SCRA Committee Meeting

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

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

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, March 4, 1999

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Paul DeVillers (Simcoe North, Lib.)): I would like to call this meeting to order. This is the sitting of the Subcommittee on Corrections and Conditional Release Act of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We're a subcommittee that has been instructed to study the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, and we have with us representatives from Prisoners' Legal Services, Megan Arundel and Beth Parkinson.

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Thank you very much for taking the time to come in to make this submission to the committee. I think you've been informed that we're looking for about a five-minute presentation, but there's some flexibility there. Don't feel too constrained, because I won't gavel you down at exactly five minutes. We will then have approximately twenty minutes for questions from the committee members. Of course, there will be more opportunity to make your points during the questioning process.

So if you'd like, please go ahead.

Ms. Megan Arundel (Legal Advocate, Prisoners' Legal Services): Beth Parkinson and I are from Prisoners' Legal Services, which is a branch office of the Legal Services Society of B.C. We provide legal assistance, both federal and provincial, to prisoners and parolees in the lower mainland. We each have a different aspect of concern to address to you today.

Persons sentenced or committed to imprisonment for more than two years are normally confined in federal penitentiaries, but under terms of section 16 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, they may be transferred to a provincial institution. Canada and B.C. have entered into an agreement under this section, the Exchange of Services Agreement, for the confinement of up to fifty federally sentenced women in Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women, a provincial prison.

The Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Criminal Code and the Prisons and Reformatories Act all require that a prisoner be subject to the enactments and rules of the institution in which they're serving their sentence. Federally sentenced women in B.C. are therefore subject to B.C.'s Correction Act, Correctional Centre Rules and Regulations, and Corrections Branch policy. In all other provinces in Canada, federally sentenced women are imprisoned where they are subject to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act regulations and commissioner's directives.

It is our view that federally sentenced women in B.C. are significantly prejudiced by the imposition of a provincial statute when their counterparts elsewhere in Canada have the benefit of the CCRA. Its enactment in 1992 codified certain fundamental rights and procedural safeguards established by the charter and developed in common law. The provincial statutes and regulations are simply not comparable.

The CCRA and regulations recognize in a number of fundamental ways the section 7 requirement that a person cannot be deprived of his or her liberty except in accordance with principles of fundamental justice. For example, recognizing that segregation and involuntary transfers to higher security involve further restrictions of a prisoner's liberty, the CCRA and regulations have established minimum procedural safeguards designed to ensure that decisions restricting liberty in these cases are made in conformity with the principles of fundamental justice.

I want you to note that while these remarks appear to hold the CCRA in high regard, they are made in comparison with antiquated provincial legislation. In reality, we remain highly critical of the CCRA, most especially with its failure to ensure its own implementation—and Beth will be speaking about that.

Nevertheless, we're of the view that federally sentenced women in British Columbia suffer from an inequality, both with regard to federally sentenced men in B.C. and elsewhere in Canada, as well as federally sentenced women in other provinces of Canada, contrary to section 15 of the charter. It is our position that the Government of Canada cannot opt out or contract out of its responsibilities to federally sentenced prisoners when fundamental issues of liberty are at stake.

We recommend that section 16 of the CCRA be amended to state that, notwithstanding section 743.3 of the Criminal Code, and notwithstanding subsection 5(3) of the Prisons and Reformatories Act, specified sections of the CCRA will apply to federally sentenced women in custody at BCCW. We recommend that these specified sections include, but not necessarily be limited to, the provisions under the CCRA and regulations dealing with access to legal counsel, disciplinary hearings, involuntary transfers, and the disclosure provisions for parole hearings.

In the written submissions that have been distributed, we refer you to these four specific examples, for which we find that the legislation applicable to federally sentenced women in B.C. fails to meet the standards applicable to federally sentenced women in custody in other provinces.

Ms. Beth Parkinson (Legal Advocate, Prisoners' Legal Services): When I first read the bill that would eventually become the CCRA, I felt a degree of hopefulness in that some of the progress that had been achieved through litigation in the preceding years and requiring due process within corrections was actually going to be codified in legislation. However, upon implementation of the CCRA, it soon became apparent that not only were these initiatives not embraced, but in far too many cases they were not even understood. On this point, I would concur with the 1996 findings of Madam Justice Arbour, who stated, “In terms of general correctional issues, the facts of this inquiry have revealed a disturbing lack of commitment to the ideals of justice on the part of the Correctional Service.”

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Of even greater concern than Corrections' apparent inability and unwillingness to comply with the legislation is the lack of any effective remedy to compel them to do so. The grievance procedure is far from being “effective”, as contemplated by the legislation. Again, I refer to Madam Justice Arbour's comments, wherein she states, “As revealed in this case, the process is highly bureaucratic. Particularly at the appellate level, both regional and national, responsibility for the disposition of the grievances is often given to people with neither the knowledge nor the means of acquiring it and, worse, with no real authority to remedy the problem should they be prepared to acknowledge its existence. At present, it would seem that the admission of error is perceived as an admission of defeat by the Correctional Service. In that climate, no internal method of dispute resolution will succeed.”

In a similar vein, I refer you to the comments of the B.C. Court of Appeal in Fraser v. Kent Institution, wherein the court found that the appeal of a parole board decision to the appeal division was not an adequate remedy, given the backlogs in the system.

So where does the prisoner turn to ensure compliance with the law? Certainly he or she cannot expect a timely response through the internal mechanisms, which only leaves seeking redress through litigation. But of what value is that when in most cases the prisoner must seek relief from the federal courts, which have enacted rules that daunt even a seasoned lawyer? And even if a prisoner can find his way through this mire, the case likely won't be heard within the year, often rendering the issue moot.

Finally, a prisoner could turn to the correctional investigator for resolution. However, pursuant to the act, the recommendations of the correctional investigator are not binding on Corrections. At the risk of being redundant, I again refer you to Madam Justice Arbour's comments, in which she states, “It is only because of the Correctional Investigator's inability to compel compliance by the service with his conclusions, and because of the demonstrated unwillingness of the service to do so willingly in many instances, that I recommend greater access by prisoners to the courts for the effective enforcement of their rights in the vindication of the rule of law.”

In response, and recognizing the difficulty prisoners encounter in accessing the courts and the lack of timeliness therein, the correctional investigator recommended that an administrative tribunal be established with the authority both to compel Corrections' compliance with legislation and policy governing the administration of the sentence, and to redress the adverse effects of non-compliance.

In conclusion, there are innumerable recommendations we could make to amend and improve the CCRA, but it seems rather pointless until there is compliance with what is already in place. Based on their performance to date, it is obvious that we cannot expect compliance to come from within Correctional Services. It is therefore imperative that an external independent adjudication process be established to compel compliance and to ensure that the rule of law runs behind prison walls.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your thoughtful and well-prepared presentation.

Since we have about twenty minutes and there are four members here, I'm going to suggest five minutes each to committee members. I think that would be equitable. We'll commence with the opposition, and Mr. Gouk.

Mr. Jim Gouk (Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan, Ref.): Thank you.

Thank you for coming out this morning. The more input we get for this, the better. Of course, that's the reason for travelling across the country.

Just looking quickly at your written submission with regard to the situation for women federal prisoners in British Columbia...in your opinion, is the facility itself acceptable if those concerns are addressed, or is the ultimate solution to have some form of federal facility for women in British Columbia?

Ms. Megan Arundel: It's not the facility that is an issue, no.

Mr. Jim Gouk: So it's more a concern that the rules be applied at the federal level.

Ms. Megan Arundel: That's right, yes.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Actually, that's all I have at this time, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you.

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[Translation]

Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau (Charlesbourg, BQ): First of all, I would like to thank you for appearing before us this morning. The more we hear from people of different organizations, the better we understand the whole problem.

I read your brief very quickly. It deals a great deal with the benefits of the Parole Act and the problem that is posed by the fact that in the provincial prisons, inmates don't have access to several of the rights which are listed in the Parole Act.

However, on page 3, you say:

[English]

“...we remain highly critical of the CCRA, most especially with its failure to ensure its own implementation.”

[Translation]

I would like you to elaborate on these problems, please.

[English]

Ms. Beth Parkinson: There are all kinds of arbitrary decisions that are being made on an ongoing daily basis that look like there's a perfunctory compliance with the act. For example, the act ensures that anyone who is segregated has to be the subject of regular reviews. Also, prior to those reviews, the prisoner is supposed to be provided with the information that's going to be considered at that hearing.

Unfortunately, time after time we see all kinds of files where we go through each segregation review notice that says “No new information—remain in segregation”. I've attended those hearings, and far too often the prisoner will walk in and be told, “We've decided you're going to remain in segregation. Do you have anything to say?” Although the review is being conducted, it's not being conducted in substance.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Therefore, what would be the solution to ensure that the spirit of the legislation is respected in situations such as those you have described?

[English]

Ms. Beth Parkinson: That there be an actual review, that there be information. Those reviews are conducted monthly. One would think that something has transpired over the past month that would have some relevance to whether or not the prisoner should remain in segregation. If all you get is “No new information, there you go”, that's not a review—particularly if the decision has been made before the review. It's not a hearing; it's a statement.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Therefore, the burden of proof is transferred to the accused, who must provide reasons why he should no longer be in solitary confinement. Is that what you mean?

[English]

Ms. Beth Parkinson: Yes. And certainly some prisoners are so disillusioned by that process that they question the value of even trying to argue with somebody who apparently has already made up their mind. If the hearing commences with “We've decided you're going to remain”, there's not a lot of hope for the prisoner that he's going to persuade them otherwise.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

[English]

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.): It would appear that the nub of the problem here is that you do not have a federal facility for women in B.C. Is that true?

Ms. Megan Arundel: That's one of the issues we're facing, yes.

Mr. Ivan Grose: All right. At least if you had a federal facility we'd be back to arguing about the CCRA, which would make it straightforward.

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Do you have any figures on numbers of female prisoners in other provinces that might be applicable to the situation in B.C.? What I'm getting at is why don't we have a federal facility here? You don't know the answer to that, but I'm asking you: say we put Alberta and Saskatchewan together—how about numbers of female prisoners as opposed to British Columbia?

Ms. Megan Arundel: Female prisoners who are in provincial institutions?

Mr. Ivan Grose: No, they'd be in federal institutions there, would they not?

Ms. Megan Arundel: Yes, that's right.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Well, that's what I said.

Ms. Megan Arundel: There are up to 50 beds in BCCW.

Mr. Ivan Grose: I realize that.

Ms. Megan Arundel: I don't know what the statistics are for women in federal institutions elsewhere in Canada. I think at the time BCCW was being built, it was conceived as housing federally sentenced women. After that I think came the plan to build the separate federal facilities in other provinces in the other five regions in Canada.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Obviously it's up to me to find out what the numbers are, but I would suspect that in the more sparsely populated provinces in the prairies the numbers are much lower than they would be in British Columbia. So I will have to find out why there isn't a federally supported institution here. That's my problem. Thank you very much for now.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.): I have no questions.

The Chairman: No questions.

Is there anything further you wish to add to your submission?

Ms. Megan Arundel: No.

The Chairman: Then thank you very much. We certainly appreciated your attendance here.

Ms. Beth Parkinson: Thank you.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Mr. Chairman, if I might have a word to the two witnesses, I would stress that, to me anyway, the nub of the problem is that we don't have an institution here. I'm going to find out why there isn't. And if there's not a good reason, then let's get one.

Ms. Megan Arundel: I understand it's because BCCW was built with that in mind initially, and once conceived they weren't going to build another one.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes, I don't find anything unusual in that.

Thank you.

Ms. Megan Arundel: Thank you.

Ms. Beth Parkinson: Thank you.

The Chairman: Now, from the West Coast Prison Justice Society, Sasha Pawliuk. You have approximately five to ten minutes for a submission and then we go to questions from the committee members.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk (Member of the Board, West Coast Prison Justice Society): That's fine. That was my understanding.

The Chairman: Great. Perhaps you would like to go ahead. Welcome.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: Thank you.

Until October 1998 I was a staff lawyer at Prisoners' Legal Services, which of course was the previous submission you just heard. I was a staff lawyer there for 14 out of the previous 16 years.

West Coast Prison Justice Society is a non-profit organization, which is incorporated as a society in British Columbia. It is comprised of academics, some lawyers, parolees, prisoners' rights activists, a native elder.... Among other things, the purpose of West Coast Prison Justice Society is to ensure that the rule of law runs within penitentiary walls here in British Columbia and also to disseminate legal information to prisoners in British Columbia.

I've distributed a copy of the newsletter. That's essentially our arm in giving information. That's the September to December 1998 issue that I've distributed.

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I would certainly echo the comments my colleagues, Ms. Parkinson and Ms. Arundel, made in their previous submission. I would just add one point in answer to the question that was directed about the facility at BCCW.

Certainly the crux of the concern, to my understanding, would be federally sentenced women, because they are not dealt with as federal women. But certainly the facility itself is a problem in that it has too high a level of security. Countless reports and investigations have determined that women don't require maximum security as much as men do, yet that's what's in Burnaby: a maximum security facility.

The CCRA is replete with all sorts of opportunities for federal tribunals to determine issues that affect the liberty of people who are incarcerated. That's obviously part and parcel of someone being incarcerated, and that's what's going on there. When one looks at the law, the act certainly appears to be something that affords a great deal of protection. The right to counsel is there, but I would echo the concerns raised by my colleagues at Prisoners' Legal Services. The problem is what happens on the ground. It looks good in Ottawa, it looks good when they put it together, but that's not what happens in the penitentiary.

