me that we've heard from other witnesses before us. For example, you say any consideration of release must always be subject to identification, withdrawal, and so on, particularly in the area of statutory release. You're familiar with that, I know.

In your other point about halfway houses, you say the candidate must be thoroughly screened and assessed. I constantly have thrown back at me the whole idea of whether it's better to just a hold a person in until the expiry of their warrant. In fact, if I read your comment correctly you said “...release and disappearance of Melvin G. Stanton. Jane concluded that, while no one...” and so on. As I understand it, he was still under warrant, but I constantly have the argument thrown back at me that if he didn't offend then, he would have offended when he was not under warrant.

Help me with this, because it's a major stumbling block to me being able to move my own personal agenda forward, and I suggest perhaps the agenda of the Reform Party, in trying to get this area under control.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: I will to some extent be relying heavily on the conversation Jane and I had about this very question. Happily, I might add, it was something we covered, because I did not work with her on the inquiry, and she is by far more the expert than I am. But we did discuss it.

You can appreciate that the circumstances leading up to Stanton's release were very carefully scrutinized by Jane and the members of her inquiry board. One of her biggest concerns, which she noted in her report, was the way in which the overhanging and experienced obligation to release drove the planning and treatment, and in many respects the lack of treatment, for Stanton.

• 1630

She remembers, for example, the testimony of one of the psychologists involved in preparing him for release. She mentioned to me just two nights ago that what struck her most about this woman's testimony was how strongly identified and how sympathetic she had become to Stanton, and how her starting point was that he would be released. It was going to happen, and it was her job to make it happen, essentially.

As a result of that, there was not the attention paid to assessing the risk to the community. The focus was on readying him, and in fact accelerating the process of releasing him. One of the reasons given under testimony was that he had indicated he had exhausted all of his resources within the prison.

Jane was struck by the trade-off between what was seemingly not available within the prison system and the assumption, which was fatally and tragically misplaced, that there would be something in the community. But there wasn't the preparation, the follow-through or the monitoring, and he should not have been released.

Mr. Jim Abbott: But help me with this idea. Let's assume he had been released in that situation, there had been the follow-through, and he had reached the end of the warrant. Let's take any violent offender who offended against women and families, to whom we say, at the end of the eighth year of a twelve-year sentence, statutory release, “We're not going to release you, but we are going to hold you right up to the termination”.

The argument that is consistently put to me is it's better that they go to a halfway house—notwithstanding your very valid point, which I agree with, about being thoroughly screened and assessed—to acclimatize them, rather than simply turning them out, giving them a bus pass and a suitcase, and putting them at the door of the penitentiary.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: I think there are two intermediate steps we have to examine in looking at a scenario like that. First, how soon can you kick in the process around determining whether or not this is a dangerous offender, address it at the earliest possible opportunity, and address it repeatedly throughout the process? Secondly, are you satisfied, as members of the review committee, that there is thorough screening and assessment, and the existing available state-of-the-art tools are being utilized throughout our system? Are you satisfied with that?

You're not fully satisfied of that—we're not, from our understanding. But we're volunteers and we haven't been looking into this in the depth and detail you have. Our sense is certainly that the tools that are there and available are not being fully utilized, and that has a lot to do with cutbacks to the system.

Mr. Jim Abbott: The statutory release issue is a major concern for myself and my party, and I appreciate your input. I'm sure we would all be very appreciative of anything further on that issue.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

[Translation]

Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Mrs. McPhedren, I want first of all to thank you for coming before us today and to share with us a perspective that is essential for the task we have undertaken in this subcommittee.

Violence against women is one of the major issues in our society. I am quite familiar with it since my wife is a Crown attorney specializing in domestic violence cases. So this is an area I often hear about.

Unfortunately, there is no certainty in life and the system, if we want to call it that, always has to seek a balance between rehabilitation—and in this regard I have somewhat different views from those of my colleague on my right—and the long-term interest of the community which is public security.

• 1635

You are calling for a screening. I don't know if it could be done any better, but the problem is that, even if it improves, there is no certainty.

I am looking for the French word for "screen".

An honourable member: "Filtrer".

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you.

In trying to screen very rigidly, is there not a danger to keep people inside when they could be better rehabilitated outside with treatment and supervision?

As Mr. Abbott mentioned, we know very well that an offender being released at the end of his term with a suitcase and without access to intermediary measures will have great difficulty becoming a useful member of society.

[English]

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: No, but you've described pretty much the facts of the Stanton early release, and we know what happened there. We know it has happened many times since then.

I think the principles you're addressing around rehabilitation and integration into the community are valid and particularly important in a democracy. But I also think we have to be very careful not to let our emotional preferences for such principles get ahead of the practical reality of what we're actually delivering in our system.

I would submit in this case that the work I've personally done in the field of rehabilitation of sex offenders is around professionals who sexually abuse their clients. It is not necessarily criminals who have been imprisoned, although frankly a number of those doctors are in jail through the criminal system.

I think there are a couple of preliminary facts. Those facts may change, but today, as we discuss this, what we're capable of delivering through our systems in terms of rehabilitation and safety to the community, and to victims, is very limited. It is particularly very limited in relation to dangerous sex offenders, and it is also very limited in the area of domestic violence.

