Proceeding of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue No. 23 - Evidence - Meeting of December 6, 2017
OTTAWA, Wednesday, December 6, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 11:30 a.m. to study the issues relating to the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system.
Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Before we begin, I would like all senators to introduce themselves. We will start on my right.
Senator Ataullahjan: Salma Ataullahjan from Ontario.
Senator Cordy: I am Jane Cordy, a Senator from Nova Scotia. Welcome.
Senator Andreychuk: Raynell Andreychuk, Saskatchewan.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate, Ontario.
Senator Hartling: Nancy Hartling, New Brunswick. Welcome.
The Chair: I’m Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard from Nova Scotia, chair of this committee.
Today we will continue our discussions on the issues relating to the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system. We are honoured to be able to welcome today the Auditor General of Canada, Michael Ferguson, accompanied by Carol McCalla. They are here to speak to their recently tabled report, Preparing Women Offenders for Release—Correctional Service Canada.
Mr. Ferguson, you have the floor, to be followed by questions from senators.
Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Madam Chair, thank you for inviting us to speak about our audit report on how Correctional Service Canada, or CSC, prepares women offenders for release. We look forward to helping inform your study on the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system. Joining me at the table is Carol McCalla, the principal responsible for this audit.
Our audit focused on whether women offenders sentenced to two years or more by the courts had timely access to rehabilitation programs and services. There are almost 700 women in federal custody and a further 600 supervised in the community. Indigenous women have grown to represent 36 per cent of the women offender population. Although CSC cannot control the number of offenders who receive federal sentences, it can provide them with timely access to rehabilitation programs and culturally appropriate services to prepare them for release on parole.
Our audit found that CSC’s tool to assign women offenders to security levels was designed to assess men, not women. CSC also used this tool to refer women offenders to correctional programs, which is problematic since the tool was not designed for this purpose. As a result, some women offenders were held at a higher security level than necessary and assigned to rehabilitation programs that they didn’t need.
[Translation]
We found that Correctional Service Canada did not provide women offenders with the rehabilitation programs they needed when they needed them. Most women offenders in federal custody were serving short-term sentences, which means they became eligible for release within the first year of their sentence.
However, half the women offenders had not completed the rehabilitation programs they needed when they were first eligible for parole, because they did not get timely access to them. As a result, they had less time to benefit from a gradual and structured release into the community, which supports their successful reintegration.
[English]
However, we found that CSC increased the use of section 84 release plans for indigenous women offenders. Under section 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, indigenous organizations or communities are part of the reintegration process. Indigenous offenders with a section 84 release plan are more likely to be granted parole than other indigenous offenders.
But we also found that access to culturally specific programs for indigenous women offenders was limited at some institutions. For example, healing lodges were only available in one region and operated at nearly full capacity. We found that offenders who participated in healing lodge programs had low rates of reoffending upon release, yet CSC had not examined ways to provide greater access to more indigenous offenders.
[Translation]
We also found that CSC used segregation to manage some women offenders, and about half of the women offenders placed in segregation were indigenous. Despite a reduction in the total number of offenders segregated each year, we found that 20 per cent of segregation placements were for longer than 15 days, the limit recommended by some human rights groups.
Two thirds of sentenced women offenders have been identified with mental health issues. We found that CSC did not have sufficient capacity to deliver the mental health services that women offenders needed. Mental health teams were not fully staffed across the women’s institutions, and its one psychiatric hospital operated at or near full capacity over the past two years. CSC has not yet secured additional beds within community psychiatric hospitals to address identified shortfalls.
We also found that CSC used cells on its segregation range to monitor women offenders at risk of self-injury or suicide, without 24-hour access to clinical treatment or support.
[English]
We’re pleased to note that since our audit work was completed, CSC agreed to no longer place women offenders at high risk of self-injury or suicide in cells on the segregation range.
Madam Chair, this concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ferguson.
Now we’ll take questions, starting with the deputy chairs.
Senator Cordy: Thank you, Mr. Ferguson and Ms. McCalla, for what is a very worthwhile look at what is happening to women in the prison system. I’m new on the committee, so it was helpful for me to read your report.
First, I would like to speak about mental health issues, which you spoke about in your report. Howard Sapers, the former Correctional Investigator of Canada for the correctional institute, spoke about the challenges with recruitment and retention of mental health care workers within the prison system. In fact, he likened it to a revolving door. He said there were challenges because they were short-staffed, so they hired somebody, and the people that they hired would go in and find out they were totally understaffed and leave for something else.
In your report, you also spoke about the challenges of whether people were receiving the proper services. I’m wondering what should be done. You did make a recommendation, which I thought was very good. The recommendation was that the CSC determine the capacity for mental health services needed to treat women offenders identified with mental illness according to professionally accepted standards and address any service level gaps in a timely manner.
So where are we? It seems like these things aren’t happening. Mr. Sapers has raised this issue before, now you’ve raised it in your report, and the Correctional Service of Canada has agreed with all of your recommendations. So where are we, and how are we going to solve this ongoing problem?
Mr. Ferguson: I’ll start and then ask Ms. McCalla to provide details.