For instance, let's deal with the right to counsel on placement into segregation. When someone's served with an involuntary transfer to higher security, there is a right to counsel, because the courts have recognized that these are placements to prison within a prison. There is a reduction in someone's liberty when this thing happens.

The problem here is, who are you going to call? Legal aid certainly doesn't cover it in British Columbia. Across Canada there's no funding. You can legislate a right to counsel, but you can also legislate pigs to fly. It ain't going to happen unless you have bucks to follow it up.

The other problem with the right to counsel is that it doesn't go far enough. The segregation review board hearings were mentioned in the last submission as well. There is a real problem with segregation review board hearings. There have been court decisions that have said they are totally pro forma, but there's no real decision-making process. The decision is made way before the guy comes into his segregation review board hearing. There is no right to counsel at that hearing. Of course, if there were a right to counsel, there would be no money for it, so no one would have a lawyer anyway.

As you can see, the problem is that even where the legislation has made the availability of counsel, at least on paper, it doesn't happen. Even the availability as it is now worded in the CCRA doesn't go far enough. A person may have the right to call a lawyer upon placement in segregation, but they may not even have the paperwork yet. Unfortunately, the timelines in the CCRA are often not followed. This is despite the fact that it is legislated within the CCRA that people are to get notice of the reason why they are being placed upon placement, and they are to have their full paperwork within three days before the hearing. This doesn't happen.

When you don't have a lawyer or some advocate to ensure compliance...and even when you do have an advocate to ensure compliance, as Ms. Parkinson mentioned, there's nothing in the act that has any sort of penalty clause. You're not going to run into Federal Court one year after the fact and say they didn't get their paperwork a year ago so the guy's being released. There are no teeth. Rights are only as good as what you can enforce, but there is no enforceability.

Again, look at the act itself. I've argued cases on behalf of prisoners before judges. I had one Federal Court judge say to me that if I told him at the beginning of this hearing that the Charter of Rights applied to prisoners, I could have blown him over with a feather. It looks good on paper, but what happens down in the trenches is a little different.

Again, dealing with the segregation review board, it's a big issue because it is a placement in jail. You don't give somebody on the street 30 days in jail without counsel, without some sort of insurance that there is a right to be heard, a right to know what the case is against them, and a right to respond to that case.

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Staff training is difficult. I don't for a minute mean to imply that the people who work in federal penitentiaries are evil, sadistic people. The problem is that in attempting to do their jobs honourably, they don't have the training. Over at Prisoners' Legal Services, we used to laugh about how, in the commissioner's directives, they capitalize the duty to act fairly. The duty to act fairly is the crux of our civilization. It's the crux of our society. It's a very important concept, yet it's not understood.

It's this capitalized concept that, I think to a lot of staff, ends up being a lot of totally inexplicable and mysterious little rules that don't make any sense. You have a staff member who's conducting the segregation review board hearing, but who has an incredible checklist of stuff that makes no sense to him or her. That person doesn't have any real concept of what the hearing is about. The hearing is supposed to be a determination to see how long that person has to remain in segregation, how long he or she has to be segregated. There's a legislative onus on the warden to ensure that people are not held in segregation longer than absolutely necessary, but often what gets discussed is whether or not a person has got a toothbrush yet. What the heck does that have to do with the placement?

Again, there's no right to counsel at the hearings. Certainly there's no funded counsel at the hearings. When you look at the statistics of the population that Canada puts in prison, it's the uneducated, the poor. These are not people who are going to be really up on what is supposed to happen. There will be a lot of jailhouse lawyer jargon going around them, but often they don't really appreciate what exactly their rights are, and certainly not how to enforce them.

Again, dealing with segregation as an example, a point that Ms. Parkinson left you with was the concept of independent adjudication. Independent adjudication is what's used in disciplinary court. It's recognized because people can be placed in segregation after a hearing in disciplinary court, and because that affects the person's liberty. There's an independent person, there is a right to counsel. Yet people can be held in administrative segregation for much, much longer than they are held pursuant to a conviction in disciplinary court, and without a conviction, without, in my submission, any true hearing, certainly without a lawyer at the hearing, and without an independent adjudication.

When you may not have enough information to charge somebody with a disciplinary offence, it's pretty easy to just go around to the back door and put that person in segregation in any event for suspicion, for investigation. It can pretty well be timed because they know how long it takes to get a habeas corpus going. They know how long the courts are going to give them, and the chance to figure out exactly what's going on before the courts start interfering. If there's a police investigation, police will put prison matters on the back burner because the guy is already in jail so they don't have to worry about him. People can be held in segregation for long periods of time pursuant to an administrative decision of a staff member, not independent adjudication, when there's no right to counsel, and when they may not have been supplied with the information necessary to defend themselves on the allegation.

I would certainly echo the comments my colleagues at Prisoners' Legal Services have made in terms of the problems with the CCRA down on the ground and running, as compared to the way it looks. It looks pretty darn good, but there certainly have to be more resources to ensure that the right to counsel is effective, to ensure that staff are sufficiently trained so that they can do their jobs, and also to ensure that the tribunals that make the determinations that affect peoples lives are independent of the running of the administration of the prisons.

Those are my submissions.

The Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Mr. Gouk, for five minutes.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Thank you. I'm going to try to be brief so that I leave as much time for Mr. Wappel as possible. Seeing how he features so prominently in the newsletter, he may have some questions or comments.

I don't wish to make light of anything you've said, because you've certainly made some valid points. But if somebody in society who is very poor—there's a ton of working people around who are a paycheque away from bankruptcy—gets a speeding ticket, that person has a right to bring counsel if so chosen. But as I understand it, there is no right to free counsel to fight a speeding ticket.

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In prison, stealing something for which you might get as much as a year in jail on the outside nets you a $25 fine on the inside. In your opinion, does the severity, or lack thereof as compared to someone on the outside, mitigate some of the procedures that are followed in there in terms of right to counsel, preparation of case, and all the rest of that, given the nature of the punishment?

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: I am unaware of any situation in which someone is convicted in disciplinary court in a penitentiary and receives a $25 fine for an offence that would net someone a year in jail. I would question that, because I'm not sure where your information comes from on that.

Certainly in terms of—

Mr. Jim Gouk: There is a situation, but I'm not an expert on it. Depending on the nature of the incident, theft being one type, if it's of a minor nature—and I don't know what the break point is on that—it's a $25 fine. Above that, it's a $50 fine. Each of those have the possibility of segregation as well. It's an either/or type of thing.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: The penalties for conviction in disciplinary court for a serious offence are pretty much up to the independent chairperson. In other words, in terms of what I'm aware of, there's certainly nothing in the law saying that for this offence you're going to get that sort of sanction. The people who preside over the hearings make a determination, given the circumstances, the record, and all those types of things that would also be something used in a criminal sentencing. They make a determination of what the appropriate sentence would be.

As an aside, for someone who is making $1, $2 or $3 day, or $3 to $6 a day, a $25 fine is a fairly significant amount of money in terms of income. In British Columbia, for example, there has been instituted a system whereby prisoners can only call their families by way of a collect phone call, which costs approximately $2 a call. Prisoners who are attempting to repay their families for the cost of this collect call—most of the families of prisoners are on welfare—are looking at two-thirds of their daily salary to make one telephone call home a day, so there are definite constraints on finance. When you're looking at a $25 fine, it's not $25 for somebody making $100,000 a year, it's a totally different sort of sanction.

Mr. Jim Gouk: I recognize that, although there certainly are disparities on the outside as well.

One other thing I wanted to ask you about that certainly caught my interest is in the statement of purpose for your society. Under i), your society aims to “promote the abolition of prisons through the reform of the criminal justice system.” What kinds of reforms are you talking about? Let me put it this way: Are you serious about the abolition of prisons? What would you do with murderers, rapists, and people who commit serious offences?

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: There's an organization called the International Conference on Penal Abolition, which meets every two years. It consists of academics, lawyers, ex-prisoners, prisoners, activists, people who are interested in pursuing a prison-free society. I don't put myself forward as an expert on penal abolition, but certainly from attending a few of the conferences, that's referred to as the problem of the serious few. In other words, I think it's accepted that there are perhaps a very small number of people in society who other people require protection from. A lot of the alternatives to prison have to do with therapeutic communities, in a sense. It doesn't have to do with leaving the criminal justice system precisely as it is, with this long road of charges, courts, and just taking jail away at the end of it all. Certainly I don't think anybody says that would be at all useful.

In looking at our society and at the root causes of crime, and in trying to deal with those and getting a safer community by not waiting for the crime to happen and then dealing retroactively with something that's happened, this is looking at a more restorative model. A lot of the terminology used to be around restorative justice, but then some people asked what it was that we were restoring. A lot of the people who commit crimes don't have anything to be restored to, because they come from situations of poverty, of broken homes, of abuse.

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It's more a system of trying to invent a system, or trying to ensure that people on both sides of any sort of a crime are brought back as closely as possible to a healthy spot. That sounds pretty academic, but in other words, the person who has committed a crime has to make sure to take responsibility for it in some way, and has to try to assist in ensuring that the persons who have been affected by the crime are brought back to where they were before the crime was committed, as much as possible.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Gouk.

[Translation]

Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Hello. Thank you for appearing before us. I quite enjoyed your presentation. However I find it unfortunate that you did not submit a written document because your presentation was very interesting.

I have one question and it deals with your organization. You have worked for the Prisoners' Legal Services and you are now with the West Coast Prison Justice Society. Does this mean that the two organizations share a similar philosophy?

[English]

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: Prisoners' Legal Services is a branch office of the Legal Services Society of British Columbia, which is largely a government-funded agency. Certainly people who work for Legal Services may have individual philosophies, but as a corporate philosophy, Prisoners' Legal Services is a branch of a larger organization. Its philosophy is dictated by the board of the Legal Services Society.

The West Coast Prison Justice Society is a totally separate agency, a separate society. The members of the West Coast Prison Justice Society bring their own philosophies into the society from their different experiences in the criminal justice system. That's sort of a long way of saying that when I worked at Prisoners' Legal Services, I thought exactly the same way, but I certainly could not present my views as being views of Prisoners' Legal Services as a branch office of the Legal Services Society. With West Coast Prison Justice, however, that's it. What we have printed on the back page is what we stand behind.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: I see in your newsletter that the West Coast Prison Justice Society works with the law firm of Conroy and Company Barristers and Solicitors. Mr. Conroy is our next witness, isn't he?

[English]

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: I got most of that in French. Was your question about the correlation between John Conroy's office and West Coast Prison Justice?

Mr. Richard Marceau: Yes.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: John Conroy is counsel to the West Coast Prison Justice Society, he's not a member of the board. He's listed on the back page as being counsel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: No, he's listed as a board member.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: Okay, that's a typing—

The Chairman: Mr. Conroy's our next witness, so we can clarify that.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: You're right, he's listed under “Board Members”, but his definition is West Coast Prison Justice Society counsel.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you.

[English]

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: Okay, thank you.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

[English]

Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you for your presentation.

I'd like to know a little bit about procedures antedating the CCRA with respect to the points you have been making. Was there any amelioration of the situation with the passage of the CCRA?

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: That's a really good question. Certainly from my personal observations, I don't think it's as a result of the CCRA. In the 16 years that I've been working in and around penitentiaries, I've noticed a change, such as just bringing in women. When I first started going into penitentiaries, women staff were pretty much unheard of. I think that's made a big difference in terms of what happens inside.

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Mr. Tom Wappel: I'm thinking more in terms of the evidence that you gave about the procedures, punishment within prison, segregation, that kind of thing. In your experience, has the passage of the CCRA, and I presume the so-called codification of these procedures, with or without teeth, changed anything?

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: Again, not a heck of a lot. I mean, you still have pretty much the same people making pretty much the same types of decisions.

I go back to the point I made about the training. Again, as I said, I'm not trying to impugn people who work for Corrections, but if you've been doing it one way for 20 years and a new act comes in but nobody explains what the big difference is, you're going to continue to do things the way you did them for the 20 previous years. I think that's one of the difficulties.

Again, new people coming in are part of the culture. Ms. Parkinson referred to the Arbour inquiry. Certainly there is a culture in Corrections. She referred to a culture of lawlessness. There is a way of doing things, and it's sort of a slower change. As I said, I think there have been some changes in penitentiaries since the early 1980s, but I wouldn't attribute a heck of a lot of it to the CCRA, quite frankly.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

The Chairman: Is that it, Mr. Wappel?

Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no questions, because I think the witness covered the subject very well. I would like a copy of the remarks...maybe not precisely, but at least the cogent points so that I can peruse them away from the hearings.

The Chairman: Would it be possible to provide a written submission, a resumé of your points?

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: Certainly.

Mr. Ivan Grose: When you're sitting here for two or three hours listening to facts piled on top of facts and you can't ascribe one fact to a particular person, it gets lost. That's why I would appreciate having a copy.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: All right, I could certainly do that.

The Chairman: We appreciate that.

Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: No.

The Chairman: Was there anything you wished to add, then? We still have a bit of time. We're moving along quite nicely here.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: I hesitate to take any time away from Mr. Conroy, who we all know can be very brief. I think I'll just quietly let him start.

The Chairman: Okay, thank you very much. We appreciate your presentation. And if you could get something in to the clerk, it would certainly be a help.

Ms. Sasha Pawliuk: Thank you.