I think METRAC would suggest to you, and we have taken this position before other parliamentary committees, that we must address and face squarely and honestly the failings and inadequacies of our systems of rehabilitation before we start releasing people into the communities and expecting, unrealistically... The evidence does not support this hope.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Okay, thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

[English]

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no questions or comments.

The Chairman: We appear to have run out of questions. It might be the hour of the day.

Ms. Marilou McPhedren: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your attendance and your submission. We will certainly be considering your brief when we review our report.

Our next witnesses are from the Alliance of Prisoners' Families, Amy Friedman-Fraser and Sarah Fraser. Please come to the closer table where the mikes are.

If you can give us a presentation of approximately 10 minutes, it will allow time for the members to ask questions.

• 1640

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser (Member, Alliance of Prisoners' Families): I want to thank you for inviting us here today. You have a copy of our brief, I believe, but I'm going to begin with something that is a little different from the presentations you ordinarily hear. Our hope today is to offer you a portrait in broad strokes, at least, of a population that we believe legislators and the general public alike have not, to date, recognized in any substantive fashion, except insofar as we believe we are seen as a vague, homogeneous, troubling, and perhaps troublemaking group.

I'm the wife of a prisoner, a man serving life, who is now on parole, thankfully. This is his daughter, my stepdaughter.

I entered prison in 1992 as a journalist because I lived in Kingston and I wanted to see what actually went on behind the walls of the prison that surrounds the town I live in.

When I met the man who did become my husband, Sarah's father, he had been in prison at that time for seven years, and I met head on the life prisoners' families live. It's not my personal story that I'd like to share today. Rather I hope to give you a broader picture of the day-to-day, year-to-year life of prisoners' families.

I will be making some specific points about the legislation at the end of my presentation. The reason for doing a portraiture for you is that we know that if we were granted some legislative and administrative support and if we were, in some measure, protected from some of the abuses we endure, we could be among this country's most vital tools in terms of reducing recidivist criminal activity.

So I'm going to ask you to picture something for a moment. I'm going to ask you to picture your image of a prisoner's family member, truthfully, what you believe us to look like and be like.

I'll ask you to imagine further two elderly parents who have travelled to visit their son at Collins Bay Institution in Kingston. They've driven there; it's January. They park in the visitors' parking lot a quarter of a mile from the front entrance and they walk along what in winter is one of Kingston's harshest wind tunnels. To reach the door, they pass the staff parking lot that's tucked beside the building. Once inside the door, they're greeted by one door and then another. A third awaits them behind the latex-gloved guard, who gives the distinct impression of disdain, while taking from the couple their keys, their ID, their $6 in change in an envelope that they will later deposit in a mailbox inside. This will later, eventually, they hope, be delivered to their son in his cell.

The guard places these items inside a box, which looks remarkably like a microwave oven, and as the couple waits, several guards and some official visitors pass them and walk on inside. The microwave-like machine beeps. It's called an ion scanner. The guard asks the couple to give him their names. They offer these, but whatever information the machine has produced about them they will never know. That information may one day appear on their son's record, vaguely worded, indicating that on this date their son received a visitor who tested positive for some telltale sign of some illicit substance.

I'd ask you to remember something that I actually witnessed. John Edwards, the then commissioner of Correctional Service Canada, visiting the same institution, Collins Bay, placed $50 in the machine and it beeped wildly. Everyone around laughed and he walked in.

Scanners have been tested in the U.S., and I believe over 60% of bills, especially large bills, test positive for telltale signs of some kind of illegal substance.

This elderly couple cannot protest the machine's message about them that has been recorded on a piece of paper. They cannot say they don't even know what drugs look like. If they do say that, they will be seen to be lying or troublemaking, and likely their son will pay the price for that protest in some manner. It may be just the guard's hostility or a day or two in segregation, a notation on the IPSO file or just general suspicion.

• 1645

I ask you to imagine the families, many of whom have travelled by public transportation hundreds of kilometres to visit loved ones living in those prisons, many of which are built in obscure, distant, hard-to-reach areas. I ask you to see them waiting in line to attend the twice, sometimes thrice, yearly family socials, giving them the opportunity to spend several hours with their loved ones in a gymnasium packed with other families, with food and activity devised and paid for by the prisoners themselves.

I ask you to imagine the 45-minute to 2-hour wait to get inside to attend that social, and often the same period of time to leave at the end of the day. I ask you to imagine them waiting outside, as we do at most prisons, in snow, rain, and hail, as one by one, visitors enter, removing shoes, belts, or sometimes everything, because the metal detector has detected something.

I ask you to imagine the way a mother who is strip searched might feel, as guards eventually discover her brassiere has a metal underwire. The damage has been done. She has been stripped bare before strangers, but she knows that had she refused to strip, she might not have seen her son for a month or two, or more.

I ask you to imagine a women with bags packed, children ready, excited to visit the family visiting area, the trailers where families blessedly sometimes spend three days together, behind barbed and razor wire, beneath the gaze of guards with guns in towers.

Families fashion a version of real life together that's punctuated by the bright lights of the prison yard, the sound of calls for counts, and the thrice daily visit of the guards to count their fathers, wives, or husbands in the case of women's prisons.

I ask you to imagine a trailer visit in which a husband and wife argue. Nothing major. We families of prisoners most often learn to argue in silence with each other in visiting rooms, where a raised voice can be the cause for concern and can lead to a prisoner's stay in a segregation cell.

