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]

Friday, May 28, 1999

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[Translation]

The Chairman (Mr. Paul DeVillers (Simcoe North, Lib.)): I would like to call to order the meeting of the Sub-committee on the Corrections and Conditional Release Act of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

We welcome Mr. Paul Williams, Executive Director of the John Howard Society, who has 10 minutes to make his presentation, which will be followed by a 20-minute question period by members.

Mr. Paul Williams (Executive Director, John Howard Society): Before I begin my presentation, I would like to say a few words in French to say that even if my presentation will be in English this afternoon, we have provided you with French and English copies of our brief. If you ask me questions in French, I will do my best to answer them in the same language.

[English]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

The John Howard Society of Quebec, which I represent, as you probably know, is affiliated with the John Howard Society of Canada, but we are, as are all other John Howard Societies, an autonomous community-based organization, in our case providing bilingual services here in the province.

Our basic goal is the control and prevention of crime and delinquency. Our philosophy, simply stated, is that the fear of punishment alone does not serve as a deterrent to criminal acting out.

The primary means we use to deal with the problem of the control and prevention of crime and delinquency is through a clinical intervention on what we call a longitudinal basis with the individual inmate. Ideally, we try to follow the inmate as soon as possible after his arrest, throughout his incarceration, and accompany him through the re-entry phase into society or into the community at large.

Our many years of institutional work, as well as conditional release supervision, allows us to make certain observations. I guess you would probably agree that the value of any law may be assessed as to the extent to which it serves those it's intended to serve—in other words, the degree to which the letter of the law is commensurate with the spirit of the law.

At the risk of stating the obvious, criminal justice is a people business. The offenders, the victims, the police, those who administer the sentences, and so on, are all persons. We believe the success or failure of the system is contingent upon, to a great extent, the relationship between and among these various persons.

What we have observed over the years is a withdrawal behind bureaucratic measures, highlighted by a proliferation of directives from various sources, usually from above, and resulting in an impersonal approach. The static measures of evaluation we're familiar with, used by the correctional services as well as the parole board, are sometimes in the hands of decision-makers who are not necessarily clinically qualified to handle these measures.

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We've noticed an undue emphasis on the particular crime rather than the dynamics of the person who commits the crime, the use of artificial categories that could be based on crime or on groupings—for example, the schedule one and schedule two offences, or the many groupings we see as to bikers, organized crime, gangs of various sorts, or whatever it might be—and finally, the computerized compilation of data, sometimes with little regard for the validity and reliability of that particular data.

In general, we've observed a widening gap between the inmate and the entire correctional personnel, and also an overuse of incarceration as a means of dealing with problematic situations. What I mean by that is we often think in terms of sentencing being the main offender, if I could put it that way, in the overuse of incarceration, but in point of fact it's overused also with the delays as to releasing men on conditional release or bringing men back for technical violations. This is reflected in the high percentage of technical suspensions that we see. There is an underuse of the most successful of CSC programs, the temporary absence program. We've seen a decline in the use of temporary absences, particularly in the medium security institutions. And finally, there is the inability to factor the commonsense element into decision-making.

I could give you an example of what I mean by that, something that came up very recently: a 65-year-old inmate who has served 44 years in the penitentiary since the age of 17. I don't mean 44 years in succession, but 44 out of the last 48 years in the penitentiary. He's presently on what they call “work release”. He goes out from the minimum security penitentiary on a daily basis from about 8.30 a.m. until about 4 p.m. or 4.30 p.m.

Our agency has been following him for a number of years, and very intensely over the last six years or so. I personally see him on a bi-monthly basis now that he's in minimum security. I went to meet with him at lunch hour when he was out on this work release about three weeks ago. His parole officer was there. I introduced myself to his parole officer. I didn't know him, but I knew his boss and several others, in that I've worked not only in the private sector but also for Correctional Services in the past.

When I saw this inmate two weeks later, he told me that his parole officer had come back to see him the following day and said “You're not allowed to socialize with anyone when you're out there”. This is the same organization that talks about reintegration or réinsertion sociale. I just want to repeat for emphasis that we're talking about a 65-year-old man who has spent 44 years in the penitentiary. Obviously the only real contacts he has with people are criminalized people. I don't consider myself such. I thought meeting with him over lunch, not breaking up his work day, would be something that could be positive to maintain the contacts and reinforce what he's doing. This was negated by the particular parole officer.

The reason I give that as an example is that I think this kind of thinking, this mindset that I've seen develop over the years, has come about because of what I said before, about a proliferation of directives. Today individual decision-making is either not present, or when it is present, it's sometimes faulty because they're not used to doing it.

Because of the time restrictions I don't think I have much more time, but in regard to the National Parole Board, what we've observed is that instead of what was formerly a hearing, frequently a very intense discussion among the concerned people—the parole members themselves, the concerned inmate, institutional people and community-based people who knew the particular inmate—so as to arrive at an equitable decision and a bilateral acceptance of what could be done in terms of parole, what we now see is kind of an antiseptic atmosphere, one that is basically peopled by lawyers who seemingly are arguing more over procedure than anything else.

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I can give two brief examples to highlight what I mean by that. I personally was involved in a hearing about three years ago with a man who had a fairly serious, at least a long-term, drug addiction problem. I had been working with him at the time for a period of two years, on a weekly basis in a group inside the institution and on a monthly individual basis, so I thought I would represent him at the parole board. When I got in there, the important thing was the documents prepared by the institution. Unfortunately, the case management officer, as she was called at that time, who was presenting the case had seen this same individual on three occasions over the past two years. What she had prepared seemingly was what counted. Our suggestion was to release the man, not completely, but on a day parole into a specialized halfway house that is especially designed for drug offender problems. It was refused. He did his full time.

If we look at the history of the National Parole Board over the last thirty years, what we see is a natural progression to bring it to where it is today, beginning with the introduction of mandatory supervision, leading through the detention clauses in the law, the significantly increased number of conditions that are unilaterally imposed on statutory release, and finally, the imposed residency.

Our position is that the problem is a long-term one, and it's reflected in the difficulty in releasing men on parole by the parole board. The percentages are down.

We believe it started some thirty years ago with the introduction of mandatory supervision being in the hands of the parole board. As I mentioned before, through mandatory supervision, through detention and statutory release, their involvement in it has converted the parole board, which originally was a releasing mechanism, into much more of a detaining mechanism.

To highlight that, you may remember that the John Howard Society of Canada presentation quoted the statistics of the releases in 1996-97, and they clearly indicated that the percentage of releases through accelerated parole review were higher than those released on full parole, and the percentage of releases on statutory release were significantly higher than those released on full parole.

As we know, the National Parole Board is involved in all those releases, but in a very different way. The original concept of the parole board as a releasing mechanism was, as I mentioned before, to study the case and, in a relatively simple procedure, try to come up with an answer to rather complex behaviour. What we see today is a very complex procedure leading to what sometimes seem to be simplistic solutions.

As I mentioned before, the paradoxical situation really started when mandatory supervision came in. If I can give an example of what I mean by that, so that it's clear, if I'm doing a three-year sentence and I come before you after a year, after the one-third, for parole, what is to be decided by you is whether you believe I'm able to complete my sentence in the community under certain conditions. You refuse me. I go back and do my other year, and I come up a year later, after two-thirds. I don't come in front of you, but you decide that I'm going to be released on a statutory release with the same conditions that you told me a year ago I was not able to deal with in the community. That's the situation we had starting back in the early 1970s, and we see the results of it today.

In part, I believe it's over-legislation, certainly an over-bureaucratization of everything.

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What we recommend... I must say that our recommendations may very well appear to you to be drastic. I believe they are. But I want to make it clear that we're not coming at it just off the tops of our heads. It doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to agree, but I think it's based on our own experience.

For example, I've been very fortunate in my career. I worked for the Canadian penitentiary service and later for Correctional Services as an institutional psychologist, later as a consultant psychologist. I worked at McGill University Forensic Clinic as a research worker. At that time we were very fortunate in being able to set up and maintain a highly specialized program in New York State for the New York State Department of Corrections, a diagnostic and treatment centre to deal with persistent offenders, the same kinds of offenders we have in the penitentiaries here. I was very fortunate in that; it was an excellent experience for us.

The Chairman: I ask you to conclude so we'll have some time for questions.

Mr. Paul Williams: I will conclude by just saying that the reason I'm reciting that is because it's based on our experience that we suggest that the parole board be divorced completely from forms of conditional release other than full parole and day parole. Consequently, we suggest also that more use be made of the community sector, that the supervision of men on parole or day parole, which is a bilateral contract, be carried out by competent organizations within the community itself—in other words, a community-based organization. We believe the Correctional Service of Canada has adequate experience and expertise to deal with the other forms of release.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you for that presentation.

[Translation]

Mr. Perron, you have five minutes.

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron (Rivière des Mille-Îles, BQ): I only have a few brief comments. My name is Gilles Perron and I am the Member for Rivière des Mille-Îles.

Mr. Paul Williams: Good afternoon.

Mr. Gilles Perron: I am new to the sub-committee and I would like to know if you agree with the philosophy of every other John Howard Society.

Mr. Paul Williams: Yes, we have established—

Mr. Gilles Perron: So the brief you have read should therefore reflect what we heard in Toronto.

Mr. Paul Williams: No, not necessarily. Each John Howard Society in its respective Canadian province is autonomous. We are an affiliated member of the John Howard Society of Canada. We are volunteer members. The John Howard Society of Canada does not have a written policy which its members must adhere to. We exchange information, share our experiences and agree on many issues, but not necessarily on everything.

Mr. Gilles Perron: You seem to do a lot of work involving our penal institutions. If you had to choose the best penal system in the world, which one would it be; would it be in the United States, in England, in France or in Italy?

Mr. Paul Williams: I have direct experience with the system in the State of New York, as well as with our federal and provincial systems. I was a member of the Commission québécoise des libérations conditionnelles for about ten years.

In my opinion, there is no ideal system. Our current system is more or less ideal, but it will never be perfect. We often compare ourselves with the United States, despite the fact that our situations are very different. The United States are ten times bigger than us and they have ten times as many problems as we have. Unfortunately, it seems that ten years on, our system has the same problems as those found in the United States. It seems we are following their lead in throwing people in jail at the first opportunity. Despite the fact that we know that jails are necessary, they should only be used as a last resort. Unfortunately, they are the first resort of our courts, of the National Parole Board and of Correctional Services Canada, which tend to solve problems by throwing people in jail rather than solving them with the help of the community, which is often quite doable.

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If possible, we should always try to solve our problems outside of jail because incarcerating people has very negative repercussions. This fact is not taken into account often enough, which does not help create a well-balanced system.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Thank you, Mr. Williams.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Perron.

[English]

Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Williams, I have a few brief questions. I'll begin with a comment.

I recognize, of course, that you have far more experience than I do on a day-to-day basis in the system, but I've attended four parole hearings of various types—only four, I admit—and none of them have involved cumbersome legal procedures or indeed lawyers.

Mr. Paul Williams: I see.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And they were all handled, I thought, with some compassion and with some direct involvement between the parole board members and the inmate concerned. That's not to say that your point is invalid; it's just my very short experience.

Thank you for the written brief. Page four of your brief says in the second paragraph—and you're referring to the National Parole Board—that there is a “...low percentage of offenders released on parole (bi-lateral contract) as opposed to those released on statutory release...”. Can that bold statement be verified by stats, and are the stats based in Quebec or nationally?

Mr. Paul Williams: The stats I took were those cited in the John Howard Society of Canada presentation. They quote the statistics from 1996-97. I have a copy here, but off the top of my head, I believe the releases on full parole were approximately 12%, on APR approximately 14%, and on statutory release around 80%. So it was a highly significant difference. That's the only statistic I'm alluding to there.

In my own personal experience, I put in an average of about three days a week in Leclerc penitentiary in Montreal, and that also is the penitentiary that brings back the post-suspension cases. So somebody with not necessarily a new crime but with a technical will be brought back to Leclerc.

I don't spend my time in post-suspension, but I do see a number of cases, and I try not to take just what the inmate tells me. I try to ask him for the written word as well. Having been involved in parole supervision in the past, I'm amazed at some of the returns to the penitentiary, and I wonder why. We talk about vaunted services out there of all sorts: we talk of anger management, we talk of all of these great programs—

Mr. Tom Wappel: That's moving right into my next question.

Mr. Paul Williams: Okay. Sorry.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Just so that I understand, maybe I'm not quite getting what you're saying.

Mr. Paul Williams: Okay.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You said 80% release on statutory release.

Mr. Paul Williams: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: That's what you said, roughly.

