[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, February 18, 1997
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[English]
The Chair: Good morning, and welcome. This is the justice committee and we're still dealing with Bill C-55, and with Bill C-254, Ms Meredith's private member's bill.
Today our witnesses are from the Union of Solicitor General Employees. We have Lynn Ray, who is the national president, and Vladimir Kozicki, who is a service officer. I want to welcome you. I apologize because I went to the wrong room this morning. It seems to be a chronic habit of mine that we can't break.
I know you have a brief and we have a copy of it, so I'd ask you to make your presentation and then we'll have questions.
Ms Lynn Ray (National President, Union of Solicitor General Employees): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to the members of the committee for giving us the opportunity to appear.
As you've noted, with me this morning is Vladimir Kozicki, who is a service officer at the Union of Solicitor General Employees. I'm the national president for the Union of Solicitor General Employees. We do have some opening remarks and then I will be more than pleased to answer any questions.
The Union of Solicitor General Employees is the largest representative for staff of the Correctional Service of Canada. In all we represent over 14,000 members throughout the federal criminal justice system in Canada. Of those, 1,354 are case management officers working both in institutions and in the community.
Bill C-55 will directly affect their ability to protect Canadians from premature release of dangerous offenders.
Our concern lies not so much with the legal implications of the legislation - many witnesses have appeared before this committee and have addressed that question - nor do we wish to challenge either the standards of what constitutes a dangerous offender or the creation of a new category of long-term offenders. In our opinion, the debate about what to do with dangerous offenders must properly rest with Canadians and their legislators.
Our concerns centre on the fact that under the present conditions the Correctional Service of Canada does not have the resources necessary to carry out the supervision of the new long-term offender. Moreover, the anticipated electronic monitoring of offenders in the community by a contractor is, in our opinion, an invitation for possible disaster. The present situation at CSC will have to change for Bill C-55 to be effective in any way.
This committee does not have to take our word for it. During his investigation, the Auditor General himself found out that the reintegration of offenders is fraught with problems. For example, case management officers work in institutions without standards for caseloads. He pointed out how inadequate their training is - they have a mere eight days to learn how to make release recommendations.
Because of overcrowding and understaffing, case management officers spend a vast portion of their time doing searches and other security duties. This means that the case preparation so critical to the National Parole Board is not getting done on time. We can only hope that despite being late, the work is accurate, because the consequences could and would be devastating.
In the community, today's case management worker has been turned into a clerical officer. The offender management system is sometimes a nightmare. It crashes on a regular basis. In most cases, case management officers spend as much time filling out reports as they do supervising and rehabilitating offenders.
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Not every offender is a Clifford Olson, but case management officers must be able to keep their attention and vigilance constantly focused on those under their supervision so they can prevent another Olson. You can't do that when you're staring at a computer screen. Yet Bill C-55 proposes to accelerate the day parole releases of non-violent offenders. This means preparing cases within two, perhaps three, months of an offender's admission into the system. According to the Auditor General they can't even keep up with the caseload they have now.
To complicate matters, the bill proposes to extend the supervision period of career offenders up to ten years. Most of these cases, if one is to believe the Minister of Justice, will be sex offenders. They represent the most difficult cases to evaluate for release and to monitor in the community. Add to that the fact that the inmate population in Canada is expected to increase by 50% over the next ten years.
In January, six institutions were locked down at the same time. Donnacona in Quebec, Drumheller in Alberta - these institutions exploded a few weeks ago. Millhaven Institution in Kingston, Ontario, has been under constant siege since January 21. Luckily, no staff have been hurt. Offenders are getting restless, sick of being double-bunked, and the service hopes to unload more and more offenders into the community.
Recently the commissioner told us the department is considering decreasing the staff to inmate ratio. However, he also assured us that this would not be done through hiring more correctional officers. This means only one thing. More offenders will be hitting the streets. Those at the gates of our penitentiaries who will decide who goes and who stays will be overburdened within months. Eventually, the wrong offender will be released. If the resources of case management officers are not looked at carefully now, the wrong offender may end up on the streets long before his or her time.
Lastly, there are plans to possibly introduce electronic monitoring at the federal level and to contract out the supervision of those offenders to private hands. As members of the community we cannot accept that a private company, not answerable directly to the commissioner, to the minister, and to Canadians, be made responsible for keeping an eye on offenders in the communities. A contract cannot be cancelled at a moment's notice, especially if one party decides to go to court.
In the meantime CSC would have to do what it should have done from the beginning: do the job itself. This situation is already pretty bleak. The system has been allowed to fall apart to a non-acceptable level. The Auditor General has been warning CSC for two years.
Too little was done to get case management officers' input into the drafting of Bill C-55, and to our knowledge no assessment of the resources needed to implement it is planned. If Parliament wishes to pass Bill C-55, it will need to ensure that the Correctional Service of Canada has what it needs to turn it into a reality. We urge members of the committee to lobby the minister and the commissioner to see that the department commits the necessary resources to properly implement Bill C-55.
The Auditor General called case management officers a hard-working, dedicated group of professionals, but they can't perform miracles. The safety of our communities is at stake.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms Meredith, ten minutes.
Ms Meredith (Surrey - White Rock - South Langley): Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome.
The impression I get is that you either do not support Bill C-55 or conditionally support it on the understanding that more money will be put into the system to develop the resources to make sure that with the legislation the Correctional Service of Canada has the ability to fulfil the mandate.
Ms Ray: As I stated, we really haven't taken a position on whether we support the legislation per se. We have had expressed to us repeatedly by our members that they are concerned they will not have the ability to carry out the requirements of the bill as presented. Particularly, we became alarmed when the commissioner was before the committee and indicated that he was not requesting any additional resources, that he felt it could be done from within.
A few years ago - I think about six years ago, but I'm not sure totally and I can research it - the commissioner did a reorganization of the case management officers, and the work of many of those who were working in the community was moved into the institutions. Those are the people who have to wear two, sometimes three, hats, what with security, etc. Meanwhile, the community population and numbers of case management officers were drastically reduced.
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Ms Meredith: Your concern therefore deals mainly with the long-term offender part of Bill C-55.
Ms Ray: Yes.
Ms Meredith: The dangerous offender part of it you haven't really addressed, but the long-term offender provision that's giving a designation for this community supervision causes you some concern.
Ms Ray: Yes, indeed. Although we believe there will be a timeframe before it catches up, certainly in the long run the caseloads, which are fairly high in the communities now, and in some areas far too high, will be increased dramatically.
Ms Meredith: Would you then say that the part of this legislation dealing with the potential for long-term offenders, of that actually working, is negligible or is going to be limited? How would you classify the response to Bill C-55 in the long-term offenders designation?