I ask you to imagine the wife leaving the trailer after three days of visiting, with her heart heavy and her throat thick with tears. She knows it will be many months before she again sleeps with and eats with her husband. As she leaves, the guard smiles slyly at her and says “So you weren't getting along too well in there, were you? Why not try a real man?”

I ask you to imagine a woman in P4W speaking on the telephone with a loved one saying, “I don't know how I can go on”. Her heart is heavy with loneliness and fear. The calls are monitored. She's caught. Institutional officials determine she must be stripped of her belongings and taken to a segregation cell for her own protection. She tells officials she is not suicidal; she does not need to be in segregation. The officials determine she must be there for her own safety.

A liaison worker who works with the woman closely, who is a member of our organization, knows this woman is not suicidal. The worker informs the representative of the citizens' advisory committee, who telephones the institution to inquire what's going on. Institutional officials inform the CAC member that the prisoner is no longer in segregation, no longer stripped of her belongings and clothes. The CAC member is satisfied and informs the liaison worker of this.

Three days later, the liaison worker, a member of our committee, as I've said, arrives to visit this prisoner and discovers the woman is still indeed in segregation. She is still stripped of her belongings and her dignity and she is now suicidal. When this happens, and I speak just from my experience and from that of people in our committee, we family members all learn again that the citizens' advisory committee is not an organization designed to help us.

Imagine, I ask you, a lockdown. It is not just the 500 prisoners living behind those walls who are locked down. Multiply the number of hostages... for we family members are numbering in the thousands. When the 500 men are locked down, we have no way of knowing what is going on behind those walls, other than what we hear in the media—a riot, a murder. We wonder whether our loved one is safe. We have no one to phone to find out.

Once, awash in fear during a lockdown, I told a guard that I felt afraid and he suspiciously asked me why. I explained to her that in mining disasters, at least, the families of the men and women who are trapped below are considered as people deserving of attention, concern, and compassion. As family members of prisoners, we seldom feel other's compassion. Pity sometimes, yes, but not compassion.

Imagine the experience of one of our members, a woman who would have joined me here, except that she has moved out west. Once when she was attending a social, after reaching the third gate, she remembered she would need her Tampax. She returned to her car in the faraway parking lot to fetch her bag. A guard, observing her from a tower, noted this, and when she returned to the institution moments later she was forced to bend over and submit to a strip search. Her behaviour, she was told, had been suspicious. Our behaviour always is, but we are not criminals by association, nor are we negligent in conscience.

• 1650

We love men and women who live in prison. Some of us were born to them; some gave birth to them; some married them. We, as non-criminals out here, have likely more at stake in seeking their healthy habitation than does anyone else.

After much consideration, we've chosen to focus your attention on two legislative items. First, we seek an expansion and/or an addition to section 74 of the CCRA. Secondly, we seek an expansion and empowerment of the correctional investigator's office and a liaison to be created between that office and prisoners' family members.

• 1655

We believe the goals articulated in the legislation—in particular, the mission statement and section 3 of the CCRA, the purpose of the correctional system, and section 100, the purpose of conditional release—to be in the best interests of society as a whole. We believe the goals of focusing on rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners into the community as law-abiding citizens to be appropriate, logical, and sane.

As you know, and as has been discussed just since I've been here, appropriate treatment in the community produces a greater reduction in recidivism than does appropriate treatment in the institutions. In fact, as we know and we experience daily, the rule inside is more often inappropriate placement and treatment, a decline in temporary absences, insufficient use of work releases, a decline in the number of parole reviews, increasing use and abuse of detention, and a general atmosphere of recklessness and, I would say, lawlessness.

We believe unstoppable negligence and abuse pervade our prisons, and a lack of corporate will to follow present legislation is boundless. This creates not only emotional, physical, and financial strain for prisoners, but damages, disables, and dismantles the abilities of prisoners' families who, as we said, could be one of the strongest tools towards helping to achieve the goals of the act.

Section 74 reads:

The Service shall provide inmates with the opportunity to contribute to decisions of the Service affecting the inmate population as a whole, or affecting a group within the inmate population except decisions relating to security matters.

We ask you to consider expanding this section or providing an additional section to include the same opportunity to prisoners' family members. Our lives are altered immeasurably and intimately by acts taken by the criminal justice system, specifically by CSC.

In regard to the correctional investigator's office, we recommend the following changes: that the correctional investigator report directly to Parliament, similar to the way in which the Auditor General currently does, thereby giving actual status and authority to that office to effect change, thereby, as well, permitting public access to the real nature of prison life, to the grievances in particular, and to the way in which these grievances are attended to by the institution and the regional headquarters and the national headquarters; that the correctional investigator's office be expanded both to meet the demands of a growing prison population and to meet the continuing problems arising from the neglect to administer properly the CCRA; and that liaison positions be established either independently of or as an extension of the correctional investigator's office so that prisoners' family members have a voice and a grievance procedure with which to address legitimate violations of the act. We hope these positions would also monitor the mission statement and practice as it translates from commissioner's directives to regional policy to institutional standing orders.

We're here today with a great deal of trepidation. We have in the past been punished for speaking out. But it has been said that the sure way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and that is why we have chosen to break our silence. It is our intention as representatives of the Alliance of Prisoners' Families to offer you these ideas and these portraits that we hope may be integrated into law to assist in administering justice not only for ourselves but for the nation as a whole.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I have to say that I'd have to be either dead or inhuman not to be moved by your presentation. I thank you for it. I can tell that it's very difficult for both of you.