As you identified, we said that there were a couple of places where there were problems with having the resources that corrections services needs in order to provide services to the women offenders with serious mental health issues. In fact, one of those issues was they didn’t have agreements in place with provinces to access some of the services in provincial hospitals. The other problem was that even though they had approved positions to hire people to work in this area, they weren’t able to fill all of those positions. At a general level, those were the two resourcing issues in terms of being able to get the resources that they need. I’ll ask Ms. McCalla to provide details.
Carol McCalla, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: In terms of resources that CSC needs for its women offender population, we were pleased to see that they completed their first prevalency study last year on the prevalence of mental illness and mental health disorders among its population. In that study, it did find that a very high prevalence of women offenders, 67 per cent, were identified as having mental health issues, and a further over 20 per cent were identified with serious mental health issues.
CSC now needs to take that information and, using World Health Organization mental health models with a certain prevalency, look at the kind of services that need to be in place in terms of psychologists, other members of the mental health team and even psychiatric hospital beds. CSC has not yet done this, so we made the recommendation that they need to determine the capacity they need to meet that.
Then, going beyond that, for the capacity that they do say that they need, we found that there were gaps. They had significant shortfalls in the staffing of their mental health teams for what they say they need right now, and we did not find that they had any retention or recruitment strategy to fill those gaps. As well, as the Auditor General mentioned, they had identified in previous years that they needed to increase their access to provincial psychiatric hospital beds, and we found that those agreements were not in place.
Senator Cordy: Are there any agreements with any provinces that the federal government or Correctional Service of Canada has put in place across the country?
Ms. McCalla: They had one with the Royal Ottawa, but that agreement is no longer active. There was a security incident, so they suspended that agreement. They do use the Pinel hospital in Montreal for services, and that has been a long-standing agreement.
Senator Cordy: We had various reports from Howard Sapers, we’ve had your report going in, and CSC has agreed with every recommendation that you made. What happens next? How do we ensure that there is follow-up? Do you go back in a couple of years’ time to see whether they have followed through?
Mr. Ferguson: There are a couple of ways that that happens. Every time that we issue a report, the department is expected to prepare an action plan. In our report, of course, you see what we found, what we recommended and what the department’s response is. In addition to that, they are expected to prepare a more detailed action plan with timelines about what they are going to do and when they are going to do it, and they have to table that with the public accounts committee of the House of Commons. They have not yet done that for this report because this report has just been released.
But, for example, with respect to the report that we issued in 2016 on preparing indigenous offenders for release, they prepared an action plan that had a number of different items that they were going to do in it. In fact, the timeline on most of those has already gone by, so that might be an opportunity for you have them come in and explain. Having said they were going to do these things with respect to the indigenous offenders, have they actually done them? Because they have given timelines and those timelines have gone by.
We can go back and do a follow-up audit, but we tend to give an organization two to three years to implement our recommendations, and then we have to plan the audit, execute it and report on it. In that type of approach, it’s usually at least five years in between when we first do an audit and when we usually follow up on it.
I think there is enough information in the public domain about what the organization says they are going to do, and your committee could also play a role in making sure that they have done or are going to do what they said they were going to do.
Senator Pate: In response to Senator Cordy’s question, I noticed you indicated they are making agreements. In fact, is it not still accurate that they have exchange of service agreements with every province and territory, but it’s contracts that they have not necessarily negotiated? Added to that, in terms of the contract that they negotiated, it was a pilot for a short term that was never fully implemented at Brockville. It is also my understanding, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that they never fully implemented it or fully resourced it, which was part of the issue that led to some of the concerns that then gave rise to them deciding to terminate it.
Ms. McCalla: With our audit, we examined the extent to which they had agreements in place with psychiatric hospitals and were able to draw on those resources, and they did not have any contracts to be able to draw upon those resources that were in place. The agreement that was in place with Brockville had been suspended at the time of our audit.
There are a number of details about how the provincial hospitals have proposed to provide psychiatric services to men and women offenders held by CSC. They were negotiating back and forth on how those would look. What the particular provinces have proposed was much more extensive than what CSC had agreed to pay for, essentially.
My understanding is that you need to have a critical mass and a minimum number of beds that has the support services of the staff around it. For women offenders, it’s a very low population, so the concern that CSC had was that it would be paying for beds that it may not necessarily be using under those types of agreements and wanted to have more of a fee-for-service.
We found the psychiatric hospital that it currently runs was operating at or near capacity for the 20 beds that it has there. CSC itself has identified the need to augment its capacity for women offenders.
Senator Pate: Taking the numbers that you indicated that CSC has identified for themselves, in fact, the critical mass is well in excess of 300 women, if we look at overall numbers and, certainly, more than 100 if you look at the most critical and serious mental health issues. I know it’s not necessarily your role to decide whether they have in fact implemented that, but that was my understanding from the numbers you presented. Therefore, there is potential to argue that there is critical mass, and there are agreements with every province and territory to facilitate negotiating those contracts, if there was a will.
Ms. McCalla: If there was a will, exactly. When they had first identified the need, they did not have the prevalency study they have now. They did their prevalency study in 2016. They identified the need in 2014, I believe, following the Ashley Smith inquiry. In 2016, they did a prevalency study which identified the number of women offenders with serious mental illness and significant impairment who could be sent to psychiatric hospitals to receive more appropriate treatment there. What we found in our audit was they have not used that information yet to identify and inform how many beds they should actually seek contracts to obtain.