Ms Ray: I'm not certain what you're asking me.
Ms Meredith: With the resources right now, do you feel it can't work, it can work somewhat, or it's going to work really well?
Ms Ray: Certainly management's position has been that they will undertake it and will make it work. Our concern is that the members we represent are already spread incredibly thin, have large workloads, very little training, very few standards within the work, and will be required to implement this one way or the other. It will come down to prioritizing those you think won't be a problem today. They'll be trying to put out fires as opposed to being proactive.
Ms Meredith: Maybe I'm being unfair in putting you on the spot, but the whole point of this long-term offender provision, as I understand it, is that there will be some offenders they won't want to put as dangerous offenders but who are still high risk. So they'll put them under supervision, this long-term offenders provision, as opposed to making them dangerous offenders. Those people are still high-risk individuals. The impression I'm getting from you is that you feel the supervision they are likely to get in the community tomorrow or next month is not going to be adequate to protect society.
Ms Ray: You're quite right.
Mr. Vladimir Kozicki (Service Officer, Union of Solicitor General Employees): That's exactly right.
Ms Ray: If we had for high-risk offenders intensive supervision - we've had a few of those projects - that would be wonderful. We simply do not have the resources available to do something like that. In fact, the case management officers don't have the time or the ability to give the kind of attention to these kinds of high-risk people that would be required.
Ms Meredith: Do you feel that potentially high-risk individuals under the present system of parole, whereby individuals have statutory release after two-thirds of their sentence and are back in the community or come to the end of their warrant - and when they come to the end of their warrant you can't do any supervision anyway - have proper supervision now? Do you feel that society is protected now with these individuals by law being put out on the streets after two-thirds of their sentence?
Ms Ray: I'm not certain that this is a question I have the tools or the ability to answer. I can tell you that our members who work for the Correctional Service of Canada are doing their very level best in trying to ensure that nothing goes awry. But we all know that we have had some pretty high-profile cases in past years, none of which we wanted to see happen then and certainly don't want to see repeated in the future. Our concern is that their workload is heavy to the extreme now and their training and safety network are minimal at best. We want to see these things enhanced to deal with these sorts of people.
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Ms Meredith: You see that with the long-term offender designation in Bill C-55, there's going to be a real increase over those who are already released through statutory release, do you? You're anticipating even greater numbers?
Mr. Kozicki: Whether or not the courts avail themselves of the provision of long-term offenders is up to the court. When the dangerous offender portion of the Criminal Code became law many years ago, it was expected that there would be a tremendous increase or great use of that clause. We've learned through the years that in fact was not the case, because for many reasons the legal standard was very high and various provinces did not feel the need or did not feel they could convince the courts that someone should be deemed a dangerous offender.
Whether or not it will be the same thing for the long-term offender portions of Bill C-55 only the future will tell. However, if they do avail themselves of it, even if only in a marginal number, not necessarily a very large one...we feel the present caseload of case management officers of the entire offender reintegration system, especially in the community, is already at a breaking point. If the courts avail themselves of the long-term offender provisions of Bill C-55 in any sense, it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Unfortunately, the consequences, as you well know, can be fairly drastic.
Although our recidivism rate is arguably one of the lowest in the world...we do have a system that works fairly well. It is certainly due to what the Auditor General pointed out as the diligence and professionalism of case management officers, but they're working with precious few resources and having to do work that should not be theirs to do.
Ms Meredith: When you say precious few resources, what other resources would they require to do their job? What are you referring to?
Ms Ray: The offender management system, for example, is very cumbersome, very labour intensive. It takes a lot of work to enter data into it. They don't always get the required data from other agencies and have to go chasing after them. Essentially, they've become clerks. They're spending entirely far too much time in front of this computer system trying to make sure that all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed rather than having the opportunity to go out and work actively with the people they're supervising.
The same holds true within the penitentiaries. Over and above the fact that case management officers are often called upon to do other than case management work, they also have to contend with this offender management system that is very cumbersome and not user-friendly.
I sat with an officer one morning some time ago and suggested we open up a file on someone new that had been given to the officer as part of the officer's caseload. We started at about 9:30 a.m., and by noon we had not completed the process for putting an offender on the system. I realize because I was new and asking questions that I probably slowed him down, but that's a terrible amount of time just to open a new file.
Ms Meredith: So when you talk about resources, are you talking about a technical resource such as a better computer program or having more people?
Ms Ray: I mean all of the above. When the computer program came into being, many of the support staff were eliminated or changed. The case management officers are doing essentially all of their support work. There are not enough case management officers now to have caseloads that would permit them to do the kind of intense - and I hesitate to use that word because it means different things to different people. For us, intense supervision is a particular program, but certainly intense supervision of dangerous offenders would be a difficult thing for case management officers to carry out when they have so many other cases on their caseload and are required to do essentially all of their own clerical work. I've already explained that in institutions the case management officers wear a number of other hats, including security, mentor, and trainer.
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Ms Meredith: I don't want to belabour the point, but with the computer age it is almost redundant to have clerical people doing work that a person can do just sitting down at a computer terminal. They can enter information rather than writing it out longhand to pass to somebody else to put on the computer.
That's just the technological advance that's happened, but if you're talking about the whole system being outdated and not functioning and not working the way it could or should be working, where it's taking a lot of time to process information....
Mr. Kozicki: The department recently amended its offender management manual and has changed a number of criteria to make a specific decision. I can't remember specifically what it is. It's perhaps for revocation and what not, from nine criteria to three, and the OMS had never been changed. You still had to input all nine former criteria in order to make the decision.
Often, unfortunately, the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand in the management of the entire offender reintegration process and system. Those are some of the challenges our staff have to work with: a manual that says one thing and a computer system that says something else.
Mr. Ray: Much of the work previously done by clerical support staff, such as the opening of a file or whatever, and passed along to the case management officer...now the case management officer is doing both the support work and their own work. The resources gleaned from the reduction of the support staff haven't been reflected in additional case management positions, in our opinion.
The Chair: I was letting you go ahead because I was interested in the questions you were asking. Did you have more?
Ms Meredith: In another round perhaps.
The Chair: Mr. DeVillers.
Mr. DeVillers (Simcoe North): Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank the witnesses for their attendance here. I think the message you bring is a very important one. However, I find it is more a matter of issues dealing with the administration of the department than the actual legislation that this committee is studying at this point in time and that we need to report back to the House on. You indicated you didn't take a position to support or not support the legislation, but your message is that there's no point in passing legislation if the resources aren't allocated to carry out the additional functions that the legislation will lead to. Is that a fair statement of your position?
