[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, May 28, 1996
.1533 
[English]
The Chair: Welcome.
Today we have main estimates for the Office of the Correctional Investigator under the Solicitor General. Before us we have Ron Stewart, the correctional investigator, and others, lots of others.
Welcome. I know you have some opening remarks, so if you want to go ahead with them, we'll have questions for you following them, Mr. Stewart.
Mr. Ron L. Stewart (Correctional Investigator of Canada): Thanks very much, Madam Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee again this year as part of the estimates process.
Appearing as a separate program within the context of the estimates process, besides reinforcing this office's independence and specific accountability to Parliament, affords me an additional opportunity to meet with lawmakers to review major issues of concern arising from our investigations. These issues are outlined in my 1994-95 annual report, which was tabled by the Solicitor General on October 25, 1995. This year's annual report will be submitted to the minister within the next thirty days.
The correctional investigator is mandated as an ombudsman for federal corrections. The specific function of the office, as detailed in section 167 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, is to conduct investigations into the problems of offenders related to decisions, recommendations, acts or omissions of the commissioner of corrections, or any person under the control and management of or performing services for or on behalf of the commissioner, that affect offenders either individually or as a group.
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The fulfilling of this ombudsman's function requires that the office maintain a thorough and responsive investigative process that is and is seen to be objective and independent of federal corrections and the ministry.
Over the course of a year the office receives approximately 6,500 complaints. The investigative staff spends an average 260 days at federal penitentiaries and conducts in excess of 2,000 interviews with inmates and half again that number of interviews with penitentiary and regional staff.
The correctional investigator, pursuant to section 192 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, submits an annual report to the minister on the activities of the office, which in turn must be laid before each House of Parliament.
The annual report, in conjunction with the detailing of the office's activities, provides specific observations and recommendations on the services, policies and procedures associated with areas of individual complaint to ensure that systematic areas of concern are identified and appropriately addressed.
The correctional investigator may as well, pursuant to section 193 of the act, submit a special report to the minister on urgent or important matters. My report last February on the incidents at the Prison for Women, which in part led to the appointment of the Arbour commission, was submitted pursuant to that section. A copy of that special report is appended to my last annual report, which I understand the committee has in its possession.
Operationally the primary function of the office is to investigate and attempt to bring resolution to individual offender complaints. The environment within which this function is performed presents a number of interrelated challenges.
The inherent tension between the keeper and the kept presents an environment that generates a high level of mistrust. The increased federal inmate population, with the resulting excessive overcrowding, has heightened institutional tensions and compounded many long-standing areas of individual and systemic concern. The opening of four new federal correctional facilities for women has increased both the number of institutions to be visited and the number of correctional administrations that have to be dealt with.
The Arbour commission of inquiry has clearly focused attention on the failure of federal corrections to reasonably address its responsibilities to federally sentenced women. In addressing these challenges presented by the federal correctional environment, it must be noted that this office has virtually no control over the number of complaints or the scope of the areas of concern requiring investigation and that the recommendations of the correctional investigator, as with all traditional ombudsman functions, are not binding.
As such, in large part, the effectiveness of the office in bringing resolution to areas of concern is dependent upon the responsiveness of the Correctional Service.
While the federal penitentiary population has increased significantly over the past years, as have the Correctional Service's resources, in response to both the population increase and the opening of new facilities, the resources afforded my office have decreased.
With a professional staff of eight investigators and two directors reviewing in excess of 6,000 complaints from some fifty institutions in five regions, the office realized that in order to avoid being overwhelmed by volume, it had to focus more attention on systemic areas of concern with the expectation that reasonably addressing these matters would assist in more effectively responding to the specific areas of individual concern.
In order to maintain a thorough and responsive investigative process that is and is seen to be objective and independent, the office has initiated or is in the process of initiating the following strategies:
- The establishment of procedures to ensure that systemic areas of concern, such as the inmate grievance process, case preparation, transfers, internal investigations, discipline and segregation, are reviewed on each visit with the institution's senior management and with the inmate committee.
- An increase in the contact between this office and the Correctional Service of Canada's regional headquarters to ensure that systemic areas of concern are clearly identified and acted upon within a regional context.
- A reorganization within the office that will identify one investigative position as responsible for the interregional coordination of individual complaints, with ongoing systemic reviews at the regional and national levels.
- The identification of one investigative position as responsible for all federally sentenced women and the coordination of the proposed changes flowing from the Arbour commission of inquiry.
- The establishment of working committees with the Correctional Service of Canada national headquarters staff on specific areas of systemic concern, in an effort to ensure both the relevant issues associated with the areas of concern and the individual cases that gave rise to the issues are addressed.
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The central focus of the operation of this office traditionally has been, and will continue to be, on the individual and his or her specific area of complaint. One of the key factors in the effectiveness of this office has been the acceptance by both the inmate population and those active within the criminal justice field of the level of objectivity, thoroughness, and independence of the office.
The effectiveness of the above-noted strategy in ensuring this office meets its mandate depends in part on the responsiveness of the Correctional Service of Canada to the observations and recommendations raised on behalf of the inmate population and the willingness of the minister and Parliament to cause corrective action to be taken when the service fails to respond reasonably to those observations and recommendations. It further depends, quite obviously, on the ability of the office to identify clearly and pursue solutions to areas of systemic concern which reasonably address the concerns of individual inmates.
Although minimal progress has been achieved on those issues detailed in last year's annual report, and although the Correctional Service responses to this office remain for the most part excessively delayed, defensive, and non-committal, I appear here today cautiously optimistic about positive change.