Mr. Paul Williams: Yes, right.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And I'm not terribly concerned about whether it's 80.9%—

Mr. Paul Williams: Okay.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I'm surprised that it's that low, quite frankly, because once you reach statutory release you should be out, unless there are... There are very specific criteria in the act, as you know, that must be met in order to keep you in.

Mr. Paul Williams: Right.

Mr. Tom Wappel: So I don't think 80% is high. I think it's low if you're at statutory release, unless it's a figure that's comparing to, as you put it, bilateral parole. Is that your recollection of the figures?

Mr. Paul Williams: I'll try to clarify what I mean, because what you're saying doesn't seem to be what I was trying to communicate.

If we take 100% of the men released from the penitentiary in 1996-97, 12% of them were released through accelerated parole release. The parole board's involved in that. I'm sorry, it's 14%—12% on full parole and—

Mr. Tom Wappel: That's 26%.

Mr. Paul Williams: That's right, and then approximately 80% for—

Mr. Tom Wappel: That's over 100%.

Mr. Paul Williams: If you want, I can check, just to give you the short—

Mr. Tom Wappel: You've given me the general idea. So what you're doing is you're taking the number of releases in a year and figuring out the percentages of where they fall. All right. Now I understand. Good.

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Mr. Paul Williams: That's right, yes. And the point is to say that the parole board is involved in all of those releases, or can be in the statutory release as well, but in a completely different role from what parole was designed for.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Okay.

On page five, first paragraph, fourth sentence: “Problematic situations with offenders on conditional release are all too frequently dealt with by return to the penitentiary.” What is a problematic situation?

Mr. Paul Williams: For example, I came across a man recently who was on a life sentence who had been returned. My years might be a bit off, but I believe that over the last twelve years he was released eight times and returned eight times, never once for a new crime, always for a technical violation.

Mr. Tom Wappel: What is a technical violation?

Mr. Paul Williams: In his case, as I understand it, it had been identified as a drinking problem that he had. So it would be around that.

Now, this is an individual I would consider I don't know. I can say hello to him, and if he walked by I'd know who he is, but for me that's not considered knowing the individual.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Mr. Williams, what I'm getting at is you're calling it a technical violation.

Mr. Paul Williams: That's right.

Mr. Tom Wappel: If he is released on parole on the undertaking that he will not drink, and he drinks, that to me is a purposeful violation, a choice made by the inmate. That's not a technical violation.

Mr. Paul Williams: Okay.

Mr. Tom Wappel: If he picks up something that he thinks is water and it happens to be vodka and he drinks it, that's a technical violation.

Mr. Paul Williams: Okay.

Mr. Tom Wappel: If he orders a beer from a bar, that is a conscious act going against the promise, as you put it, in his bilateral contract that he made that he would act in a certain way in order to be released from prison.

Mr. Paul Williams: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: So my question simply is, in your definition of problematic situations, are you including conscious choices made by inmates contrary to the promises they made?

Mr. Paul Williams: Definitely I would in certain cases. Again, that's why I say what we've gotten away from is dealing with the individual as an individual. We know that if we release a man, for example, who's been involved in armed robberies and other forms of violent behaviour and he is supposed to report on a basis of every two weeks, for example, and he starts sloughing it off and he's not showing up, the way we used to deal with that was we would get in touch with him, sit him down, read him the riot act and work with him to try to find out what's going on and if it's that hard to come in every two weeks.

What I'm finding out today is the guy's back in. I think that is an overuse of incarceration, only because, as I said at the beginning, we don't believe that incarceration alone or the fear of incarceration alone is going to prevent.

We're talking about men who have had problematic behaviour for a long time; it has to be worked with, and it can be worked with better in the community than inside. But if it has to be inside, you've got to bring him in. I don't want to be misinterpreted there.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I understand the point.

Mr. Paul Williams: Penitentiary is necessary.

Mr. Tom Wappel: My final thing is on page six. I don't want to seem like I'm moving along here, but we have set times for people, so please forgive me.

Mr. Paul Williams: I understand.

Mr. Tom Wappel: In the last full paragraph, I just want to understand this: “Our suggestions are few but basic”.

Mr. Paul Williams: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I have four things circled. Then I read the first two and confuse myself into thinking they somehow are a restatement of three. In other words, “There must be a clear demarcation between discretionary parole and other forms of release.” Isn't that another way of saying “We recommend that the NPB be divorced from all forms of release...”?

Mr. Paul Williams: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And “Similarly, the supervision of those released on condition must be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the fundamental difference between the bi-lateral...and other...”. Isn't that the same as “We recommend that the NPB be divorced from all forms of release...”?

Mr. Paul Williams: No. I would say it's more the parole supervision and the day residency.

Mr. Tom Wappel: So in fact there are two, as opposed to—

Mr. Paul Williams: It really is two. The two second are really to reinforce or clarify. I guess they didn't, but they're meant to try to clarify what I was saying.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Very good. Thank you very much.

Mr. Paul Williams: You're welcome.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Williams. We appreciate you taking the time to come and make this presentation to us.

Mr. Paul Williams: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Our next witnesses are Terrence Drummond, Georgina Drummond and William Hartzog.

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[English]

Are you more comfortable in English or French?

Mr. Terrence Drummond (Individual Presentation): I think we'll make the presentation in English, but I'd be able to answer in French.

The Chairman: Just so that you know, this is a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and our mandate is a review of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. The act when it was passed in 1992 had a clause in it saying that it would receive parliamentary review after five years of application. We are reviewing it to specifically see what recommendations this subcommittee can make through the standing committee to Parliament. So we'd be interested in hearing your experience with the act and your concrete recommendations if you have any.

Go ahead, please.

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Mr. William Hartzog (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much for hearing us.

I don't know if everyone at the table is an MP. I see two name tags, two people without name tags.

The Chairman: Next to me are two researchers who are helping us.

Mr. William Hartzog: We basically have three members of the review panel.

We would like to begin our short presentation with a statement by Mr. and Mrs. Drummond—

The Chairman: Certainly.

Mr. William Hartzog: —followed by representations on my part, which are written. We've also provided the committee with the results of an inquiry held subsequent to the tragic death of the son of the Drummonds in Donnacona prison. As this is probably the fourth death attributed to suicide in Donnacona, the preoccupation we'd like to address to you is extremely serious. I don't mean to think that you're not going to take it seriously. I myself was a member of the National Parole Board from 1996 until two weeks ago, 1999, so I'll have some reference that may be of some help.

The Chairman: The only difficulty is the time restraint, so if you can keep it to...

Mr. William Hartzog: We will make a short presentation and we'll look forward to questions.

The Chairman: Certainly the committee has all the documentation and can review it when we're preparing our report.

Mr. William Hartzog: Of course.

I will let Mr. and Mrs. Drummond begin.

The Chairman: Certainly. Mr. Drummond.

Mr. Terrence Drummond: We are the parents of Jeffrey Maurice Drummond, who died at Donnacona prison at the age of 32 on Thanksgiving Day in October 1995, only 50 days or so from his statutory release from imprisonment. We thank you for the opportunity to speak with you and we appreciate the sincere attempt you are making to review the laws on correctional services and conditional release.

Jeffrey is now one of at least three inmates who have died in the last four years at Donnacona, all indicated as suicide victims. An inquiry held at the request of the Correctional Service Canada concluded that Jeffrey committed suicide, a conclusion we are not ready to accept. We feel Jeffrey indeed wanted to be released from prison and returned to the community and that he would not have taken his own life. Reports from his community assessment evaluation case came to the same conclusion.

Jeffrey leaves behind a daughter whom he loved, two brothers, five sisters and ourselves, his parents. We would like to present our observations and wishes for sincere changes in the attention, treatment, and care given to inmates and for legislation, which is necessary to ensure that such a tragic thing never occurs again in any prison or penitentiary in Canada.

We would now like Mr. William Hartzog to make a presentation summarizing the conclusions of the inquiry mentioned above and concerning where the law either needs strengthening or modifying as well as where the law and regulations might not have been applied at all in Jeffrey's case.

After Mr. Hartzog's presentation we'd be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

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The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Drummond.

Mr. Hartzog.

Mr. William Hartzog: Yes. The committee will note that the Drummonds have a handwritten presentation as well and a letter from their son.

I will read this and then cut it short in another aspect of it.

My name is William Hartzog. I am a member of the Quebec Bar and a former member of the National Parole Board of Canada from May 1996 to May 1999. I was a part-time member of that commission in the Quebec region.

The Drummond family have asked me to review the information forwarded to them by the Solicitor General of Canada consisting essentially of the contents of an investigation requested by the then regional president of Corrections Canada for Quebec, Mr. Jean-Claude Perron.

My presentation will be in two parts, divided as follows: first, a summary and observations about the inquiry and circumstances surrounding Jeffrey Drummond's death; two, comments on the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. We will provide the committee with some material from Mr. Drummond's file and from the inquiry report.

One, as noted by Mr. and Mrs. Drummond, the inquiry concluded that Jeffrey Drummond did commit suicide. Jeffrey Drummond had been in administrative segregation for two weeks at the time of his death and had two more weeks to go before returning to the regular population and may have had a hearing by an independent judge. This is not revealed in the report.

He had been in segregation because the detention cells were full. As noted by the Drummonds, he would have been released on statutory release on December 3, 1995, his death on October 9 being therefore less than two months before his final and ultimate release from prison.

I recognize that this is of course already written, but if you would indulge me I will be very quick.

The Chairman: That's fine.

Mr. William Hartzog: Thank you.

His death came only two months before his final release. The inquiry concluded that on the day of his death at least one guard—and that's in the material we've given you—told the nurse on duty who visited Mr. Drummond in the afternoon something to the effect—please see the report for the correct wording—that “the Psychiatrist should see Mr. Drummond because he is not the type of person to ask for help.”

The nurse reported to the inquiry that she intended to inform the psychiatrist the next morning—too late in these circumstances. The nurse who had seen him earlier had not made any notes herself about his behaviour that would raise worries.

The inquiry reports that another guard told a psychologist a few days before his death that Mr. Drummond needed help. The psychologist denied this happened.

Mr. Drummond's behaviour was indeed strange, disturbing, and totally ignored by the professional staff at all levels, and in fact tragically understated in one guard's report, who, unprofessionally and cynically, wrote that apparently his problem is the inmates don't like him because he disturbs them. That's my paraphrase. You'll see the exact words in the report.

Mr. Drummond had become aggressive, seemed to be determined to be antagonistic to the guards, participated along with other inmates in a disturbance, but clearly was acting very differently from other inmates, banging his cell, yelling all night, ringing his alarm constantly, refusing to take walks, not sleeping and being what must have been obviously disturbed.

The remarks by Mr. and Mrs. Drummond about other deaths by suicide at Donnaconna, at least one—I'd say see enclosed newspaper report, but I failed to attach it to my material—happening in 1997, is pertinent. There is a tragic problem at Donnaconna.

Was Mr. Drummond's transfer to Donnacona justified even if he requested it? With respect, opinions differ. He was only back in prison due to a suspension of his statutory release. He'd been released in May. He'd had trouble in the community. He was rearrested. He was tried and on August 1 he was acquitted on two charges, convicted on one of disturbing the peace, which was suspended. And of course he needed a hearing to see do they maintain the suspension or do they continue it.

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So this was a matter that probably shouldn't have taken him from Leclerc to Donnacona. He was only waiting on a post-suspension hearing by the National Parole Board. Under these conditions, with less than four months before his new statutory release, it is not difficult to be doubtful. I've underlined the following: his records were not even transferred to Donnaconna until two weeks after his own physical transfer. That's in the report from the inquiry.

The inquiry indicates that Donnaconna did not even know he was there for a post-suspension hearing. They knew he was there; they didn't know why he was there. The absurdity is that if he had been allowed to resume his conditional release—if they had granted it, not that on merit he might have gained it, I'm simply saying theoretically—sending him to Donnaconna would have been unwise professionally, socially, and financially.

Mr. Drummond did not have a meeting nor even have a case officer assigned to him for some considerable time after his transfer to Donnaconna. Again, you'll find that in the report of the inquiry. There were no psychiatric warning signs in Mr. Drummond's previous reports and assessments by the Correctional Service. At the same time, the personnel of his wing in Donnaconna on duty at the time of his death had not taken the refresher courses about suicide prevention for nearly seven to ten years. Again that's in the report.

There was no mention in the report that the institutional head ever visited the segregation unit. The law requires a daily visit. That's in the act. It was the same for mental health personnel. There is no record that they were on their daily visit to the disturbed prisoner.

While it may be unrealistic to think prison guards are friends to inmates, they are surely their caretakers and caregivers. It's impossible to believe that caregiving or caretaking mattered—and I've underlined this and put it in bold—in any way whatsoever to the personnel at Donnaconna in this incident.