The one thing I would say is that I had an opportunity in my own constituency on a totally different topic but where there was a dynamic, where there was the opportunity for retribution by certain people... The people I was working with wanted to make a public statement. They came forward, and as a result of the publicity that didn't happen.

• 1700

If I may, I would encourage you that if you have any feeling that there has been any retribution as a result of your presentation to us, I know I, and I'm sure all of us, would want to know about it and be able to respond to it.

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Thank you.

Mr. Jim Abbott: You present me with a fantastic dilemma, though. The dilemma is one where I am sincerely moved by your presentation, and I mean that in all sincerity. I'm trying to balance your presentation and your word picture of yourselves and the older parents, and so on, against the reality of drugs going into prisons, which also has the potential to completely upset the entire prison environment and create hostile and dangerous situations even for your loved ones. Can you help me get a balance between those?

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: I hope I can. First of all, I don't want drugs in the prisons.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I understand that.

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: I had a friend who was murdered last week because of drugs. I think the drug problem is the problem. But I would say that the drug problem was a drug problem when visits were behind glass as well.

I think part of what we're talking about is a perception, and I have to say that I am sure I had this perception before I ever went to a prison. I would drive past Joyceville Institution every day and see streams of people coming out, and I did not know those people were me. I think that's mostly what the community sees. There are us and them.

Sarah said to me just before we came up here, how do you make people understand that when we go behind those doors we are—excuse my language—shit? Guards walk in. I've stood in line for hours waiting to be tested by the ion scanner and have seen dozens of people walk in with duffel bags, with suitcases, with wagons.

If there is going to be drug testing, it needs to be of everyone. I think the problem at this moment is that there is a targeted community that is perceived to be the problem. One of the problems when you make assumptions and when stereotypes are created is you lose sight of what might really be happening. I think that's why it's important for families, and that's why I've tried to organize this group, because it's important for us to have a voice and show who we are and that we're not what we are perceived to be.

So there's my balance difficulty, because of the punishment. But regarding the drug strategy, for example, that's why we mentioned involving prisoners' families in such a strategy. I think families could be helpful in addressing those kinds of questions, just the kind of question you're asking.

In the time we have here today, I can't really go into everything I've thought about along these lines. I think that's why it's important that family members be brought in to such a creation. A drug strategy without using our input makes no sense. It hasn't made sense, and it hasn't affected the drug problem. It's as bad as it has ever been. There are all sorts of new machines and new tests and new urinalysis...

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

[Translation]

Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: I will be very brief. I want to tell you I greatly appreciated your presentation. You are right. It is unfortunate that your experience and your perspectives are ignored. They should be better known and I want to thank you for sharing them with us.

• 1705

However, I must contradict you somewhat. You write in your brief that you are more cynical than politicians. I didn't think it was possible. You state in your brief:

We recognize that substantial change is unlikely on the basis of this submission.

This is what I read in your document. Your proposals are the best I have seen so far. For example, you say that the Correctional Investigators Office lacks teeth, is under-staffed and underfunded. I happen to agree with you and I hope that our report will make a recommendation similar to yours.

Secondly, you propose family input into correctional service policy making. I, for one, had never thought about that and I think this is a terrific idea; it deserves to be looked at closely and I am happy that you mention this since no one before you ever did. I find this suggestion very reasonable.

I would simply like to say that I am very happy that you expressed an idea that confirms what I think about the correctional investigator. Next, you come up with a new idea and I didn't have time to fully read your document. Third, I think the input of families into policy development by corrections is a new idea that deserves our full consideration.

I don't very often agree with Mr. Abbott, although I like him very much on a personal level, but on this I agree with him. You shared with us some very important insights. Should you ever feel penalized, let us know because we find your perspective very important. I know it is for me and I have no doubt all members of the committee share my view and I would like to thank you for presenting us such an interesting brief with such well thought out proposals.

[English]

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Thank you very much. I'm just going to make one comment. I think there are moments when it's possible to be more cynical than a politician, sadly.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You asked me to do something that I don't have to do. You asked me to imagine what the family of a prisoner goes through. I don't have to imagine that. I put my family through it many years ago. At that time, there were not the amenities you mentioned, but there also didn't seem to be the difficulties. It seems to me that with the advent of new scanning devices and better methods, it has made the task for the visitor more difficult than it was before, and that's not the way it should be.

I also share your belief that... I have never believed that most contraband came into prison by way of visitors. It just doesn't make sense. I sometimes get support on that belief and sometimes I don't, obviously, but having been on both sides of the situation, I'm afraid I have to agree with you. I think as long as we waste time blaming the visitors, we'll never solve the problem.

I am disappointed to hear that the situation is as you describe it. The electronic devices and the embarrassment is one thing, but it's being made more difficult by the actions of the staff. That's beyond comprehension. It's unnecessary. It's brutal and it's a surprise to me. As far as I'm concerned, I will do what I can in my small way to see that that is changed, because it shouldn't be happening. It's something that, if enough effort is put into it, can easily be fixed. You simply tell these people, you don't do that anymore, and if you do it's a serious offence.

• 1710

I assume there was quite a period of time over which you were visiting. Your husband is on parole now?