The recently released reports of the Auditor General and Madam Justice Arbour have confirmed the significance of the issues raised by this office over the past four years. I specifically view the Arbour report as providing all those involved in federal corrections with both an opportunity and a clear direction for necessary change.
The key to the effectiveness of this change will be dependent in large part on the steps taken to address the service's deplorably defensive culture. This culture, which is well detailed within the commission of inquiry report, has resulted in an approach characterized by Madam Justice Arbour as ``deny error, defend against criticism and react without a proper investigation of the truth''. This approach obviously is inconsistent with the service's mission statement, which commits itself to openness, integrity, and accountability. Movement towards commitment to these values is necessary if the very real problems facing corrections are to be addressed.
I conclude this brief opening statement by saying I've met recently with the acting commissioner, Mr. John Tait, and I am confident he is supportive of the need for change. I am further confident that with strong leadership within the Correctional Service committed to the values enunciated within its mission statement effective relationships with both government and non-government agencies can be established and they will assist corrections in ensuring their operations are responsive to the population they serve and are consistent with the intent and the letter of the law governing those operations.
I have with me today Mr. Todd Sloan, who acts as both an investigator and a counsel to my office; Mr. Jim Hayes and Mr. Georges Poirier, directors of investigation; and Mr. Ed McIsaac, our executive director. Fortunately Ms Nathalie Spicer, who has appeared before the committee in previous years and is responsible for federally sentenced women's issues, is able to be here today. We will collectively attempt to address any questions committee members may have.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Our usual pattern is to start with ten-minute rounds, starting with the Bloc. Are there any questions?
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[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent (Manicouagan): This is the third time during our mandate that we receive the correctional investigator's report. In the past two years, I had fun pointing out a recommendation that had appeared in every report since 1982. I will not do it again this year because it will take too long. You have to count on a least ten minutes or so.
I am referring to overcrowding. Every year, since 1982, the correction investigator's report recommends eliminating overcrowding for all sorts of reasons, which are fairly obvious. This year, the report says:
- There are now approximately 5,000 inmates in federal prisons who must share cells designed to
accommodate just one inmate.
- that it is inhuman to put two people in an isolation cell designed for one -
Mr. Stewart, what is required to eliminate the double bunking situation that has prevailed over the past 15 years and which I would call scandalous? I am not talking about reasonable double bunking - that can happen - , but rotten double bunking. What steps must be taken, Mr. Stewart.
[English]
Mr. Stewart: The overcrowding numbers are about the same and the inmates are still complaining. Overcrowding affects just about everything that happens in a federal institution. The more inmates you have, the more line-ups you have and the more difficult it is to get programs. It impacts on just about everything in the prisons.
My job is to bring the problems of the inmates to the attention of the minister and through the minister to Parliament, and that's what I do. If overcrowding or any other issue remains a problem, then it's my job to bring it to the attention of the minister and to this parliamentary committee as the minister tables the report before both Houses of Parliament.
As I said in my opening brief, we're always looking for help to try to remedy some of the situations. Perhaps the committee or Parliament will want to take a look at the situation and see if we can deal with it.
As you said, it has been in a report for the last number of years and the situation continues about the same. But I think in corrections they're taking some initiatives to try to reduce the population. I can't speak for corrections, but....
First we were advised by corrections that it was a front-end-load problem, because they couldn't control what the courts were putting into the system. We weren't sure about that. They suggested the judges were passing longer sentences and that was affecting the population. We've done a bit of work on that, and I think those figures have levelled off.
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I think the problem is in the back end of the system. We're not letting enough non-violent people out of the prisons. Mr. John Edwards, the former commissioner, stated as recently as a couple of months ago that this was a problem they were looking at. They kept far too many non-violent people in federal institutions past their parole eligibility date. They're looking at ways to do something about that.
I can't speak for Corrections; I don't know exactly where they're at on that. But it continues to be a problem the inmates have. As I said, it impacts on everything that happens in an institution, and because it's still a problem I can put it in my annual report.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Unless I misunderstood you, you said earlier that you had the power to prepare a special report or to appoint a special committee to study specific incidents. You referred to what had happened at the Kingston penitentiary for women. You have exercised your right to make special reports and to appoint special committees. That was a good move.
Could you not do the same thing for the overcrowding in our prisons, as a last ditch measure, to show the minister how serious the problem has become? According to the figures in your report, overcrowding has more than doubled since 1990 and is still on the rise. I would also like you to tell us when you think that will stop and whether you have a solution to the problem.
Do you not have the power to set up a special committee or to make a special report, and in the affirmative, will you do so?
[English]
Mr. Stewart: Madame Chair, I don't know about setting up a task force; that isn't in the mandate anywhere. But certainly special reports are something we can do.
The problem, although it's important, has been there for a while. The special reporting function is for emergency-type things that are happening and won't wait until the next annual report to advise the minister and Parliament. That's why a special report went in. That's what it's there for. But it has been in the annual report for the last number of years and continues to be a problem. I suppose I could do a special report on overcrowding, and it may be something we may want to consider.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Yes, but you have just said so. You say here that you make a report in special cases, such as the incidents at the Kingston penitentiary for women.
When you have 5,000 inmates, representing 20 p. 100 of the prison population, doesn't that constitute a special case? Isn't it up to you to foresee that chronic overcrowding will lead to a major disaster?
[English]
Mr. Stewart: I agree that the problem is not going away and is increasing.