I sincerely do not think this is an exaggeration and will now indicate the duties in the law which I consider would have obligated the Correctional Service to attain a higher standard for the protection of life.

As a final note, the inquiry has only looked at the events in the light of what the notes reveal and what the personnel did. Nothing in the report indicates a perspective based on understanding the obligations for the care required by the act.

The Corrections and Conditional Release Act may be adequate; it may be deficient. At this point it's hard to tell, based on the Drummonds' experience.

Nothing in the act mandates the correctional investigator to intervene using the powers of the Inquiries Act in cases of death—I'll highlight that in my discussion about the law. This is surely a shortcoming. The act says may, it doesn't say must. The record of the correctional investigator reflects a needed concern for procedure and the respect of the mission of the Correctional Service. Being involved could make other suicides unlikely.

The following is a list of the provisions in the act that are pertinent in this case. I will make remarks orally about each one, promising the committee to commit myself to writing if needed.

I will go along quite rapidly and you can interrupt me and... I know there's a recording, and that will certainly be adequate.

I am unfortunately not referring to the articles of the most current version of the act. I'm referring to the articles in chapter 20 of 1992. It's simply the act that was in effect at the time Mr. Drummond lost his life, although many of them are still in effect and still pertinent. So I don't know if you'll have the same numbers.

Article 4 talks about the principles of the Correctional Service and that they shall guide the service in achieving its purposes referred to in article 3, which is carrying out sentences, assisting rehabilitation.

Paragraph 4(a) says the protection of society must be paramount. We understand that.

Paragraph 4(b) says the sentence should be carried out in regard to all relevant available information. You could therefore ask yourself why you would transfer a man without his record, file and dossier and not assign a case officer for two weeks. That's pertinent, I believe. The act may be adequate, but the application may be a problem here. I know that's not your mandate but we'd like to illustrate it anyway.

Paragraph 4(d) says the service must use the least restrictive measures consistent with the protection of the public, staff members and offenders.

Paragraph 4(e) says offenders—and we all agree, of course—retain the rights and privileges of all members of society, with qualification.

• 1350

Paragraph 4(g) will tell us that correctional decisions must be made forthrightly and fairly, with access to an adequate and effective grievance program.

Paragraph 4(h) compels the service to respect gender, ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences.

The Chairman: I have to interrupt you for a second, Mr. Hartzog. On the copy of the act we have, article 19 says where an inmate dies or suffers bodily injury, the service shall...

Mr. William Hartzog: I haven't gotten to that yet. That wasn't what I was stating.

The Chairman: Okay.

Mr. William Hartzog: What I said about shall and may—

The Chairman: That would be correctional investigators.

Mr. William Hartzog: That's right.

The Chairman: Yes, okay.

Mr. William Hartzog: The act provides that the commissioner may mandate an inquiry by the commission. We feel that probably would be a helpful necessity.

Again I am very sorry for the dissonance in the numbers, but the principles are the same and many of them remain.

Obviously the mandate of the Correctional Service is the care and custody of inmates in their preparation for release. Then we come to what was then article 6, which is the governor in council. That goes right back to the government making regulations. These are not regulations made by the commissioner. They are made by the Governor in Council, therefore they have legislative weight—for control and management, care and control and all matters that are pertinent.

I will then jump to article 19, which is the same as your article 19, that where an inmate dies or suffers injury there should be an investigation and it should be taken to the commissioner.

I assume their regional inquiry was that investigation. We're not entirely certain whether this was the same one or not, but there was an investigation. The act says the correctional investigator should receive a report. It would probably be pertinent that the correctional investigator have a mandate to deal more explicitly with cases of death and use the powers of the Inquiries Act, as I've stated before.

Article 22 says the minister may make regulations and pay compensation. The Drummonds have not at this point asked that, nor has it ever been raised by Correctional Service or the Solicitor General of Canada. There may be a need to have something in the regulations about reaching out. Do we have to make a lawsuit first, or should there be... I think the conclusion of the inquiry is there were errors and negligence—not malintentioned negligence, but I'd consider it negligence. It's an area that's important.

On article 23, the obligation to pass on information, when you transfer someone, the handlers should know who they have, why they have them and what the reasons are.

Article 24 says to keep the information up to date. We think the inquiry demonstrates that had they had more up-to-date information, they would have been more appropriate. This is not a gripe or a grievance or a chicane; it's a situation that led to death.

Article 28 says you should transfer someone to the least restrictive environment possible, taking into account the needs of the inmate.

On article 31, administrative segregation, it appears that Mr. Drummond was probably initially put in administrative segregation, although the report doesn't reflect it, and probably went before a hearing board. He was in segregation because the detention cells were full, but he was probably isolated because of an infraction. There's no dispute on that issue. I think he was originally administratively segregated.

To segregate someone you have to have reasonable grounds, obviously. You must come to the conclusion that there is no other alternative possible. The act requires, at what was then paragraph 31(3)(c), that the institutional head assure himself or herself that segregation is necessary. This could be delegated, I suppose, to a subaltern, but we feel there should be more direct involvement by the institutional head. The act later requires that every single day you're in segregation the institutional head visits you. As I say, the report doesn't reflect that it occurred.

• 1355

We obviously note at article 32 that all the decisions are subject to the rules of article 31—least restrictive, the most appropriate—and we know that article 33 begins to set out the procedure for how you deal with people in segregation.

Article 36 is what I referred to a second ago, which is the obligation of the head to visit every single day. You're not here to do an inquiry into that case, I do understand that. It may be, nevertheless, that this is an area of heightened scrutiny and perhaps more specific regulation.

They have the same rights and privileges at article 37, subject to necessary restrictions.

I only mention article 38 because it sets forth that there is a discipline regime. As the inquiry indicated, it's not obvious that Mr. Drummond was in segregation as a result of a disciplinary action. It's not clear he did have a hearing. Do you understand that?

Article 40 tells us what the disciplinary offences are. I won't go into great length there, but we do know that at article 42 you get a written notice of the reason for segregation or discipline. You have to know why, you have to know if it's minor or serious, and you have a series of procedures.

There's a fine line between telling you that this was handled badly and that you should foresee, in the law, that it is adequately protected; I understand that. We'd say at article 69 that although normally we think cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment or punishment of an offender is obvious to most of us—that's cruelty and intentional hostility, torture, things like that—I think it's possible to ascertain that the deprivation and the non-timely presentation of health services could be understood as inhumane treatment, if not cruel treatment.

At article 72 I call the attention of honourable members to your right to visit any penitentiary in Canada, any prison, any penitentiary, to visit any inmate.

It's important to stress that in providing for health care, in articles 85, 86, and 87 we define health care. We define mental health care, and at article 86 the service is obliged to provide essential health care and reasonable access to non-essential care. In this case we think the essential care he should have had wasn't available to him.

At article 87, the service shall always take into account the offender's state of health and health care needs in all decisions affecting the offender.

I can go on to article 90. There's a grievance procedure. You know why you're in detention. You can grieve and you can complain. You must have complete access.

Article 96, we now see that the Governor in Council may make regulations. We see a number of regulations that are important, I think, for the committee to keep in mind and perhaps review.

We know that the Governor in Council makes recommendations regarding the placement of inmates, pursuant to another section or another article, and their transfer. One would need to know if the regulations are adequate with regard to transfers without documentation. You mustn't transfer someone—it's heard frequently that that occurs—without their papers, without telling the receivers who they are or what they need.

Regulations regarding the administration of segregation... Honestly, we haven't prepared an information brief for you on that subject. It may be an area bearing more scrutiny.

We also know that others than staff members may conduct disciplinary hearings, and there's the regime of the independent president.

We know that the Governor in Council at paragraph 96(y) mandates and stipulates that procedures should be written by Governor in Council regarding the procedure to be followed on the death of an inmate. There may be need to more adequately deal with that. We really might need to grapple with that in a great deal more... You'll read the report of what the inquiry said, and the inquiry chairman was concerned about the death. There's no indifference here; there's no inadequate concern at that point. There is an inadequate examination, we think, of why it occurred. So it's in the regulations and it may need to be looked at.

• 1400

Security classification in article 96 is another regulation. Mr. Drummond went to Donnacona from Leclerc. He had been suspended, and he needed a post-suspension hearing. He would go out, he would go in. If he stayed in, he only had four months left. Yes, he met the standards for Donnacona in terms of his personal behaviour—difficult, hostile, aggressive, may be difficult, may be violent—but it's not the only place that can deal with that. He also had to have a hearing in two weeks. So why did they transfer him?

What we hope to do, as we've said many times, is not to ask you to review what happened but to ask you to review where the law wouldn't be adequate.

The Chairman: Mr. Hartzog, you will be providing us with some specific recommendations based on the experience of the Drummond case, is that right?

Mr. William Hartzog: We certainly would be pleased to do so. Our intention at this point was to say here are our concerns. But yes, we could follow that up.

The Chairman: Obviously I've let you go on much longer than we had anticipated for that reason, to get the information, but it would be most helpful for the subcommittee if you could try to crystallize it into some specific recommendations based on the experience.

Mr. William Hartzog: Yes. I'm just finishing with article 167, which identifies the role and obligations of the correctional investigator.

As simple citizens who were parents of an inmate who passed away, it's difficult to engage counsel who has the time and the resources to respond deeply enough to undertake a review of the law, which is obviously a considerable undertaking, as your research assistants will certainly recognize.

At this point we dearly hope to tell you where we thought there were some problems. We would certainly be willing to come back and respond in writing. I hope if you do have questions for the Drummonds I haven't taken up too much time. It's a joint decision to present this, as you know.

The Chairman: I think we're pretty much past our allotted time.

[Translation]

Mr. Perron, do you have any questions?

Mr. Gilles Perron: I would like to make a brief observation. Is the case we're discussing still before the courts? How far along is it?

Mr. William Hartzog: It has not been prosecuted and there is no formal demand. For the moment, there has only been a request for information. In the beginning, Mr. and Ms. Drummond did not want to sue for compensation, but that still remains a possibility. For now, they want to understand what happened and perhaps begin discussing the possibility of compensation. But they don't intend to sue. There has been a death and a request for information, which we are assessing right now. The Solicitor General responded by providing the results of the inquiry. It is very unfortunate that we were not given the results of the inquiry carried out by the Sûreté du Québec. We were also not given access to some of the coroner's documents. We have his conclusions, but... So, as we speak, we don't intend to sue. No action has been taken in that regard.

Mr. Gilles Perron: I hope you will send us your recommendations.

Mr. William Hartzog: I will do so in all sincerity. Given the results of the inquiry, I cannot help but note that despite public statements as to the unfortunate nature of the event, nobody committed themselves to doing everything possible to prevent it from happening again in the future. In 1997, there was another suicide at Donnacona. As far as we know, that's the fourth one. It's extremely serious when a guard says that an inmate's problem is that other inmates do not like him because he bothers them, when in fact he is almost delirious. The inmate was delirious for two days, if not four. That's not a long time. Yes, we do promise to give you some recommendations.

• 1410

Mr. and Ms. Drummond might like to say a few words to that effect.

The Chairman: I first have to give the floor to Mr. Wappel.

Mr. William Hartzog: Very well.

[English]

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you for coming. Allow us to express our sympathies on the loss of your son. I'm sure no parent wishes to survive their children voluntarily. It's always a tragedy when someone takes their own life.

We would appreciate your recommendations tout de suite, because we are beginning our deliberations on Tuesday, and the faster you could get them in... They don't have to have extensive justification, since you've been here, just the recommendation.

If I may, the way I take your presentation on the face of it is it would seem as if most of the things that are mentioned are a failure to implement properly the procedures and laws and sections that are already there. That of course is beyond our mandate.

If I can distill what you've presented, I believe you have a specific recommendation that in the event of a death at an institution, the correctional investigator should, as a matter of course, conduct his or her own investigation. So that's clearly a specific recommendation.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

Mr. William Hartzog: I think this is the most democratic correctional service in the world. Maybe Denmark is progressive, or maybe some of the European countries, but there's no attempt here to say this is a correctional service with the correct mission. It is, and the values and guarantees that are contained in this act do Canada proud. I'm very sure that many of the personnel and directors and heads and regional heads themselves also have that same commitment.

[Translation]

I don't mean to insinuate that the mission is inadequate. On the contrary, I believe it is one of the best missions in the world and one of the most democratic ones. It is one of the missions which is most respectful of the rights of inmates. However, there is room for improvement—

[English]

I think it's necessary for us to state that it's, at least personally, something I'm proud of, that the service has the missions it has, that the parole board has the missions it has. It's necessary to ask, what do we need to do with the law?