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Yes.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Over that period of time, did you notice any change in the aggravation getting in and out? Did it get worse? Did it get better? Was it always the same way?

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: That's difficult to answer, because I got more tired, so it perhaps felt worse. I don't know that it changed dramatically. I think it's been pretty steady, and I think it's what Madam Justice Arbour called the culture, sort of a temperament. I would like to say too that I would not paint all staff members with one brush.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Oh, no.

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Nor would I paint all family members with one. But there is a culture of divide and... I think my daughter had a fairly strong emotional reaction, as I did, to the previous speaker, because I think that's another case where my experience of release is not that it's easy and not that it happens very quickly. So when you hear victims talking about it being so easy for people to get out, it's like there are two different worlds spinning.

I guess the only thing I think is that maybe if family members are brought in and if there's an avenue with the correctional investigator's office, if there's someplace for our voice, perhaps dialogue will ensue, and perhaps the two worlds cannot be so separate and so at odds with each other.

Mr. Ivan Grose: You may be heartened to know that regarding the role of the investigator, all sides of the equation have said pretty much what you have said—expand the role of the correctional investigator. So you'll get no argument from anyone who's involved in the process. You've certainly brought your thoughts to the right place because we're the people who are supposed to set the standards, make the rules. Mind you, that's not quite as simple as it looks either.

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Right.

Mr. Ivan Grose: But I do empathize with you. The reaction of people saying it's so easy to get out—I get the same thing. Of course, I know a little bit better than that.

But thank you very much for being here, and it was well worth your trip.

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Thank you.

Mr. Ivan Grose: You've given me something new. I think I know a lot of the answers; I certainly don't know all of them. But you've given me a new aspect, a new field to work in. Thank you.

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Thank you.

The Chairman: Could I ask about a couple of points dealing with your proposals. On page 8 you say:

We propose:

a. that you seek a hearing with the Correctional Investigator to better understand the nature of the issues requiring that office's attention...

The correctional investigator is going to be appearing before this committee on May 31, so we'll have that opportunity to review what we've been seeing and what we've been hearing.

On the last page, on your proposal “that members of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee visit prisons and speak with those unable to appear”, etc., we've been doing that. The subcommittee has been touring, and at every stop we meet with the inmates' committee—just the committee, no one else present, no CSC staff, no one from the Solicitor General's office, etc.

Just on those two points, we've already implemented those.

Ms. Amy Friedman-Fraser: Thank you. I'm glad to hear it.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming, and thank you, Sarah.

Our final witness is Dr. Marnie Rice, the director of research from the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre.

Ms Marnie Rice (Individual Presentation): [Doctor]Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Marnie Rice, psychologist and director of research at the maximum security Oak Ridge division of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for inviting me to participate as part of your review of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

• 1715

The written brief contains more information about Oak Ridge and myself, but very briefly, our research department is a world leader in research pertaining to offenders and mentally disordered offenders, having produced approximately 200 published scientific papers since its inception, including most recently a book entitled Violent Offenders: Appraising and Managing Risk.

I'd like to stress that the views I'll be presenting today are my own and are not to be taken as the views of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre or any other organization.

In particular, the main topic I will address is that of risk assessment. First of all, I'd like to say that Canadians have much reason to be proud of Correctional Service Canada and the national parole service. Canada has a modern, fair, and internationally respected correctional system. Canada is recognized as a world leader in corrections research, correctional programming, and recidivism risk assessment. Much of that work is done by employees of the Solicitor General and Correctional Service Canada.

Despite outstanding research and careful applications, however, actual violent recidivism rates by released offenders are probably higher than the public is willing to tolerate. I submit as well that the violent recidivism rates are somewhat higher than they need be, and the reduction could be accomplished without expending more resources on incarceration.

In a speaking note to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Solicitor General Andy Scott questioned whether the risk assessment process could be enhanced to better determine which offenders should be held in custody. There is abundant research to show that what is called actuarial or statistical prediction is superior to what is called clinical judgment. In literally hundreds of studies throughout all domains where humans have to make predictions, it has been shown that the best job of prediction can be done with a strictly statistical approach, as opposed to giving human judges the relevant information and allowing them to put it together as they see fit for each individual case.

The evidence on this is absolutely overwhelmingly in favour of statistical approaches. An actuarial tool makes predictions based on the measured relationship between outcome, violent recidivism—in this case where public safety is the priority—and several objectively measured personal characteristics, for example, age, marital status, and so on.

Personal characteristics are selected based on their unique contribution to the prediction of the outcome—violent recidivism—and weights for each can then be computed. Numerical scores for variables are usually added, to give a total for each individual. Then the relation between the total score and the violent recidivism is tabulated for hundreds of cases where the outcome for each is known. This then gives an estimated probability of violent recidivism for each new case.

As I said, actuarial predictions contrast with informal methods, in this area usually called clinical judgments. Clinical judgments are usually based on an assessor's intuitive or subjective evaluation and a combination of characteristics reported in the professional literature to be related to violence. Such an approach usually also depends on memory for past cases. Informal methods are not developed using the systematic testing of prediction against measured outcome.

In spite of the abundant evidence in favour of statistical approaches, the National Parole Board is currently charged with the duty to consider release decisions about individuals considering each offender as a unique individual. They are provided with various assessments that have been done by CSC staff, along with considerable other information about the offender.