I believe the correctional service is dealing with the problem. It's not an easy problem to solve. They advise me they are taking steps to try to reduce the numbers. But according to Corrections, this is a problem that is worldwide and it's not something only Canada suffers from. In most western jurisdictions the problem of overcrowding is a fact of life, and anywhere you go you're going to find shared accommodations and double bunking, whatever you want to call it. It seems to be more of a worldwide problem than a local problem that might be the subject of a special report.
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Again, we are patient, and we hope the Correctional Service, especially with a new administration coming in, will be able to take up the problem and perhaps deal more effectively with the situation.
The Chair: We're at the end of the time.
The Reform Party has ten minutes, Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): Mr. Stewart, I'd like to thank you for your presence here today and for the brief you have submitted, as well as for the presence of your colleagues.
On page 8 of your brief you state:
- This culture, which is well detailed within the Commission of Inquiry Report
- - and of course you're referring to the Arbour report -
- has resulted in an approach characterized by Justice Arbour as ``deny error, defend against
criticism and react without a proper investigation of the truth''.
I was concerned when I read the report that all witnesses, including the four inmates involved in the initial assault upon the guards, were not called to testify under oath. Being an old policeman, I wondered how recommendations could be made without obtaining all available evidence. I had some concerns there.
Of the two concerns I had, the greatest was the fact that the report reveals that the inquiry obtained evidence of institutional cover-up in the original reporting on the Kingston riot to the correctional authorities and to the minister. The author of the report seemingly fails to see the seriousness of this and counsels against disciplinary action for those responsible. I just can't understand that. Of course I don't expect you to respond to that, but I can't understand it.
We all remember what happened with Nixon. It wasn't the break-in to the Washington facility that caused his downfall; it was the cover-up.
I don't think we can call commissions of inquiry into instances like that and ignore evidence of a cover-up. I'm shocked at that. Anyway, I'm going to leave that.
I'd like to ask you this. Does your duty as a correctional investigator involve complaints only of the inmates against the Correctional Service, or does it also include complaints an inmate might have against another inmate? Do you have the jurisdiction to investigate a complaint from an inmate against another inmate?
Mr. Stewart: Well, we'd certainly look at the complaint. It's hard to visualize what it might be. If we got a complaint, we might not be able to deal with it in our mandate, but we might be able to advise the proper authorities that an inmate has a problem that might be dealt with by the police or by the Correctional Service.
Mr. Ramsay: I understand from your answer, then, that you're not mandated to investigate those kinds of complaints, other than to pass the nature of the complaint on to others?
Mr. Stewart: No, we can look at complaints from inmates against inmates.
Mr. Ramsay: Do you get many of those complaints? It seems to me from your answer that you don't get too many of those kinds of complaints.
Mr. Stewart: No, we don't.
Mr. Ramsay: Okay. Let me ask you this. Our visits to the federal institutions indicate that drug trafficking within those institutions is a serious problem. If we were able to eliminate the drugs and the drug abuse within the institution, in your estimation, would it reduce your job and reduce the number of complaints you receive?
.1600
Mr. Stewart: I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't really say. Any culture where you have drugs is going to be a source of some violence. Overcrowding is certainly a contribution to the violence, and I'm sure drug trafficking is part of the problem too. But to reduce the amount of drugs in institutions I don't think would reduce our caseload that much.
Mr. Ramsay: Then is the drug abuse that's going on within the institutions not a contributing factor to the high number of complaints you've received from the inmates?
Mr. Stewart: It may be contributing because people are forcing other inmates or their families to bring in drugs. There is that type of thing. But inmates obviously don't complain to our office that they're not getting enough drugs, for instance, and they don't complain about other inmates using drugs. We get the odd complaint about it. It provides problems within the institution, but it's not something the inmates complain about to our office.
Mr. Ramsay: So the drug abuse within institutions is not a contributing factor to the complaints you receive. I see you receive quite a large number of them, and you're saying to the committee that none of those complaints, or a very small minority of them, if any, are the result...the drug abuse is not a contributing factor to those complaints.
Mr. Stewart: Again, it may indirectly affect complaints coming from inmates.
Mr. Ramsay: May I be fair with you and ask you if you're aware of the percentage? You quoted a number. You receive thousands of complaints annually. Have you broken those down? Do you know what is the factor contributing to a majority of those complaints, a minority of those complaints?
Mr. Stewart: If you look in the annual report you'll see a breakdown of the areas and categories of complaints for those numbers.
Mr. Ramsay: All right, may I ask you this. Do you see drug trafficking as a problem within the institution?
Mr. Stewart: Yes, I see it as a problem.
Mr. Ramsay: Then would you be willing to support measures that might reduce the rights of inmates, perhaps visiting rights, or those avenues, based on their rights, through which the drugs are flowing into the institutions? Would you support an examination of those rights, and if a restriction of those rights would reduce the flow of drugs into the institutions, would you be willing to support that?
Mr. Stewart: My job isn't there to support or not support CSC policy on drugs or inmate responses to that policy. My job is to deal with inmate complaints and to let the Correctional Service deal with their drug policy and the effect it has on the inmates. My job isn't to support one side or another of the drug policy.
Mr. Ramsay: But your job is to maintain the rights of the inmates, and if the visiting rights, as we understand it, are one of the channels through which a large majority of the drugs are entering the institutions, that is a right you are interested in maintaining for the inmates. So there would have to be a balance, a saw-off. If that is the cause, if that is the main channel, through which the drugs are entering the institutions, if it's going to be reduced, there would have to be a reduction of that right. So it does involve your mandate in a significant way, I would suggest.