I taught law in Rwanda. The Rwandan constitution is extremely sophisticated and guarantees

[Translation]

the presumption of innocence and so on. The constitution is beyond reproach. But there was a genocide of 500,000 in that country.

[English]

Laws are important and must be reviewed. I commend the commissioner for its review, and I think it's extremely valuable.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Perron.

Mr. Gilles Perron: You just said that Denmark's prison system could serve as a model in some areas.

Mr. William Hartzog: Yes, but our system compares well to most other progressive systems. I don't think there are any structural, obvious or insidious weaknesses in our law. I personally have a lot of confidence in the mission, the principles and the respect of inmates, in the disciplinary regime and in everything else. In other countries, there may be less of a tendency to incarcerate people, but that is not due to the correctional system legislation; it's rather a matter of having a different mentality. Yes, I wanted to recognize other systems, but I did not want to insinuate that ours—

• 1415

In my opinion, the democratic rights under that law are more than adequate. There is also the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Perron. Mr. Hartzog, thank you very much.

[English]

Mr. and Mrs. Drummond, thank you very much for coming.

As Mr. Wappel has indicated, we'll be preparing instructions to the researchers very shortly as a committee, so if you could get that to us, we'd be most appreciative.

Mr. William Hartzog: I'm going away for the weekend. I'll take my little computer with me and try to fax it to you on Tuesday.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. William Hartzog: Thank you so much for letting the Drummonds come and see you—et moi aussi.

The Chairman: Our next witness is Alice Katovitch. Please come forward.

I understand Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger is with you.

Ms. Alice Katovitch (Individual Presentation): He's here, but he will speak after I speak.

The Chairman: Fine. Go ahead, then. If you keep your presentation to approximately ten minutes, that will allow time for the members to ask questions.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: Good afternoon, honourable members of the justice committee.

My name is Alice Katovitch, and I am the mother of a first-time offender who went into the federal prison system in January 1994 on a five-year sentence for armed robbery. His five-year sentence was to end in January 1999.

I lived a parent's worst nightmare, 24 hours a day for four and a half years, with the fear that my son would be killed or driven to kill himself in a federal prison here in Quebec.

My son spent the majority of his sentence in voluntary segregation, and some disciplinary segregation for his own protection in the last part of his sentence.

My son's life was threatened in 1995 while he was at the Cowansville medium security prison. He was not threatened by other inmates, as one would expect, but rather by the Correctional Service staff, who told him he may end up banging his head like Barnabe when he is put in the hole, in segregation.

On March 21, 1997, my son was transferred to Port Cartier. While he awaited his transfer, word started to circulate at Donnacona that the guards had set up a contract on my son's life when he would arrive at Port Cartier. These threats to my son's safety may sound non-credible to you, but to my son, who lived through it, and myself, being helpless to do anything, it was very real and left us feeling terrorized.

The whole situation began to escalate in 1994, when my son's dessine technique teacher decided to have him expelled from the course. The teacher changed the time allotment for him to do particular work on a module, which reduced the time allotted by the Ministry of Education from 72 hours to 36 hours. The teacher's having tampered with these figures would have made it impossible for my son to complete his work on time, and when he refused to sign the document that this teacher asked him to sign, he was taken before the work board and was expelled from the program. This program was very important to my son for his rehabilitation.

• 1420

Had it not been for the intervention of the Office of the Auditor General, my son would not have been permitted to complete his high school program and get his graduation leaving certificate in June 1995 at Cowansville.

My son attempted to deal with these irregularities through the internal grievance and complaints procedure. These actions were used against him and he was charged and taken before the disciplinary chairperson and put into segregation. He was found guilty. The situation escalated where he was even told by the above-mentioned teacher, “If you take on one of us you take on the three hundred other officers.”

My son quickly learned what was meant from this statement when on December 23, 1994, his first Christmas inside and away from family, a guard injured him after a search had been done in his cell to harass him and they took sugar and scotch tape and typewriter and different dishes. They injured him and then proceeded to put a multitude of false charges against him to justify putting him in segregation for five days, December 23 to 28, 1994. No calls were allowed to a lawyer, no calls allowed to family. I found out because another inmate called me and told me my son had just been put in the hole.

I proceeded to call the prison and make arrangements for a family visit. I was told to come on December 27, which I did. I didn't tell my children. I didn't tell my daughters that their brother was in the hole. We were outside the prison and I said “We may not get in to see him because they have him in something they call the hole.” My girls got very upset. When we got inside the prison they tried to refuse me access, but I told them I had permission from the assistant warden and another gentleman from the visit department, and they proceeded to let us visit. But we had to visit in an enclosed plastic box, no touching, no kissing.

The Chairman: I will have to interrupt you at this point, Ms. Katovitch. I see you are about a page and a half into your memo and it's a six-page memo. Also, we're not here to re-judge specific events. If there are conclusions from the experience with the correctional system through your son, if there are conclusions and recommendations you can draw from that, that's what would be helpful for this subcommittee.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: It was a pretty terrifying situation daily. My telephone bills escalated from $200 to $500 a month. I'm very grateful... I don't know why they let him make that many calls, but I'm grateful he was allowed to make them, because I could talk to him and I could reassure him that he wasn't losing his mind. He told me things that were happening and I made records.

We were frightened, really frightened, because we took them at their word. I could not understand. I contacted Ottawa, and nothing seemed to happen.

On accountability, I'll jump to Donnacona—

The Chairman: This is filed with the committee. We have it.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: My son put himself into voluntary protective custody at Donnacona because the guards were giving him a terrible time. They were preventing him from going to his programs and then saying that he refused to go, writing up all kinds of charges. He was going before the disciplinary committee. It was terrible. So he put himself into protective custody.

While he was in there, they still managed to charge him. Coming back from the disciplinary hearing one morning, a guard came along and said he'd take him back. When they got to the large gate, the electronically controlled gate, the guard told him to proceed. Now, my son's hands were packed; he had all his documents for his defence, holding them, and my son couldn't proceed through the door because the guards wouldn't open it. The guard who was with my son proceeded to beat him up, beat him up. There are medical documents, medical records. And a psychologist came out of her office to see what all the noise was about, so she saw, and there were other guards there.

• 1425

There has to be some accountability. You can't just accept “We didn't do it”, or “We were justified in using excessive force”. You have good people and you have bad people. And it's their word taken over someone else's.

I played a very large part in my son's five years, and he has enough evidence. He has tape recordings of the internal hearings. There's a very important issue for you.

The Chairman: But—

Ms. Alice Katovitch: The chairperson is judge. He's also the crown prosecutor.

The Chairman: Unfortunately, Mrs. Katovitch, we are not here to try the Correctional Service of Canada. We're here to review the law it has to operate under and to receive recommendations and in turn make recommendations to Parliament for specific changes in the law.

Much of what you're telling us... Maybe your son has recourse through the courts, if there's evidence that there was abuse by guards, things of that nature.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: I didn't come here to... There's no vindictiveness against the Correctional Service. There is a very serious interest in why there are so many deaths, and I think someone should care.

My son made a mistake. He wanted to really turn his life around, and he has, thank God. But there are a lot of people in there and there are a lot of bad things happening to them that the law didn't state should happen to them. That's all we are interested in now. I understand that this is a story, and I just wanted to give you a general idea of what is happening in there.

The Chairman: We appreciate that. I just wanted to be clear on what the mandate and the role and the function of this subcommittee is and what it isn't.

I take very strongly your point on accountability for the Correctional Service of Canada. I think that's a point that's coming through very clearly.

I'll go to the other members and they can ask their questions.

[Translation]

Mr. Perron, do you have any questions?

Mr. Gilles Perron: Good afternoon, Madam. As the chairman just said, it is not our role to judge what happened in the case involving your son. However, Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a request: I would like us to study this case to see whether it would be possible to improve the Act or to find other ways to prevent this type of situation. That's the only thing I have to say. I don't want to say you are right or you are wrong about your son. However, it does make us stop and think about our penal system.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Madam, there is a procedure under the current act, or an avenue for an inmate, and that is the correctional investigator. Did your son or you use the avenue of the correctional investigator in his situation, and if so, what did the correctional investigator do or not do, in your view?

• 1430

Ms. Alice Katovitch: In 1994 my son did appeal to the correctional investigator. From the documents that I have and the four years after that, it looks like there was no help. On March 21, 1997, my son was being transferred from Donnacona to Port Cartier, and I had information that he was going to be killed because guards had taken that contract out on his life at Port Cartier. I had a signed affidavit from a witness. I called the correctional investigator and he didn't take me seriously. He thought it was nonsense, I guess. So my daughter sent out faxes to the Solicitor General, to the Donnacona warden, to the correctional investigator, the person who heads that office, and I think even the Prime Minister of Canada got one.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Madam, excuse me for interrupting. If you had a signed affidavit of a person alleging a conspiracy to kill someone, why would you call the correctional investigator? Surely you would call the police.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: Well, my son's case also has police reports.

Mr. Tom Wappel: But we're talking about a Criminal Code offence, conspiracy to murder.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: Yes. Now that you've brought it to my attention, you're right. You're right.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And you didn't call the police.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: That's not for me to answer.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I understand. And my question is, did you call the police?

Ms. Alice Katovitch: No.

Mr. Tom Wappel: But you called the CI, and the CI thought it was nonsense.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: That's right.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Okay. Now my question was, did your son get in touch with the CI, and did they speak to him?

Ms. Alice Katovitch: Yes, they went to visit him also, but there was never any... It appeared there was no help.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Did they give him a report or advise him of what their conclusions were?

Ms. Alice Katovitch: No, they didn't give him any report. But he did put in an access to information request from their office. In the first batch he got, I believe half of the information was missing from the pages and he put in a complaint. Just after he got out of Archambault in February 1999, he put in all kinds of access requests to get his files. They sent some files that had full pages, but it was nonsense. We have those files at home, not making sense, not making sense at all.

The correctional investigator did tell me, though, in 1997 when I told him about this death threat, that I should be very worried and afraid when my son came home. I've got to say that I got very, very upset when he said that to me, because I'm a parent and I happen to really love my son. I said “Okay, would you please do me a favour and could you please put everything you have just said to me in this telephone conversation in a letter?” He said he'd do that and hung up. I seem to have gotten him very angry. I don't know. Maybe because I was talking about this stuff. But this is reality. This did happen. It's documented. There's a lot more that's documented.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you kindly.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

Thank you very much, Mrs. Katovitch, for coming and sharing your experience with the correction system with this subcommittee.

Again, I just want to emphasize what the mandate of this subcommittee is. It's not to review particular cases. There are other bodies with jurisdictions to deal with specific cases. We are here to review the operation of the law in general terms and make recommendations to Parliament for changes in the law.

• 1435

Many of the things you are raising in this memo you provided us deal with application of the law, specific incidents, etc., and there are finders of fact who exist to deal with those issues, so I just want to be perfectly clear on that. But we do appreciate you taking your time and coming and sharing your experience with us.

Ms. Alice Katovitch: I appreciate you having me. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[Translation]

Our next witness will be Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger. Mr. Ranger, would you prefer to speak in English or in French?

[English]

In English.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger (Individual Presentation): I am appearing as an individual.

The Chairman: Welcome to the subcommittee, Mr. Ranger. We will ask you to make your presentation in approximately ten minutes if you can. Again, we emphasize that the mandate of the subcommittee is to deal with general recommendations that through the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights we can make to Parliament for potential changes in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. If you would care to proceed...

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: I'd like to be sure that everyone has a copy of my little brief.

The Chairman: Yes, we have; your brief has been distributed.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: First of all, I'd like to address the accountability aspect of what a lot of people refer to as being the system, Corrections Canada, National Parole Board, even the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada. Of course I don't particularly see the system as a system. I see the system as many individuals exercising powers that are given to them by the CCRA particularly, exercising these powers in a manner that affects other individuals directly. So some people might see it as a system, but I see it as a lot of different individuals making decisions that affect people very much directly. I want to make that clear, because when I hear “the system” it makes me wonder... It's someone has done something, or if someone has taken a decision against someone else directly, and all these decisions add up to what you could call the system.

In my brief I address a few very minor things about the act in regard to which I am asking that it be revised or changed, or looked at for that matter. With respect to accountability in general, I would like to make a proposition or a suggestion to the committee, which you could do further studies on. Firstly, let me say that I'm appearing here today because I have too much documentation and too many things that clearly show how the system could benefit from being changed, how the system could benefit from being modified, and what parts of the system are really actually working as we speak.

I would like to make a direct request before we even go any further. I understand the committee has the power to call individuals at a later date to be witnesses in order to get into certain specific matters more in depth, shall we say.

• 1440

The Chairman: Yes, the committee can invite people to come and even have certain powers of compelling bureaucrats, etc., to come before us. But obviously we need to be convinced it's something that's of general application, that it is something that will be benefiting us in our review of the act itself.