Mr. Ray: Certainly, it's a fair statement, and part of the reason we've taken the step of requesting to appear before the committee is that there have been pieces of legislation, including the revisions to the CCRA a few years ago, where we didn't come before committees and make the case for the resources necessary to implement the legislation properly. So we've been grappling with the aftermath since then. We make no apologies for the fact that it's why we're here.
Mr. DeVillers: I think that's worthwhile, but looking at our role as a committee, at what we need to report back to the House, I see this as outside of that function at this point in time. It's something we certainly need to know, and the committee should be made aware of that. Perhaps another forum would be a proper place, because we're not in a position where we can make recommendations in a report. We're being asked to report on the legislation, so inasmuch as we appreciate your attendance and we appreciate hearing this, I'm not sure we can deal with this as a committee.
Mr. Kozicki: Perhaps not as a committee, but as MPs you undoubtedly have access to the minister to a far greater extent than we do.
Mr. DeVillers: That's why I say in another forum it's a message of interest.
Mr. Kozicki: Cabinet and Treasury Board will be in the position of deciding whether or not dollars will be allocated, because it boils down to dollars and cents, to a revision of the department's budget and resources. We were hoping that along with your functions as members of the committee, you could perhaps bring those concerns of ours to the attention of the department and the minister.
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Mr. DeVillers: That's a lesson we as legislators always have to bear in mind. There's no point in passing legislation if you don't provide the tools to carry it out.
Thank you. That's all I have.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. DeVillers.
Did you have a question?
Mr. Discepola (Vaudreuil): Yes. I just want to pick up on Paul's point. I tried with great difficulty to go through your brief, and in essence I tried to distinguish between what could be perceived as perhaps management-union problems on what we could apply within our review of the actual legislation. I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't take the time to actually make your concrete comments and take a position on the legislation before us.
I believe, as Paul, there is another forum for it. As far as this committee is concerned, we did ask the question at the outset. When the commissioner was here, the opposition, as a matter of fact, was concerned about making sure resources would be allocated. You made the case yourself. On the long-term offender provision, for example, it didn't actually lead all of a sudden to an onslaught of new cases where resources had to be effected.
I am concerned that year after year after year, the Auditor General always states similar concerns. And I thank you for bringing those concerns to us, but I think you should also make your point well heard at the lower management level.
Mr. Ray: I would like to assure you that we do make that point well known and well heard at the lower management level, and indeed at the minister's level. This is not a point that we have not made in the past. Our concern was and remains that we have legislators who are responding to a need that they see in the community, but who are not necessarily providing the resources and the tools to the departments. When we became aware that the commissioner and the minister had not identified what we thought was a need for additional resources and there would be an impact on the system that would in fact have a ripple effect, we felt it was important -
Mr. Discepola: But the Auditor General has stated also that he doesn't feel it's a case of additional resources; it's a case of better utilization and a better direction of the existing resources. When you see case management in one region, for example, dedicating x percentage of resources to a very finite number of cases, whereas in another area on similar types of cases it's spending far fewer or far more resources, I think those are the things that CSC should be looking at and finding out about.
Why is it that when we treat offenders or have a certain approach, it seems to work better in one region when we can do it a lot less expensively in another area. You're going to have to get used to it, unfortunately, within the fiscal restraints. We're going to have to better allocate the resources we have, as opposed to your trying to come to us and plead for additional resources. We'd be beating our head against the wall if we tried to go out and ask for additional resources elsewhere.
On the question of electronic monitoring, again, you don't seem to take a position, other than to defend your own position, which is probably what you're supposed to be here for. When you say we shouldn't privatize it, there are tender specifications that you could stipulate that would alleviate your concerns on the privatization aspect of it. Again, it's only a supervisory tool. It won't replace anything. I don't see how it would affect CSC, because it's really the National Parole Board that would be charged with the long-term supervision above and beyond warrant expiry.
Mr. Ray: Certainly, I can tell you right now we have a position on electronic monitoring and we oppose it. We've made it well known for a number of years. This is the crux of the reason why. We have watched private contractors being hired to do the monitoring in other jurisdictions, both internationally and within Canada. We've watched it happen. Those private contractors hire technicians to operate the equipment, and those technicians are very good at their jobs. Those technicians are not trained case management officers, nor are they peace officers, nor do they have the authority or the ability to implement revocations or other necessary moves. Indeed, the technicians are making decisions on whether or not a parolee is in non-compliance, based on timeframes. The normal thing is that if there hasn't been a signal, or you haven't heard from the individual within x amount of time, you should make a phone call to the parole officer, or in fact use your judgment as to what is going on in the world around you.
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So you have individuals who, by and large, are not trained in the criminal justice system. They are trained technicians, and very good at it, no doubt, but they are making decisions that case management officers, and people who are accountable, should be making.
Mr. Discepola: I don't think the electronic monitoring would replace the people who have to make the case management decisions. We're only using the electronic monitoring to actually do the physical supervision of the inmate's whereabouts. Over the past few years human beings seem to have a weakness in doing it and the records associated with it.
Ms Ray: I will go back a number of years to when we started to use perimeter intrusion devices, PIDs, around institutions. At one point we attempted to have the perimeter security of institutions done without any people, without any eyes.
Every institution in this country now has people also, in addition to the PIDs. Like every other electronic device, PIDs do indeed have their limitations. In the PIDs' example, in the prairies, tumbleweeds and the like cause the alarms to go off on a regular basis. Small animals, birds, and so on do the same thing. What I'm saying -
Mr. Discepola: But here we're vaguely referring to this electronic monitoring.
The Chair: Mr. Discepola, talking over each other doesn't work, so maybe we'll let the witness finish.
Ms Ray: Thank you. I'm saying that there are limits to the electronic processes. Our concerns are that in addition to the limits of the electronic technology, we're also adding people who are not trained and not accountable for their actions.
Mr. Discepola: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Discepola. Did you have -
Ms Meredith: At these hearings we're also dealing with private member's Bill C-254, which deals with dangerous offenders. It has to do with post-sentence detention, which would allow corrections....
When you have somebody within your care whom you have identified as a high-risk offender, who upon release would likely cause serious bodily harm or death to an individual come the end of warrant expiry, you can't do anything about it. The private member's bill gives corrections the ability to identify these people within the last year of their sentence and direct them to the dangerous offender application system.
Do you support that concept?
Mr. Kozicki: Yes, absolutely. As we've seen in our brief - and I will say again - how dangerous offenders should be managed is.... In our opinion, we're not trying to pass the buck on this, but it is a debate that properly rests with Canadians - members of the community - and their legislators.