My interest in this is how a healthy balance can be reached in reducing the flow of drugs within an institution while at the same time not overly infringing on the visitation rights of some of the members who are not involved in that kind of activity. I think that's a very straightforward proposition, which correctional facilities, this committee and the government have to address.
.1605
Mr. Stewart: Maybe Mr. Todd Sloan, our counsel, would like to respond to that.
Mr. Todd Sloan (Counsel, Office of the Correctional Investigator): Yes, thank you, Madame Chair.
As a rule, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, in my experience, strikes precisely that balance. It legislates visiting and other contact with the community, including family members, as an entitlement, and it restricts access at the behest of the service to that communication in the interest of identified and reasonably believed security or safety concerns. Certainly it is the position of our office that the introduction of drugs, the passing of drugs, and the use of drugs within institutions represents such a security concern.
We might also mention that over the past several months and years we have had ongoing consultation both within the scope of our investigations and as a rule with the Correctional Service on precisely the issue of striking this balance. I think you will find that the provisions of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act provide the type of cross-referencing you seem to have in mind by your question.
Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Madam Chair. I see my time is up, unless you're being lenient today - are you?
The Chair: Only with you.
Ms Torsney.
Ms Torsney (Burlington): Spare the rod, spoil the child, right?
The Chair: That's right. With Jack, it's too late. We just always give him a little bit extra.
Ms Torsney: I have a couple of questions.
I know you have all of these cases broken down on page 5 by complaint received and pending, by category. Are some of the 6,799 complaints one individual launching 17 different complaints? Do you have, as most MPs would testify, certain characters who are more complaint-oriented and active on files than other individuals and are at penitentiaries? Or are these one time only, spread across all of the prison population?
Mr. Ed McIsaac (Executive Director, Office of the Correctional Investigator): We, as I'm sure the MPs, have a number of people who consistently complain. We get large numbers of complaints from them.
Generally, the number of 6,000 plus is coming from a base of 4,000 to 5,000 inmates. We are not receiving either a small portion or even a significant portion of the total number of complaints from a block of inmates. It is representative of -
Ms Torsney: The whole population.
Mr. McIsaac: - four to five thousand, yes.
Ms Torsney: On some of these things, I would venture a guess that some of my constituents would say: Look, you did a crime; why should you get anything? That's all too good as it is. Why are you complaining about your diet or employment? My goodness, you caused harm in our communities. Why should we even have an office like this?
What do you say to those people?
Mr. McIsaac: I would say, first of all, that I don't think the period of incarceration is designed to be excessively on the punitive side. I think the fact that one has been separated from society and sentenced to a time in an institution is in fact the punishment.
In terms of the diets, the complaints are not with either the quality of the food or the calorie count. What we are basically dealing with here are either religious diets that have been authorized either by the chaplain or by regional headquarters that are not being complied with, or they are medical diets that have been authorized by health care staff that, again, either are not being complied with or not meeting the strict requirements that have been laid out.
.1610
In terms of the employment situation, the difficulty and one of the by-products of overcrowding is an absence of meaningful employment within the institutions. It is not a healthy situation to have hundreds of inmates sitting around day after day with absolutely nothing to do.
Many of the employment complaints we are receiving are inmates who are not able to find employment on a full-time basis, or they have requested the employment that will hopefully lead to the acquisition of a skill that could be used once they are returned back to society.
So it is those areas that are being complained about. They do not fall into the vexatious or frivolous end of the scale.
Ms Torsney: Are some of the things in here things these people have no right to complain about? Most of us would, if we could, choose where we wanted to live in terms of cell placement or have access to counselling programs. People in my community have some trouble. So why should we give these inmates anything? It's a question I get asked every day.
Mr. McIsaac: I guess we'll have to deal with the items on an individual basis.
In terms of the cell placements, we are oftentimes dealing with someone who wants out of segregation, or has been placed in segregation as a result of protective custody, who is requesting a cell change for a legitimate reason of safety.
I'm sorry, what was the second area you had referred to?
Ms Torsney: Health care, or mental health access counselling, things like that.
Mr. McIsaac: The access to the programming is an identified requirement, usually by the caseworkers within the Correctional Service. If the inmate is not able to access the programming, it is probably going to have two impacts. One will be that he will end up spending a longer period of time inside because he is not viewed either by the service or the board as ready to be released back into the community. If his statutory date arrives and he has in fact not been able to get access to the identified programming, then we are left with the situation where someone being released back into society has in fact not addressed perhaps the difficulties that led him there.
Part of the service's mandate, obviously, is to release individuals who are considered to be no longer posing a threat.
Ms Torsney: But I guess we're getting into the individual categories. What I'm trying to get at is something a little broader. That is, you've identified that the volume of your work has increased and yet your budgets have decreased, that there's going to be some 50% increase in the volume of.... Let me get the correct 50%.
According to the corrections population growth statistics of May 1996, for the federal, provincial, and territorial ministers of justice, a 50% increase is predicted in the prison population in this country unless the current practice of incarcerating more people for longer periods of time is reversed.
My question is, should we spending money housing these people and eliminate a function such as yours? Or why is your function important? Some of my constituents would say that these people have wronged our community. Why do they have rights? Why do they have access to a service such as yours?
Mr. McIsaac: The incarcerated population of this country do have rights and continue to maintain those rights. That is what the law says. So in dealing with the reality of the current time, they enter a federal institution maintaining all the rights of every other citizen except those who are expressly removed as a result of the fact that they are incarcerated.