If you have more documentation you wish to file with the committee, please feel free to do so. We're open to receiving as much documentation as you wish to present. The committee, when it drafts its report, will review all the testimony from the witnesses we saw in person and also all documentation that's been presented to the committee.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: And, if I may ask, how much time is allotted for individuals to submit information before you actually take a decision as to whether or not you will call them at a further date?

The Chairman: We are well along in the process. This is the fifth regional visit we've been doing. The schedule for the committee is to sit down next week and start reviewing its evidence and give instructions to our researchers for the drafting of the report. So time is of the essence. It's very shortly that we'll be about the business of preparing this report.

• 1445

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Fine.

I would like to touch on something very briefly with respect to accountability. I know that presently there is an office that Mr. Wappel had mentioned, the Correctional Investigator of Canada. I wrote a lot of letters while I was inside prison, and at the time, because of my personal experiences, I more often than not included the term “correctional cover-up investigator”. I didn't do that to make any enemies with this office, although in the end there was no sense in my taking any kinds of measures to call them because it was just out of the question. I did so because I'm a very honest person, and a very direct person. What I see is what is there. What is there is what I say I see.

To cut to the chase, I went to the correctional investigator on many occasions about certain things, and it became more and more apparent to me that when the correctional investigator placed this information I submitted to them in the file they have at their office... And by the way, these files are undated, unsigned; they're just pieces of paper that are put there with certain words and this and that, it's very vague, which of course could have something to do with the Corrections and Conditional Release Act itself, which gives the correctional investigator almost carte blanche to do anything he wants.

You could never really take this office to court for anything, even if they do know about a suspected murder that might happen in the near future. As long as they're acting in good faith they're untouchable. So that's a very interesting aspect of the act. I thought it was interesting when I was inside, and I thought that my situation was quite helpless when I saw that. My God, I said, these are the people I can go to and get help, and they're untouchable. You cannot by any means make... a few letters, a few phone calls to the Prime Minister's office and that, but nothing else can happen.

As I said, I went to that office on many occasions, wrote many letters, and through an access request I started to understand that the information they put in my file was often missing information, and pages that were a legal size were folded very conveniently and photocopied and placed in the file so as to not show the critical information I was talking about. These might be state-of-the-art actions on the part of CIC office that they've learned over the years to deal with things. But I saw them right away, and it was very clear to me what was going on.

As far as I'm concerned, this office is just sitting there. It's true that they do have probably the best experience with corrections. Having experience and applying that experience to really solve problems is another thing. Of course you can't expect these investigators to run out tomorrow and solve all the problems in the prison system in Canada, because in two weeks they wouldn't have a job. That's something else that has to be looked at.

The Chairman: For your information, there have been groups that have brought recommendations to this subcommittee that the Office of the Correctional Investigator be made to report to Parliament, as opposed to reporting to Correctional Service Canada. So that's one concrete recommendation the committee will be considering.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: When you say report to Parliament, do you mean the Prime Minister's Office, the Governor General, the Queen, or are we talking about the Solicitor General?

The Chairman: No, to Parliament, to the House of Commons and the elected representatives who sit in the House of Commons and the Senate. That's Parliament.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: I'm sure you're aware that at the present time—

The Chairman: The way the Auditor General's office reports to Parliament, not to a specific department.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: I'm sure you're aware that at the present time the Corrections and Conditional Release Act authorizes or enacts that the CIC can under special circumstances—of which there have been more than ample examples since 1992, since the act came into effect, not even counting since the office of the CIC was created—according to the law make a special report right to the Solicitor General, and of course this would be dealt with accordingly. I'd have to say that since 1992 I have only heard of one report that was made, which was of course this famous Prison for Women incident where The Fifth Estate was actually airing everything that went on the tape all over across Canada, all over the world.

• 1450

It was absolutely no surprise to me that the correctional investigator's office were tripping over their shoes to get some kind of a report sent over to the Solicitor General as fast as possible in order to make things a little bit more, how can I say... “appropriate” is a good word.

I've seen what has gone on and I've seen certain other inmates inside where officers hace accused them of being homosexual in front of other inmates. Of course I would tell the inmate to phone the correctional investigator contact and make a complaint.

I've also seen answers come back from that office where the answers are doctored to a certain degree so as to water down the incident. I'll give you an example. One thing said “we were told”—which are these famous words that would appear—“we were told”, “it would seem”, etc. Nothing very clear—very, very vague terminology. It's a very interesting office; it's run in a very, very special way, actually.

I saw a letter one day about that specific incident I'm talking about, and it simply stated “We were told that the officer simply wanted to make you aware of the dangers of contracting AIDS in the institution if you are having sexual contact”. It went on and on and on. I mean, something just wonderful for the human rights, but nothing to do with the actual incident. I was there and I saw that incident happen.

So it was just another incident that made it perfectly clear to me why this office exists and just what it is doing. It is covering up, in my personal opinion. It is covering up incidents that are happening inside Canadian prisons all across Canada and watering them down and keeping the lid on them so that the public is just not outraged by these things that keep on going on, more and more and more.

The Chairman: Do you have any specific recommendations with respect to the Office of the Correctional Investigator or corrections generally?

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Apart from abolishing it, which would be a strong recommendation on my part, and at the present time it's the only thing... You know, you're better to have $5 in your pocket than nothing—of course not putting a monetary value on that office at all. I wouldn't want to insinuate that it's worth $5. It could be a lot less or it could be too much; it's for someone's own personal opinion.

I did bring with me today a publication from the Quebec government called “Comité de déontologie policière”. I'm sorry. I must apologize; this is only in French, and it's the only copy I could acquire from the government. But this is very, very interesting, in that this particular office was created here in Quebec. In English it's called the Police Ethics Commissioner. It's created, as you may notice on one of the little pamphlets—which are bilingual, because on these I insisted—to ensure the respect of good relations between police officers and the public.

I'm sure you can agree with me that the interaction that a Quebec police officer, whether they be the Montreal police force, the Quebec police force... it doesn't make a difference, it's police in Quebec dealing with the public. I'm sure you can agree with me that if some guy gets stopped for speeding or running a red light or whatever, these are limited instances that you have dealing with officers.

The Government of Quebec found it necessary to create an office. We're not talking about a cover-up office here; we're talking about the office of a police ethics commissioner where complaints are submitted, reviewed, and it's decided what will happen afterwards, and an appropriate sanction, I might add, is dealt with accordingly. A letter is not sent out stating that the officer slapped you on the head because he saw a bug on your head about to bite you; it might have been a bee, we're not sure, the officer can't remember, but you did get that slap and it was in good faith, believe me.

I'm not talking about that type of office; I'm talking about something concrete here. The example is in front of you. You have it there, an office that could possibly review, and swiftly so, actions of correctional officers that will affect and do affect inmates' lives directly—inmates, their families, their rehabilitation prospects.

I'm sure you read the report by the Honourable Justice Louise Arbour. It was very, very critical of Correctional Services. Particularly, I think she stated in a roundabout way, don't wait for this agency to pull up their socks, because they're just not going to do it; we have to use judicial intervention. That is short from military action.

This might sound very stupid, but I've got to say it. When I was inside and I saw what was going on, all I wanted to do was get rehabilitated. I fought with Correctional Service Canada for I don't know how many years, and all I ever wanted was to be able to do programs, turn my life around, kick myself in the butt, if you want to use layman's terms, and get out of prison and never come back—and while I was there, maybe help a few other people to do the same thing.

• 1455

There are a lot of people crying out for help, and the way the system is being administered presently, because we're talking about the administration of the sentences, is incredible. The whole thing turns toward generating more time inside, generating des échecs—I'm inside so long, I can't even speak English any more, and it's my maternal language, believe it or not.

The Chairman: Failures.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Yes, failures. It's designed to try to create failures for inmates trying to do good things for themselves, to try to distance inmates from their families. It just goes on an on.

I would hope and I would pray that the people who have the power at the present time to review this act will try their very best to implement accountability for the system, and at the same time try to give the system a little bit of a push or a shove that it so desperately needs at this time in order to become effective. The tools are there. It's just a matter of applying them in the right way.

So I guess you're going to review this “Comité de déontologie policière” and pamphlets. I would like to suggest that an office of that kind be created.

The Chairman: Okay. It's time now to go to questions.

[Translation]

Mr. Perron, do you have any questions for Mr. Ranger?

Mr. Gilles Perron: I'd like to ask a very brief and personal question. If he wants to answer, so much the better. If not, that would be unfortunate, but it's his choice.

How long was your sentence and since when are you out? Did you go through the minimum, medium or maximum facilities in our penal system?

[English]

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: To answer your question, if I interpret it correctly, my sentence was five years. I did three and a half years inside the institution, and of course this famous statutory release, which I hope to God you don't remove, because it is the only hope for a lot of prisoners... There are a lot of prisoners that must stay in jail; that's what detention is for. It is applied very loosely and it's important that it's there. But there are a lot of other prisoners that the longer you keep them in there, they're going to be ruined. They're going to be burned out and they're going to come into society and not be able to do what's necessary to turn their lives around and be productive citizens. That's important.

Yes, five years, and the latter part of your question was particularly...

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: How long have you been out, and what kinds of steps have you made in...

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Are we talking about the graduation?

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: Yes.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Yes. I began in a medium. I tried to do programs in that medium. Documents were falsified by a corrections officer. The witness previous to my mother used a very nice term—“changed dates”. This man falsified federal documents. I put charges at the SQ in Cowansville, the same SQ that were just recently charged with covering up some stuff there. It just goes on and on. Anyway, they came there when I was put in segregation on the 28th. I called the police as soon as I came out and they laughed. They weren't going to show up. I had to call this office in Montreal and then they came and they were very mad at me, screaming and yelling at me.

So I started in medium, and because I tried to do programs... Now mind you, let's make this clear, if I had used drugs inside and if I had sold drugs for the preventive security officer, because that was going on... You bring drugs in, he doesn't charge you. He doesn't call the police and say you brought in drugs and you should be charged according to the law. No, he calls you into his office and says “Listen, I'm going to let you keep your drugs. I want you to sell them to guys in here and then you give me a list of the names of the guys you're selling to.” This creates a lot of busts for the preventive security officer and it makes Correctional Service Canada look like it's working so well that it's incredible.

People are doing drugs inside and inmates' chances of being rehabilitated are being stolen right before their noses. But people are looking good in the system, and I guess that's important. That's just a small comment.

So I started in a medium, and because I wanted to do programs and because I did not stop to... I guess a lot of people use the word “whine”... I thought I was crying out for someone to intervene so I could carry on with my rehabilitation. Because I was a pain in the butt, and I was a severe pain in the butt, I might add, it got to the point where Correctional Services Canada did so many things to me.

They would put serious charges on me. Whenever I would call the police, I would get a serious charge. I put a complaint with the Human Rights Commission, I got a serious charge. I contacted the Minister of Education to try to have my mark removed because the teacher said I failed when I never failed, and I got a serious charge. It just went on and on. The RCMP finally got involved in the end and did an investigation similar to the one for David Milgaard, where they don't really go and look for the truth and prove that the person who is talking is telling the truth. They're sent out on behalf of the federal government to try to find loopholes in what is being surfaced.

Because that happened, I was transferred to a maximum security institution. The reasons given were that I put too many requests in and I put too many complaints.

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I used the offender grievance procedure. The biggest mistake you can ever make in your life in the system is using the offender grievance procedure, because after that you are burnt. The officers will abuse you, they will persecute you, they will do as much... and especially if you use if effectively, as I did. I used to type my grievances, and that's why my typewriter was seized.

I went to a maximum thereafter. I stayed until I filed a judicial review case to the Federal Court of Canada, which I learned while I was in segregation for three months.

Then the director of Donnacona Institution came and saw me, took me out of my school—fast, fast, big rush meeting. He pulled me out of the room, just me and him, and told me he would transfer me on the cuff to Drummond Institution, a medium. All I had to do was stop my complaining—stop calling senators, ministers, journalists, the media. Stop calling these people, stop damaging the credibility and the image of Correctional Service Canada, and we'll ship you to a medium right away.

But Mr. Gilbert made a mistake. If he would have told me, “Mr. Ranger, you're not a bad guy”... Well, he did say that; he said “You're not a bad guy, but your file stinks, because you're bucking against Correctional Service Canada”. If he would have told me, “I want to transfer you to a medium because there are good programs there, you can get these programs”, etc., I would have considered it. But to approach me and try to buy me off when I saw all this stuff going on around me, it didn't work, obviously.

Two weeks later I had to check into segregation because the officers were telling me they were going to assassinate me inside the prison unless I stopped.