The Chairman: Our next witness to join us is Mr. John Conroy, of Conroy and Company. That's a law firm, I take it?

Mr. John Conroy, Q.C. (Conroy and Company Barristers & Solicitors): That's right.

The Chairman: Thank you.

You have approximately ten minutes for your presentation, and then we'll allow the committee members to cross-examine you.

Mr. John Conroy: As a lawyer, it takes five minutes to introduce myself.

The Chairman: We need to know if you're a member of the board or counsel to the West Coast Prison Justice Society.

Mr. John Conroy: No, I'm not a member of the board, I am counsel to them. They usually have their meetings in my office, so that explains the address. That's where the mail comes as well.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. John Conroy: I don't have a written submission for you, but I'm still the chairman of the Canadian Bar Association committee on imprisonment and release, from which you'll be receiving a brief—if you haven't already received it. Professor Jackson and Professor Manson are appearing before you on Monday in Ottawa, and they will be presenting that brief. There will be some overlap with what I say, since I had a hand in participating in the preparation of that brief. My views are obviously influenced by my experiences with that committee.

• 1050

I've been practising law now for about 27 years. I moved out to the Fraser Valley in 1973, and it was only as a result of doing that and then practising criminal law.... Like most criminal lawyers, when my client was sentenced I'd go on to my next case, and I had no idea of what happened to them afterwards, unless they came and told me about it if they reoffended and were charged again.

Then I was asked to run the community law office. It was the first community law office in B.C., and that was in about 1975. It coincided with the Steinhauser hostage-taking at the British Columbia Penitentiary. Not long after, when I was in the community law office job, demands on my time started to come from prisoners and their families in the surrounding area, because the Fraser Valley is the Kingston of the west; all the prisons surround us. So it wasn't as if I had a particular interest in this area; it came as a result of the demands on my time.

When I first phoned a warden, when I was asked to appear in disciplinary court, the first reaction back then was “We don't allow lawyers in here”. Of course, that was the wrong thing to say to a young, idealistic lawyer, who was chomping at the bit wanting to ensure that justice was done. They hadn't taught me that in law school, so I was challenged and looked into what was going on. Frankly, I was quite shocked at what was happening in those days.

Mr. Wappel asked one of the previous witnesses as to the previous procedure. When I started, the disciplinary court system involved the chief of police in the prison, the assistant director of security would sit as the chairperson of the board, and the only evidence invariably against the prisoner would be from one of his subordinate officers. So it was totally unrealistic to expect that the chairperson or judge of the disciplinary court would disbelieve one of the subordinate officers, because if he did, they'd have a major morale problem in the prison. So the whole process was considered by the prisoners and others to be a kangaroo court, and it increased their disrespect for the law.

My perspective then—and it continues—was that it was very important to ensure that the rule of law applied within the prisons. Behind walls, the media didn't have the kind of access they do to the courts to see and report on what was going on so the system would be accountable to the public, the courts and the rule of law.

A lot of my work initially at the community law office, which then evolved into creating the separate Prisoners' Legal Services, was to provide remedies to prisoners. At that time, the Steinhauser hostage-taking occurred when various counsel were trying to declare the conditions and circumstances at the British Columbia Penitentiary to be cruel and unusual punishment. We had people then who had been in solitary confinement in an antiquated facility for years, and they were going crazy. They would see their neighbours killing themselves or slashing themselves, and they would have to clean up the blood. They knew that's where they would be going a few months later.

The most important thing seemed to be to ensure that the law applied and they had peaceful remedies. We took test cases—the Martineau line of cases—to ensure the ambitive remedy called certiorari applied to prisoners, so they could have access to the courts. The courts used to adopt a hands-off policy, deferring to the wisdom of correctional administrators—in my submission, something they shouldn't have done.

Then we brought further test cases, among them Cardinal and Oswald. There were also comparative cases out of Ontario and Quebec—the Quebec case was Morin and the Ontario case was Miller—in which we established that habeas corpus could be used to spring somebody from solitary confinement into the general population of the prison. The reason for that was so a prisoner could get into court within a week or two and have a judge pass on what was happening to them, instead of their being left there in solitary with no remedy.

This wasn't just to create more work for lawyers; it was because we knew that if these people were not given a peaceful remedy, they would resort to a violent remedy, and that's what had really happened in Steinhauser. The prisoners thought they were going to be put back in solitary—they'd been there for a long period of time—and thought, instead of dying there slowly, they would desperately take hostages and seek to have the release of everybody else from solitary confinement. They thought they'd rather go down in a hail of bullets and die quickly than die slowly.

• 1055

People have to understand that the harsher you make the regime in a prison, the more likely you are to have violent reactions, unstable reactions or non-peaceful reactions.

You have to remember that many of the people who come into the prisons are—as previous witnesses have said—from the poor parts of society and have had perhaps more unstable backgrounds or upbringings. They haven't had the socialization many of us have had, so we must be careful not to judge them by our own experiences. We have to look at what they may or may not do, depending upon the regime we have.

Having been involved in that type of litigation, and having been involved in cases in appearances before various boards and tribunals now over the last 25 years, I still have some idealism, but I'm afraid I would adopt a comment from Doris Lessing's book African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe, in which she says there is no one more furiously cynical than an idealist betrayed.

Having come through litigation under the Bill of Rights and the Charter of Rights, having participated with the bar committee and others in the correctional law review leading up to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, and having supported the laudable purposes and principles that are not only in that act but also in Bill C-41—the sentencing principles, I am still very frustrated by the lack of implementation, and I agree with what the previous witnesses said.

It's my submission that the most important thing you could do, and the biggest recommendation I would make—again echoing previous witnesses—is to ensure that there be access to peaceful remedies through independent counsel and independent adjudication, so the second branch of what John Howard said in 1777 is implemented.

We have an authority of rules, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which was the first reform he espoused, but he also espoused outside independent inspectors, and so did Bentham in his “Panopticon”. In my submission, that's what we need. The correctional investigator, for example, should be reporting to Parliament, not to the minister. It should be a truly independent office.

In the regulations, prisoners have a right to counsel, but it's illusory because it's not funded. We have a case pending before the Supreme Court of Canada now called Winters, in which we're trying for a second time—not the second time in the Supreme Court of Canada but the second time in terms of litigation—to compel the Legal Services Society of British Columbia to cover prison disciplinary matters.

Under the regime now...and we'll use Winters as an example. Winters is charged with assault. Assault is an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada, but it's also an offence under the penitentiary service regulations. Some representative of Correctional Service Canada decides whether this matter will go to outside court or inside court. Obviously, if they think there might be difficulty proving it in outside court, they're going to pick inside court.

The effect of that administrative decision is that the person who goes to outside court gets legal aid—funded counsel—if they can't afford it. If it goes to inside court, they don't. A second decision is made after they've said it will go to inside court to classify it as either serious or minor.

Let me digress briefly to say at one point the classifications were serious, intermediate or minor. The intermediate category was created because the courts had said that for serious matters you had a right to counsel and you didn't for intermediate. Then the court said you had a right to counsel for intermediate, so they abolished intermediate and went back to serious and minor.

To carry on with Winters, if the decision is then made to classify it as serious, the act now provides for a right to counsel, but it's not funded counsel. Having decided to come inside, you lose your funded counsel; having decided it's serious, they give you back your right to counsel, but without funding.

• 1100

At Kent Institution now, because the chairperson is an outside lawyer who is truly independent, they classify everything as minor, so there's no counsel. The problem with Correctional Service Canada is they resist any attempt for there to be truly independent accountability. In my submission, until we have that you will not have an institution that complies with the rule of law.

You have Madam Justice Arbour's recent comments. You can go back to every royal commission to about 1858, and they nearly all say the same thing: these are lawless agencies because they're not truly accountable to the public, or the independence of the bar, the bench, or some sort of independent adjudication system.

I know that may be costly, but if we want them to obey the law and if we're going to spend this time crafting a good law that can be held up as a model to other countries in terms of what we do as one of the leading civilized countries of the world, we have to make sure some remedies are there to enforce the law, to make sure they obey the law. That really is the most important thing I wanted to say to you today.

I could go on, as you know, for many hours.

The Chairman: Your reputation has preceded you.

Mr. John Conroy: I think I've probably used up my 10 minutes.

The Chairman: Yes. I will have to go to the committee members, because thus far they've been brief, but the time I let the presentation go on is the time they'll cross me up and carry on.

Mr. John Conroy: I'm open to cross-examination.

The Chairman: All right.

Mr. Gouk.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Thank you.

I'd certainly agree that any institution where there is no representation for prisoners whatsoever could basically do whatever, and there would be no true justice there. But on the other side of the equation, if you give full representation with paid counsel for whatever offences are committed inside, the prisoners could—and I submit to you in some cases would—tie up the prison far more successfully than perhaps even a riot could do, by manipulating the system. You could literally grind it to a halt. Where do you find the balance?

Mr. John Conroy: I disagree, Mr. Gouk.

In fact, if a person comes before the disciplinary court now and they ask for an adjournment to get counsel, it goes to legal aid, they get turned down, they appeal it and the appeal is lost. They would have to seek what we call a Rowbotham application to get individual funding. It delays and defeats the whole purpose of having what the courts have said are swift disciplinary decisions.

We know from studies that were done by Professor Jackson many years ago that having duty counsel or counsel there has effectively helped speed up the process, to get down to the issues that may be involved and narrow them down.

I appreciate that at first glance one may think that's what will happen, because lawyers have a reputation, I suppose, for raising all kinds of issues that might delay things and so on, but that hasn't been the experience when counsel has been involved. In my submission, if you have an independent person running the various boards, whether it's a segregation review board or a disciplinary board, they control the process. As long as you have somebody who knows what they're doing, those abuses can be avoided.

Mr. Jim Gouk: So you're saying you wouldn't necessarily need to have full process; you would need to have someone independent of the prison system involved in the process.

Mr. John Conroy: That's right—independent counsel and an independent adjudicator, preferably.

Mr. Jim Gouk: But in each case with independent counsel.... I'm trying to see if there's some way to streamline this. Would it have to be counsel of choice in each individual case?

Mr. John Conroy: Ideally it would be counsel of choice, but certainly limits on that have been developed through the legal aid plans in relation to people on the street, because of the funding situation. For example, if I agree to take on a case in Vancouver on a legal aid basis, they won't pay me for travel from Abbotsford to Vancouver, the incentive being that the person should get a local lawyer—things of that kind.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Okay.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Gouk.

• 1105

[Translation]

Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Richard Marceau: I would like to thank you for your presentation, Mr. Conroy.

Since we have arrived in British Columbia, we have heard from a lot of people who found it absurd that after serving two-thirds of his sentence, the prisoner has an automatic right to parole. Several people told us that we should return to a system where prisoners would have to deserve parole at two-thirds of their sentence. What do you have to say to these people?

[English]

Mr. John Conroy: I think the media has distorted what mandatory supervision was, and now statutory release is, all about. It was not a privilege for prisoners; it was a tightening up. If you go back historically, and it's still the case in the province, after one-third you're eligible for parole. You'd have to apply, see a board, and the board in its discretion decides whether you get parole or not.

If you didn't apply for parole or you were turned down for parole and got to two-thirds of your sentence but you had otherwise been well behaved in the prison, you earned the third off for good behaviour and you went out. In fact, that was effectively the end of your sentence, and still is in the provincial system.

People said, this doesn't make much sense. Those who are a good risk are getting parole; those who are not a good risk are not, but they're getting out at two-thirds with no supervision. So surely the bigger-risk people should be under some kind of supervision for the last third of their sentence. That's when mandatory supervision was created. But then of course what happened was, because they were a bigger risk, they reoffended or breached more often than people did on parole, and that became newsworthy. As soon as it became newsworthy, the public then started blaming the board for the screw-ups on mandatory, when it had nothing to do with the board at all because they hadn't granted the release.

So that then proceeded for some period of time and obviously was a tightening up of what happened. It wasn't the granting of some privilege or anything. It was putting conditions on that last third, and it's only since the CCRA, I believe—it might have been a little bit before that—that they decided to abolish earned remission and simply call it statutory release, because most people were earning that third in any event, subject to losing some time for disciplinary court convictions and things of that nature.

So if anything, no, I would support the continuation of mandatory supervision statutory release. Again, it's an example, though, of the sort of thing where at first glance to members of the public, if you don't understand it, you think this is some kind of privilege because it's an entitlement to be released at that one-third.

But remember what happened after that. After that they said, what do we do about people who get to warrant expiry and are still considered dangerous at the mandatory supervision time? So they came up with detention.

Before detention, at Kent they used to take the prisoner out to the rock quarry at the back, release him from the van and immediately rearrest him and call that a suspension of his mandatory supervision. The court said you can't do that; you need some post-release conduct before you can suspend. So they come up with detention.

Now the Correctional Service Canada, if they have reasonable grounds to believe you're going to reoffend in a violent manner prior to warrant expiry, can detain you until warrant expiry.

Members of the public will say that's good; we're keeping them in longer, and that protects us. But I would suggest that isn't necessarily so. If the man comes to the end of his sentence, is the bigger risk and has no gradual release, if you unlock that door and put him out on the street, it would seem to me that the chances of that person reoffending are far greater than if you had a period of gradual reintegration to try to get him into a situation where he's stable.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Very well, but the impression that I described is not only that of the general public. Since we have arrived in British Columbia, Monday, we have met not with members of the public—today is the first day that we meet with members of the public—but rather with people who were involved in the process, whether it be prisoners, prison guards or parole officers. These people tell us that it doesn't make sense for it to be automatic. I'm not talking about just the general public, but rather people who work in prisons, in the system day after day. They told us that they were on the front line. These are people who are truly involved in the battle for rehabilitation.