You've undoubtedly felt the uprising from communities throughout the country on this issue. We certainly support it by virtue of the fact that our membership deals with these offenders on a daily basis, 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, in fact, some inmates on the inside are not deemed dangerous offenders and they probably should be. However, we are concerned with the corollaries; that is, we certainly support the idea contained in C-254.
The problem is that between a very good idea and reality there's usually a very large step. It has to do with turning the legislation into a reality. Hopefully in that area we are ringing the warning bells.
To give you an example, there are 4,600 positions for correctional officers in corrections; that is, positions, actual jobs. There are at present 1,300 vacancies for these jobs, and close to 1,000 of them are filled by casual employees. Casual employees are individuals trained to the same extent as new, full-time correctional officers, but they have absolutely no sense of continuity whatsoever. Their on-the-job training is sparse at the very best, because they work one week here, and maybe they do not work for three months, and then they work another two weeks there.
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We know that in some units of maximum security penitentiaries, such as Kent in B.C., on any given shift 50% of a given unit may be staffed by casual employees.
So we certainly agree with the detention of dangerous offenders, those who have properly been so marked by the courts. However, if you're throwing them into a penitentiary that is staffed by inexperienced staff.... Let's put it this way: the security of the community may be compromised.
Ms Meredith: But wouldn't the community be more secure in that they are at least in a prison -
Mr. Kozicki: Yes, absolutely.
Ms Meredith: - as opposed to wandering around on the streets?
Mr. Kozicki: Yes. It's much better for them to be on the inside and supervised in perhaps a precarious way than not at all.
However, perhaps we're saying let's be conscious of the fact that once they go through that front gate of the penitentiary and are admitted into the system, they have to be handled in the proper way. Otherwise, we might be dealing with the events of Drumheller a mere three or four weeks ago.
Ms Meredith: We have had people who have suggested that if a person hasn't been deemed a dangerous offender upon sentencing, if their actions haven't been severe enough that they've been given that designation, why would you, why would anybody, be able to get evidence - I guess it would be evidence - that this person who came in not designated a dangerous offender should be declared a dangerous offender?
In other words, as employees of that institution, what would bring your attention to an individual after sentencing that was missed prior to sentencing? Why would you be in a better position than others to bring attention to that individual?
Ms Ray: Well, for one reason, we have people, and we hope the case management officers, who are spending a great deal of time working with and talking to these people.
In addition, these offenders often go on to engage in further unacceptable activity in institutions. Oftentimes that's not taken into consideration when it comes time to make these decisions. They are activities that are often dealt with internally, or quite frankly, because the internal system is not working as well as it should, they aren't dealt with at all.
But indeed we do see how the offender is acting and articulating, and we have some insight into what they may or may not do.
Mr. Kozicki: To a certain extent, the Correctional Service has its own judicial process whereby offences committed inside a penitentiary only bring about institutional sanctions. The same kind of offence in the community by any one of us would possibly bring criminal charges.
According to your private member's bill, if the courts wished to look at an offender for up to one year to decide whether or not they should be deemed dangerous, those institutional offences, if they are not taken into consideration - and, in our opinion, they should be taken into consideration - may not be recorded officially with the courts as criminal offences.
Ms Meredith: So you're telling me that if you have an inmate who tries to kill some other inmate, who either beats him up, stabs him, or what not, that inmate isn't charged with attempted murder?
Mr. Kozicki: The inmate may not be charged with attempted murder. I could certainly make available to the committee, through the department, those infractions that automatically call in the judicial process. But there are very many offences, such as drug possession, for example, where, if you're caught with drugs in your cell, you may not be charged criminally.
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I know of many cases where some of our staff, after a search, find contraband and report it, as they are supposed to do, and they see no consequence to the offender after that.
Ms Meredith: But with a violent offence, something where the inmate is showing a personality disorder - call it what you want - where he is showing violence against another human being, are those added to his criminal file?
Ms Ray: No. In fact, I think that's a question you should probably ask the department in terms of their criteria. Increasingly, though, we've been alarmed at seeing staff assaulted and what would lead to an assault charge in the community, and no charges result.
In fact, the Correctional Service of Canada has downgraded its criteria for when they would bring internal charges. This has happened to the point where many correctional officers find it a farce. They don't even put forward the charges at all, because they recognize they're not going to go anywhere.
In his previous incarnation the current commissioner suggested to me at one point that correctional officers and case management officers, WPs, were well paid to take the occasional punch.
Ms Meredith: But the point I'm trying to get at is that the behaviour of an inmate while he is incarcerated is perhaps an indication of the reason he committed the offence that got him there, or of the likelihood of this behaviour causing serious problems when he's released in society. Now, if nobody is concerning themselves, if this isn't something that keeps adding on to a record of the inmate that shows the whole picture of who this person is whom we're going to put back out on the streets, I have real problems with that. And I'm sure people out there in society have real problems if, from the moment they enter the prison, basically nobody gives a damn how they behave until they're back out on the street. The consequences of added time, of criminal charges that add time, or that raise him up to the profile of a dangerous offender....
Ms Ray: Those are precisely the concerns we have as an organization, and they are being expressed to us by our members.
In fact, during a recent visit I made to the system in New Zealand, I was quite astounded to find that any charges to do with criminal activity or criminal charges in the street that happen inside the institution are dealt with through the courts. So they become part of the ongoing record, the increases, and so on.
That does not happen here; that's the point we're trying to make here. It's even less likely to happen if the aggressive activity is directed towards a staff member. We have a serious concern that the ongoing behaviour patterns are not being well documented.
Ms Meredith: When they're dealing with this inmate request for day parole or for general parole, would the parole board at least have it on his record to be dealt with at that time?
Ms Ray: It would depend again on whether or not it was included in the record on an ongoing basis. The case management officers are required to be able to substantiate everything that is on an inmate's record. So if there haven't been charges laid and disposed of in one manner or another internally, then they can't make the statement in a report to the parole board, because it will be challenged by the inmate or their representative.
Ms Meredith: That they weren't actually convicted of having done it?
Ms Ray: Exactly.
Ms Meredith: Therefore they're innocent?
Ms Ray: That's right.
Ms Meredith: Thanks very much.
The Chair: Thanks, Ms Meredith.
Are there any other questions?
I would like to ask you something, just so I'm clear with respect to the high-risk offenders legislation, the government's legislation. If you were to resolve your problems with management on resources and that sort of thing, are you confident that your personnel would be adequately trained and adequately skilled to fulfil the mandate of this bill in terms of supervising people in the community?
Ms Ray: That's an historic problem we've had. It certainly became very apparent during the board inquiry, if you'll recall. It has surfaced a number of times since.