Senator Pate: Have they used the information they gleaned when they did similar research at prison for women, or did they reveal any of that information to you at the time?
Ms. McCalla: I’m not aware of that information. In 2014, when they initially identified the need to secure additional beds, we only saw what the need identified was for.
Senator Pate: So there was nothing from late 1990s, the early 2000s or post the Human Rights Commission report?
Ms. McCalla: They have certainly done studies on the prevalency, but it was not necessarily according to different categories of need, which they have done now in 2016.
Senator Pate: Thank you.
Senator Ataullahjan: My question is on your 2016 report, Preparing Indigenous Offenders for Release, which found that CSC did not examine whether its culturally specific correction interventions were sufficiently accessible to indigenous prisoners. You also found that access to correctional interventions varied considerably across institutions and regions, but section 76 of the CCRA requires the implementation of programs to address the needs and increase the rehabilitation and reintegration of all prisoners. Can you please comment on CSC’s failure to fully implement section 76 and whether that has undermined the reintegration of prisoners?
Mr. Ferguson: Again, I’ll ask Ms. McCalla to provide details, but they are responsible to provide culturally appropriate programming. We found, for example, that healing lodges were not available in all regions and, as a result, not available to all indigenous women offenders. Part of that was because they have a low number of offenders in certain regions so they didn’t have the healing lodges available in all of those regions. That’s partly why we commented about the fact that the access to those services was variable across the country, because in some areas those services were available but not in others.
The other thing that we identified was that sometimes the culturally appropriate programming was not started as quickly, so the offender couldn’t start their programming quickly enough and therefore were not prepared for parole at the earliest possible date. In some cases, the offender — even though they were an indigenous offender — would choose to take the non-culturally specific programming because that would start earlier and they could perhaps get it completed in time for parole.
Certainly, we are always concerned when any offender is released after their earliest possible parole date, particularly if it’s because the institution has not been able to provide the programming to them. That means when they are released, they have less time for that structured and gradual insertion back into the community.
Ms. McCalla: We found that CSC has developed culturally specific programs for indigenous offenders, as it’s required to do. Under the CCRA, it’s to provide programs and services specific to the needs of indigenous and women offenders.
They have the pathways and healing lodges, access to elders and the correctional programs, but our concern with the delivery of these programs was we found that access was uneven across the various institutions.
At the Prairie institution in Edmonton, in the Prairie region, more than half of the offender population is indigenous, and we found that access to programs there was comparable to non-indigenous offenders.
CSC’s main challenge is in other regions where indigenous offenders make up smaller proportions of the population, and there we found that they were unable to provide access to their correctional programs in a timely manner. Not every indigenous offender would necessarily opt to take the indigenous offender program, but we found that in regions with small numbers of indigenous offenders, the indigenous offenders that had been working with an elder and had a healing plan in their correctional plan were not taking the indigenous programs, and we would expect that they would have.
We also found that more than half of the indigenous offenders were taking the indigenous programs, but they weren’t able to access them and, as a result, only a quarter of them were able to complete their programs by the time they were first eligible for parole. That’s a significantly lower rate than non-indigenous offenders.
Senator Ataullahjan: Has it been the experience of your office that the recommendations agreed upon result in actual change within Correctional Service Canada?
Mr. Ferguson: Well, I think even in this case, we identified the issue that they were using cells on the segregation range to manage women offenders simply because they were at risk of self-harm or attempting suicide. They were using some of those cells just to manage the mental health risks. In the course of the audit, they agreed that they were going to stop doing that because it doesn’t provide an appropriate clinical approach. Now, I’m not exactly sure how they’re going to manage those offenders because they still have those risks of self-harm. I’m not sure on the details, but I think that was an instance where we did see that they had taken some action.
This is the third audit we have done on preparing offenders. We did one on preparing offenders in general, we did another on preparing indigenous offenders and now we have done the one on preparing women offenders. In the course of all of those audits, we have mentioned that they don’t always get access to all of the information that they should have and was available at the sentencing to be able to determine the appropriate security and programming levels for the offenders. They still haven’t fixed that and we are now three audits into this, but we have seen that they have started to make progress.
In terms of our recommendations — not necessarily just for Correctional Service Canada but in general — the departments will just about always agree with our recommendations. They will always say they are going to implement our recommendations. Fairly often, what we find when we come back and do a follow-up audit in the same area is that they will have, in fact, implemented something, but the results aren’t necessarily any different. I think that is the thing that is, perhaps, most discouraging for us. We can make a recommendation, the department says they are going to do something and they will do it, but if we look at what is happening in the results, they don’t necessarily get better. That’s what we keep trying to send as a message to the departments. When we talk about the issues we find in these programs, the important thing is getting the programs to a point where they are providing better results.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you.
Senator Pate: I wanted to pick up on something that Senator Ataullahjan raised in terms of how you monitor. You examined the issue of women being placed in segregation and being treated as though they were on segregation status and noted that was something of concern. To be more specific, how did you know that was happening and how will you monitor in the future, or how would you suggest it be monitored to determine whether that is continuing to happen? As you undoubtedly uncovered in your report, the reality was that people are being placed in segregation but not being classified, so none of the legal requirements to monitor them in segregation were being adhered to. I’m curious to pick up on what kind of accountability mechanisms you would recommend or would suggest that our committee consider in terms of our recommendations?