I'm from Pointe-Saint-Charles, and I've got to tell you, my mother brought me up really, really well. When I know I am right, I will not stop for anything. Because when you know in your heart that you're right in what you're doing, nobody can scare you. Somebody can put a gun in your mouth, and you just don't get scared, because you know in your heart that what you're doing is correct and right and you're doing the good thing. If that had to happen, if I had to get killed because I wanted to try to rehabilitate myself in a system, whew, I don't know, because that's where it was headed.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Perron, do you have any other questions? Is that all?

[English]

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: I just want to make one last point very, very briefly.

I stayed in maximum security. They tried to bring me out from segregation; I wanted nothing to do with that. Then they transferred me 14 hours away from my family to Port Cartier Institution. I stayed there for three months, and then I was released.

So as far as your question is concerned, I started in a medium. I completed my correctional plan one hundred percent, but because I used the offenders' grievance procedure and I contacted people and resources outside the institutions, I was shipped to maximum and kept there for over a year and a half afterwards.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Wappel.

[English]

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Mr. Ranger, for your presentation.

Just so we're clear on the record, you are Mrs. Katovitch's son?

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Yes, I am.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You are the person who's referred to in her presentation?

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Yes, I am.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I'd like to thank you for presenting a written proposal. I may be wrong on this, because I'm quite frequently wrong, but we've heard from inmates, but usually inmates within the institution. We haven't heard from too many inmates who have completed their sentence and have come here to tell us about their experiences. Either you're the first or you're one of the first who has done that, and we're at the end of our inquiry.

The Chairman: Mr. Wappel, there have been two or three groups that worked with rehabilitated ex-inmates.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes, but I'm talking about an actual inmate.

The Chairman: Oh, yes. Cons for Christ was one group that was represented by a lifer and there was a lifers' association as well.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Good, excellent.

I think it's important that people who have completed their sentences and have turned their lives around should take an active part in the process, as you have done. I think this is very important, because experience can tell us a lot.

Now, of course, as you well know, there are at least two sides, if not three or four, to every story. I just want to ask you a couple of things specifically about your written proposals. I congratulate you for putting them in writing and putting them in a way that we can look at the present section and take a look at what you have to say.

However, I want to ask you specifically about section 71. I don't understand the rationale behind your addition of subsection 71(4). Could you tell us why you think we need that? I gather it is your position that people are paying CSC to employ them. What are you getting at here?

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Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: No, I was very careful when I drafted this. I'd like to thank you for asking this question, because it would take a person looking at something very particular to have noticed that.

It deals specifically with the fact that at the present time there are inmates all across Canada who are separated from their families, from their loved ones, from their children. The only way these inmates can really communicate with these people without writing letters... When you're inside, writing letters is a difficult thing to do. To put your emotions on paper and have to deal with that afterwards is very difficult as your sentence goes on; it's two different worlds completely.

One of the most popular ways to communicate, as I'm sure you know, is by telephone. Inmates all across Canada talk to their families directly by telephone and at the present time are paying horrendous costs making long-distance phone calls to their families.

What's happening is that Corrections Canada is getting—I use the word “kickbacks”, Bell Canada uses the word “discount”—these humungous $75,000 cheques, and it goes on and on, because of the humungous long-distance calls by inmates who are just trying to keep in contact and trying to the keep that umbilical cord, if you want, with their families so that they don't turn into bad apples and so that their families can support them and try to saturate them with love and happiness and support. Corrections Canada is making a fortune.

With regard to the families, I would like to mention my mother in particular, because the last time I was sent back to prison... When I spoke at CKUT radio here in Montreal, they whisked me back to the halfway house the same day and send me away to prison for three months and told me that I had embarrassed the government by doing a press conference on October 29, 1998. That's another story.

But I was in university, in the Honourable Marcel Danis' political science class here in Montreal at Concordia University. I was taking a law course. I was working; I had a full-time job. I'd just got married. It's incredible what these people do when you show that you have the potential to damage their credibility or to expose what's going on in the system.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Mr. Ranger, can I get you to focus on my question?

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Yes. I'm sorry.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You're referring specifically to the money that is paid or you think is paid—I don't know, it may be the case—to CSC by the telephone services—

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: That's right.

Mr. Tom Wappel: —for presumably engaging that particular company as the telephone provider.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: As that carrier, exactly, 100%.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And you think that is improper in some way.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Absolutely. I think the company that provides telephone services to the inmates... I'm not talking about Correctional Service Canada, the operations; I'm talking about the inmates, who pick up a pay phone and have to use the highest rate to call their families, or whoever, in Canada or even overseas. That is what I'm referring to.

You might notice that I put “Subject to any other provision of this Act”. I added that very quickly this morning, because I know for a fact that there are work programs and Corrections Canada has certain contracts with certain individuals to keep these people on programs to help them to reintegrate. I didn't want that to interfere at all with the fact that they're getting money for these telephone conversations. So you can see that this is pretty well restricted with respect to those kickbacks.

There should be a system implemented by Bell Canada, Sprint, ACC, AT&T—there are many companies—whereby these phones will be still operational but a factor will be added into the cost whereby the discount will automatically be given to the person they're phoning and not to Correctional Service Canada. They're making money off keeping people... If they separate you from your family by 14 hours, then you're really making... The bill for that month for my mother was $500, believe it or not, and that's incredible.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I get the point there, and I should point out that you're not the first person who has mentioned the telephone issue.

Are there any other examples that lead you to make this suggestion to us, or is it the telephone system you're really talking about?

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: There are obviously conflicts of interest. I don't know if that's where you're going, but there are lots of conflicts of interest in every institution.

Inmates have to get their electrical devices opened up and verified. It's part of the procedures. More often than not, you will find that these companies are directly run by and related to individuals who are working as Correctional Service Canada officers. In other words, they create a need for something, and then they phone their brother or they do it themselves. They create a company whereby the services that are needed by an inmate in order to have personal effects brought into the institution, or many other things, are actually being done by the staff members who are working for Correctional Service Canada. It's a clear conflict of interest.

• 1510

Mr. Tom Wappel: Hold on. I don't want to prolong things, but we were in the RRC, the regional reception centre, and they have a barber on contract who comes in and cuts the hair. Are you suggesting that a person should be disqualified from that contract because he happens to have a relative who works at the centre?

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: In little hick towns where institutions are, because we're not talking about major cities, where all these institutions keep these small towns alive—

Mr. Tom Wappel: Well, let's talk about that one. The last sign I saw was 18 kilometres from Montreal. It's not that far from the second or third largest city in Canada.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: I cannot say that I would want to include that type of a situation, because that person is providing services directly that are needed for the health and the hygiene of an inmate in a Canadian prison. That is a situation I would not want to encompass in this type of a recommendation.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I don't want to get argumentative with you, but then let's take it to the next step. Are you suggesting that a person who runs a small-engine shop who is called in to examine whether a razor contains an escape mechanism, for example, should be automatically disqualified from that contract because he is related to a member of CSC? Is that your position? That's all I'm asking.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: No, and I'll tell you why. First of all, obviously people who do these specialty types of services are few and far between. Secondly, it would be difficult to screen individuals.

Of course, one can only hope that Correctional Services, and I guess in part the Solicitor General's office, would have enough ethics and morals to understand that it's a very thin line. You see politicians lose their jobs because of these types of situations. There's a very thin line and it has to be respected. And if it must be so, well, it just seems to me that the more jobs you create for people in the community for people who are inside institutions, when you are actually working in an institution... These staff members in institutions have a direct influence over whether that inmate stays in that institution for one week or one year. It all depends on their personal opinions that they write up in their progress summary reports.

If you'll notice, I mention in the one that says “Accuracy of Information”... I didn't put in a copy of the present, but I wrote this up very briefly, because information in the system is a serious problem right now. There is all kinds of false, inaccurate, and misleading information being put down in files used to justify prisoner incarceration, used to make decisions against prisoners that affect them and their families. It's incredible. This would make it a little clearer that if that is not true and if you know that is not true, you cannot write that and that cannot be presented to the parole board, and that cannot be presented for a detention hearing, and so on. In my view, that will help the system out in the long term.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your brief, Mr. Ranger. I reiterate Mr. Wappel's thanks for having specific recommendations drafted. We appreciate it. Also, if there are further documents you wish to submit, you could do that through the clerk's office, obviously as soon as possible.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: I have to be very honest with you: I must have at least 75,000 pages of documents, if not 200,000.

The Chairman: Obviously it would be documents similar to these, where you can draw specific conclusions from your general experience.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: I would like to consider my documentation—it's in a cupboard somewhere, it's not at the centre—as a serious resource for you people, because you only see these wonderful reports that CSC pays people to produce, whereas my documents show the truth.

The Chairman: No, I'm sorry, the subcommittee has seen a lot more than reports from CSC only. We've heard from a lot of witnesses in many institutions; we met in camera with the inmate committees at these institutions, with no one present from CSC or the Solicitor General's office, and so on. We've made a very concerted effort to try to get as much accurate information as we possibly could.

• 1515

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Is there a process in place at the present time to verify with these members of the inmate committee that you meet with in the institution and who give you this accurate information on what's going on? Is there any process in place right now to verify six months later that they haven't been paroled, a full parole even, or maybe even a halfway house?

The Chairman: Well, we just met with them in the last two or three months. They all presented themselves as the elected representatives of the inmate committee. That's the only information we have.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Right, yes. I've often been to the institution. I know what that's all about, the inmate committee. The reason I was never on the inmate committee is because the inmate committees are in a sense a puppet of the administration. Of course that's no disrespect for any inmates at all; everybody has their own bag. But I've been there and I've seen it and I know what it's all about.

• 1520

The Chairman: Okay. Well, as I say, if you have further documentation, we'd be pleased to receive it. It will have to be very soon, that's all.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Is there anything in particular the committee is interested in?

The Chairman: No, it's whatever recommendations you wish to make, specific recommendations on potential changes to the legislation. That's what we're about.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Okay. Can I ask a question, or is this limited to questions from the members?

The Chairman: Well, no, you can ask one question and then we have to move on.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Okay. Thank you very much for your patience.

I would like to know if there has been serious consideration given to abolishing programs in federal institutions. Is there some kind of a consideration being given at this time to taking away programs, rehabilitation?

The Chairman: No one has made that recommendation to this subcommittee.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Ranger: Okay. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Our next witness will be professor Marie-Andrée Bertrand, whom I would like to welcome to the committee. You have about ten minutes to make your presentation after which we will proceed to members' questions.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand (Professor Emeritus of Criminology, École de criminologie, Université de Montréal): Fine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You should have received my brief in English and in French last March, or around that time. I'm not sure, given how much work you have, that you had time to read it, but I will summarize it for you in five minutes. I will try not to act like a university professor who speaks for two hours before concluding or making specific recommendations.

I am Professor Emeritus of Criminology and have taught for 35 years at the École de criminologie of the Université de Montréal. I am retired, but before I retired, I undertook a study with three master's students, one doctoral student and a research colleague, on prisons for women around the world. We travelled to Scandinavia, which has a wonderful reputation for treating prisoners well and for incarcerating as few of them as possible. We also went to England, Scotland, and the United States, where we visited five model prisons for women.

The result of all this was a book entitled Prisons pour femmes, which was published last December by the Éditions du Méridien, in Montreal, and which was the subject of at least two articles, and soon, four, entitled "Prisons for Women", "New Prisons for Women" and "Different Prisons for Women". These articles were published in criminology journals, including the Caribbean Journal of Criminology and Social Psychology, and Criminologie, which is a Quebec journal, and Women and Criminal Justice. The book basically reflected everything we saw.

Our brief highlights four points, as you have seen, Mr. Chairman. The first point is the fact that many new prisons for women are infinitely better laid out than is the Kingston prison for women; however, the training and work programs available in the new prisons are not much better than the old ones. To my knowledge, there is only one modern, original and relevant program available to women. It's the industrial design program available in Edmonton's prison for women. Elsewhere, such as the prison for women in Joliette, where I regularly visit inmates, the main type of work offered is assembling cardboard boxes.

• 1525

However, and I also recognize this in my brief, the new prisons do have some good features. For instance, in each of the new prisons, there is a model or experimental program. For example, in Joliette, there is a program for mothers and children, where mothers, grandmothers or fathers may spend several hours with the inmates in the company of their children.

But in each of these cases, these modern, original and more humane programs are only accessible to 15% to 20% of female inmates, including Edmonton's program, which I just mentioned. I've seen these programs in action firsthand, and I also met with the inmates and the prison warden. In my first point, I also say that federal inmates in Canada do not always have real access to post- secondary education.

[English]

They really have to fight enormously to get to have correspondence courses at the post-secondary level,

[Translation]

and they must also do God knows what to make classed interesting.