Using this information, combined with a personal interview with the offender, they are supposed to arrive at a decision about release that considers the unique aspects of each offender—that is, parole boards are more or less required to employ clinical judgment.

All of the scientific data that pertain to this issue lead to the conclusion that from a public safety perspective this is not the best way to make decisions. Rather, the most accurate decisions could be made by strictly following what the best statistical instrument says about each individual case.

Section 203 of the CCRA created a new authority to allow judges to lengthen the time that offenders who have committed violent crimes and certain other offences must serve in custody prior to parole eligibility. I submit that to the extent that the purpose of this section is to increase public safety, the goal could be better accomplished by removing discretion from the judge and making the decision about length of custody prior to parole eligibility strictly on the basis of statistically determined risk. I say this because the judge's discretion here falls into the category I referred to as clinical judgment, just as do the National Parole Board's decisions.

• 1720

Section 23 of the CCRA requires that CSC make all reasonable efforts to obtain specific pieces of information for all offenders in as timely a manner as possible. Obtaining the right kind of comprehensive information about offenders is absolutely critical for accurate risk assessment. The most accurate instruments for the prediction of future violence among offender populations depend critically upon having accurate information from several sources, a fact that was recognized in the development of the CCRA. It would appear from the reports prepared for the review that there have been difficulties in implementing this information gathering. Resolving these problems to ensure the timely gathering of information is critical.

I would further add that additional information would increase the accuracy possible for violence risk assessment. Specifically, where an offender has ever been sent to a provincial health institution for a pretrial assessment, information-sharing agreements should require the sharing of the health records compiled with respect to any pretrial assessment, not just those that were actually used in the trial.

In Ontario, for example, CSC has endeavoured to enter into information-sharing agreements with the Attorney General and the Ministry of Community and Social Services in order to obtain police information and young offender information. Entering into a similar information-sharing agreement with the Ministry of Health would benefit both parties, as Ministry of Health authorities also require information from all sources in order for them to do an accurate job of violence risk assessment for their clientele.

At present, we have little knowledge about how an offender's risk of violent recidivism changes due to the passage of time or participation in programs. So far, the personal characteristics that best indicate violence risk are the sorts of things that do not change. Among these static predictors are age at first offence, gender, criminal history, and assessments of psychopathy and anti-social personality. Researchers in this field have yet to identify any changes in personal characteristics—for example, changes in attitudes, knowledge, skills or symptoms—that assist in violence risk assessment beyond that achieved by static factors alone.

That is hard news to accept and is, I hope, a temporary state of affairs, but it is unfortunately what the data say at the present time. This fact has important implications. First, it means that a careful violence risk assessment to be used for release decisions need only be conducted once in each incarceration for each offender. This assessment could be done as early as possible, once all the relevant information has been obtained. From a scientific point of view, this violence risk assessment could form the sole basis for determining time of release. The actuarially determined violence risk assessment should also be used to determine how resources for the community management of offenders should be apportioned. Specifically, there are some offenders whose risk level is so high that public safety is best served by keeping them incarcerated for as long as their sentences permit. The percentage of these offenders is very small.

The fact that a follow-up of offenders currently detained until warrant expiry date shows that they actually have lower recidivism rates than those released on statutory release illustrates that the most accurate prediction methods are not currently being used to decide who is detained. Partly, this is because the CCRA specifies that only certain offenders can be considered for detention, namely those who are currently under sentence for a serious violent offence. Yet those are not necessarily the most dangerous persons.

Of course, past history of violence is an important predictor, but factors such as psychopathy, as mentioned by a previous witness today, are even more important. But to restrict consideration to those whose current offence is violent is to force less than optimal decisions.

Aside from the very small percentage of offenders whose risk levels are too high to release prior to warrant expiry, all other offenders should be supervised upon release in accordance with their risk. Research done by Canadian researchers has shown clearly that apportioning treatment and supervision of offenders under conditional release in accordance with risk is the best way to protect public safety.

Very low-risk offenders might actually be made more likely to offend by anything more than very minimal supervision. On the other hand, intensive community treatment and supervision is indicated for the moderately high-risk offender. From the reports prepared for the CCRA review, it would appear that too many resources are currently expended treating and supervising the lowest-risk cases and too few on the higher-risk cases. Changing the balance of resources would not cost money but would be very likely to improve public safety.

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Finally, I submit there are two categories of error. The first type of error is committed when we fail to use the most accurate risk assessment methods available, including obtaining the requisite information about each offender. I submit that the public reasonably expects elimination of this class of error.

However, the public has to accept that the most accurate means are not perfect. Some released offenders will commit further violence even when we use the best science available. This category of error can only reasonably be reduced by research aimed at learning more about why people commit violence and how such violence could be prevented. CSC and the Government of Canada as a whole have conducted and supported such research and should continue to do so.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I have to admit that at this time of day I don't need this.

Ms Marnie Rice: Sorry.

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Mr. Jim Abbott: As a matter of fact, I think I might be joining you on... well, not joining you on a couch, but I'll be lying on a couch while you have at me.

At the bottom of page 4 of your submission, you say:

At present, we have little knowledge about how an offender's risk of violent recidivism changes due to the passage of time or participation in programs.

That is as scary as heck.