Ms. McCalla: For the enhanced observation, which is used when an offender has been identified at risk of self-harm or suicide, we picked up on that issue of their placement in the segregation range from the jury recommendations into Ashley Smith’s case. There, the jury had recommended that CSC treat them the same and that it has the same level of oversight for that use of segregation cells.
In our site visits, we visited the segregation ranges in each of the institutions and did see that offenders were placed in segregation. The cells they use for enhanced observation are a little different than those used for segregation. For example, they ensure those cells have 24-hour camera monitoring and bigger windows than the other cells. But those cells could, indeed, also be used when an offender is on segregation status.
Senator Pate: Just to be clear: They’re in the segregation unit, and you’re talking about the windows and doors?
Ms. McCalla: Yes.
When we started our audit, they were not monitoring the length of time those women were held in those cells under enhanced observation. During the one year when we were auditing, they did monitor the length of time they were in there. We have incomplete data for that year, but we found, in general, that the women were placed in enhanced observation in cells on the segregation range I think we report for about three days. But that was not reliable data.
At the end of our audit period just this last summer, CSC updated its policies for how the oversight will be carried out. We haven’t had an opportunity yet to examine how that oversight will be put in place and operational. We only saw the policy that was in place. It involves review by members of the psychiatric mental health team, which is a good thing. I don’t know what it has for independent review, but the independent review is only a recommendation. It can be overridden. So we haven’t had an opportunity to look at the oversight for women offenders placed in segregation.
Also during our audit period, CSC changed its policies and now prohibits the segregation of women with mental health issues in its segregation ranges. We also did not have the opportunity to verify how that would be put into place.
Senator Hartling: Good morning again, and thank you for being here and for the good work you’re doing. It’s important to our study.
In your 2017 report, Preparing Women Offenders for Release, you noted that the CSC could have saved about $4 million in custody costs if the 225 women released on parole in the 2016-17 fiscal year were prepared for and released by their first parole eligibility date. Can you comment on how best to hold CSC to account for implementing the CCRA pursuant to legislative intent and to remedy breaches of law and/or policy?
Mr. Ferguson: In general, it comes down to them making sure they are able to get the offenders prepared for their parole hearing at the earliest possible date. That’s why we put so much emphasis on all of the different aspects of that.
It starts right from the very beginning, where the offender is placed when they come into the system, because they’re going to get their parole hearing if they’re in a minimum, maximum or medium security. Then they have to make their way through the system. First, it’s important where they’re placed. Second, it’s important what programs they’re assigned and that the programs be appropriate to what the offender needs. Third, the CSC can actually get those programs started when the offender needs them. All of those things have to fall in place to be able to get the offender prepared for the parole hearing at the earliest possible date.
That’s why in the audit and in the other audits that we’ve done we have focused so much on the percentage of offenders who actually were prepared for that first parole hearing. That’s one thing that Correctional Services should continue to update and give you and others information about how many offenders they are actually getting prepared for their parole hearing by the first date they’re eligible for that hearing.
Senator Hartling: Did you have anything to add?
Ms. McCalla: As the Auditor General mentioned, this is the third in a series of audits we have done on preparing offenders for release. In each of those audits, we have recommended that CSC ensure that it does prepare offenders for release when they are first eligible, where appropriate. In particular, we found that low-risk offenders were not being prepared in a timely manner.
In this audit, for the first year in the last 10 years, we had found an increase in the number of offenders who had been prepared for parole. There was a significant increase, so we are seeing the effects of our work there, but our point is still that, yes, they are preparing more offenders for release — and this is a reversal of a worrying trend that many have noted — but it’s still late in their sentence. I think only a quarter of them were prepared when they were first eligible.
It’s very important for their overall successful reintegration and parole supervision, particularly for low-risk offenders. CSC’s own research has pointed out that many of these offenders can be safely managed in the community rather than in custody.
Senator Pate: Thank you for the ongoing work you do.
In your report — and you alluded to it in your opening comments — you talked about the need for the classification scheme and the ongoing recommendations, particularly since the 2003 report by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Protecting Their Rights, where it was found that the classification and assessment tools used for women violated the human rights of women on the basis of not only sex but race, because of the overrepresentation of racialized women, particularly indigenous women, and women with mental health issues. You indicate they have made a commitment to develop a new Custody Rating Scale.
As you’re no doubt aware, they also made that commitment in 2004 following the release of the 2003 Human Rights Commission report. They hired Dr. Moira Law to conduct that research and develop a new tool over a three-year period. But after her first report, in which she recommended starting all women at minimum security, recognizing that even those women who were in for offences involving personal violence often were reacting to violence so they were unlikely to be a risk to public safety beyond their own particular circumstances of victimization. She recommended that and also that only where there was evidence that they posed a greater risk to public safety that their security level be increased.
I’m curious as to whether you were able to examine the research Dr. Moira Law did and where you see the process now. Given the apparent intransigence of Corrections — Louise Arbour made a similar recommendation in 1996 — to implement these recommendations and the fact that Corrections is now fighting those very same kinds of recommendations or assertions that the Supreme Court of Canada made in the Ewart case, what evidence do you have based on your audit that things are being changed and that this will be remedied?