Case management officers institutionally, for example, get something like eight days of training. Most of it is self-directed modules. There's nothing the matter with self-directed modules, but eight days to make the kinds of decisions and recommendations...is somewhat problematic. That is so particularly if the individual coming into the institution doesn't have a background in that area and may have just finished receiving their degree. There are a lot of things that go on for which they may need more training and in-depth processing.
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We have found that routinely the changes made to legislation aren't well communicated to correctional workers throughout the system. Oftentimes they don't know and don't understand the changes and/or the implications of those changes.
The Chair: So are you saying - and I'm not trying to stir the pot here - that your members are not up to the task of doing this job?
Ms Ray: That's part of what we've been saying all along, that the proper resourcing has not been there. The initial training is acceptable, but the ongoing training and the upgrading just have not been there in the past years to keep people current and knowledgeable.
The Chair: Are you speaking for parole officers as well?
Ms Ray: Yes.
The Chair: So you're saying that those parole officers in Windsor, where I live, aren't up to the task of doing their job?
Ms Ray: No, I'm saying that to keep themselves current and to do their jobs properly with the dedication and the desire they need, those parole officers in Windsor have to spend an enormous amount of their own time and resources just to stay current. This is because that's not being provided by the employer. The employer provides barely minimum training and barely adequate training. So someone who's dedicated has to spend a lot more of their own resources.
Mr. Kozicki: Time spent away from actually doing what they should be doing in the first place, that is, managing offenders.
The Chair: So during an eight-hour day you want them to have time for training, in addition to their job?
Ms Ray: Not necessarily every day, but I would like to see some regularized training. In the past years there's been very little, if any, training.
The Chair: Thank you.
We'll rise then. Our next meeting starts at 11 a.m. It's here and it's by satellite. No technological wizard here; my employer doesn't give me time to train.
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The Chair: We're ready to start.
Hello, Vancouver. My name is Shaughnessy Cohen and I chair the justice committee. We're here where it's very cold and we've just been looking at beautiful pictures out your window of a boat going out, so I demand to know what the temperature is in Vancouver.
Mr. Eric Caton (President, JEMTEC Inc.): It's about 8SC.
The Chair: That's the same as in Windsor, Ontario, which is not where we are.
Mr. Caton: We consider that pretty cold.
The Chair: I want to welcome Jim Cairns, the adult institutional analyst from the Corrections Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General in the Government of British Columbia, and Eric Caton from JEMTEC Inc.
Welcome, gentlemen. I know you have some words of wisdom for us and then we'll have lots of questions.
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Mr. Caton: Maybe I could ask a question. We have 15 minutes, but is that 15 minutes between the two of us or 15 minutes each?
The Chair: I don't know who makes those rules up. You take as long as you need and then we'll ask questions. Just feel comfortable to go ahead.
Mr. Caton: Okay. Jim's going to start off and then I'll fill in a little bit about the technology.
Mr. Jim Cairns (Adult Institutional Analyst, Corrections Branch, Ministry of the Attorney General, Province of British Columbia): I've actually decided to keep my presentation fairly short, just touching on some of the points about why British Columbia got involved in electronic monitoring and how we use it. Then I'll let Eric talk about the technical aspects of it.
I figured we would give you as much time as we could because I'm sure you have specific questions you want to ask us. To ensure that we're giving you the information you want and not just what we want to tell you, we're going to try to give as much time to questions as we can.
One of the primary goals of the B.C. Corrections Branch is to provide a range of community and custodial programs to meet the sentencing needs of the courts and to protect the public. That's one of the reasons British Columbia has a comparatively low rate of incarceration. The branch has developed effective, innovative, and proactive alternatives to traditional custodial sentences.
The branch believes offenders should be placed in the least restrictive and the least costly possible setting consistent with the needs for public safety. The majority of offenders are not violent and do not require secured placements. Electronic monitoring provides an alternative form of incarceration for selected lower-risk offenders. It uses a combination of technology and staff supervision to enable an offender to serve their jail sentence at home. In this way offenders can maintain employment, continue their education, remain with their families, perform community work service, and be referred for treatment to less expensive and perhaps more effective community-based programs.
Temporary absence is the legal vehicle we use to allow the person to serve their sentence at home. The electronic monitoring program, or EMP as we call it in B.C., was initially introduced as a pilot project in the greater Vancouver area in August 1987. Since that time the program has expanded to all regions of the province, with approximately 350 offenders in the program on any given day.
When we developed the program back in 1987, we created a citizen advisory board to help us work through the issues we needed to look at. We invited members from a number of community- and justice-related agencies, such as the John Howard Society, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Citizens United for Safety and Justice, the Elizabeth Fry Society, and the Salvation Army. That was to get a community flavour into looking at something at that time that was a very innovative and perhaps controversial way of dealing with persons who were in custody.
The program has now been expanded to all the regions of the province, and that's been so since 1991, except for the very remote areas where it's just not economically viable to have the program operate, although we still do it in some of the areas that are fairly remote. We've entered into protocol contracts with the RCMP to provide the local supervision doing the home checks, which is the way we run the program. What we do is have correctional officers attend the home on an irregular basis to check with the person. We don't use just the electronic monitoring itself.
In terms of some numbers, in fiscal year 1995-96 the average daily count on the program was 303, which was an increase of 5% over the previous year. That represented approximately 15% of the total adult sentence population on the program. Currently, for the first 9 months of 1996-97, the average is 340, which is a 12% increase over last year. Again, percentage-wise, that represents about the same amount, 15% of the sentence population.
We have on occasion gone over 400 people on the program, and we've been pushing 20% of the sentence population.
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In terms of the costs for the program, in 1995-96 our average per diem rate for electronic monitoring was $42.06, which compared to the blended figure for custody, excluding EMP, of $128.63. So we had an actual difference of $86.57 per day. Again, this is a theoretical figure because you don't save that actual amount of money each day when a person is on the program. But if you were to take that cost-avoidance figure, you'd end up with $9.5 million as a cost avoidance to the branch. It's not a savings, because we don't have that money at the end of the day, but we haven't spent it either.
In terms of real differences we're looking at the marginal costs of $10 a day for being in the community versus $20 a day for being in the institution. It is substantially less of a saving, but it is an actual saving. The cost would be lower if we didn't use the staff supervision, but in British Columbia we believe this is one of the key factors to the program, so we maintain that level.
The last thing I'll touch on is the offenders classified for this particular program, and we use it as a classification option. Persons are not sentenced by the court to this program. They are sentenced by the court to a custodial program and then placed on the program at the discretion of the corrections branch under a classification option. Everybody who goes on the program is screened. The things we look at specifically are: willingness to comply with the program and the conditions of the program; the sentence being served is generally less than six months, although we do look at longer sentences; there is no pattern of violence in the person's criminal history; there is no record of sex offences; the person on the program does not present an apparent threat to the community; the person has ongoing constructive time commitments in the community such as work, education, participation in treatment programs, or child care responsibilities, that type of thing; and they have a positive community assessment.