Ms Marnie Rice: Yes, it is. That is an unfortunate truth, that at the present moment in time the best prediction of violence recidivism does not include things that can change due to treatment, due to passage of time, or anything that can be done while the person is incarcerated.

Mr. Jim Abbott: So if we then carry on through that paragraph, what you're basically saying—and please help me if I'm wrong—is that if we have a person who by whatever form of legitimate measurement best known today is determined as being a person who is violent, who will reoffend, and this is determined at this one time, and if the person has a 12-year term and there really isn't any advantage to them or to society to let them go at the eighth year, in fact we're protecting society for that last four years. Is that what you're saying?

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Ms Marnie Rice: I'm saying that would be the case for the highest-risk offenders. For example, an instrument we've developed has nine risk levels. In the top risk level we can virtually say this person has 100% likelihood of committing a new violent offence in a certain time period, which is about seven years. So we would say for those people, yes, public safety is unquestionably going to be best served by keeping that person incarcerated as long as we possibly can. Fortunately, this is a tiny proportion of offenders, and the majority of offenders fall somewhere in the middle areas of risk.

So for those people, we're saying all you need to do to assure public safety with them is to apportion the services you're providing to that person in the community; in terms of supervision and treatment programs, apportion them in accordance with their risk.

So there's abundant evidence as well to show that if you try to force really low-risk people to take programs and so on that they really don't need because their risk is low to begin with, you can actually make matters worse. It's better to take those resources and spend them on the moderately high-risk people who really need the supervision.

Mr. Jim Abbott: But in this scenario we're talking about the extremely high... at least that was my example.

Ms Marnie Rice: For the extremely high group, I say at the moment we have no cause to think we can lower their risk through any kind of incarceration or supervision during their follow-up. At the present moment, the best science would say we have to keep those people off the streets as long as possible.

Mr. Jim Abbott: This is so important, and I really want to clearly understand. So what you're saying is for the people who are at a moderately high level—perhaps in the absence of mood-altering prescribed drugs; let's set that one aside for just a second. Even those people you would be able to assess at the outset. You're suggesting, as I understand your presentation, that even programs for them are of limited value.

Ms Marnie Rice: What I'm saying is we don't yet know their value. By all means, certainly we need to provide them. We need to keep evaluating them. But at the present moment in time, we have no scientific basis to reduce their risk level, our estimate of their risk, based on their participation in any kind of treatment program.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Let me give you a silly example, and it's intended to be so that we don't get too heavy duty here. An awful lot of us went through our teens and maybe drank too much, and maybe into our early twenties. We finally got the message. It took a long time and a lot of hangovers to realize, I don't like a hangover. So some of us will have decided, because I don't like a hangover, I'm not going to drink too much.

Isn't there something of a parallel between that silly example and somebody who is engaged in violent behaviour, anti-social behaviour, that they could come to the same realization, that it could finally sink through? I don't like the hangover; I don't like being in jail; I don't like the reprobation by people.

Ms Marnie Rice: Absolutely. We're certainly not trying to deny that people can learn. Unfortunately, the state of affairs and the science is that we don't yet know that anything we teach offenders through their incarceration actually lowers the level of risk they pose at the end of sentence.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Incidentally, Jim, be careful with those silly analogies. I get chocolate bars and murderers mixed up, and it costs. That was a silly analogy I made once.

I don't know why, but I have this gut feeling, without all your training and all your experience, that gee, I knew this all along. Of course, maybe it's because I trust statistical evidence more than I do gut feeling. They just don't do it.

I'm getting fuzzy. It's the end of the day.

Did you mention in here that the best time to make a decision as to length of sentence is at the parole period rather than at the initial sentencing?

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Ms Marnie Rice: No. I'm just saying that actually the earliest possible time you can do it, the better. Ideally it would have been done before a person even reached the correctional system; it would have been done in pretrial. For the most dangerous offenders, hopefully we will now be able to look at them in terms of having them made dangerous offenders, or look at things like long-term supervision. But I think that's really outside the scope of this.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes, because I can't see a judge giving a fellow ten years with the possibility that at the end of ten years he may decide to increase it. You just can't do that.

That brings up a point. Why are we so reluctant to call people... We've had dangerous offender legislation on the books forever, or repeat offenders, or habitual offenders. We seldom use it. Why that reluctance? Have you any idea?

Ms Marnie Rice: I think that's a good question. First of all, it's costly to pursue dangerous offender status on an individual, so we don't like to overuse it.

Mr. Ivan Grose: It's costly not to pursue it at times too.

Ms Marnie Rice: Exactly. I think in Ontario they certainly are pursuing dangerous offender status on more of these high-risk offenders. I do believe that is certainly a good way to go. As I say, we're going to invest resources in the person in keeping them incarcerated. We're going to invest resources when we make a mistake and let them out and they recommit another offence. It's very costly to put people through the court system. So we certainly believe it's worth it to invest the money in getting good information about an offender at the time of trial, so that the right decision can be made then as to whether or not this person should become a dangerous offender.

Mr. Ivan Grose: You've made me feel better, because I've always felt a certain amount of sympathy for the poor doctors who are parole board members who let someone go and they commit some horrible crime. I thought, what in the world did the parole board or the doctors have to go on? Is it really their fault? Actually, now I've become convinced that they do have something to go on. The fact is we don't know what to do, so the best thing to do is just rely on statistics. The odds are bad; they're ten to one that this fellow will reoffend. Sorry, we can't accept those odds.