Mr. Chairman, I attended classes for inmates in these new institutions. I sat in on these classes. I saw the inmates. It's true that in Edmonton, primary and secondary education are well organized. It's also true that there are seven or eight computers in the adjoining room. But no one was working on those computers when I visited. The kind of interactive teaching which I saw in a Danish prison and in an American prison, at Shakopee in Minnesota, is not really done in Canadian institutions. Since I am also familiar with prisons for men and have visited male inmates, I can tell you that male inmates in Canada and elsewhere have access to post-secondary education. That concludes my first point.

My second point deals with security levels. We all know that prisons for women were built three, four or five years ago with the promise that there would be no perimeter security around these penitentiaries. However, two years after the beginning of construction and several months after the arrival of inmates to the penitentiaries, perimeter fencing was built at great expense. I was told that each of these fences cost $2 million. Double perimeter fences were built, even triple fences, in Joliette, Edmonton, Truro and Kitchener, not to mention the type of perimeter security which exists around the Burnaby penitentiary. In the latter case, the perimeter security is so sophisticated and huge, that it is absolutely out of proportion to the real danger the inmates present. Even the staff has admitted this.

So, we built security fences, but despite that fact, troublesome inmates were sent to maximum security, even super- maximum security institutions for men. If my information is correct, four former female inmates from the prison in Joliette are now housed in prisons for men.

• 1530

Second, allow me to remind you why it was decided that perimeter fences be built around the penitentiaries for women. A few women had broken out of the Edmonton jail, but this was mainly due to the fact that an absolutely unfortunate act of violence was carried out in the prison for women in Edmonton, which saw one female inmate killing another.

When there is talk of female inmates escaping, it's mostly cases of women who have not returned to jail after being temporarily released. I don't understand how perimeter security would change anything about that.

My third point is related to the second one, Mr. Chairman. In fact, at the Edmonton penitentiary, I got the shock of my life, despite the fact that I had seen it all. Two-thirds of the inmates at the prison for women in Edmonton are Native. I have nothing against jailing women who have committed a crime punishable by incarceration under the Canadian Criminal Code, but the problem we have is with the disproportionate number of Native inmates in Canada's Correctional Service. It's obvious that we have a fundamental problem in that regard.

Following the Arbour report, it was recommended that female Native inmates be housed in an institution respecting their culture and their lifestyle, which was done. So we now have the Healing Lodge for Native inmates. However, only a small percentage of female Native inmates, those who, in the opinion of correctional authorities, need only minimum or perhaps medium surveillance, are sent to the Healing Lodge, whereas, to my knowledge, there are now over 50 Native women who are serving their sentences at the facility in Edmonton.

So we can ask ourselves why we have an institution for Native female inmates when they are housed elsewhere. But to be frank, some Native women told me that they would rather not go to the Healing Lodge, since it had a fairly controlling cultural environment which they felt they did not belong to anymore. This shows what kinds of problem arise from building facilities which ultimately do not meet the needs of inmates.

I will now talk about my fourth and last point, after which I will make a few recommendations. My fourth point deals with parole. May I address this issue, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman: Yes.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Thank you.

What I had the opportunity to witness, in my frequent visits with a specific inmate and then with several other inmates at the prison in Joliette was the way these inmates were perceived by the commissioners. I've reached some conclusions, and I must admit some of them were inspired by the inmates and others by my observations during hearings which, as an exception, I was allowed to attend.

We must choose the commissioners, who will hear the cases of female inmates, through a process which is as impartial, non- political and non-patronage-related as possible, as is the case for male inmates, but we must also ensure that the commissioners are particularly sensitive to the needs of female inmates. In my brief, I quote two sentences, one which was uttered in my presence and the other which was repeated to me by the case management officer and by the inmate.

• 1535

In the one case, the commissioner had said: "Since you've already served eight and a half years of your sentence, you now have six and a half years left; I don't see why we should not let you go to a half way house to give you access to community services and work." However, the inmate in question had already been out on day parole for several months.

I don't know what you think, Mr. Chairman, but in my opinion, it is not up to the commissioner presiding a hearing to decide whether an inmate will indeed serve out a full 25 years of her sentence. This inmate has the right to believe that after 15 years she may not be completely absolved but may be transferred to another program.

Second, here is the sentence which was uttered in my presence: "I hope that you are not thinking of becoming pregnant and having a child." I'm not saying that the person who said this did not mean well. I'm saying that it was sexist. It's not acceptable for a commissioner presiding a case to say this when an inmate, for whatever reasons, wishes to have access to day parole or to obtain a review of her sentence.

Those were my four points. I summarize them on page 5 of my brief. I will now make my recommendations.

It's possible to provide modern and relevant training and work programs for current female inmates in Canada and to give them access to post-secondary education. It's been done elsewhere. Some women, who for years have fought for these rights in Canadian prisons, such as Ms. Horii, finally won their cases and had to be transferred to a prison for men in order to gain access to post- secondary education.

Second, it is not right to incarcerate female inmates in a facility which is out of proportion to the danger, or the risk, they present to society.

Third, we have to carefully choose the commissioners who will preside over cases involving female inmates and, in my opinion, they should receive special training. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Professor Bertrand.

Mr. Perron, do you have any questions?

Mr. Gilles Perron: I only have an observation.

You've summarized what I think very well. In fact, I was discussing these things with one of your former students and I do not understand why female inmates cannot have access to these programs. It may be because of the low number of women in the institution, but in my opinion that's not an excuse.

There's one point on which I disagree with you somewhat, and it regards fences. I wonder why the authorities changed their mind. Tell me if I'm wrong, but weren't the fences built to prevent people from the outside from getting in rather than those on the inside getting out?

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: If you want to prevent the public from visiting female inmates, in other words, if you really want to create unsurmountable obstacles to prevent people from getting close to the inmates—

Mr. Gilles Perron: It is not only that; it's also a question of mentality.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Of public opinion.

Mr. Gilles Perron: In Joliette, there is an apartment building near a prison. Would the occupants of that apartment building be afraid to live there because there are some mean women prisoners just a few steps away? Is that why they put up a fence?

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Possibly, Mr. Chairman, but in my opinion, perimeter security is also meant to stop criminals from escaping.

• 1540

Secondly, I can say that we saw some fine examples of the opinion of the population living near penitentiaries for women and community centres for women in trouble with the law in Montreal, when the Maison Thérèse-Casgrain wanted to move to Notre-Dame-de- Grâce. The neighbouring community maintained that it would be dangerous for the children, and for the mentality and morality of the neighbourhood. Finally they refused to allow the house in their neighbourhood, although these women could quite well be as fit to mix with society as any other women. It would be quite possible to have a correctional community centre in a neighbourhood like Notre- Dame-de-Grâce without scaring the population away.

Coming back to your objection, my criticism is far more radical than what I have said so far, and I thank you for giving me this opportunity to state my thoughts. Security levels that were believed to be legitimate and good for men in custody are still not available for women. This is a fact. Even women living in a cottage, known as a minimum security female, in Joliette, have to cross all the same security hurdles and bureaucratic procedures in order to leave as the women who just arrived and who are in the first building, where they are presumed to be under the utmost maximum security.

I admit that these houses that are run by the inmates are well-conceived and they are a great step ahead, nonetheless, all the inmates are subject to a perimeter security system that makes any contact with the outside world extremely complicated. To visit a minimum or medium security woman inmate, I have to cross bureaucratic hurdles that are not even there in medium or minimum security penitentiaries for men. I think that this is unfair. You're probably right in saying that this is because of the small number of clients, but this is a poor excuse, only based on economics and a cultural problem. The culture of Correctional Services Canada is male. I understand that, but I still think that this is not fair to women.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Perron and Ms. Bertrand.

[English]

Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

Professor, I want to zero in on this particular issue, just so that I understand what you're saying.

As I understood your original presentation, you don't think there should be any perimeter fencing of any institution that houses any woman.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: No. I'm sorry—

Mr. Tom Wappel: Do you then agree that there are some women who need to be housed in what we would term maximum security facilities, designed for women?

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes?

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Yes, thank you for your question. May I just say something about this?

I think I have repeated over and over again that about 15% of the whole population of prisons for women in the world... According to the staffs and directors and solicitor generals of all the countries where we've been, about 15% of those women are in need of real control, meaning that they should not be allowed to come and go as they wish or to go in the city or in the neighbourhood without some people around them, an escort. This is what I'm saying.

What I'm saying also is that in these small cottages where we now keep women who have been convicted because of so-called federal offences, there are now at least two-thirds of the population who do not deserve to be kept in such conditions.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Why?

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Because they are not people who require maximum security. I'm just answering your question.

Mr. Tom Wappel: But are you suggesting that people living in bungalows are in maximum security?

• 1545

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: I'm saying that the kind of perimetric security that has been built afterwards, as an afterthought, around Joliette and around Kitchener and around Truro...

Mr. Tom Wappel: Well, why was that? That was because the women who were there breached the trust of the people who designed those prisons without fences and walked away from them and committed offences.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Absolutely not. The facts were the following. What happened in Edmonton was that inside the prison an inmate killed another inmate. And if my information is correct, four inmates got away from the institution, during which stay outside no one killed anyone, and two of them came back by themselves within a week.

Mr. Tom Wappel: But it was in response to that and the community outrage at people walking away and breaching the trust.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Oh, that's something else.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Isn't that true?

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Yes, breaching the trust in Edmonton, breaching the trust of whom? I don't know. And breaching the trust—

Mr. Tom Wappel: Of society. You should know that.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: Well, the society of Edmonton, I would guess.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: I have nothing against the society of Edmonton. I'm just saying that it certainly was not—I can testify to that—it certainly was not the whole of Canada and the whole of women in Canada and the whole of corrections people in Canada who were claiming that we needed two million for fences per institution in February or something like, in 1996. It certainly was not.

For my part, if you so wish, I can bring you the newspaper cuts of people protesting against that and saying that it was absolutely unfair, a generalization, and that certainly wasn't worth eight million people in fences.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

[Translation]

Professor Bertrand, thank you very much for coming. We received your brief. And since our research assistant is a former student of yours, we will study it very closely.

Prof. Marie-Andrée Bertrand: I wasn't fortunate enough to be Lyne's teacher, but I have a great deal of regard for her. Goodbye.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Tom Wappel: Mr. Chairman, I appear to have less of a strong constitution than either you or my colleague. I wonder if we could have a two-minute break, because I would like to hear all of what the last witness has to say.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Let us take a two-minute break.

• 1547

• 1558

The Chairman: Let us resume our work.

Our next witness is Mr. Patrick Altimas, Director General of Maison L'Intervalle Inc.

[English]

Mr. Altimas, if you could give us a presentation in about ten minutes, that would allow time for the members to ask questions.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrick Altimas (Director General, Maison L'Intervalle inc.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First I would like to thank you for inviting me to share my experience with you. Excuse me if I am a bit nervous. This is my first appearance before a committee of the House of Commons. I did not have time to prepare a text. It was impossible in my present circumstances. I will try to be brief.

I have a been a criminologist for 25 years and I have worked in the field of adult corrections at different levels, both in the public and private sectors. For the last six years, I have been the Director General of Maison L'Intervalle inc., an organization that specializes in mental health and justice and offers services to adult offenders with mental health problems.

• 1600

L'Intervalle, a community resource centre that belongs to our organization, has had a contract with the Correctional Service of Canada since 1989. The Correctional Service has had a problem with mental health cases since 1989. We went from 25 to 20 places in 1994, and this was further reduced to 15 places in 1998, because the Correctional Service of Canada did not send us enough clients.

I do not intend to describe our particular situation, but I simply want to illustrate the fact that since the implementation of the Corrections Act of 1992, we have trouble preparing cases, especially when mental health problems are involved.

Also, since the implementation of the 1994 amendments, if I am not mistaken, and I'm referring to statutory release with a residency requirement, the population has changed a great deal at l'Intervalle.

In 1997-98, for instance, 48% of our clients were on statutory release with a residency requirement and only 15% were on day parole, whereas transition houses had been originally intended for clients on day parole. This radically changes the quality of the clientele as well as its motivation, if I may say so. Clients arrive without any decision as to their release because they are arriving on the date of their statutory release. The suspension rate for these statutory release clients is 50% whereas it is only 25 or 30% for day parole.

We see the same thing in the way that the accelerated parole review is applied. We might have thought that these people were motivated, but in fact, 50% if these clients get suspended for breach of parole.

I know from practical experience that certain things in this Act and its implementation must be reviewed. For instance, I have been challenging the notion of an accelerated parole review for years. In my mind, this notion goes against the very grain of conditional release. I will explain.