• 1110

How is it that people who are in daily contact with prisoners tell us that parole should not be automatic? These people say that two or three weeks before hitting the two-thirds mark of the sentence, prisoners can no longer be controlled because they know that no matter what they will be released after having served two-thirds of their sentence. How are we to answer this?

[English]

Mr. John Conroy: I'm surprised to hear that. I haven't heard anybody say that before.

As far as I know, the statistics in terms of success on statutory release, mandatory supervision, are still quite good. It's certainly not as good as it is on parole. So I'm not sure what they're saying the problem is. If you go back to earned remission, those who behave themselves are going to earn one-third off and get out at two-thirds. That was the idea, the incentive to behave yourself to earn that one-third off. So I don't know if these people are proposing that you simply abolish it completely, and you're always then at the discretion of the board before you get a release. Is that the idea?

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: It was something like that, from what I understand.

[English]

Mr. John Conroy: Again, you will increase the number of people who will remain in prison.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Yes, that's correct.

[English]

Mr. John Conroy: It will cost you more money, and more of them will end up at warrant expiry. I submit that's not in the public interest.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

Mr. Wappel.

[English]

Mr. Tom Wappel: Mr. Conroy, I'm slightly confused about the hats you wear. In this West Coast Prison Justice Society newsletter you are listed as a.... Are you John W. Conroy?

Mr. John Conroy: I am.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You are listed as a board member as of October/December. Is that incorrect?

Mr. John Conroy: That's incorrect.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You're listed as Conroy and Company, yet the mail goes to Conroy, Hammond and Company.

Mr. John Conroy: Mr. Hammond is no longer with me.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Okay.

Now, in your example of Winters, it seems to me that the difference is, if Winters is charged with assault outside and he's convicted, he has been convicted of an offence for which he can be sentenced and deprived of his liberty for a period beyond the time for which he is already in prison.

Mr. John Conroy: That's correct.

Mr. Tom Wappel: If you are inside, it's a disciplinary matter. There is no conviction, there is no additional record, and—correct me if I'm wrong—you cannot have any additional time put on you, because eventually you will receive your statutory release even if you don't get out earlier. So It seems to me that it is an entirely different situation with an entirely different set of ramifications, which in my view can justify the difference between legal aid covering in one case and not in the other.

What are your comments?

Mr. John Conroy: My submission, first of all, would be that I think we should have as few parallel criminal justice systems as possible. If an offence is defined under the Criminal Code as an offence, perhaps all matters that are under the Criminal Code should be dealt with under the Criminal Code. Most prisoners may not like that, because as you pointed out, that means perhaps a consecutive sentence, although it might also be a concurrent sentence.

You say that liberty is therefore affected. Liberty is also affected when you face a disciplinary charge, or at least it's at risk of being affected. The Supreme Court of Canada, in Cardinal and Oswald, Miller and Morin, recognized that being sentenced to the prison within the prison, namely solitary confinement, affects a liberty interest. That's why it's important to have counsel, in my submission. If the penalties for a disciplinary offence were limited to non-liberty types of restraint, then there's a better argument for there not being any true counsel.

But you have to remember that the prison is a society in itself, and these people came from society, they're in this society, and they're going to go back to that society. What's important, as part of the corrections process, is to encourage them to respect the law, to understand it, and be prepared to use peaceful remedies in the future. The prisoner is at risk of solitary confinement when faced with an assault charge and disciplinary court that's designated as serious. The law gives them a right to counsel, but not funded.

• 1115

My point was this administrative decision takes away the funding when in fact it's the same facts, it still does result in a conviction, sir. That's how it's defined in the legislation. It then not only impacts on the prisoner in terms of the penalty that's awarded for the disciplinary offence, but it forms part of the person's record. It can affect their security classification. It can affect the institutions they remain in, whether it's maximum, medium, or minimum. It can void their parole.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Suppose, then, we change the CCRA to say that any disciplinary matter that could be proceeded with under the Criminal Code should be proceeded with under the Criminal Code. Then the prisoner would in fact have a right to counsel and he takes his risks in criminal court.

Mr. John Conroy: That has always been preferable in my view, that the offences under the act should be limited to truly disciplinary matters and not overlap with matters in the Criminal Code.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Do you feel most prisoners would agree with your position?

Mr. John Conroy: No.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I don't think so either.

Mr. John Conroy: I'm not here to simply make a submission as to what prisoners would want.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I understand.

I'd like to pick up on what Monsieur Marceau was talking about, because you seemed surprised and I think it's important for you to know that it indeed was not the media, it was not the public, it was the front-line workers.

I suspect we're going to hear this all across the country. They're not suggesting necessarily, at least I didn't hear them suggest, that everybody should do every last day of their sentence; no one is suggesting that by any means. They are suggesting it is in fact a risk to the public in many cases to let people out simply by the expiry of calendar days without any examination of their behaviour, whether they've taken any programs, whether they have shown any degree of remorse for the crime for which they've been convicted and incarcerated. It isn't just statutory release, it's APRs—

Mr. John Conroy: Oh, I see.

Mr. Tom Wappel: —that they're extremely concerned with, because all you do is tick off the days on a calendar, They view that, at least the way I understood it, as a very serious potential danger to the public.

Mr. John Conroy: When you say danger to the public, though, are you talking in terms of risk of violence?

Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes.

Mr. John Conroy: But, you see, that doesn't make any sense, sir. APRs only apply to schedule II non-violent offenders—

Mr. Tom Wappel: Those people may be violent. They may have committed many offences. They just haven't been in a federal penitentiary, and the offence for which they're in a federal penitentiary is deemed to be non-violent. If you talk to someone who's had their home broken into, they would say that's a violent crime.

Mr. John Conroy: I appreciate that, and you can tinker and redefine what's in schedule I and schedule II, and Parliament has done that a number of times already. But are you going to abolish APRs for all of those people who are non-violent, who don't have those kinds of histories you're talking about, for whom there is no reasonable grounds to believe they're likely to reoffend in a violent manner?

The whole thrust of those people who've looked into this is to try to come up with alternatives to imprisonment and, in the case of those who are sentenced to imprisonment, to keep them there only as long as is necessary. So the person who is a non-violent drug offender, for example, may get out at one-sixth now on day parole to a halfway house type of situation, and one-third being directed to full parole under the APR, and the person is then under supervision for a long period of time in the community. So we don't have the same cost and everything that we have in keeping them in the prison.

But if the CSC feels there are reasonable grounds to believe somebody is going to reoffend in a violent manner, they can still keep them in; there's that power to do so. The same is true with statutory release in terms of detention. So we have checks at statutory release, at one-third and at one-sixth, to try to identify those who we think are going to be violent. It's all then a matter of defining what that means.

Mr. Tom Wappel: These people who work on a day-to-day basis have heard your arguments, not perhaps directly from you but the philosophy that you've just expounded, and they don't agree with it. They work on a day-to-day basis with—

Mr. John Conroy: In terms of the people who work there on a day-to-day basis, you have to also take what they say sometimes and be careful about why they want the things they want. The guards union in California is the largest contributor to the governor's coffers and that's why they have more prisons in California than anywhere else—

Mr. Tom Wappel: We're not in the United States. We're in British Columbia.

Mr. John Conroy: The people who were on the front lines—

Mr. Tom Wappel: We're not talking about correctional officers, we're talking about parole officers and program workers.

• 1120

Mr. John Conroy: They all have an economic interest in what goes on, so just because they're people on the front line doesn't necessarily convince me that what they're saying is what you should do.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Granted—

Mr. John Conroy: If you think there should be more people in prison and kept in prison longer, then that's what you do.

Mr. Tom Wappel: No, no, I think the philosophy they're trying to suggest is that there should be some degree of responsibility accepted and some degree of progress shown by the inmate in order to be released early, rather than simply waiting out your days on a calendar. That's the only point.

Mr. John Conroy: But the sentence is still being served, whether it's inside or on the street. And it's always a question, first of all, of protection of the public, and making a decision about whether or not that person is a risk to the public. That's the first most important decision.

So if the person can serve the sentence, subject to being suspended and returned to custody.... They lose their APR status. They don't have to reoffend to lose it; on a revocation they lose it. They're no longer a first-time federal offender. So there's a lot hanging over the heads of these people, and it seems to have been effective. There are lots of people out there on APR who seem to be obeying their conditions. And that, I submit, is the real test.

Do we have statistics of a lot of people reoffending on APR? I don't think so.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Wappel. That's a good point. That's a statistic that we will be looking into.

Mr. John Conroy: Somebody asked about statistics in terms of the women's prisons, and if you look at Madam Justice Arbour's report, you're going to find some statistics in there on page 207.

The Chairman: Yes, but our researchers will be getting that information.

Mr. Grose.

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

Thank you, Mr. Conroy. You answered my question from before.

Carrying on with something Mr. Wappel mentioned, if one is charged and tried inside the prison, could not one be sentenced to loss of remission?

Mr. John Conroy: Not any more, because they've abolished it.

Mr. Ivan Grose: There's no question. So then it would be an advantage in that case to be tried inside the prison rather than outside.

Mr. John Conroy: From the point of view of many prisoners, they'd prefer, I'm sure, to be tried inside the prison to avoid the possibility of consecutive time.

What we feared was that there would be more use of solitary confinement when they abolished remission as a penalty, but I understand this fortunately hasn't occurred. What seems to have happened is there is more use of fines.

But that's a problem too, as was pointed out earlier, when you make very little money. Twenty-five dollars may seem like little to somebody on the street, but it's a lot to somebody who earns very little. I have to pay $1.75 for the privilege of accepting each one of those collect phone calls from prisoners, because the recipient of the collect call has to pay according to the arrangement between the telephone companies and Correctional Service Canada.

Mr. Ivan Grose: I might add here—it's not a question—the mere mention of solitary confinement sends chills up my back after seeing the solitary confinement at Kent. It's inhuman, as far as I'm concerned.

Regarding this question of representation of prisoners inside the institution, I think we all would probably admit that most charges are incurred by a very small percentage of the prison population, the so-called jailhouse lawyers and so on. If they get full representation without control, are they not going to be using a disproportionate amount of the time and money allotted to the defence of prisoners, if we had a fund, if it were funded inside the institution? A lot of these things are done simply, in my opinion, to pass the time while they're in. There would have to be some control on the amount of time for which one individual would have access to this paid representation.

Mr. John Conroy: I think one would certainly have to come up with rules and regulations that would govern it, just as we do for legal aid on the street. But I think if you made sure that Criminal Code offences are dealt with in the outside courts with independent judges and independent counsel to start off with, you would reduce the possibility of those abuses. That would be the first point.

• 1125

Then presumably the offences would be truly disciplinary types of offences inside the prisons. Again, if the independent chairperson has.... If you started off with a system of duty counsel, for example, you'd probably find, as we do in the outside courts, that it facilitates people who don't want to go to trial, entering their pleas, having somebody to represent them in terms of sentence, so you can clear off some of those things. So all that's left to take up the time of the court in terms of actual trials or whatever are those where there's a real dispute or perhaps somebody trying to abuse the system.

No matter what systems we devise, there are going to be people who abuse them. But hopefully an independent chairperson with adequate powers to control the process can try to minimize the abuses. Certainly as the evidence of abuses develops, changes can be made to try to limit them.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Yes, unfortunately there are a lot of “ifs” in there. The reason I raised that point—

Mr. Tom Wappel: He's the lawyer.

Mr. Ivan Grose: —was that if the question were asked by John Q. Taxpayer on the outside.... I can just hear it now: “Why would we provide a lawyer to a prisoner who already has offended society and is in prison and not behaving himself?” Not that I'm opposed to your idea....

Mr. John Conroy: But when you're sentenced to prison for an offence, it's not part of the sentence that you receive substandard justice. We're not saying, here, we're sentencing you to so much time and if you reoffend you're going to get only substandard justice. Is that the penalty? If it is, you should put that in the legislation so everybody knows that's what part of being sentenced to prison is.

I've heard that polls and studies as to the right to counsel generally show the public accepts that there has to be proper legal aid funding. But again, I think the problem is that we don't think about legal assistance in a complicated legal system in the same way as we do about medical care or care for health problems. Yet people who come before the criminal justice system often have all kinds of health-related problems, whether they be mental health problems or whatever, and assisting them to go through a peaceful resolution, many of them having reacted violently or in some other way, to encourage them and to facilitate going through the peaceful resolution of the conflict, whatever it is, in my submission is very important to the health of Canada and to the health of the public.

We somehow have to get the public to understand that having people who are frustrated, who try to do this on their own, who try to appear in the outside or the inside courts on their own, and who don't have adequate education or understanding of how it all works is not good for everybody's health. Somehow we have to get people to understand that spending the money to do this is going to benefit the public in the long run. But it's not an easy sell.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you very much. You've provided me with the answer that I will use.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Conroy. You've got us back on schedule. Thank you.

Our next witness is from the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy. We have Mr. Dandurand.

So you're appearing alone, are you?

Mr. Yvon Dandurand (Director, Policy Development and Human Rights, International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy): Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman. My colleague Mr. Tkachuck is still in Africa and could not come back early enough to be here today. He sends his apologies.

The Chairman: Thank you, that's fine. I'm sure you will handle the task.