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I would hope that the majority of individuals in this country would also want and feel the requirement for some independent assurance that our authorities who control the deprivation of liberty are in fact doing such as prescribed by the rules, the laws and the regulations and that there is not abuse - that the system we have established is in fact acting in a fair, reasonable and humane fashion.
We know and we certainly continue to see that abuses are a potential. They do happen. A democratic society such as ours has a vested interest in ensuring that those rights are maintained and safeguarded to the extent we are able to do such.
Ms Torsney: I'm probably on the final question.
The Chair: You have about a minute left.
Ms Torsney: Mr. Stewart, to you and to the rest of the team, I suppose, do you do any kind of public communication about the work you do? Are you asked to do any Rotary Club speeches or community talks about our system of incarcerating individuals and how there are checks and balances? Do you communicate to the general population some of the reasons you exist, or is that just not being done?
Mr. Stewart: Over the years I've done a fair amount of that, though to a lesser degree now. When we go to institutions we deal with the native brotherhoods and with the inmate committees. We're always on call to speak to them about our role. We talk to some of the other groups that have access to penitentiaries, such as the Elizabeth Fry Society, the John Howard Society and so on.
We'd like to do more of an information thing, but we don't have the budget for it, nor do we have the human resources because of our heavy caseload. We continue, with the resources we do have, to contact the inmates, mostly in groups, and tell them what our office is all about.
Ms Torsney: The point is I think you need to do some more community outreach stuff beyond the current communities you serve, because the reality is some of those questions I've asked, which may seem a little weird....
There is a climate out there right now, which I face every day in calls, that we should not treat our criminals so well and that there doesn't need to be a function such as yours. People think our jails are very luxurious and that everybody's taking university courses when the average population can't get to them, and the food's so wonderful, and on and on it goes.
Maybe there would be more money for budgets for departments like yours if more people knew about what you did and supported the function. Get political.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Jim Hayes (Director of Investigations, Office of the Correctional Investigator): Madam Chair, could I respond briefly to that?
The Chair: Sure.
Mr. Hayes: Mr. Stewart is probably not aware of this, but I've been invited to Fanshawe College down in Oshawa -
The Chair: That's in London.
Mr. Hayes: Right.
The Chair: You're talking to mostly MPs from southwestern Ontario here, so you'll want to get it right.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Chair: It's probably not as good as any of the ones in Oakville, Windsor or Sarnia, but you're from London, so who cares?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Hayes: Nevertheless, I've been invited to the college to address some of those very issues.
It came up from one of the professors that he found a very right-wing swing in the class. He is a former police officer and is very aware that there are two sides to this thing. He met me when I was speaking on another occasion and invited me down. He said it's going to be quite interesting, because the people are very, shall we say, conservative with respect to the treatment of people who have been sentenced and the treatment afforded them subsequent to that sentence being carried out.
So I will certainly keep your remarks in mind and try to survive as best I can. Perhaps we will do a bit more of that if the opportunity presents itself. I agree with your point. It's well taken.
Ms Torsney: I'd like to receive a copy of your remarks, if I can, if you write them out.
Mr. Hayes: I will do so.
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The Chair: Thank you very much.
We go to the Bloc. Mr. St-Laurent, you have five minutes.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Mr. Stewart, what are your criteria for assessing priorities and complaints. According to your report, you dealt with 1,800 out of approximately 7,000. You no doubt had some system to make a choice, to leave out most of them and to keep the main ones. How did you decide which were more important than others? Was your decision based on the number of inmates affected by the complaint or whether it was a life threatening situation? What are your criteria?
[English]
Mr. Stewart: If you look at the statistics in the annual report, we talk about disposition of complaints. First of all, all the complaints we get are investigated; perhaps a better word would be ``assessed''. Until you look at the complaint and make a judgment, you don't know whether you have a valid complaint or not.
Some complaints are beyond our mandate. The administration of justice is a provincial matter, so if the inmate is complaining about his lawyer, the jury or the judge, etc., we tell him we have no mandate to deal with that. So we know right away. That's fairly easy to decide.
A lot of times complaints are premature. There are time factors, where an inmate wants to know whether his transfer has been activated yet, and we say ``Well, they still have some more time. Get back to us in another twenty days'', or whatever the timeframe is on it. That would be premature.
Sometimes the complaints aren't justified. Sometimes they're withdrawn. We go down and explain to an inmate what the policy of the Correctional Service is so he understands that a guard or whoever was doing his job, so he withdraws his complaint.
Sometimes we give assistance and sometimes we're able to resolve the complaints, but everything that comes into the office is assessed or investigated. We don't priorize our complaints. Obviously if an inmate wants a temporary absence pass to go to his mother's funeral, that's something we would phone the warden on and try to activate, if in fact he met the criteria. In that case it's more of an emergency issue than prioritizing anything.
We deal with the complaints as they come in. Some take longer to deal with than others. If we go to an institution or even to a region and find several complaints dealing with the same problem, for example a transfer situation at the regional level, then we can go there and maybe solve all these complaints with one phone call, for instance. If it's something like a health care situation in an institution and we have several complaints about the health care policy, maybe some inquiries will rectify that.
But the complaints are dealt with as they come in. We don't prioritize.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Still on the topic of complaints, do you also investigate complaints about the administration, or does your role involve solely dealing with matters directly affecting inmates? Can you conduct inquiries on the administration or only on the running of the prison, from the inmates' perspective?
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[English]
Mr. Stewart: I'm not sure if I understood the question. Are you talking about people within the institution who work there, if they have complaints about the administration?