When conditional release was first conceived, it was a decision made by a board after evaluating various factors that an individual presented to see whether he would be eligible for conditional release. In the accelerated parole review, the mechanism is reversed and they say: "You will be released unless we can prove that you must not be released." In this case, the only thing that counts is the offence that was committed. This amounts to taking only one factor into consideration, whereas a decision to release or not to release someone is really far more complex.

Naturally, in practice, the Parole Board had sometimes seemed quite ridiculous, so to speak, in some cases where a person met the criteria, but was a member of organized crime, or someone who was presumably involved in criminal activity and likely to continue his involvement for years.

To me, the accelerated parole review seems out of line with the current context of the Correctional Service and of the National Parole Board.

If we want to be sure that people do not needlessly stay too long inside penitentiaries, we could come back to the notion of eligibility for day parole after one-sixth of the sentence has been served. The Board would have to study each case after one-sixth of the sentence, to ensure that people are not forgotten inside penitentiaries. Then, the evaluation would be the same for everyone, with the same standards for everyone, and we could ensure that the review be done in a timely fashion for everyone.

• 1605

So, I would consider such amendments to this Act to be well- advised.

Regarding mental health, I cannot say that the law was successfully applied in past years. Exactly why was this? I think that there is some misunderstanding of mental health and psychiatry among many interveners, including parole commissioners, parole officers and correctional officers. I think that the Correctional Service and the Board should make an effort to train more people and give them better information about mental health. For instance, what is bizarre behaviour, how can we define it and how can we ensure that a person with such behaviour can get good service when needed?

This is not because the Correctional Service has not made an effort. A mental health unit was set up in 1993 at the Archambault institution, but despite this, there are still too many inmates who are forgotten in certain penitentiaries and who do not receive the care they need.

As regards mental health cases, I can assure you that when they come to a transition house, they receive much better supervision than what you would get in a regular transition house, considering the type of clients we have, the problems we identify and the amount of risk that these persons could represent for public security. On paper, these persons may seem to be more dangerous because their behaviour is often violent, but in a transition house, we can quickly spot signs of mental disorganization. The clientele is more open and shows signs of disorganization more readily which allows us to intervene more quickly. Out of some 300 or so inmates we received since 1989, six became re-offenders while they were with us. One of these cases was serious, but the others were rather minor. So, we cannot say that this clientele is more dangerous when released into an environment like ours.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the time you gave me. I am ready to answer your questions.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Perron, have you any questions?

Mr. Gilles Perron: I have only one question. Are there any women among your clients?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: At the federal level, there are none, but there are some on the provincial level because we have a mixed provincial house.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Why not?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Not at the federal level because the request has not yet been officially made.

Mr. Gilles Perron: By yourself?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: By the Correctional Service. Preliminary discussions were held at a certain point, but you understand that the female population is so small that it would be almost impossible to set up a house for women only.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Then, women will just have to commit more crimes.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: That is unfortunate. Our provincial house is mixed and works quite well.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Could your federal house also be mixed?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: It could be if the Correctional Services people accepted the notion of mixed houses. We cannot take that for granted.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Is the success rate of your mixed provincial house comparable to that of your federal house for men only?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Provincial clients nearly always finish their terms. The structure is less formidable and there are fewer conditions to observe. These clients have a different legal status. They do not re-offend during their stay. It is difficult to compare the two because federally...

Mr. Gilles Perron: That was not the question I asked. Do you have more or fewer problems when running a mixed institution?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: I would not say that there are more problems. Of course there are problems that you do not find elsewhere. As they say, we have to deal with these problems, but nothing sufficiently serious has happened to force us to review the notion of mixed houses. The personnel and the clients themselves ensure that they are well-run. When problems are detected, love affairs and things like that, we intervene and generally things work out. With our team of psychiatrists and nurses we have good support and we manage quite well.

• 1610

Mr. Gilles Perron: Thus, there would be no problem if there were a few women in your establishment.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Only in people's minds.

Mr. Gilles Perron: I'm talking about the federal level.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Perron.

[English]

Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Altimas, you said you were a little bit nervous about appearing before our committee. I hope you aren't any more, because I think your presentation was excellent, and you made the points. I just want to recap what I understood your presentation to be. I just wanted to let you know that you might go away from this committee remembering that you are the last witness we are hearing outside of the commissioner, the head of the parole board, and the correctional investigator—and the minister, of course. That's your claim to fame insofar as these hearings are concerned.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: It's a good thing I didn't know that before.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Tom Wappel: First of all, I want to ask you if you have had an opportunity to personally visit the mental health centre in Archambault that you mentioned.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: I go there regularly.

Mr. Tom Wappel: How do you like it? Is it a good facility? Is it helping the prisoners, the patients?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Let me put it this way. As far as I can see, it is a penitentiary that claims to be a hospital, and it's not a hospital.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Okay.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: When I say that, it's not necessarily to be overly critical, but the definition of the unit itself is still in the making, shall we say. It has been six years now, and you still get the sense that there's more work to be done in terms of turning it into more of a treatment facility as compared to a medium security or maximum security penitentiary.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Right.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: So there are efforts, depending on what staff you talk to. If you talk to the nurses, they're very dedicated and very close to their patients, and they know their patients. But if you talk to the guards... Unfortunately you still have a number of guards, or correctional officers, as they call them now—

Mr. Tom Wappel: You call them whatever you like. The prisoners do.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Well, they have other words too, but we'll stay away from those.

Some correctional officers are from the old school, and I understand them in that they had a hard time integrating into a treatment model and a different context, but they still have the concept that they're working with cons, not patients. That colours the intervention a lot, I find. You have a situation in which, as I say, you're neither a hospital nor a treatment centre but you're pretending to be one—and you're still a penitentiary.

There's still work to be done, and I think they recognize it themselves. They're in the process of trying to get accredited by the Canadian Hospital Association or whatever, and I think they're going to be doing a lot of work on that. It's not perfect at this point. I think they also need to—and we've been telling them this for years—do more work in terms of preparing the inmates for their release.

I'll give you just a very simple example. An inmate came to the halfway house a few months ago, supposedly ready. We found out that he couldn't even put his two feet on the street because he was scared. For the two years or three years that he was at the mental health unit, they did not help the situation because they allowed him to not even go out into the yard. That's not helping the guy to come out, if you understand what I'm saying. Now we have to work with this guy to have him actually just walk out of the house, around the block, and eventually take the bus and stuff like that. There's more work to be done in terms of preparing the releases of these individuals. They should be working more closely with us in that sense, because we have the expertise.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Right.

We had an opportunity to visit the mental health centre within the walls of Kingston Penitentiary. Have you been there?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: No, I haven't.

Mr. Tom Wappel: If you ever get a chance, I would recommend that you do go there and talk to the director. You may see some things that are good or bad, and you might be able to communicate them to the people at Archambault. Although I'm sure that they're interfacing all the time, perhaps there would be a more objective view from you. It might be an interesting visit for you. It was certainly an eye-opener for me, and I think for some of the other members of the committee.

• 1615

Now, just to recap, do I understand that you're saying to abolish the APR section and replace it with a system that brings back the potential release at one-sixth of sentence? Is that what you're basically saying?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: That's what I'm saying.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You know that APR is limited to certain criteria.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: I know that.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Would you be suggesting that going back to the one-sixth of sentence would also be limited to those people who would otherwise have fallen into the criteria of APR?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: No. What I'm suggesting is that there should be no difference between inmates in terms of the criteria that are used to make decisions about them.

APR, to me, is a travesty of parole. In other words, the only criterion that's really important is what offence you've committed. Once you've decided that—and that's basically just a fact—you're released unless they can find arguments to not release you.

Well, I can tell you that I once saw an inmate at the mental health unit who had been ordered on release to our house. I had to go visit him within 72 hours. I evaluated him and said no way, he wasn't coming to our house because he wasn't ready. A few weeks later, he had to be released to another house. He never made it to the house. If you tell me that this individual met the criteria for proper release, I will tell you no, because of APR.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Well, that's a good way to end. APR is a travesty of parole.

Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Gilles Perron: Mr. Chairman, could you give me two seconds?

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Gilles Perron: You got me. You said that the old guards still called the clients by the same name.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: The cons.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Yes.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: They call them cons.

Mr. Gilles Perron: I don't know if this already exists, but do you think that training courses should be provided to upgrade the old guards as well as the young ones to 1999 techniques? We could show them that they can do more than just punch or control the clients, and get them to change their behaviour to the right behaviour. Do they have ongoing training?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Regarding these officers, they got some training when the unit was opened, but I think it was only three weeks or so. I don't think that was enough, in view of the objectives at the time. I think that we can train people right up to retirement age, but it is next to impossible to change behaviour after 20 years of doing things a certain way.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Trees that have grown crooked remain crooked, trees that have grown up straight remain straight.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Especially in view of the history of the Archambault institution. There was a kind of riot in 1982, with murders, etc. Some people still remember that and have never gotten over it, and this is understandable for the people working there.

Mr. Gilles Perron: And this is as true for the clients as for the workers?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: It is difficult to change this mentality that took years to settle in. Certainly some of them can adapt, but they would effectively need more training and more recognition of their role within the system, whether they are correctional officers or parole officers.

I worked for the Correctional Service of Canada for years and I saw that employees' contributions were not easily recognized. Management takes on a big brother attitude and this makes people afraid of the system. They're afraid of taking initiatives and they're not necessarily encouraged in their work.

I think that the role of correctional agents needs to be clarified more by involving them personally. I am sure that even some of the older guards would adapt, but this would take the right training and also the right involvement.

• 1620

Mr. Gilles Perron: Do the young guards have a better vision of the system or do they pick up the bad habits right away?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: When a young guard enters into this kind of environment, he or she feels under pressure to conform to the party line, if I may put it that way. The same thing happens in police forces, as well as in big institutions. The young are often told to forget whatever they have learned while we show them how to do the work. This peer pressure and pressure from people in the environment is normal is inherent to any human institution. Thus, it cannot be completely eliminated. I think however that we should go on making efforts so that people may adopt attitudes and behaviours more appropriate to a treatment unit than to a penitentiary.

[English]

The Chairman: One more, and it's the last one.

[Translation]

Mr. Gilles Perron: Before becoming a prison guard, does a person have to take relevant courses in a CEGEP in Quebec or in high school?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Yes. However, this is not a course for prison guards as such. Many young recruits of the Correctional Service have taken courses on intervention techniques and delinquency at CEGEPs, for instance. Others even have baccalaureates in criminology and have jobs as correctional officers or parole officers. Most of the young recruits today have training in this area, which was not so 25 years ago when I began my career. Therefore things have substantially improved in this respect.

Even with more highly-trained officers, the situation will not change overnight. A culture cannot change in one or two years. I remember the penitentiary culture of 1971, when inmates still wore uniforms with numbers. Their sideburns could only be a certain length and their hair had to be cut short.

Mr. Gilles Perron: And they were not allowed to wear beards.

Mr. Patrick Altimas: No, beards were out. I lived through the end of an era, the end of this military regime, as it was called. Very many things have changed since then, but some mentalities still live on, both among inmates and among penitentiary guards or personnel. Some things have never stopped. It takes years to change a culture.

We should consider whether we want to create a penitentiary that specializes in mental health, or a treatment centre specialized in mental health. The Correctional Service has not given a clear answer to this question yet.

Mr. Gilles Perron: You spoke a great deal about training in mental health. Would your answer also apply to daily activities?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: Like most of the other persons or directors working in this field with me in Quebec, I have been trained in criminology. The personnel is increasingly well-trained and things have changed a great deal in penitentiaries over the 20 or 30 past years, but there's still room for improvement. There is no way I can tell you that simply because I have a degree in criminology, I have all the necessary knowledge, that I know what I'm doing, and that you should not bother me because I can do my work perfectly. Criminology is constantly evolving. As part of society, we follow it as it evolves. Some of the changes were beneficial, whereas others were less beneficial. The Correctional Service of Canada has been continuously changing for years.

• 1625

Mr. Gilles Perron: If we recommended in our report that continuous and better-quality training should be offered to the entire staff of penitentiaries in Canada, would you support that?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: If you are proposing meaningful and well- targeted training, I say yes.

Mr. Gilles Perron: Thank you, sir.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Perron.

Your recommendation regarding the accelerated parole review was very clear and Mr. Wappel summed it up well. You seem to be against statutory release with a residency requirement. Could you tell us more about your recommendation regarding this?

Mr. Patrick Altimas: In my opinion this question is far more complex. If we had a program that allowed us to review the cases of inmates correctly and in a timely way, and to prepare them adequately for release, we might not have to resort to residency requirements. At this time, I cannot guarantee that we are ready.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Altimas. I thank the committee members and all the staff for their excellent work. The committee is adjourned.

The meeting is adjourned.