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: I hope so. Thank you very much.

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

The Chairman: So if we could have a presentation of between 5 to 10 minutes, then there will be questions from the committee members.

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: Thank you very much.

I am Yvon Dandurand, the director of policy development and human rights at the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy here in Vancouver. Contrary to what the agenda says, the centre is not part of the University of British Columbia. It just happens to be on campus. So we're not affiliated.

We are affiliated with the United Nations. We are part of the United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice program. And as part of our work we have a major corrections and sentencing project that is international in nature and consists of facilitating the provision of technical assistance to other countries in the area of corrections and sentencing. We're involved, for instance, in Africa, where my colleague Brian Tkachuck is today, in China, and in Central and Latin America.

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None of that is immediately relevant to the work of this subcommittee. But I'm mentioning this because that perhaps puts us in an interesting position in terms of being able to make some comparisons, broad-brush comparisons, between the situation in Canada and the situation in other countries.

In that sense I'm appearing here not so much as an expert but as a somewhat distant observer of what is happening in Canada. We are involved from time to time with our colleagues here. We were involved in facilitating the consultation that happened earlier on the Corrections and Conditional Release Act in Vancouver. We also were involved in organizing a national seminar on restorative justice about a year and a half ago, which really was dealing with the issue of alternatives to sentencing. Also, our work internationally has much to do with the implementation of international standards, justice and human rights standards when it comes to treatment of offenders.

What I want to offer today to the members of this subcommittee is a few general comments from basically a comparative perspective. My first comment really has to do with an overall assessment.

I would like to say Canadians have valid reasons to be proud of the system they have, certainly if you compare our system to that of most other countries, even developed countries. Yet when you look at this you also find that Canadians are still largely in many cases dissatisfied with the system they have.

I think this is a very important issue. I'm sure this is an issue your subcommittee is concerned about. It certainly seems at times that no matter how great a service is being provided, it will never be enough from the point of view of Canadians. Some of it has to do with other broader factors that have nothing to do with sentencing and corrections, that have to do with fear of crime and how safe people feel in their society, and so on. A lot of it is perceived as a responsibility of the courts and the correctional system, when in fact many of those issues are a community responsibility.

The public mood is very punitive, and not just in Canada. Around the world there's definitely a backlash against some of the penal reforms that have been implemented in Canada and abroad over the last several years when it comes to dealing with criminals. There's no shortage of examples in other countries—south of the border but also everywhere else—where, when this public concern is not taken seriously, it can lead to a serious situation where the public will impose its will on everyone in the system and makes its will known, with very untenable consequences for the correctional system. I'm thinking of countries that have gone with mandatory sentencing and a “three strikes and you're out” type of system, and so on. That is always a possibility unless the system can be credible in the eyes of the public.

Generally speaking, my own personal view is that since the enactment of the current legislation, we have made huge progress in Canada. I don't mean that statement as a blanket approval of everything that is being done, but in all honesty, a lot of progress has been accomplished since 1992. I'm thinking in terms of a clearer sense of direction for the whole of the system, a clearer focus on what the task at hand is. I'm thinking also in terms of the distinct improvement, in my view, concerning the quality of the decisions that are made at all levels of the system, including conditional release and so on. I feel society is better protected, that progress is being made. I also feel there's more room now for community involvement, victims' involvement.

These all represent significant progress. But I still think there are several areas that deserve a better effort on our part. By our part I don't mean just the Correctional Service or the National Parole Board, I mean us as a society.

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One area is the old issue of transparency. The tradition in all correctional systems around the world is to be closed upon themselves. It doesn't come naturally for a correctional system to be open and transparent, open to public scrutiny. I know, again, that efforts have been made in that direction, but I believe more effort has to be made to ensure that what happens in our system—the decisions that are made, and so on—are more transparent to the public and to anyone concerned, including victims of crime and communities.

This relates to a point that was made earlier by a previous witness, Mr. Conroy, also concerning the independent accountability of the system. There is the independent accountability issue, which I believe is important, but there's also the issue of transparency, access to information, and information that has not been manipulated and massaged and presented in order to try to orient public opinion in one direction or another.

Now, how is that accomplished? There are several ways, but one of the ways I would like to stress here is more research—and more independent research. There's a fair amount of research being done, but most of it is controlled very tightly by the system itself, by the Correctional Service and others. There is really a paucity of independent research.

You may think I'm proposing some irrelevant academic thing, but I am not. Really, a lot of the public view on what is happening depends on whether the information they have in credible. Sometimes some information is circulated, coming directly from the system itself, and you don't whether to believe or not; you don't know whether to classify it as propaganda or as research. One of the criteria there is the independence of that research. I won't belabour that point. I believe you know what I'm talking about.

But I'll give you an example. I also teach at the University College of Fraser Valley in the Department of Criminology. One of my colleagues there started research, with the cooperation of Correctional Service Canada and the local police force, on what was happening to inmates being released from the institution in the valley. The research is still in progress, but I had a chance to talk to him before coming here.

As you might imagine, some of that research was instigated as a result of the thousands of signatures that have been gathered to protest against the number of people on conditional release in the area. His own preliminary findings are that the concerns of the public really may be valid, but they are not supported by the empirical evidence in terms of where the inmates go, the rates of recidivism, and so on.

I'm not going to try to present his data for him, but the point I'm trying to make here is that sometimes, even though people within the system are distrustful of independent research, they are making a mistake, because independent research can enlighten collective choices. It should be encouraged much more than it is today.

I will just list a few other issues, and perhaps members of the committee can ask about them. I've listed seven points that I think deserve greater attention and better effort, again on the part of all of us, including people working in the system. I say this because even though my own report card on the reforms that have been brought in in the last decade or so is a significantly positive one, I also think sometimes that we're getting ahead of the public, getting ahead of ourselves, and sometimes also getting ahead of the people working in the system. It is hard to make everyone understand what it is we're trying to accomplish. It's an ongoing task.

Now, among the seven issues I'd like to bring to your attention, one is the old issue again of sentencing disparity and people understanding how sentencing happens. It may not be directly part of what this subcommittee's looking at, but in a sense in the report of the sentencing commission in the late 1980s there were issues concerning sentencing disparity and so on that have not yet been addressed by the legislators in Canada. I believe those issues continue to plague the correctional system. The correctional system is at the back end of the system, and there's not a whole lot they can do once the sentences have been done.

My suggestion here is that at some later time this committee, either the subcommittee or the committee it reports to, should readdress the issue of sentencing disparity.

The other one I do not have a lot of information on because, I would submit to you, there's not a whole lot of information available. But we are aware of the fact that there are current proposals by the Minister of Justice concerning the Young Offenders' Act and the transfer to adult court and so on, and all of that begs the question of what happens to those young offenders. I am generally aware that there are federal-provincial agreements concerning those young offenders and so on, but if you're trying to find out exactly what is the agreement, it is not that easy. Again, perhaps it goes back to transparency.

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My point here is that there is a growing issue, and that issue might be exacerbated if the proposals of the Minister of Justice that were circulated for consultation purposes go ahead in Parliament. So the whole issue of juvenile offenders and what its impact is going to be on the federal corrections system is something that I think needs greater scrutiny, although unfortunately I'm not in a position to assist the subcommittee much because there is not a whole lot of information available to the public on what happens to those people. And I'm not sure that a whole lot of work has been done on trying to anticipate what the consequences will be of those proposed changes and recent changes to the Young Offenders Act when it comes to young offenders being transferred to adult courts and perhaps receiving longer sentences.

On the next one, I don't have to lecture anyone about this; however, I can remind you that the world is watching how Canada is dealing with its aboriginal offenders. Again, it's an area where progress has been made, but how we address the problem of their overrepresentation in the correctional system is a crucial issue and is certainly one where Canada is being watched by other countries.

The fourth point is that part of the progress that has been made in terms of the quality of the decisions I was talking about earlier is because of the fairly impressive developments that have occurred in Canada in terms of developing a methodology to assess risk and to manage risk represented by offenders. As you may or may not know, all of that is based basically on actuarial statistical methods of risk prediction, and all of those methods do include risks from the point of view of the rights of offenders. I'm certainly prepared to elaborate on that later if you have any questions. I think this is an issue of concern, one that does not receive sufficient attention.

For my last three points, one is that maybe more attention needs to be given to the question of mentally disordered offenders and what happens to them. Another issue—and I know work is being done right as we speak to try to improve this—is that there is not sufficient programming and resources available for community corrections, and that might be an area of priority. Finally, in respect not so much to the system but to the Office of the Correctional Investigator, I do believe—and again, this is from a human rights perspective—that it is quite important for this committee to consider the possibility of recommending greater independence for the Office of the Correctional Investigator, perhaps, as suggested by other witnesses, to ensure that it reports directly to Parliament.

I know that during our consultations locally earlier this year, the issue came up several times. Again, I would not presume to offer direct suggestions on how to handle it, but I can point to that as an issue and as something that requires immediate attention.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Gouk.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Thank you for coming. You've certainly been very succinct in your presentation.

I don't have any specific questions really, other than to say I want to make sure we're on the same wavelength on a couple of things.

One of the things I find happens too often is that people seem to polarize themselves, either saying you shouldn't go after someone because it's not their fault, they're a product of their environment, their upbringing and so on.... I don't happen to believe it's an either/or situation. You mentioned the aboriginal situation, and it is a very disturbing figure. But likewise, we have far more men, a disproportionate number of men, than women, and this doesn't mean we need to have all kinds of special programs for men.

I think we need to recognize that there are a lot of problems in aboriginal society. Many have been brought upon them, and we need to deal with those, but we don't ignore dealing with the criminal justice system because of the other problems that are there. It's a parallel system as opposed to an absolute, final alternative.

Likewise, with the young offenders system we have the same thing. We don't ignore what young offenders have done because of their backgrounds, but we try to ensure that we remove those causes.

I sensed when you were talking that you have a lot more information and material. Have you something that perhaps you could submit to the committee in written form that would expand on some of the ideas you were talking about?

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Mr. Yvon Dandurand: I certainly could undertake to submit some more information. I must say that our own area of expertise really is in the comparative, which means basically comparing our situation to that of other countries. There are researchers, and other institutes and other groups, that are better placed to provide this information.

One of the points I made is that a lot of this information is strictly not available. It is very hard to obtain information on what is really happening.

I feel rather strongly about your previous point, which is that a lot of those problems end up being, on the surface, correctional types of problems, but they're not. They're societal problems. When we come to aboriginal offenders, by the time they end up in the federal correctional system, it's really too late to try to address that problem. Something else had to happen. You've made the link also with the young offenders issues, and I do not remember offhand what the proportion is, but a huge proportion of adult offenders were young offenders. And that is in effect an indictment of our response to young offenders. If we had been more effective at intervening when they were young, we would not end up having them in the federal system when they become adults.

Mr. Jim Gouk: We do have some good programs starting now. There's one in my own riding, a diversion program to try to keep them out of the court system, and the rate of recidivism has been absolutely astounding. It's less than 1%. It's an incredible success.

One other point you've raised was the fact that there's a lot of misinformation out there. What we need to do is find ways to do that. I found, just in the very short time this committee has been doing its review, an attitudinal change in me in certain aspects, particularly with the concept of controlled release and the advantages of it. I feel that what is still missing from the system is responsibility on the part of the offender, a sense of the consequence of action. There seems to be very little sense of the consequence of action. I posed to one prisoner who had come before us the question, would you like a system where you had more rights accessible to you, with more consequences for not following the system properly and abusing those rights? And I was surprised his response was that, no, he wouldn't like that at all. Where do you go with something like that?

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that question.

Mr. Jim Gouk: It's one of the problems we have to deal with.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Gouk. Mr. Marceau is next.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Mr. Dandurand, thank you for having appeared here today. I found your presentation interesting.

You said on several occasions, in your introduction, that Canadians should be proud of their system, that it was a good system despite everything and so forth. You were basically saying that when we look at ourselves we feel rather sad, but when we compare ourselves to others we feel better about it.

I want to ask you the opposite question. You are drawing a comparison. What have you seen elsewhere, in other countries, developed or not, which should perhaps be studied and adopted here in Canada?

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: In this area, I don't think that there's very much we can learn from abroad, but as to prevention, as to how we settle conflicts as they happen, on that score there are things we can look at from other countries, developed or not, which deal with public participation in the determination of the public's response to crime. In English, we speak of consensual sentencing. Here in Canada we speak of restorative justice, but I don't think that that's a very good term. It's a matter of creating systems which would allow the community to be involved in the response to an offence.

Obviously, in the case of violent atrocious crimes and so forth, the response is quite simple, but where we're dealing with youth offenders for example, we have a lot to learn from systems and countries which are not as professionalized as ours and which have left the doors more open to public participation. I'm thinking for example of circle sentencing or family group conferencing, in Australia and New Zealand, which has been tried in Canada. Outside of that, in many ways, we are in a leadership role.

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Mr. Richard Marceau: [Editor's Note: Inaudible]... parole system.

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: That is my point of view, yes.

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you. That's all.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Marceau.

[English]

Mr. Wappel.

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

Mr. Dandurand, I wanted to make sure I had the points that you made. You said there were several areas that deserve a better effort. I have eight, but you had said there were seven. I just want to double-check, and then I'll give you an opportunity to expand on one.