Ms. McCalla: When we examined this issue, we looked to see the extent to which CSC had responded to the most recent recommendation from the Human Rights Commission in 2003. It had itself committed to develop a security classification system for women offenders.
We requested and obtained the Moira Law report and her examination of security classification. She had been contracted by CSC to develop a new security classification system from the ground up, if you will. Her first report, which had recommended how the classification system could work for women offenders, was reviewed by CSC and was rejected by them. They did not pursue further work on that.
We had seen some work that CSC had then done in its own research to possibly reweight the tool. They examined the possibility of doing that — of reweighting. There are three main categories that the Custody Rating Scale reviews and weighs, and many other jurisdictions do revised weighting for women as opposed to men. Their sample size was too small, however, so they could not conclude on the benefits of reweighting. They did not pursue further work on it.
There were also other starts and stops they had done, but at the end of the day, they had not made any modifications to the Custody Rating Scale to consider uniquely the risks of women offenders.
In their own research that they had recently conducted — I think we report it’s in 2012 — they had again noted weaknesses with the use of the Custody Rating Scale with women offenders and its predictive reliability in two of the three sections that it does weigh. We therefore recommended that they once again look at options to improve the security classification for women offenders.
The ultimate problem here is that if you don’t have a reliable classification tool, women are either receiving too high of a security classification, which adversely affects timely preparation for parole, or conversely, if they get too low a security classification, that’s a danger to offenders and staff. So you want to make sure you’ve got your women offenders at the right security level, and we therefore made a recommendation to CSC that they do that.
Senator Pate: You made the recommendation, as many other bodies have made, and you have made the same recommendations, in fact, previously, along with the Correctional Investigator, the Human Rights Commission and Louise Arbour. They themselves have acknowledged it in the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women. You, in fact, go further at page 6 of your report to indicate that not only did they not have a new classification scheme, but they were overclassifying in 37 per cent of the security level reviews, where they were placing people at a higher recommendation even than the scale that already is apparently overclassifying women.
Ms. McCalla: When we looked at how the Custody Rating Scale was used in operation — so in theory, they have identified problems with predictive reliability of the scale in use. Then we looked to see how the scale was actually being used. We found that about 30 per cent of the scale’s initial classifications were overridden by staff, which is problematic for an actuarial tool. It should not be that high. We looked at the work that CSC had done, and CSC actually found that the classifications done by staff, the overrides, were better than what the tool had recommended, which is indicative of problems in using the scale.
CSC has developed a security reclassification tool specifically for women offenders, and that tool has been validated for use with very strong results. We were concerned because 37 per cent of that tool is also being overridden by staff, which is problematic because they know that is a good tool. It is different than the results for the Custody Rating Scale.
Senator Pate: How confident are you that these issues will be remedied in the future by Corrections?
Ms. McCalla: We discussed in depth our concerns with how the scales are being used, and they agree that they will examine options for the Custody Rating Scale, and they will look to examine why staff are overriding the security reclassification scale. They agree that that level of overrides is very problematic.
Mr. Ferguson: This is an issue that we see in a number of different programs, where a problem is identified and a department will start working on it, won’t finish the work on it, and the problem just continues year after year.
We only went back to the Canadian Human Rights Commission to raise the issue in 2003, so by now there should have been enough time for them to figure out how they need to deal with this. That’s a message that we are trying to deliver, not just about CSC but about a lot of different government programs. When there are these types of serious concerns raised and there are recommendations to do something, there should be at least a response to that. If at the end of it they do some sort of an evaluation and determine they can’t come up with anything better, at least report that, but we just see this too often. Where there’s a recommendation and a problem identified, they start working on it, stop working on it, they come back and work on it again, and nothing happens.
I can’t tell you for sure that they are going to fix it this time. All I can tell you is it’s a message that we are trying to impress on all government departments. When you have had a long, outstanding issue and you say you’re going to work on it, you need to come up with an answer.
Senator Andreychuk: I want to touch on this a little differently. With the tools you keep talking about, to what extent did you find that the knowledge CSC had was based on previous material? In other words, are they starting from their own records, or are they incorporating the history of that person, including the examinations and analysis in the court system or in other governmental systems? What I’ve found in the past in the systems is the silo effect. There’s a bit of an examination here, and it rests in the courts. Then they go into Corrections and they’re almost reinventing that person. That’s the first part.
Second, there is a lot is here about mental health. The two areas in addition to mental health that give me some concern are drug use and alcohol use. To what extent does that interplay with mental health? Is that a subset or a separate condition?
Third, to what extent are family resources utilized for the preparation? I know the healing lodges, particularly the Maple Creek one, was long in making. There was a lot of trial and error in that. When they reached out to the Aboriginal community — more particularly the extended families — and brought them in, there was a better success rate. To what extent are families involved in this preparation, or are they at all?
Mr. Ferguson: I’ll start with the first part of your question and then turn it over to Ms. McCalla, since she knows more about it than I do.
In the first part in terms of understanding an offender, when an offender comes in the door, they have a number of different pieces of information they are supposed to collect, the information that was prepared at the time of sentencing or the judge’s comments and those types of documents. If the individual is an indigenous individual, it should include the Aboriginal social history and those types of things.