We only deal with inmate complaints, and the inmate complaint may deal with any policy or the administration of a particular institution. We would look at that complaint, yes. I think I've missed -
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Let me give you an example. Would you handle a complaint about a problem between the warden and the person in charge of finance, a situation that doesn't involve any inmates? Can you investigate that or is it up to someone else?
[English]
Mr. Stewart: I can investigate any matter on my own initiative. I don't have to have an inmate complaint. If we see something wrong with the policy - for instance, the health care policy at a particular institution - we can question that policy. We would deal with the warden or with the region, trying to solve whatever we saw as the problem. Most of our work is complaint-driven, through the inmates, but I can investigate things on my own initiative.
Is that what you were getting at?
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Thank you very much.
[English]
Mr. Stewart: Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Maloney, five minutess.
Mr. Maloney (Erie): Let's address the issue of overcrowding. Is this a problem that's prevalent throughout the country, or is it germane to the east, the Maritimes, or to the west?
Mr. McIsaac: It's all across the board. It has been worse in Ontario and the prairie region over the last couple of years.
Mr. Maloney: How do you define overcrowding? For instance, take Collins Bay or Joyceville - do you still use KP? What is the recommended number of inmates in these facilities and what in fact do you have?
Mr. McIsaac: All the institutions have a rated capacity that is set by the Corrections Service. It generally relates to the number of cells they have. We identify it as a problem once you've got two inmates living in a cell that was designed for one. When you've got an institution originally designed for 400 people and you end up with 600 in it, then you have a problem.
Mr. Maloney: What would it cost to build a new facility having, say, 400 inmates?
Mr. McIsaac: I have no idea. Tens of millions, I'm sure.
Mr. Maloney: What would it cost to administer a facility of that number?
Mr. McIsaac: Again, I'd only be guessing. You'd have to present that question to the service.
Mr. Maloney: It was suggested earlier that perhaps one of the alternatives would be to release non-violent or first-time offenders. What alternative measures would you see for these individuals as opposed to incarceration? What would be your suggestion?
Mr. McIsaac: The difficulty with overcrowding came to the fore in 1991-92 when you began to have 500 to 800 inmates double-bunked across the country. The number now is somewhere between 4,500 and 5,000.
We have seen a decrease in the number of offenders being released on either day parole or full parole. As well, we have seen an extended period of time being spent inside, even among those who are being released on parole.
In conjunction with that, over the last two to three years we have seen a large number of offenders being revoked who are on either day parole or full parole, and the numbers being revoked on the basis of a technical violation, as opposed to having committed a new offence while on parole, is on the increase.
The bottom line is that we have seen a significant increase over the last three to four years, almost entirely as a result of individuals spending longer time inside than they were spending four or five years ago on the same length of sentence. And we're seeing a significant increase in the number who are being revoked. So if you add those who are not getting out to those who are being revoked, and especially to those who are being revoked absent of any further offence, you've just about got the number of excess in terms of double bunking.
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So to answer your question and in terms of a solution, if the service is in a better position than they have been for quite some time in terms of providing the programming that is available or needs to be available in a timely fashion, and the cases are prepared and presented to the National Parole Board so a reasonable decision can be taken on whether they should be released into the community under supervision, I think we would move a large step forward in terms of reducing the numbers.
The other difficulty, which was identified within the Auditor General's report recently, is the absence of programs in the community that are either consistent with or bridge those programs that are available in the institutions at the current time. I would think part of the reason you're seeing such a large increase in the number of individuals who are being revoked is because of the absence of programming in the community, an absence of somewhere to refer these people. The parole officers and the board, I'm sure, are seeing as the only option a return of the individual to a federal penitentiary. I think there's a much better way and a much less expensive way to be dealing with these people.
So I see those combined as alternatives to address that problem.
Mr. Maloney: In the United States we see some movement to privatization of prisons. Is that an answer to overcrowding?
Mr. McIsaac: I would expect that if you turn the prisons over to private enterprise, they would have a vested interest in keeping them full and expanding - the profit motive.
The Chair: Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Ramsay: I'd like to follow up a little bit along the lines of questioning Ms Torsney was using.
Ms Torsney: That always makes me nervous.
Mr. Ramsay: When it comes to the rights of inmates, of course, those rights are there by way of legislation. Those rights can be enhanced or they can be restricted by law as well as, I suppose, by policy within the guidelines set down by law.
In the Arbour report, what disturbed me was that there was no indication of why the assault and the rioting took place in the first place. In other words, if it had not been for the rights of the inmates to move about as they were, and to come in contact with the guards as they were, they would not have had the opportunity to assault the four guards. One was stabbed with some kind of instrument, and others were kicked and choked and that kind of thing.
So if the rights of inmates are placing the security and physical well-being of the correctional staff at risk, as it apparently did in this case, then I think the onus is on the committee to look at ways and means of dealing with that.
I refer specifically to the drug trafficking. When we speak to the wardens about the drug trafficking and how it's getting in, we get a number of answers but they mainly identify the visiting rights. One warden said almost 100% is coming through by physical contact. That's a right that is granted them. And I disagree with respect to the response I received with regard to this question and this issue. The wardens tell us they could dry up the drug trafficking within their institutions if they had the right simply to deny the physical contact.
So again, we have to balance the rights of the inmate with the rights of the other inmates to serve their time without the danger or the security risk that living in an environment such as an institution creates when other inmates are involved in drug trafficking and drug use.
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It's all an offence: the possession, use and trafficking of drugs is an offence. It's happening within our institutions, based primarily, according to the wardens, upon the rights of the inmates to have physical contact with those who visit them.