I had transparency in the correctional system, with a subheading of more independent research; sentencing disparity and the public understanding of sentencing; young offenders and their impact on federal institutions; aboriginal offenders; risk assessment, which is the one I'd like you to elaborate on, because I'm not quite sure I got the point; mentally disordered offenders; programming and resources for community corrections; and the correctional investigator's independence and reporting to Parliament. As I said, I had eight, but you'll take that extra one, right?

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Could you elaborate on risk assessment?

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: Yes, and I actually did have eight, but the first one I treated as an introduction.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Okay.

Mr. Yvon Dandurand: The notion of risk assessment is a double-edged sword in many ways. Again, Canada is really leading other countries. A lot of other countries are interested in borrowing the technology we have that allows us to use statistical information and historical records about what an offender has done, such as the age at which they first committed an offence, first conviction, record when it comes to previous conditional releases, and so on. We have been able to amalgamate all of that into basically a measurement scale, and we can come to a fairly accurate prediction about what is going to be the future behaviour. It has become a cliché to say the best prediction of future behaviour is past behaviour, but we've turned that into a fairly impressive technology that has made it possible to make more cautious decisions—and many people would argue the decisions are perhaps too cautious.

But this has allowed us to do two things in the system. The first is to get most people within the system to talk the same language, to understand the risk factors and to truly integrate that into their daily decisions and formal decisions, such as the release decisions. That is quite impressive, really. The downside of this is that all of that is historical information.

From the point of view of human rights, you can't change history. If you were to tell me that I represent a great risk in the future because I started offending when I was 8 years old, and if that tells you I'm a greater risk than someone who started offending when he was 25 years old, no amount of programming or effort on my part or the part of anything or anyone else is going to change that. I can't turn back the clock and change the fact that I offended for the first time and was caught for the first time when I was 8 years old. This is the limitation of those instruments.

This system really places not just inmates but other people who face the criminal justice system in a very difficult situation. There is no way for them to convince people that they have made changes, because all of our technology or methodology to assess them is based on the past. From the point of view of human rights, that creates several difficulties. Once you have been given the label of “dangerous offender”—not a dangerous risk in the sense of the law but in the sense of those tools—it's very hard to change that label.

I know efforts are being made to come up with different kinds of instruments when it comes to trying to assess the progress made by inmates, but as far as I know, that problem has not been solved. So we sort of have the weakness of our success in this area.

Mr. Tom Wappel: That's an interesting phrase.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Grose, do you have any questions?

Mr. Ivan Grose: No, but I think we agree that Mr. Dandurand and Mr. Wappel have reminded us just exactly what it is we're all about. That's all I have to say, Mr Chairman. Thank you.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Dandurand, has your centre carried out any comparative studies that you could share with the committee? I'm thinking more specifically of the investigative offices in other countries. How do they go about having the independence that several witnesses have mentioned, including yourself?

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Mr. Yvon Dandurand: I will do so, with pleasure.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[English]

The next witnesses are from the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia. Arthur Paul and Brian Chromko, welcome. Gentlemen, if you could make a presentation that is between five and ten minutes long, that would allow time for questioning from the committee members.

Mr. Brian Chromko (Executive Director, Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia): First of all, I want to thank you for the invitation.

I'm mainly going to touch on two areas. The first is about pre-release and the prisoners going back to their communities. The other point that I'll then touch on deals with services within the correctional institutions, especially in British Columbia.

Court workers do not work directly with any of the federal institutions in British Columbia, but I have toured all the federal institutions in B.C., primarily with the regard to the services that were being provided to sex offenders. Court workers created the first sex offender retraining program in British Columbia and across Canada. The reason was that native inmates who didn't have a grade 10 education didn't qualify for the sex offender retraining program that's in the prison system to date. Consequently, we had inmates getting no assistance or no help, and then just being released back into the community to offend again. They had no intervention at all within the correctional institutions.

To date, we're trying to look at expanding the sex offender retraining program to train existing band social workers and community health nurses in order for the communities to have their own internal resources for when inmates are released. When a problem arises in the communities, they will then have a better mechanism to deal with it. They can deal with the problems internally at the community level.

In terms of the existing situation with regard to day parole and all the rest of it, we find that native people simply don't make applications for any of these. We find a lot of our native inmates are gated in the sense that they do their full time and are then released back to their communities. The communities have expressed many concerns about wanting to have the inmates getting better assistance while they're incarcerated. In the Pacific region, I think about $1.3 million is being spent to provide aboriginal services. Unfortunately, I would seriously question some of these services in the sense of whether or not they are the best services that can be provided to inmates—and that would be right from the spirituality to ongoing training programs.

With that, I'm going to stop and turn it over to Art Paul. He's with the court workers as well, and has actually worked as a parole officer. He has also worked as a prison liaison worker within the provincial system. I'll ask Art to talk about the recidivism rate when we ran our own internal program.

Mr. Arthur Paul (Regional Manager, Lower Mainland, Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia): Good morning, and thank you for inviting me. My name is Arthur Paul, and I'm the regional manager for the lower mainland of British Columbia for the Native Courtworkers.

I have actually submitted a written submission to the subcommittee, and it has an introduction to the court workers and our intent. Our intent is to basically support, while hoping that we can also facilitate some of the services that you provide in the institutions.

I wanted to comment that I think the source program you have as a core program for first nations people in the institutions is a program that's working. I can't say it's working for all aboriginals, but I can say that it is working in some of the provinces.

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What I'm submitting is actually an application for a proposal for a two-phased program. One phase is in the institution and follows up with your SOR program. It's basically a continuation of or an addition to your SOR program. The second one is a community-based one, and I'm hoping it would be throughout the province of British Columbia—and again I have to make the statement that it's for British Columbia, because I can't really comment on what's happening across Canada.

The reason for my submission is that it's a response to your CCRA five-year review for aboriginal offenders that was completed in February 1998. I actually read through your statistics, and the majority of them basically show that the aboriginal people reoffend more. They're placed back in detention more for technical violations. I believe the program I've submitted to you would actually assist aboriginals in helping them understand what a technical violation is. In discussions that I've had with a couple of the clients in the last couple of weeks, they said nobody actually told them. I understand that you do have case managers who do exactly that, but a lot of times aboriginal people will sit there, shake their heads and say they understand, when really they do not. I'm hoping the program I'm offering will assist them to understand their rights.

For temporary absences, day parole releases and statutory releases, this is an in-house one. I'm looking at the exact same thing, utilizing aboriginal advisory committees for releases in the community. Earlier I heard an person making a submission concerning risk assessments. I believe aboriginal advisory committees should be utilized more, or an elders committee. I understand that in the lower mainland in B.C., we do have a contract with an elders advisory group.

I think my comment would be that some of the aboriginal advisory groups that we have are non-British Columbians. They're actually from back east, and that's one of our major concerns. We have aboriginal people from back east teaching their traditions and cultures to people in the west, and a lot of times it doesn't work; it actually confuses the aboriginal individual. So I'm hoping the advisory committees that we have put together, that the court workers have, will actually assist in assessment.

I'm actually better at responding to questions than I am at putting forward this written submission. I was hoping you guys would have the opportunity to read this beforehand.

Mr. Brian Chromko: The court workers have 32 offices throughout British Columbia, so we're a provincial organization. We're presently engaged in trying to work with Corrections to do some of the community assessments. Corrections is very difficult to work with in the sense of trying to set up a better process. You would think this would be an ideal process for Corrections in the sense that, if someone is going to Fort Ware, we have a court worker who can quickly do a community assessment. Upon the person's release, that court worker could ensure that the person is going to be coming out having a person he can contact, to a community that is going to be informed about the person's release back into the community and about what training the person has received, if any.

I'll mention some of the things I've seen happen in British Columbia. We had a sex offender released, a pedophile. He had done his full time, five years, and went back into the community and was teaching language in the preschool. The community's response was that he went to prison, so he was cured. We simply do not have enough knowledge, information, out there at the community level to say, look, he's a pedophile; he's incurable; he can never go back and be near children, ever. As a community, you're going to have to put together a process to ensure that children's safety is in place if you're going to allow him back into your community.

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When we ran prison liaison workers, our recidivism rate, people getting back into trouble, was very low—that's in the provincial system. We're very successful, running top-notch programming.

With that I'll maybe stop, and you guys can ask questions.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Gouk.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Certainly you raise some very good points, and part of the problem we face is that our overall mandate, if you want to sum it up in a single sentence, is how to make the system work better. That means, yes, identifying the problems, and someone suggested that's the easy part. The real challenge is what to do about those problems.

One of the things you mentioned was the grade 10 factor. Is that because they assume that someone with less than grade 10 can't assimilate what's being taught in these programs?

Mr. Brian Chromko: The present sex offender program requires a fairly sophisticated degree of reading and writing, because you're documenting all your behaviour.

Mr. Jim Gouk: In terms of this educational system, if you will, with communities and so on, how do we approach that? What is the practical answer to that?

Mr. Brian Chromko: What the communities are looking for is better programming within the correctional system itself for the inmates, because they are a captive audience. You can do a lot of good, intense work there. I'm referring to programs that are really going to make a difference in these inmates' lives, so that when they come out we're not going to have to worry a great deal about recidivism.

Instead, what we find being delivered today in the Pacific region, out of that $1.3 million contract, is that Corrections are doing it internally themselves. When I was in there, I saw terrible mismanagement of the money and the direction in which it was going. As an outside person, you can never make changes because Corrections is saying, well, we'll spend the money internally. So at Elbow Lake, where they've built a sweat lodge, they brought some gravel and dirt in and everything else, and then they charged $10,000 to the fund for doing that work when it was all Corrections people. That's what I talk about as mismanagement of funds rather than looking at solid programming that could go in there to make change within the inmates.

Mr. Jim Gouk: What can we do at the community level that would make this work more effective?

Mr. Brian Chromko: I think the community is wanting more say at the community level. As Art mentioned, where we talk about those community panels being set up to take a look at the process for release, quite often the community has no say or input whatsoever.

Another example is where a person was released to a community in British Columbia. He was a sex offender, and he was released right back to the house next door to the house where he offended. His parole officer said he had to report in once a month, and that was the condition of the release. The family did not know how to deal with this, and the community did not know how to deal with it. He was about to reoffend, and that's when Art and Doreen were there. He recognized Doreen from the prison, and he said, “Look, I'm going to reoffend.” So Art and the whole committee worked with the community to teach the community how to take charge of this guy.

Mr. Jim Gouk: That's exactly the point I wanted to make. When we talk in terms of education and we focus on the offender, would it be appropriate to take some portion of that money, perhaps a significant portion, and teach the communities and teach the people who are going to be involved with these people? Is that an appropriate target for education, not just the offender but the communities themselves?

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Mr. Brian Chromko: That's what I've really been trying to push for some time. One of the difficulties I run into with Corrections is that they're saying it's not their mandate. Everybody's saying it's not their mandate.

When I was trying to develop the sex offender...to train all people in communities all over British Columbia—not set up another bureaucracy but just retrain existing staff—where the resources are there at the community level, which then could be accessed by Corrections.... Or if they have internal problems, they could be dealt with more efficiently, and more informed decisions could be made.

Mr. Arthur Paul: That's part of what I was actually trying to tell you earlier, that what I submitted was an in-house community and job readiness program outline. The second part was a support service for the facilitation of the development of community advisory committees, and the training of those committees. We've found that the majority of the training that's happened in a lot of the communities that we've seen, and that I've been a part of, comes from back east, and they're not dealing with the west coast aboriginals.

The third part we're offering is the support and facilitation of recruitment of program personnel and correctional positions for Correctional Service Canada. The 25 years of experience, 15 years for Brian, 10 years for me, in the institutions and out.... We have correctional guards on staff with court workers because they found, in the position they were holding, they had no real authority or statements they could make. I found the recommendations or comments that I made in the position I held as a federal parole officer were actually put aside. They weren't really looked at as being valid, because I was an aboriginal.

In the context of a federal parole officer, they had a non-aboriginal federal parole officer taking care of approximately 23 aboriginal people here in B.C. in the lower mainland. I was thinking to myself that one of the reasons I was hired was to take over the aboriginal programs. It wasn't in their goals and their mindset that I was going to be taking that over. I was there as a parole officer. And I thought I was hired for my specific experience with aboriginal people.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Mr. Chromko, when we visited institutions in British Columbia, I asked where the elders came from, and I was told that a lot of them came from the East. One of the reasons for this, I was told, was that there were a lot of Crees in the prisons of British Columbia and that the Crees were not native to British Columbia, therefore the elders had to come from regions east of the Rockies. That is the explanation I was given. Is it true? Does that make any sense?

[English]

Mr. Brian Chromko: A large part of the prison population base is from back east. I would suggest probably 50% of our B.C. population are not from our province, they're not our people. They're Cree and Ojibway from all across Canada. So they try to build the elders to be representative of everybody, but the representation, I guess, is not always as fair as it could be, or as one would think.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: I am very unfamiliar with Aboriginal culture and I admit it freely. I have been told that the system where the elders helped and guided somewhat like priests or ministers of the Christian religions and that the system worked very well. People have recommended it to me and I was told that it helped a great number of Aboriginal prisoners, but I have the impression, after your presentation, that the participation of elders from Canada's First Nations doesn't work as well as we have been told.

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What could we do to improve the situation, in your view?

[English]

Mr. Brian Chromko: One of the difficulties in British Columbia is that we have 31 different dialects, so we have 31 different nations of native people. And we're as different as Italian and French. We all have different cultures; we have different practices.