As I indicated, everybody who is on the program is assessed prior to being placed on the program. As a result, we have experienced a 94% success rate for people placed on the program. Success in this circumstance is identified as completing the program without being returned to custody or violating any of the conditions. It has been 94% almost since day one, and it remains that to date. I think this is a reflection of the quality of the screening our staff use.
The majority of offenders who are returned to custody centres for non-compliance have violated the alcohol or drug prohibitions of their temporary absence permits. The other reasons include curfew violations and domestic problems.
I'll stop my presentation at that point and let Eric go into some of the technological things, and then we'll open it up for your questions. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you. Go ahead.
Mr. Caton: I'll speak about the technology that is in use across Canada today, making sure I cover the limitations of the technology so you understand what it does and does not do. Then perhaps we'll talk a little bit about what additional options are used in various provinces and territories. Last, I'll talk a little bit about full-time tracking of individuals in the community.
To start, the technology is all about doing more with less. Having this technology in the community requires fewer officers and less cost to take care of the same number of individuals. The technology is, first of all, a transmitter that goes around the client's ankle and transmits approximately 150 feet to a field monitoring device, which is basically a receiver dialler. It is a device that sits in the client's home and is hooked up to the telephone and a normal 110 power source. There are no modifications needed to the client's home for either their telephone or the power. It works in 99% of the homes it's put into. The only modifications we sometimes see are people who have hard-wired phones, for which we may need to put in an RJ-11 jack, which is just a normal clear plastic jack on a telephone.
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Both these devices have tamper devices within them to allow us to know if the person cuts or removes the device from their body or indeed unplugs the device from the phone or the power, or takes a screwdriver and opens the case and wants to have a look inside. We'll know all of those things once the device is plugged back into the phone line and talks to the host computer.
The host computer, in this case, sits in a corrections facility in British Columbia and records all the comings and goings of each individual. Each individual has a separate curfew, and as long as that curfew is kept there are no alarms sent out. If the person breeches the conditions laid down, which they have agreed to with Corrections - for example, if they come home late - an alarm is sent out via a variety of methods, but typically here in British Columbia it's through a paging system. An officer receives a page and is notified that a person has not returned. When the person does return the officer is notified so they can follow up with that person to find out why they were late.
The technology is a presence-absence monitor. It allows for one officer to take care of a great many clients and only respond to those who do not keep the conditions of their curfew.
There are a number of additions to the basic technology, which I'll speak to briefly. There's the drive-by monitor. I don't have it here today, but basically it's a portable receiver carried by officers in corrections vehicles, which allows them to go to the person's place of work, or to an AA meeting, let's say, and verify the presence of the offender at those meetings without actually going in and interrogating them in front of other people, thereby avoiding a certain level of embarrassment, if you will.
Also available, and used in Ontario but not in British Columbia, is a remote alcohol screening device, which would sit in the client's home. Once the person returned home from work, let's say, the device would call them to the device and they would go through a series of tests by putting the device against their mouth and blowing into it to verify that they had or had not been drinking. It has a number of tests it goes through to verify that the person taking the test is indeed the client and not their wife or children. This is done via voice verification.
There is a second, separate system called voice verification. This is different from the alcohol screening device. This is a system whereby there are no electronics required other than the client's telephone. A template of the client's voice is built. When they're locked down via their curfew, let's say in the evening when they've come home from work, a computer will phone them and prompt them to say certain specific words. They will repeat these words into the telephone, and via a patented process it will be verified that indeed this person is at this telephone. This system is not now used in Canada, but it's used in several places in the U.S.
Another system that is not used in Canada but is used in several states in the United States is a domestic violence intervention system. We call this the JurisMonitor system. It's set up with a variety of technologies to help enforce and verify that separation orders between a stalker and a victim are kept.
It works this way. A device such as the two I've already mentioned, which provide electronic monitoring, is placed on the stalker so we know if they are at home or not, and they have a curfew. The victim has a second receiver dialler in their home, and if the abuser or stalker comes within approximately 500 feet of the home, a call is made to both the police and to a monitoring centre, which starts a recording process in order to build some data so that a judge can make a decision as to whether or not the person is keeping their curfew and their separation.
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I should point out very clearly that the technology does not provide a high level of protection. It is an audit device to ensure that a separation order is kept. There are some additional devices that go with this. There's a pager for the victim when they are outside their home so they're not locked up in their home. A cell phone is also carried by this person with 911 built into it.
Lastly, and perhaps almost more importantly than the technology, we strongly suggest that the stalker or perpetrator should have a heavy programming component to try to break their behaviour patterns. Otherwise, we're just putting the person in a closet for three weeks or three months, and when they're off the equipment there's no reason they wouldn't go back and do what they were doing before.
Those are technologies that are out there now and being used. What I'd like to do now is talk a little bit about what we call continuous electronic monitoring or tracking.
There's been much hoopla lately that we can track a person as per a James Bond movie as they move around the city or the world. While there are a number of technologies and attempts to do this, the reality is that it's not at a level today that I think would provide comfort to either your committee, the Correctional Service of Canada, or indeed even someone like myself who sells the equipment.
One of the main things has been global positioning satellites, which is a system that is maintained by the U.S. military. While it has some benefits for boaters and truckers and a variety of other people who are outside, the present receivers for that technology do not work particularly well inside buildings.
As you're probably aware, Canadians spend the winter months inside buildings. We would know when they were outside if they weren't in a metal vehicle. However, we would lose them inside the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, for example, and we wouldn't know where they were as long as they stayed underground.
There are several attempts being made to overcome the limitations of both GPS and other technologies that would allow us to know not only where a perpetrator or a defendant is, but also where an Alzheimer's person is, where children are, and a variety of other markets. However, to date there has not been one technology that could be used across Canada that could be put in a small enough package that a human being could wear without some kind of discomfort.
That is the technology side of the component. The infrastructure necessary to support that is actually quite complicated as well, in that you'd need a computer with a digital map of all of Canada. It would also have to be updated frequently as roads change and areas change. Officers would have to put into it avenues that the stalker or perpetrator could move on or not move on, as well as notes and a variety of other things so that you could actually track a person and see if they were following the area they were allowed to move through.
This software and computer hardware doesn't exist as such just yet. As we speak, there are attempts being made to do this, as there is a large market not just in corrections. However, to the best of my knowledge, there's not a system that will cover all of Canada, and certainly even in the large centres there are major holes. Having said that, I believe we'll see that come to fruition in the year 2000 or just afterward.