However, in each of the three audits that we have done on preparing offenders for release, we have not yet found an instance where they are getting everything they should be getting, even though all of those documents are prepared. They’re all documents that exist because they have to exist for the sentencing. All of that information exists, but they don’t always get it when the offender shows up at their door, and that’s the information they’re supposed to use to understand who this offender is and the background of the crime. That can be used then to establish what security level they’re at.
I think in this instance, in the case of the women offenders, we saw that we’re finally starting to get better at it, but they still don’t have all of the working arrangements in place with the provinces to get all of that information when the offender first comes in the door, so they still have work to do there.
In terms of things like the drug use, alcohol use and family resources, Ms. McCalla will address that.
Ms. McCalla: A very high number of women offenders are identified with substance or alcohol misuse. Corrections Canada usually addresses these through its correctional programs. Its correctional programs are multi-targeted to address these factors.
Our concern was that CSC has not evaluated how well its correctional programs target alcohol and substance misuse. They found that the correctional programs in general for non-indigenous women didn’t significantly reduce the chance of re-offending upon release. Conversely, programs for indigenous offenders do. But they have not evaluated how well their programs do address substance abuse issues and target those, which is a significant risk for reoffending upon release. In general, though, women offenders have a very low risk of reoffending upon release, which is why they were having problems and challenges in identifying a reduction. So we had recommended that they evaluate how well they target the substance abuse issues.
In terms of family contact, it has been recognized as being a significant factor for the successful reintegration of women offenders, and that indeed was the thinking behind why they set up regional women’s institutions throughout the 1990s, going back to the Arbour report. We found that they indeed do monitor positive family contact, and that is an item that is considered by the reclassification scale because it is a significant factor for successful reintegration of women offenders.
Senator Andreychuk: Are there any statistics of the offenders themselves not wanting to go through the programs? I realize that most want to get out, as they said to me, but are they willing to utilize the tools that are available?
Ms. McCalla: We found that, generally, the correctional programs have a very high participation rate, and they do have what CSC calls “successfully completing.” In order to successfully complete a correctional program, you would have to be engaged and willingly engaged in that program and show positive results in terms of insight into your criminal risk factors.
In terms of the indigenous offenders who would want to engage in an indigenous correctional program versus a non-indigenous correctional program, we found that it’s about half, and that corresponds to what we had seen in the intake assessment where they interview offenders and ask them if they would like to have access to an elder and if they were interested in following a healing plan. That corresponded to us.
They do monitor, for example, women with substance abuse issues. They do evaluate their level of recognition and their level of wanting to address that because, as you point out, you’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t want to improve.
Senator Pate: Just supplemental to Senator Andreychuk’s question, in terms of linking in your 2016 report on preparing indigenous prisoners, I’m curious as to whether you saw with women, particularly since the Supreme Court of Canada decision Ipeelee and the Twins case and the requirement that section 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code also applies to conditional release decisions, evidence of that in terms of your planning. I just want to be clear. I think you said no, but I just want to be clear whether you saw any evidence of that.
Ms. McCalla: We had not, no.
Senator Andreychuk: On the whole issue of healing lodges, you say that they are useful — you say even more than useful — but that they’re not across the regions. I know how long it takes to develop an appropriate healing lodge because there are many parts to it. In the other regions, is it that there’s a low number and it would not be viable to open a healing lodge? It’s always a question of getting the resource close to where the people are. If there aren’t the numbers, then you have a facility that isn’t being utilized. For some, you have to go down so that you can multi-use one of these facilities, or do you move the offender to the nearest lodge, which may be a far distance? Many of the offenders that I’ve been aware of come from rural areas, from Northern areas. How do you balance the numbers game as opposed to the need for that facility for an individual?
Ms. McCalla: That’s a big question, and it’s a big question that CSC is grappling with right now. That was explained to us as being the main barrier that they have in establishing healing lodges in, say, Atlantic Canada, where there are small numbers of offenders.
There is some interesting work that they have done in their second healing lodge, which operates in Edmonton, and it’s a section 81 and a section 84. They have women that are there for a healing lodge, but this is operated by an indigenous community organization. They also have the section 84s in there, which gives them the ability to shift the beds and the room for the variable population that they would have.
But CSC has said and the numbers bear it out in, say, Atlantic Canada, that the numbers are small, but they also vary a lot. You run the risk that you would build a facility that would not be running at capacity. But, between that and nothing, there are some options that they can explore. We did note that, in all of these institutions, offenders did have access to elders and were working with elders. We recommended and CSC has agreed to examine options to a full healing lodge but still access to those types of programs in the regions with smaller numbers of offenders.
Senator Pate: Further to the question that Senator Andreychuk just asked and you answered, when you looked at section 81 and 84 agreements, as you probably know from your study in 2016, the Buffalo Sage Wellness Centre that is run by Native Counselling Services of Alberta that you just referred to, when they initially opened it, there were no indigenous women eligible to go there because of the classification scheme. We had this tautological or vicious circle of the classification scheme impacting, so they took a number of non-indigenous women until they could reclassify women down to be able to go.