In the institutions we see a predominately eastern culture being practised—the sweats, the pipe carriers, and all this kind of stuff. Now, that would not be acceptable for me because that's not what my culture reflects or what I would practise, coming from the area I come from. But it's becoming an accepted norm, and maybe it's not the most effective process that could be there. Maybe a more effective process would be to teach a culture based on all the different cultures, all the different processes.

When we talk religion, we're talking spirituality. Where I come from, Coyote was one god. He played tricks on another god. Mountains were formed. When the great flood came, he turned himself into a stick and floated to the top of the mountain. In Christianity, we talk about the great flood and the mountain. There are similarities in there. I think it would be a healthier process to teach a cross-section of religions, rather than trying to impose one practice as being the accepted system.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Therefore, what you're telling me is that when we are told that we must respect Native culture and tradition, that is false because there are many Native traditions and many Native cultures, which, at the present time, are not all well represented or taken into account in the Canadian correctional system.

[English]

Mr. Brian Chromko: Yes. I think because of the cultural diversity, it would have to be a more expanded process. And maybe rather than teach religion, teach the different processes. I have difficulty when I see someone who is in prison all of a sudden becoming a pipe carrier. Pipe carriers are never in prison to begin with, so it's against even that whole cultural process.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: So it would be like asking a francophone Quebecker to wear a Scottish kilt. That is more or less what you are saying.

I was told that at the Elbow centre in British Columbia, there was a high percentage of Aboriginal people, and this was not true of the other centres we saw. There were some in the other centres, of course, but the percentage was higher at the Elbow centre. Is it a good thing to have such a high proportion of Aboriginal people from various nations in one place? Is it better to concentrate Aboriginal people in one centre, even though they are from different nations, rather than putting them into a majority white prison system or into an institution where most of the residents are non-Aboriginal?

• 1220

[English]

Mr. Brian Chromko: No. I think it's a healthy process, and all I'm saying is just not imposing one process.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Paul, you had a comment on this.

Mr. Arthur Paul: Yes. When you're making a statement concerning Elbow, actually we have the elders council that contracted to have this. There are 110 people in the program there and 55 of them actually are aboriginal people who are taking it, but the 55 people who are taking the elders program in Elbow haven't taken any of this program content at all. So that kind of makes you wonder if there should be more cultural sensitivity training. Again, the aboriginal elder who's there running that contract is also from back east. It's a problem.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Grose, did you have a question.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm out of my depth here completely. I'll listen rather than question.

The Chairman: Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you for coming and thank you for providing this document. I have a couple of questions about it. I tried to do two things at once. I was listening to what you were saying but I was also glancing at this.

There's a president's message, but I can't find the president's name anywhere in this document. Who is the president?

Mr. Brian Chromko: Hugh Braker.

Mr. Tom Wappel: The mission statement is a holistic approach to prevention and intervention. My information is that CSC statistics will tell you—and I'm not exactly sure of the number because the information is in my Ottawa office, but I think it's 25%—that at least 25% of all federal inmates were sexually abused as children. Now, you have some statistics on aboriginal sex offenders. One of them is not that. Do you know, statistically, how many aboriginal inmates were sexually abused as children?

Mr. Brian Chromko: Probably 100%.

Mr. Tom Wappel: So presumably prevention begins in the community to try to prevent sexual abuse of children, wouldn't you agree?

Mr. Brian Chromko: Sexual abuse in the native community is very rampant, it's still happening and we have to do a great deal of education to prevent it. Some communities now want to deal with this but they want to deal with it in a different process. Rather than look at the prison system, they want to deal with it in an internal process.

Mr. Tom Wappel: But surely sexual abuse of children is against any known religion.

Mr. Brian Chromko: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: So what's wrong? What's going wrong?

Mr. Brian Chromko: The majority of the sexual abuse comes out from the residential schools. It's just playing itself out. The great majority of the children who were in residential schools were sexually abused, and now we have generation after generation coming back—the process is still carrying on in the community. That's why we're trying to say if we're going to make a change in the corrections system or in the court system we have to go back to the community level. Unfortunately government funding doesn't always meet criteria. If you have a crisis here you'll get funding for that.

What I wanted to do was to go back into all the communities in British Columbia, spend one day with chief and council, spend four days with all the band social workers, all the native people involved, to come up with a plan of action on how they're going to deal with it, and then come back the following week, spend three days with all probation officers, parole, police, everybody, work with them to set up a plan of action and bring them together. That way a community is then working to deal with the problem. To date, I haven't been able to receive any funding, and to me it would make the most sense.

• 1225

Mr. Tom Wappel: But is there no band funding for things like that?

Mr. Brian Chromko: There's no band funding. Most of the bands are struggling just to keep afloat for that. I went to the Department of Indian Affairs, I've gone to Corrections Canada, I've gone to many different sources, just to do that development phase. What happens then is the community is taking ownership for the responsibility for the problem, and that's where it really has to start. Until they take ownership and responsibility for the problem, we're not going to see any change.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you. That's a sad statistic you just gave us, truly sad.

The Chairman: Mr. Gouk.

Mr. Jim Gouk: There is one thing I have trouble with and I'd like your perspective on it. When you say there's no band funding...I certainly don't know all the band situations, but Nisga'a, for example, have between 1,700 and 1,800 people and they have $28 million a year in income. The Stony, 3,300 people, have $50 million a year in income. Where is the problem in not having band funding when we have these kinds of figures out there?

Mr. Brian Chromko: The Nisga'a don't have their $28 million yet.

Mr. Jim Gouk: No, that's existing now. It goes to $32.1—

Mr. Brian Chromko: I had dinner with them last night, and they didn't have the $28 million.

The problem is the Department of Indian Affairs money is...you have money to spend on keeping people on social assistance; money is very earmarked and so you can't spend it any other way. The limited amount there—it makes no sense to me to give people social assistance for doing nothing, but DIAND's funding doesn't allow any other change of process to that. So that's where we run into difficulty when there is no money. The limited amount of money that's there is so earmarked into specific peg holes that you can't move left or right with that process.

The Chairman: Some of the money that's earmarked under the new initiative on healing is to be turned over to the communities, I understand. Is there a possibility some of that money would be made available for these purposes?

Mr. Brian Chromko: Court workers have made application to run the sex offender retraining program and we've also applied for 14 counsellors for them.

The Chairman: I guess there's a possibility of some—

Mr. Brian Chromko: We're hoping, because, as I say, the community has to take responsibility and ownership of the problem. I think Corrections, where possible, could be more sensitive to trying to work with the community more, although I understand it's clearly not their mandate. But I think in the long run, some involvement working at the community level will pay off in the end. It would be most beneficial.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chromko and Mr. Paul. We appreciate your coming and making your submission to us.

I think, committee members, we will break now for lunch.

[Translation]

But first, Richard has another question.

[English]

I'd like to go in camera to discuss tomorrow's schedule. There are some developments we need to talk about there.

[Proceedings continue in camera]

• 1259

[Editor's Note: Public proceedings resume]

The Chairman: I would like to reconvene this hearing and welcome our witnesses: Ms. Turcotte, who we were with yesterday at Ferndale; and Mr. Doyle, who'll be making a presentation on behalf of CAVEAT. So perhaps we can have about a five- to ten-minute presentation and then there'll be questions from the committee members.

Mr. Ben Doyle (Director of Communications, Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination (CAVEAT)): My name is Ben Doyle. As mentioned, you know Rosalee Turcotte, whom most of you met during a consultation yesterday in the Fraser Valley. Rosalee has done a great deal of work on this and other issues, as both a member of CAVEAT and as a member of the citizens' advisory committee.

To put our appearance today here in perspective, Rosalee and I met five years ago in 1994 outside of adjacent courtrooms in B.C.'s supreme court in New Westminster while we were attending separate trials. Rosalee was going through the trial of the person who was later convicted of murdering her son Kenny in 1991. I was being introduced to the system by attending the trial of the man who was later found responsible for the murder of my best friend Angie in 1992.

• 1300

I make this point because I want to impress upon the committee that as CAVEAT members, we are in no way here because of a knee-jerk reaction to personal anger. Instead, this has been a long road for us, but it's one we recognize as being of critical importance in order for us to work toward positive change within the system. This is what brings us here today.

More specifically, CAVEAT is here to improve the profile of victims and thereby help educate others as to the need for recognition of victims by the system. To be clear, we assert that the protection of society should be paramount.

I'm going to give a summary of a paper Rosalee has prepared for CAVEAT B.C. She has made it available today and you will get a copy of it.

The introduction of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act in 1992 mandated some important legislation. The National Parole Board was made accountable to decisions made by its members. This was achieved through the creation of the decision registry. This database of conditional release decisions contains very important items of information. We assert that this provision has led to increased awareness and understanding of and public confidence in the National Parole Board.

In contrast, the Correctional Service Canada is far from being held in this regard with respect to this...and one of the reasons can be attributed to the lack of such a registry.

At present, the CCRA requires that some information—although a limited amount—is to be made available to victims upon request. However, these details are too basic to be informative, let alone of any comfort or enlightenment to victims seeking any information. An enormous amount of information is not mandatory upon request, such as dates of hearings and reviews, conditions attached to the release, the general destination of the offender upon release, and so forth. Moreover, there is no mention made at all of an offender's participation, or lack thereof, in programs or therapy, nor is there any mention of the offender's behaviour while in custody, or any indications about risk or remorse. There's an absence of this information.

Correctional Service Canada declares that one of its missions is “to ensure that the concerns of victims are taken into account in discharging our responsibilities”. I'd like to note the weakness of the wording “taken into account”. Unfortunately, the system is replete with things like that with respect to victims. This in itself is indicative of the manner in which victims are too often neglected by the system, if considered at all.

This has left many victims frustrated after attempting to contact and obtain information from the CSC. Victim liaison coordinators, though on hand, are fulfilling this duty as an aside to their regular roles; they are not dedicated to this full-time. This is not to cast aspersions on them as professionals at all; it's just to point out that such a process falls short for victims.

The principles of the CCRA have set out that the Correctional Service Canada is to act in a “forthright and fair manner” in dealings with inmates. Conversely, no such provision is made for victims.

I should point out that CAVEAT does not seek special rights; rather, CAVEAT aims for rights equal in principle to those of offenders. Victims must be given their place and they deserve this recognition—that is the mantra.

Today, an unaccounted-for problem exists. If an offender chooses not to apply to the NPB for conditional release upon becoming eligible, the victims and the public at large do not have any access to information about the offender. This problem is compounded in situations where offenders are serving life sentences and it will be many years before parole applications are made. This means that many years of Correctional Service Canada information, documentation and decisions are not available to victims and the rest of society.

We consider the dire consequences of circumstances related to high-risk offenders who wait for statutory release, or in the case of Correctional Service, moving them to another institution, or going through another form of release where the discretion is made at the hands of the correctional facility's institutional head. Unlike the National Parole Board, all of these decisions are made without public knowledge, and we have some cases here to illustrate that.

• 1305

Without going into details, there were two people who had walked away and were at large. They had been responsible for a murder in Seattle, Washington. There was another one closer to home. The point is that the sequence of events can't be tracked, let alone traced. That's really a situation that lends itself to public mistrust of the system and a feeling that they're not getting the information. It's further problematic because when they do get the information they're not sure if they can hold it as credible.

Victims have indicated their desire to know about transfers and releases prior to their occurrence. Furthermore, they want to be afforded the opportunity to have their concerns heard prior to decisions being made. Again, this should not be seen as an onerous or needless task. The National Parole Board is already required to keep victims informed prior to the fact. CSC should be made to conduct the same practice, in our estimation. However, this must be laid out in legislation. It will not be established any other way, as current Correctional Service Canada policy only permits notice after the fact.

As an anecdote to that recent one, less than four months ago Pieter de Vink, Correctional Service Canada Deputy Commissioner, Pacific region, directed institutions in the region to notify victims prior to transfer decisions being made. Sadly, this practice has already been abandoned after Mr. de Vink was informed it was unlawful.

This illustrates our point but also underscores the need for legislation. It also shows there is some level of support for our proposal within these institutions.

We need assurances that offenders are not being released prematurely and that reasonable steps are being taken toward rehabilitation. At all times, the protection of society must be the overriding goal and the primary consideration. Correctional Service Canada citizens' advisory committees are not privy to the decisions or decision-making with regard to offenders. As it stands, the CSC operates in a vacuum, and we assert that this is totally unacceptable.

Today, 60 offenders are unlawfully at large from various institutions and community correctional facilities in the Pacific region. While most have come before the National Parole Board at one time or another, some are at large following a release granted by an institutional head.

While the conditional release cases are publicly documented, the others are not. The statutory release cases are more often than not the cases of complete non-compliance on the part of offenders to rehabilitate themselves. These are the highest risk and we have had several terrible stories in B.C. in the last few years. Without citing the examples—and we could provide them—Mitchell James Owen is one, the murderer of Pamela Cameron.

Unfortunately, these cases are also potentially the situations where repeat offences are a certainty, not even a risk. So here we have the terrible scenario that some of the most dangerous people are at large and the information on them is sketchy, at best.

CAVEAT proposes that legislation be enacted to require the CSC to create and diligently maintain a decision registry. Accordingly, this registry must include relevant information about an offender and be accessible by the public. To this end, it must record reasons and rationales behind the administration of an offender's sentence. The system can be modelled after the National Parole Board registry created in 1992.

Some examples of information that could be kept are classification of an offender, such as medium and minimum security; a summary of his criminal record; documentation of referrals by case managers for programs and the like; a summary of his behaviour within the institution, which is definitely lacking; a record of transfers, reclassifications and release decisions; and a record of staff or administrators making the decisions.