Lastly, I'd like to point out that there are some heavy costs attached to that kind of situation. The transmitter worn by the stalker or perpetrator or client would have to transmit a certain number of times per hour, probably through the local cell lines or telephone system. To do that on a fairly regular basis, such as every 10 minutes, would require almost 150 calls a day. That is going to get quite expensive just for the calls.
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So there are some cost issues. There are some mapping issues. There's some technology that is not presently where it needs to be, and indeed it may be that the technologies that will come about finally have not even been invented.
That wraps up the technology. I guess we're open for questions.
The Chair: Thank you.
First, from the
[Translation]
the Bloc Québécois, Mr. Langlois. You have ten minutes.
Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): Good morning, Vancouver.
I'm interested in the technological aspect. Do the system now in use and the technological means available to you now allow for individual use of the gadgets you're showing us? Is it easier to exercise control in an urban area? Is it easier to do it over a given period of time? For example, if someone is supposed to be at home from 10 at night until 7 or 8 the next morning, these technical means must make surveillance easier. I'm throwing my questions at you in disorder, but it's off the top of my head.
What happens when there has to be more continuous surveillance? Are satellites or cell phones used? Are there dead zones, for example? I'll take a case in British Columbia. For example, if someone lives in Merritt and works in Cache Creek and cellular surveillance is interrupted along the way for whatever reason, does that pose a problem? Could that person simply phone in or something upon arriving at work?
Those are the problems I can see and I'd like to ask you what possible or desirable improvements you could suggest for the technical system already in place. Concerning the statistics you provided us, the figures seem conclusive enough for the kind of crimes that can be controlled in this way. But what I think is important is the technical aspect and I'd like to know what improvements might be desirable for the system.
[English]
Mr. Caton: I think the technology for the tracking outside the home, a continuous electronic monitoring, is not where it needs to be to verify that a person, let's say in Cache Creek, has indeed gone from their home directly to work without stopping in a third location.
What I'd like to see is a universal system that, as I mentioned before, includes some mapping technology, coverage for all of Canada, and of course a technology that will allow us to follow the individual as they move through the community. The technology is not in place today that could be used across Canada. I would like to see a universal technology, whether it's satellite or radio towers, that could be used in any location. But it's not there today, and the cost for that technology will be substantial.
Mr. Cairns: In terms of part of the other question that was asked about the individualization, that is how we operate the program in B.C. Corrections. Every individual's program is different.
The EMP officers sit down with the individual offender, work out the schedule and the distance from home to where they're going to work or school. They judge the amount of time required. If the person requires 20 minutes to get from their home to their work site and 20 minutes to get back, and they start work at 9 a.m. and finish at 4:30 p.m., their curfew would be built around that. So they would leave the house, say, at 8:30 a.m. or 8:40 a.m. and then they would be required to be home by 4:50 p.m. or 5 p.m., whatever the time would be. During the time they're away from their home, outside the receiving radius of the transmitter, it's a good-faith situation that they go from point A, their home, to point B, their work site, without any diversions.
We do check, as Eric mentioned, with the drive-by units. We could go by their place of employment and check to make sure they're there. We also work very closely with their employers. I don't know if there's anybody on EMP who's working at a site in which the employer doesn't know the person is on EMP. It's a process we use. If the person doesn't show up for work, the employer is normally going to tell us this client did not show up for work today. So we're not waiting until we either drive by or they don't show up again at the end of the day to know they've violated. But it is a good-faith situation in that they do what they're supposed to do when they are not within the range of the equipment. We do have violations, but it's not a common problem.
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[Translation]
Mr. Langlois: Do you have any statistics or figures about people not respecting electronic surveillance conditions, not voluntarily, but because of purely technical problems that may have been discovered after investigation? Those people were lost track of because of the limits imposed by the present system and that's what your colleague was mentioning before. Do you have a lot of cases like that?
[English]
Mr. Cairns: I don't have the specific numbers in front of me. As I indicated, the failure rate for the program would be 6%. Included in that 6% of the people who have participated in the program would be persons who failed to go to work or to school, or wherever they were supposed to go. It often end up tied into alcohol problems, though, because instead of going to work they go to the bar. They come back in an inebriated state or they don't show up on time. When we find out they are not at work, we follow it up. That seems to be the problem.
In terms of leaving early or returning late, we do get that information. It is also one of the identified reasons why we have failures in that particular program. But I don't have numbers that would say exactly how many of those persons there are or have been.
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois: You said a potential victim or someone receiving threats could carry a paging like device that would give a warning if the author of the threats is within 500 feet; the threatened person could then call for help. How? I understood it was by calling 911, but in a province as huge as British Columbia, the efficacity of the system depends on how fast the police can intervene. Could you give us more details on how this would happen, especially in rural areas?
[English]
Mr. Caton: The way the program would have to work is that during the set-up of the program for each victim we would have to look at their surrounding area, where the police are, whether there is someone else who could respond, and whether there is somewhere the victim can go when a perpetrator or stalker comes close.
In terms of whether it would work the same in the city as in a rural area, I think the answer is no. It would require a greater level of...who is going to respond, when are they going to respond, and it may be that it's not the police. It would be on an individualized basis.
I think this is the way it's operated now in the United States. They're looking at each situation and where the victim spends most of their time. Then they build a series of situations and lead the victim through them so that she knows - typically it's a she - how to respond. So we require some training on the part of the victim.
To answer your question, for different victims different areas would require different ways of being addressed.
Mr. Cairns: Perhaps I could offer some opinion here as well. British Columbia has looked at that type of approach in terms of dealing with domestic violence cases in B.C., and we have not been satisfied that the technology is going to provide any advantage or sense of.... I think what it will do is provide a false sense of security for people on the program given that they believe they might be safe having this device in their home. I'm concerned that even with a 500-foot radius...it doesn't take a person very long to cover 500 feet, and unless the police officer is also within 500 feet, he's not going to get there before the perpetrator does. Other than knowing that the person was close to the home, I don't think it provides any protection whatsoever for victims. The last thing I'd want to do is let them think they were safe when they weren't. I personally don't support that concept until I'm satisfied and guaranteed that the equipment will do what it's supposed to do, and that's to protect victims.
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Mr. Caton: I'd like to point out that the equipment is not sold on the basis of protection to the victim. There is a common misconception that the equipment will provide a level of protection. No electronics is going to protect the victims. What it does is audit the conditions of the separation order.
I think it's important that you understand that this is not about protection. If you're looking for that, then I think we have to add other elements to the mix - and most likely they're not electronics - to give that level of protection that I sense you're looking for.