Ms Marnie Rice: I think that's true. In the last decade we have made considerable progress in being able to make good predictions about who's a good risk and who's a bad risk. Where we haven't made good progress is in being able to show that we can reduce the risk through treatments and things we can provide to an offender while he's under sentence.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Fine. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: This is so fascinating to me. If we take a look at all of the different elements of why we put people in jail for criminal offences and we narrow it down to a select few—these are the people who end up on the front of the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Sun. These are the people who create the whole aura within society about, oh, our criminal justice system is completely out of control. So although they represent a very few in number, they represent a very big picture. It's a big explosion.

You're suggesting, in certain situations, for these few people that society's real purpose for incarceration is, one, to remove them from the general population for the safety of society.

Ms Marnie Rice: Exactly.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Then what we're really saying is that under the CCRA, the attempt to come up with something... one size fits all doesn't really fit. It's like we've been hearing about minimum versus maximum and the whole issue of how the CCRA can be interpreted in a maximum institution versus a minimum institution. They don't really mesh. I think what we're really saying here is that somehow, with the wisdom of Solomon, we're supposed to be coming up with something in the CCRA that would recognize this reality we're faced with as a result of your presentation.

Ms Marnie Rice: Yes, but I think there are certainly reasons, other than protection of the public, why you would want to provide treatment and lots of good activities for these really high-risk men. We have to also think about the safety inside the institution. So it makes sense for other reasons to still be providing treatment and activities even for these very highest-risk men.

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Mr. Jim Abbott: I refuse to name any of these people because of what they've done to our society, but if we were to think of some high-profile people who have committed absolutely despicable acts against humanity and who are currently incarcerated, the difficulty that I have seen in the brief time we've been looking at this issue is what do we do with them? To remove them from 50 square feet of space for one hour a day so that they can walk around and pump some weights and that's all is in itself a problem, isn't it?

Ms Marnie Rice: Yes, it is, and certainly we have some of these same sorts of men in our institution in Oak Ridge. Our philosophy is that the best we can do for some of these men is to provide them with an environment where they do have some space, where the environment is secure and as pleasant as is possible in a maximum security setting.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Okay, thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Abbott made reference to your brief at the bottom of page 4, where you say that so far the personal characteristics that best indicate violent risk are the sorts of things that don't change. Then you list some of them—age at the first offence, gender, criminal history. Those can be categorized statistically very easily. Then you head out into assessment of psychopathy and anti-social personality. Now we're more into the subjective category. What's the relation? They're all on the same list.

Ms Marnie Rice: When you say subjective, these things are actually not subjective. From a research point of view or from a statistical point of view, they are done in a way that you could have two people independently scoring those. They would arrive at the same score, and so these two can be put into numerical form and—

The Chairman: But one's a forecast, one's a recording of actual statistics, isn't it?

Ms Marnie Rice: No. Every one of those—age, criminal history, anti-social personality—is put into a number. It's all past, and they're put together to make a forecast about the future.

The Chairman: Okay. So those assessments are not traditional psychological assessments, the “look at the ink blots and give us your impression” sort of stuff?

Ms Marnie Rice: They are traditional psychological assessments in the modern sense.

The Chairman: It depends where your tradition started.

Ms Marnie Rice: They're all ones that can be done... you can have two individuals doing the assessments, scoring the same person, using the same information, and they both arrive at the same number. So it's not subjective in the sense of one person will give them one score and another person will give them another score.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Every parallel that we do always has certain shortcomings, but I wonder if this parallel would fit.

I don't think you were with us in the room at the time, but we heard earlier from some individuals representing the black community. We got into the fact that there are not, to the best of our knowledge, statistics kept that would be in fact helpful to this issue of prejudice against them.

An awful lot of the time in our society we have a tendency to intentionally not keep statistics because it's not politically correct to keep statistics. Is there a parallel to what we're talking about here, where it's not politically correct to say this person is incorrigible or we simply can't help this person?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never heard a cogent presentation like this that has made this point. Like Mr. Grose, I had this feeling in the back of my mind. Is there a parallel between those things?

Ms Marnie Rice: Yes, it's true. You won't find very many professionals in the field who would say that, because for a lot of us our job is to try to treat these people. The unfortunate fact is that at the present state of the science, we have no reason to believe that our treatments for these highest-risk people reduce their risk at all. It doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying, because certainly we should, but right now the state of affairs is we can't say that treatments lower their risk.

The Chairman: Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: In the meantime you say to them, sorry, folks, but you're going to have to stay here in a reasonably nice surrounding until we get to the right pill.

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Ms Marnie Rice: Or whatever...

The Chairman: And you say in your presentation here that it's a very small percentage. What would that percentage be, as a ballpark?

Ms Marnie Rice: Probably we're looking at 3% or 4% of the federally incarcerated population.

The Chairman: So the other 96% then—

Ms Marnie Rice: They're not in that 100% category.

The Chairman: Yes, they're not in that. So somewhere it's more encouraging a picture that we can paint for those.

Ms Marnie Rice: Exactly.

The Chairman: Okay. Any other questions?

Good. Thank you very much.

Ms Marnie Rice: Thank you.

The Chairman: I guess we're finished.

Thank you to the staff for their long day's work.

This meeting is adjourned to the call of the chair.