Legislation should be tabled to compel CSC to seek the victim's view prior to the decision being made regarding transfers. A victim's view is merely one of many items to be considered. We certainly don't expect it to be the only voice heard or the only consideration; we know it wouldn't be and we don't feel it should be. We just want it to be one of the considerations.

In 1992 victims were finally given the right to attend the parole hearings. This was made possible by the CCRA introduction. We applaud this measure; it is indeed a good one. However, we need to go further. As I said at the consultation I attended on May 28 in Vancouver last year—the Solicitor General's—victims should not have to fight for what should be afforded to them automatically. Many victims do not have any fight left in them, especially in the case of multiple trials and appeals. Rosalee can attest to that.

• 1310

To be clear, victims should be given the opportunity to address the hearing if they desire. Some don't, and that's their right to choose. After all, we're talking about the effects of a crime that they are still living through. Nothing could be more relevant.

In a similar respect, the 1996 provisions of victim impact statements, a Criminal Code amendment, required judges to consider the comments from victims. Having written one, and Rosalee did as well, I can tell you that I do feel it is more than a symbolic effort. It can provide partial closure. I think it's a very important tool, and again, it's up to the victims and the family members and what not if they want to do this. It should be their right to exercise it if they choose.

We want to stop Correctional Service Canada from excluding victims from the process. We need to be integrated into the routine functions of those who administer the sentences in various instances of our correctional facilities.

We've anticipated some benefits following the creation of a decision registry for the CSC. It could, if implemented, add credibility to the principle of protection for society as being a primary consideration. It could dispel some of the public's mistrust of the organization that claims to be open and accountable. It could build public confidence in CSC, which is at this point low. It could increase awareness and comprehension of the correctional process.

It could allow victims to claim their rightful place within the criminal justice system and thereby create a system that can begin to be seen as fair to all stakeholders, not merely offenders. It could also make the system responsive to the concerns of victims by removing the barriers that cause feelings of detachment and alienation. It can also allow victims to feel as though they are part of the process if they so desire.

It can provide a framework for victims to assess the information about offenders. We might not like the decisions, but we might be able to appreciate what went into the decision, which is something that the National Parole Board is unfairly criticized for many times because the word “parole” is used generically and the media doesn't even understand it. I've learned that, and I made those mistakes in my first couple of years of being involved with CAVEAT. It's not until that information is available that you can break it down and really appreciate that their hands are tied in many cases or it has nothing to do with them at all in some cases.

Another benefit could be that it would compel offenders to be responsible for their behaviour by making them publicly accountable for their actions within the institution. This may even be a step toward rehabilitation if there is indeed any hope or progress.

I have two other notes.

The Chairman: You're drawing to a conclusion, are you, Mr. Doyle? We want to have some time for questions.

Mr. Ben Doyle: Yes, I'm very close. I want to make two more points.

During the May 28 consultation, the correctional investigator, I believe his name is Todd Sloan, agreed with me and asserted that there is indeed a need for a victims' ombudsman, as he, in his capacity as correctional investigator, can neither hear nor address complaints from victims. Since he cannot, there should be a mechanism for this purpose.

My last point is that I want to insert my rejection of the belief of the director general of corrections, Richard Zubrycki, that too much emphasis is placed on risk. At the May 28 consultation in Vancouver I was extremely discouraged by what he told me. We had put to him the situation of an offender in the Fraser Valley here who had committed 64 offences, was unlawfully at large and committed a sixty-fifth brutal rape of a woman at a store. I asked him simply, do we even need a hearing to determine that this person is dangerous when we have 64 prior offences?

He said, “What if the sixty-fourth offence is the last one he committed?” And of course it wasn't; he committed the sixty-fifth. But the idea really bothered me, and then he backed it up by saying there was too much emphasis on risk. I want to close by saying we don't think it's even possible that there can be too much emphasis on risk.

That is our submission today.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Gouk.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank both of you for coming and for the work that you and your organization do.

I've seen a lot of the material that Rosalee has prepared and I'm still going to have to go through it more. There's quite a bit of detail in there.

The one question I have is with regard to the decision registry and the access to it. You referred to the access of the general public. In the interests of making this more saleable, would you accept the concept of the registry being more limited to victims, someone who had a direct connection, a need to know, sort of thing?

• 1315

Mr. Ben Doyle: I think that's the most practical. As to the public, yes, we have to crawl before we can walk, and that might not even be necessary. But definitely for the victims, that's right.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte (Assistant to the Director of Communications, Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating Its Termination (CAVEAT)): The public does have access to the National Parole Board's decision registry, but it would certainly be acceptable in the beginning, at least, that victims would be allowed to access the information through CSC.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Any time we propose to do something new or different, we always have to balance the two sides to it, and we look for part of what the argument against would be and what is realistic and reasonable and achievable.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: As to the vast majority of offenders that we're talking about, information is going to be available on them through the National Parole Board at some point in their sentence. But what we're trying to deal with predominantly is the ones who are going to choose not to apply for parole. Or in the case of offenders who are serving life sentences or very lengthy sentences, often it can be 15 years after an offender has been sentenced and gone into the system, and for that entire period, the victim will have absolutely no information about the offender. So I guess those are probably the two categories we're trying to address.

That's what I'm saying. It's not reasonable to expect people to have totally no information for 15 years and then all of a sudden it starts to come. I don't see any justification for that.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Yes. Let me ask both of you as victims in very serious crimes, the most serious crime there is—and this is a very hard question—how much of the way you feel or you think, in terms of victims, is going to approach the concept of protection of society in a general role and the rehabilitation where possible, as opposed to retribution, if you would? How much is that going to colour it, and how do we deal with people who say that's what you're about, that you simply don't want people to get out because there has to be that vengeance for what was taken from you in the heinous crime that they did?

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: I think there needs to be public education, and that's the one thing that doesn't happen now for the public, the way the Correctional Service is run. Basically, the public has no insight into how anything is done within Corrections, and they have no opportunity to see if the offender has indeed started to make changes in his life.

I've attended a number of parole hearings where I believe the offender has made very significant changes in his life, and I believe if the victim in that case had also been able to see that, they would have had an entirely different opinion of the offender.

Again, I'd refer you back to what I said before. When you have maybe 10 or 15 years when you have no information, the victim is basically stuck back at that period of time when the offence first happened, but if they were able to see gradual progression or a change in the offender, I think victims would not—

Mr. Jim Gouk: It would help to provide closure for them.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: Yes, it would provide closure for victims. Certainly it would be healing for victims. But I also think you would be able to look at it in a more informed way, and retribution wouldn't really be what you would be looking at then.

For me personally, I know something that I want to see from the fellow who killed my son is an expression of remorse, and I think if that did come, I certainly wouldn't be trying to keep him in for the rest of his life just for that, but I feel I would want to see that and I would want to see the changes myself before he was released.

Mr. Jim Gouk: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Gouk.

Mr. Marceau.

[Translation]

Mr. Richard Marceau: That's fine, thank you.

The Chairman: Is that all right?

[English]

Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Allow me to say, first of all, that I of course am very supportive of CAVEAT and have been for many years, and one of the difficulties when we're doing things like this is hearing about these very tragic and sad cases. Of course we're all very sorry about the circumstances.

Might I attempt to introduce a small note of levity in an otherwise difficult situation by turning your attention to your submission? Under the heading, “Benefits of the Creation of a Decision Registry”—if you want to have a look at that, it's page 7—I notice that in the fourth point you want us to increase “pubic” awareness.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: Oh, I had this typed professionally yesterday. I'm sorry.

Mr. Tom Wappel: There may be some who would fully agree with that.

• 1320

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: I apologize.

Mr. Tom Wappel: That's all right.

One of the interesting questions is who a victim is, and this is something we can debate. I ask this specifically, Mr. Doyle, because there might be some—I don't know the circumstances of the case; girlfriend, friend, relative, whatever—who would argue that you are not a victim any more than, shall we say, society at large was a victim, as opposed to someone who lost an immediate family member. This would open up a large discussion as to who would be entitled to this kind of information. Have you and your organization given any thought to who is a victim for the purposes of your proposals?

Mr. Ben Doyle: The act does define it. Regarding the situation in a case where you're not an immediate family member, I joined CAVEAT with family members of my friend Angela, who was murdered. They are no longer members. People react in different ways and need to do what they can do, and if they never become actively involved in trying to agitate for change, and they can go on with their life, then I think that's a great thing for them to do.

I don't really consider myself a victim in that sense. I feel I'm here on behalf of Angela, her sister, and her mom in particular, whom I'm close to, and I don't expect to be notified myself. I would want them to be notified, and then I would get it from them. They know who's close to Angela and they know who's concerned about these issues. So personally speaking, I don't need to be included in that definition. However, I can say that if I think in terms of how my life is different, absolutely, I feel like a victim. My life is completely different.

One of the first times I saw Chris Simmonds, who founded CAVEAT in B.C., speak was at BCIT, a college out here, and he said the system told him he wasn't a victim because he didn't witness the act of the murder of his daughter. He said, “I see her die every night.” To me that was the most poignant and relevant piece of information. To tell him and Rosalee and people in that situation that they're not victims.... We needed a minimum, I guess, to include the immediately family.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You mentioned that Mr. de Vink issued a directive or something like that, and then it was rescinded because it was illegal. I think that's what you said—

Mr. Ben Doyle: Unlawful.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: He said it was unlawful.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Now, who said that it was unlawful, and why was it unlawful?

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: The Correctional Service had a legal opinion rendered. We're not allowed access to that legal opinion, so I haven't seen it myself.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And the legal opinion said that the Correctional Service could not do what?

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: They could not notify victims prior to a transfer taking place. That whole thing came out of a situation where I was trying to help a victim whose father had been very brutally murdered by a member of the family, and when this person went to prison, he had been threatening to kill this other man who had testified at the trial. Ten or twelve years had gone by—again it's one of these situations where they had had no information. So this victim was still very much feeling that this offender was a threat to him, and he found out the offender was going to be transferred to an institution in Mission, which is less than half a mile from his home. Of course he reacted very strongly to that.

So we had a number of meetings with Mr. de Vink and other people in the Correctional Service, and out of that, and listening to our concerns, and I guess out of a sense of duty to act fairly with victims.... It was a very traumatic event for this fellow. He has even gone to the extent of moving.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Just so that I can isolate it, though, madam, you're saying the CSC does not believe it is legal to inform a victim of a transfer.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: I guess Mr. de Vink, after looking at the legislation, believed that it was, so he ordered that the institutions in this region advise victims whenever there was a transfer. I think the notification of the transfer was to take place within a week or two. But then—

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Mr. Tom Wappel: So the deputy commissioner, reading the legislation, thought he could do this, and then the CSC received a legal opinion that said he couldn't do it.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: I can only assume that's what his thoughts were.

Mr. Tom Wappel: This would certainly indicate at least some ambiguity or argument on that issue. I'm trying to isolate that so we can home in on it when we hear from the commissioner.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: I think it's important too that it shows at least a level of support for what we're suggesting. I believe there is support also in some areas of the National Parole Board. Apparently this has been discussed.

The Chairman: If I could interject on this, the standing committee did its report on victims, and one of the recommendations the standing committee made was that the Corrections and Conditional Release Act be amended to oblige Correctional Services to notify victims of escapes and transfers and the timing and conditions of temporary absences and other forms of supervised community release.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: Again, that's not prior to what you're saying there. It doesn't change anything because the victim would only be receiving the notification after the fact.

The Chairman: Then what he was giving was a notice prior.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: That's right. It's very important that you do know ahead of time.

The Chairman: Yes.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: There could be all sorts of reasons why it's not in the best interests of the victim or the offender to go there.

Mr. Tom Wappel: So your point is that you wanted notice to the victim prior to the transfer.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: All right.

Mr. Ben Doyle: Dates stick in your head. When you have a trial coming up or an appeal coming up, these dates are very significant in your life. You prepare your routines around them. You take time off work if you can. These are very significant. It's very important to be able to prepare yourself mentally for a transfer, especially in the case Rosalee's talking about, where the person is moving within proximity to the victim or the victim's family. It's very distressing.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: I have nothing, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: The only other thing I have is the other recommendations that the committee made in its report. Do you have any comments on the others, or have you had an opportunity to review those recommendations? Because in chapter four of the report the standing committee dealt with amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. If not, maybe that's something you could provide the committee if you have a copy.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: The only comment I would have is that most of those recommendations seem to be centred around the National Parole Board, to the exclusion of the Correctional Service. Of course they're a big part of this whole equation. What would be my comment is that I really don't see why the National Parole Board is expected to relate to victims and provide information to victims in one matter, while we let their counterpart exist in an entirely different matter.

Mr. Ben Doyle: Correctional Service Canada is on the front line with these offenders, and the National Parole Board is dealing with them for a specific reason, not day to day.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: I was very pleased about recommendation 14, where the audio tape will be available. That's something I've talked about for a long time. I was pleased about that. I see of lot of really good things in the report.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. We appreciated your rather extensive work, especially that of Ms. Turcotte and Mr. Doyle. Thank you for your attendance. We appreciate your input.

Mr. Ben Doyle: Thank you very much.

Ms. Rosalee Turcotte: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

The Clerk of the Committee: Are you adjourning the meeting, Mr. Chairman?

[English]

The Chairman: The meeting is adjourned.