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois: There are a lot of science fiction movies in our theatres, of course, but perhaps - and this is a question, not a suggestion - the system could be designed to create a sort of conditioned reflex, which would mean that if the person issuing the threat got closer than 500 feet to the person being threatened, the threatener would get a 150-volt discharge. That would be a form of protection. Could the system possibly be a Big Brother attached to the wrist or other perhaps more essential parts of the body, if we're targeting sexual delinquents, for example?
[English]
Mr. Caton: The answer is that a large firm in the United States, which is where most of this technology and these ideas come from, has proposed to the government in the United States that they could actually put a chemical device inside offenders. So when a person broke the conditions of their curfew...or indeed the area they were allowed to go into...it would release chemicals that would disable them. Basically this would cause them severe stomach pain. It would not kill them, but it certainly causes them to be disabled.
Is it technically possible? Probably after the year 2000 it could be done. However, I think there are some issues that would cause some problems with civil liberties and perhaps even some concerns about the misuse of such technology.
So it has been thought of. Indeed, a lot of work has gone into such types of devices. However, will we see them? I'm not sure the public would find them acceptable. However, that's today; perhaps in two to five years they will.
Mr. Cairns: On that same theme, there are more simplistic ways in terms of using electronic devices. The technology is used with animals, such as dogs and cattle. They wear a collar, and when they come within a certain distance of a fence it gives a shock. It's like an invisible electric fence; it backs them up. I don't know how well that would work with humans. I suppose it possibly could.
There was a chap named Pavlov I think who used stimulus response a long time ago to train animals. It's the same concept, but I don't think we'll see it dealing with persons.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Langlois.
Ms Meredith, picking up on that theme.
Ms Meredith: They're chuckling because I was suggesting that's something I should consider for my dog.
I want to sort of backtrack on the concept of electronic monitoring. Jim, you said originally that you use it on non-violent, low-risk individuals who have been selected through a process of assessment and evaluation. The legislation we're dealing with, as I understand it, is looking for it to be used on individuals who they suspect are a higher risk, people who they suspect will do something. Electronic monitoring is not going to stop an individual from doing anything, is it?
Mr. Cairns: No, it's not, and I do have some concerns. I've read the legislation, I've looked at it, and it certainly gives me some concerns.
We've stretched the envelope in terms of low-risk, non-violent offenders to start looking at individual cases, some of those persons who in the initial stages would not have been considered non-violent or low risk. Again, looking at the assessments in each kind of circumstance or situation, this does not mean we won't put a person on the program who has a history of some violence, or even a sex offence or those types of things. However, it's based on the assessment of the individual.
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Part of the concern I would have is that if the court had the absolute jurisdiction to place this person on the program without any degree of assessment or input from the Corrections Branch, we could end up with any type of person whatsoever on this program. When the inevitable violation occurs - and one paints the worst-case scenario of a serious assault on a spousal assault victim, for example - the whole program is going to be painted with that same brush.
The general public will not differentiate between a person placed on the program by ourselves versus a person placed on the program by the courts. They don't make that distinction now between persons on probation or parole, whether they're federal or provincial offenders, or for that matter whether they're American or Canadian.
When a violation occurs, I think every justice system in North America is blamed for whatever happened. I think the idea behind trying to address these people through legislation and some form of increased monitoring is a good one. I'm not sure electronic monitoring is necessarily going to be the answer for persons who are bent upon committing serious personal injury, as the act indicates.
Ms Meredith: It would appear to me from listening to other witnesses that people see it as perhaps a positive thing with domestic violence, that maybe it would be better than nothing. But I got the impression from the act that what we're talking about more likely is pedophiles. Do you feel it might have some relevance with domestic violence, the threat of serious personal harm to a family member as opposed to just the general population?
Mr. Cairns: Actually, no, I don't think so. Eric has talked about improvements in the technology, and I think once we have some improvements in the technology I'd feel more comfortable about it.
Again, I think it all goes to compliance, whether it's a pedophile, a domestic violence case, or a person who just drinks and gets violent. It really is a compliance issue. Can we monitor this person's ability to comply by being home when they're supposed to be home? All it really tells us is whether that person is at home, within the range of their receiving unit, when they're supposed to be there. Once they're away from there, we don't have the capacity at this point, or at least within the program we use, to know where that person is or what they're doing.
My concern is that if we put this person on the program and they are intent on causing serious bodily harm in a domestic violence case - and we've seen those cases - they don't care whether they get caught or not. They walk right up the steps of the church in front of the entire congregation and assault or murder their victims, their wife or children. An electronic monitoring device is not going to stop that person.
If we're making the decisions, we have the dilemma of determining who is likely to commit that serious violent offence and who is not. We do that reasonably well now. If the courts are in the situation of making that determination of who is going to commit that violent offence and who is not, I don't know what criteria they're going to use or how they're going to assess those persons.
Ms Meredith: Basically you're telling us it's not just the act they commit, but it's a whole series of other factors that will determine.... If they commit a minor offence but other assessment factors show they are likely to be a high risk and to disregard the monitoring device or the parameters that are established around it, you would not put them in this program. Is that right? You assess more than just the crime they commit.
Mr. Cairns: We look at their entire behaviour, and in fact non-compliance with previous court orders is one of the things we looked at. That does not necessarily mean the person is violent, but we want people who are going to comply, and the person who breaches probation or a conditional release order from the court is not likely to end up on this program. Violence is only one of the things we look at, and of course domestic violence particularly is something we look at when we put a person on this program.
The last thing we want to do is put a person on this program into a situation where they're liable to commit domestic violence within the home, or even worse, be the victim of domestic violence. An example would be a female offender who gets placed in this program. We wouldn't want to put her back into her own home, where she may be the subject of domestic violence, where her only alternative is to go back to jail.
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Ms Meredith: Would it be fair to say then that you would not support the use of electronic monitoring in the way it is envisioned with the legislation before us, Bill C-55?
Mr. Cairns: That would be my personal opinion. I have some concerns about it. I can't say that I'm necessarily speaking on behalf of the B.C. Corrections Branch or certainly the B.C. government, but based upon my experience in working with this program, I personally would have some serious reservations about its use in that manner.
Ms Meredith: Okay, thank you very much.
The Chair: Mr. DeVillers.
Mr. DeVillers: Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't think I have any additional questions. I thank the witnesses for their time and their input. I think their evidence here has been very clear and concise.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Regan, did you have any questions?
Mr. Regan (Halifax West): Ditto.
The Chair: Well, this is what happens when you have good witnesses. Thank you very much for your assistance and for your help.
We're very pleased to let you know that there's a storm coming to Vancouver from Ottawa. It's going to be 10 below zero tonight, but don't worry about it. If we can live through it, you can too.
Thank you very much.
This meeting is adjourned.