But they also combined section 81 and 84 in a policy way. We’ve heard evidence here from other witnesses around what was anticipated or what was anticipated or planned in terms of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act when they envisaged section 81 and 84 and when the legislature and the Senate at that time considered it. It was to actually look at individualized placements. Yet the policy precludes that and actually presumes institutional options. Did you have an opportunity to examine the difference between the legislative intent and the policy and, therefore, the practice?
Ms. McCalla: No, we did not examine that. We looked at the extent to which they had these agreements in place and the extent to which section 84 agreements were being utilized for indigenous women offenders.
Senator Pate: I noted that in the report, picking up again on what Senator Andreychuk raised, you talked about the increased numbers of section 84 agreements, which, on its surface and in reality, is a good thing, but how many of those did you find were in existing institutions, so not just the Buffalo Sage? My understanding is that a number of those section 84 agreements are actually halfway houses and they’ve merely allocated certain beds as section 84 instead of doing the kinds of agreements that were envisaged by the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
Ms. McCalla: No, we did not examine the extent and the location of those section 84 agreements as well, but it’s an interesting issue that we have noted, the idea that it can be with a community organization and not just with, say, a reserve. There is that flexibility within the legislation that they can do that, but we did not examine the extent to which the most recent section 84 releases were with organizations versus with indigenous communities.
Senator Pate: Or within existing halfway houses?
Ms. McCalla: Yes.
Senator Pate: You’re just repurposing existing halfway house beds.
Ms. McCalla: Yes, but the release has to still be sponsored by an organization.
The Chair: Because we only have one panel today, we can extend the time just a little bit. Senator Ataullahjan has a question, and I have a question as well.
Senator Ataullahjan: With your indulgence, while I have the Auditor General here, I would like to refer to the study the Human Rights Committee did on the resettlement of the Syrian refugees. I was looking at some of your recommendations and how the government has failed to track the Syrian refugees and their resettlement. Would you like to tell us what your major findings were? What were the successes and the failures of this program?Various articles after your report came out talked about how the Liberal government failed to track the upwards of 40,000 refugees.
Mr. Ferguson: In terms of the Syrian refugees, we were looking at the resettlement services and focusing primarily on the department, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and their responsibility to encourage or support the integration of the Syrian refugees or all newcomers into Canada.
We found that when the Syrian refugees arrived, the department made sure that their needs were assessed and made sure that their language capabilities were assessed. Most of the Syrian refugees that needed language training and language services did participate in language training and language services.
We were concerned about a couple of things. First, there was a period of time where the department was not able to get all of the money out to some of the service providers, that is, the organizations that were actually providing language services to the newcomers. That meant that there was a period of time, at least three months, maybe longer in some cases, for about 15 per cent of the service providers whereby they had to cut back on some of their services because even though there was approval to still pay for those services, the department had not put in place the agreements they needed to actually get the money to those organizations.
The thing that we were also very concerned about was the department had put in place a measurement framework for what it needed to know about the integration of the refugees into Canada. It had identified the type of information it needed and it included information about things like whether the children were enrolled in school, whether any of the refugees that had serious health issues had access to the health service providers that they needed, information about their participation in the income assistance programs — all of those types of services being provincial services. However, the department had not put in place — again, similar to what we talked about with the women offenders — the agreements with the provinces to collect that information and didn’t have the information they needed to know what was going on at the provincial level in terms of that integration, education, health and income assistance. We felt that since it was the responsibility of the department to support the integration, that it was not enough for them to stop just at the federal government services. They should know what is going on with all services for those refugees to understand whether they are truly having the opportunity to integrate.
Senator Ataullahjan: We made 12 recommendations to the government. The one thing that was flagged in our studies was the mental health needs. We heard from doctors that once the refugees felt safe, we would see a spike in mental health problems. The other one was language training specifically for mothers with young children. We had suggested that maybe they provide some sort of child care so that the women could go to language training classes. Many widows who came had young children and needed help. Did you find those needs were looked at at all?
Mr. Ferguson: In terms of child care, we did find that they paid for things like child care, transportation and that sort of thing. I’m not sure of the extent of participation, but I know that those services were available and they did have budgets to pay for some of those types of services.
The mental health issue again goes back to the fact that they weren’t collecting information about the needs. For any of the refugees that did have significant health needs, they didn’t have information as to whether they were actually able to participate or get those services through the health systems in the provinces.
I think that’s very consistent with what we identified, and I think you are saying this as well. They need to understand not only the health needs of those individuals when they first arrived in Canada but also whether their circumstances would cause some of those health needs to change. Whether they would get access to those services would be very much in line with what we were talking about, namely that those are services that would happen at the provincial level and they need to have that information to really understand the integration of the newcomers.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you.
Senator Cordy: I’d like to go back to your report when you spoke about the fact that few women offenders received on-the-job training with CORCAN. You said that many women offenders lack marketable job skills and that on-the-job training while in custody can support their successful reintegration upon release. You spoke many times in your report about the necessity of being able to integrate successfully so there is no recidivism, and today you said the same thing.
I read that male prisoners are trained in skilled trades so that when they are released, they can get a job in the community making a reasonable living wage, but that many of the women are trained in cooking, cleaning and sewing, which are great life skills to have but, unfortunately, don’t have great salaries when people get out.