So I ask again, if we were able to eliminate the drug trafficking by 50%, 80% or 100%, what reduction of complaint would that result in, in your opinion and from your experience in these matters? You have, as you indicated, about 8,000 complaints a year. If we could reduce that.... Or is that causing no problem at all? Is that not resulting in any complaints at all? If we could reduce it, on the other hand, would it reduce the complaints that are coming from the inmates?
Mr. Stewart: With the new drug strategy within CSC where they're cracking down on the drug trafficking, I think probably our complaints would go up. Inmates who are found to have people bringing drugs in through the visits program would have their visits terminated, so we would get an increase in the number of complaints from inmates about their lack of visits.
Mr. Ramsay: I understand that, but if there were a policy change that removed those rights then it wouldn't be a legitimate complaint.
Mr. Stewart: That's right.
Mr. Ramsay: Well, that's what I'm referring to.
As I said earlier, what about the balance here? If we were be able to, would it be worth eliminating the drug trafficking, denying the inmates the rights that create the channel through which the drugs enter the institution? Do you have an opinion on that? Maybe you don't.
According to the wardens, we can't have two things: we can't have the physical contact and elimination of the drug trafficking. If we deny the rights of the inmate to physical contact it will eliminate up to 80% of the drug trafficking, according to the wardens. Do you have an opinion on the balance that should be drawn there, or should we just leave it alone and leave it as it is?
Mr. Stewart: I think that's something for the lawmakers to look at, and whether they want to restrict drug trafficking is up to the Correctional Service to decide on their policies within their drug strategy. My mandate is to deal with inmate complaints, not to take a side on whether they should be more thorough on their drug policy in trying to eliminate the drugs coming into an institution.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. We'll get back to you if we get there.
Ms Torsney.
Ms Torsney: You obviously have some complaints because people have not had access to proper visitation as they were granted under CHRA. What are some of the reasons you would argue to have visitors visit inmates? Are there any benefits to having visitors visit inmates, or is it best that they don't have any contact with the outside world for the duration of their stay?
Mr. Hayes: By far the vast majority of visitors coming into the institutions, in my experience, are positive contacts.
There's no doubt about it; there is a drug problem. In some institutions it is significantly different, and yet they would be at the same security level, for example, which is probably a comment on the procedures we use at one institution versus another. But by far the vast majority of offenders look upon visits, correspondence, some kind of street connection, something of the outside as something that is going to help them do their time, whether it be two years or life, 25 years. They need that kind of connection for themselves, and it is probably one of the most human expressions you can see within an institution. I say this because many of the chaps who are there are serving long sentences and are very institutionalized. Certainly the vast majority of them have a good and positive experience.
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Many years ago, when they started the private family visits, it was perceived as a program that would be very difficult to manage for a lot of reasons. That is where, by reason of explanation, they spend a certain amount of time in a very private visit with their families or their wives, siblings, etc. They are able to spend two or three days and kind of live as normal human beings, cook their own meals, do their own laundry and watch television as late as they like, that kind of thing, and just try to live as normal an existence as they can.
That has been an extremely successful program and it is one of the definitions of entitlement they have to visits. Very frankly, I believe if we were to eliminate visitation within a facility it would create massive unrest. I think it is one of the best releases of tension. It is one of the best therapy programs. Certainly it is very beneficial to the families that contact our office on behalf of their sons and husbands and fathers. In my opinion, from experience, it is an extremely beneficial program.
Ms Torsney: Of course when we evaluate people for parole we look at whether or not there is any family for them to return to. If they haven't had any contact, it makes it a little bit difficult to reintegrate them into the community.
Mr. Hayes: Precisely.
Ms Torsney: When we were at the jails, we heard that because of decreased staffing and the lack of perimeter watches people are able to throw things over the perimeters to be picked up later. In some cases it's even staff who may be involved in this trade. So eliminating visits, unlike perhaps those wardens who want to come forward to say they could eliminate it 100% in their prisons - which is what I think Mr. Ramsay had said earlier - maybe we should look at that and have them come forward and identify what problems were happening in their visitations.
I think that's my main point and question to you.
The Chair: Are there any other questions? Mr. Discepola.
Mr. Discepola (Vaudreuil): In your complaints, have you any statistics as to the types of complaints that women inmates have versus male inmates? Are they generally the same types of complaints, or do they generally have different needs?
Ms Natalie Spicer Nault (Investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator): In proportion, there's generally no distinction in terms of the types of complaints women have compared with men. They are generally within the same categories as those of men and involve case preparation, health care, transfers. There's no discernible pattern with respect to women inmates.
Mr. Discepola: Justice Arbour recommended that an investigator be assigned to specifically deal with women's issues. Do you agree with that, or is there no need according to your testimony?
Ms Nault: Actually, since February 1996, prior to the release of the Arbour report, I have been the investigator assigned to issues relating to federally sentenced women, as well as the new facilities that have opened up and those that are preparing to open.
Mr. Discepola: Thank you.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: I have just two questions. Mr. Stewart, you are not just starting out as correctional investigator. You say the prison population is increasing and the number of correctional officers decreasing. There is therefore a reduction in prisoners' services. To me, reduced services means increased tension.
Do you think this deteriorating situation could be improved by significantly increasing the number of correctional officers in the penitentiaries? Would that help?
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[English]
Mr. Stewart: Could you elucidate a little more and let me know what you mean by ``correctional agents''? You're talking about staff?
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: I am talking about officers who work directly with inmates. I'm not talking about office staff.
[English]
The guards, officers.
Mr. Stewart: You mentioned in your remarks leading up to your question that there was an increase in the number of inmates and a decrease in the number of staff, of guards.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Exactly.
[English]
Mr. Stewart: Is that across the system? I wasn't aware that there was that big a staff decrease.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: The number of inmates is increasing more rapidly, that is not at the same rate, as the number of officers. If we wait much longer, there will be fewer officers for the same number of inmates.
[English]
Mr. Stewart: Pardon me. I understand now the question.
I don't think it's the number of officers; it's the facilities themselves. We've already talked about the accommodation. We can talk about health care, we can talk about programs and we can talk about recreation.
If you have 600 inmates in a space designed for 400, a penitentiary runs like a boys' school, for lack of a better example: at 08:00 you do this and at 09:00 you do this. If, for instance, you want to shower your inmates and you have so many minutes to shower them, if you have half again as many inmates, you can't get the job done in the time allotted, no matter how many more staff you have. So it's the facilities that are the problem, not the number of staff.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: You have never worked in a prison, Mr. Stewart. That is not a question.
Here is my second and probably last question, madam Chair. You write in your report:
- In fact, Correctional Services now has less reliable data than a year ago, because in September
1993, the department stopped producing its monthly national report...
[English]
Mr. McIsaac: There has not been an improvement. The reference you identified within the report, if I remember correctly, referred to the number of waivers and postponements, or perhaps the number of inmates double-bunked in segregation. In both of those areas, for whatever reasons, the service stopped collecting the data for a while. It is not so much that we need the data; it is more that the service needs the data in order to be able to reasonably manage the areas of concern that have been identified.
Their information collection has been, over the last three or four years, all over the map. It is, we are told, and we have been told in the past, slowly improving. The difficulty is that when the data finally gets to an improved or verifiable state, there will be nothing to go back and measure it against to know if in fact there's been any improvement in the area of concern.
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So the short answer to your question is the information being provided to our office we continue to find does not address the specific areas of concern we've raised.
The Chair: Thank you. That's all the time we have for that.
I didn't see any Liberal hands, so I'll go to Mr. Hanger for five minutes, and I think, subject to what colleagues say, this will be our last round.
Mr. Hanger (Calgary Northeast): I apologize to the committee and the witnesses for my lateness. I was tied up with another matter.
I'm very curious about this whole area of the correctional investigator's role. There's no question that drugs is a major issue inside of prisons. I was talking to some drug enforcement officers in the prisons, and they have a general complaint.
They say the stronger their enforcement is, the more complaints there are laid against the officer, and the more complaints there are laid against the officer, the more involvement there is for the correctional investigator. As the number of investigations with the correctional investigator increases, the heat comes down upon the officer from CSC.
In his own opinion, he's doing his job and has the recommendations to show it, and yet the correctional investigator seems to be running interference and interfering with the work of the officer through his reporting as it comes back to him from CSC.
How would you view that statement?
Mr. Stewart: I'd have to know the particulars of the complaints against the correctional officers.
Mr. Hanger: I'm saying this is a general statement made by a lot of enforcement officers.
Mr. Stewart: Anybody who comes into the institution from the outside is seen as an intruder. The Correctional Service probably sees itself as the expert in the correctional field. They tolerate people coming in, but they think ``We're the experts and we know how to run this organization''.
The act in part III mandates us to look at inmate complaints, and if they make complaints, then we have to follow up. If the complaint has no substance to it, then we tell the inmate their complaint has no substance. If it does have some substance, then we'll take steps to try to resolve the situation.
Mr. Hanger: So you don't think at any time, through any of your reporting as a correctional investigator, that complaints from inmates, as they may come to bear on one officer or two officers in an institution, would not reflect the number of complaints to...? You would not note them to CSC in a negative light?
Mr. Stewart: I'm not sure I'm following that.
Mr. Hanger: What I'm asking is this. In your reporting on any complaints that come out of any institution against any one or two officers in the line of duty, if the numbers were sufficiently higher than normal, you would not note that incident or those incidents in a negative light to CSC?
Mr. McIsaac: I'll attempt to answer. If the complaint of an inmate is against an individual officer, we will first review the complaint. We will as well, during our debriefing on leaving the institution, raise the issue with either the warden or the deputy warden.
The management of the staff obviously rests with the management at the institution. It does not rest with our office. We would not make the specific recommendation that any action necessarily be taken on this matter. We would refer the matter to the warden for his information.
We had to receive the complaint. If he felt there was a need to follow up on it, then that would rest in his hands.
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Mr. Hanger: I'm not necessarily talking about run-of-the-mill complaints against guards and prisoners. I'm referring to an officer who is dedicated to doing his job and is good at his job within the institution, in fact so much so that his record outshines those of many of the other officers. Yet the complaints coming up against him will be quite substantial from the prisoners.
How are you going to reflect that in your report? Are you going to reflect it in a negative sense to CSC, wanting something done with this officer because his drug enforcement is maybe ten times higher than anyone else's or four times higher than anyone else's? Just how is it going to come to be?
The information I'm getting back is that those officers who have high enforcement records are the ones being stepped on by CSC due to reports coming out of the correctional investigator dealing with the drug issue in particular.
Mr. McIsaac: I'm the executive director of the office, and I am unaware of any report that has been issued by our office to a warden or a regional headquarters relevant to what you're saying.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Hanger.
I want to thank you for appearing in front of us today. Have a good day.
We're adjourned.