Is there any change in that? In society today, a lot of women are entering the skilled trades training and jobs. Have they started within the penal system training for jobs that will actually provide a decent wage for success? Because successful intergeneration includes having a job and a salary for you and your family.
Ms. McCalla: Absolutely employment is a critical need for successful reintegration of any offender, women offenders included. We did not examine necessarily the type of training that’s offered by CORCAN. We looked only at CORCAN employment because that is meaningful employment. It is established to provide meaningful employment to offenders while in custody. Because of the very low numbers, we stopped our work there. Only 29 women had participated in a CORCAN employment program, so we were very concerned about that.
They do have a lot of vocational training certificates that they offer. We found that high numbers of women offenders were earning those vocational certificates, but those certificates vary from one day to earn them to three or four months to earn one, or even years for welders.
We did not look to see the distribution necessarily of those training certificates across skilled trades versus hairdressing, for example, or food preparation, which was another that they do — agriculture, landscaping and horticultural work as well. They have a wide variation. We didn’t necessarily look to see the extent to which they were linked to labour market needs. We just noted that they had very low numbers of employment but higher numbers of vocational training certificates, which we thought would be useful because to get a job in many workplaces, even in food preparation, you need to have these training certificates.
Senator Cordy: So there is work to be done in that area if so few women are actually getting trained within the system.
Ms. McCalla: We found, too, that its healing lodge does not have a CORCAN shop as well. I believe we reported they operate at four of five women institutions and not at its healing lodge.
The Chair: We are going to wrap up in about 10 minutes, so maybe we will ask the question and the responses to be brief.
Senator Pate: To pick up on Senator Cordy’s question, the only industry that we’re aware of and that I’m aware of in women’s prisons is the sewing shop at Joliette, which some of us saw when we visited. If you don’t have the answer available right now, would you be able to provide the committee with a breakdown of where those CORCAN spots were?
Ms. McCalla: There were CORCAN shops at only four of its five institutions. I do not believe we gathered what the main industry was at the CORCAN shop. We didn’t tour the CORCAN shop at Joliette because it was not open.
Senator Pate: The most often requested training, if you will, or post-secondary was university courses, but in 1992, all funding for post-secondary education was terminated. Did you have any opportunity to look at what the interest was in that area? It may not have been relevant because it’s not available anymore, but I’m just curious, picking up on Senator Cordy’s question.
Ms. McCalla: We didn’t examine that, no.
Senator Pate: It was helpful to have in your report how many positive responses you received. To pick up on a theme we’ve talked about previously, how comfortable are you and how satisfied were you in terms of the responses you received and did you find them sufficient? Related to that, given what you’ve said and how difficult it is sometimes to see the follow-up on the recommendations, what would be your recommendation about how best to remedy these issues and how to follow up in the future?
Mr. Ferguson: In terms of judging satisfaction, the fact they said they were going to change their practices for how they handle women with serious mental health issues and the use of cells on the segregation range indicated to us they were taking our findings seriously. But I always reserve judgment on their success by actually looking at what they do rather than at what they say they’re going to do. We’ve seen too many times in a lot of organizations where they say things, and it’s not until we see what they do can we pass judgment. It’s good they’ve agreed with our recommends and that they’ve made changes in their practices it terms of the isolation, but we’ll just have to wait and see in terms of what they did.
There was a second part?
Senator Pate: Yes. How would you see best following up on these things and providing remediation? The correctional investigator doesn’t have the power to do it either. How do you best see that happening?
Mr. Ferguson: The best way to continue to follow up on this is, like I say, at the end of each of our audits, they have to prepare an action plan. This is the third audit we have done on preparing offenders for release, so by now, many of the items in their action plan should have already been completed. That would be a source of information for you to be able to ask the department to explain. For example, they said they were going to do X. Have they done it? How do they know that what they have done is resulting in better results? That would be a good source of information.
Ms. McCalla: The number of women offenders who are prepared for release, for their parole hearings, is certainly a very important indicator for how well CSC is serving its offender population, because in order to prepare women offenders for a parole hearing, they have a lot of work to do in terms of developing correctional programs that appropriately target their risk factors, getting those programs delivered to the women and getting access to the type of interventions and services that are most appropriate to their risk factors.
We have seen an increase in the number of women who are being granted parole since we started auditing this issue. The timeliness of when they are being granted this parole still remains to be a concern, but the ultimate test is whether they not return to custody. Right now, we’re doing an audit looking at all offenders, the community supervision and the supports provided in the community to offenders to ensure that they successfully reintegrate. That will be the most indicative of whether Corrections is properly meeting its mandate to support the safe reintegration of offenders.
Senator Pate: Thank you.
The Chair: I just have a couple of questions I’d like to ask as well. One is around whether your audit examined how Correctional Services Canada is providing services to racialized women in general and to Black Canadian women in particular. Did you examine the experiences of those women, and if so, were there any significant differences in the services, such as custody ratings, assignment of access to programming, access to parole and cultural relevant programming?
Ms. McCalla: When we did our examinations, we anonymized the data, so we did not look to see who these women were and where they came from. We had only asked for the information to be broken down between whether you self-reported as indigenous or non-indigenous, but we had requested any other indicators or personalizing information be stripped from the data. We only examined the extent to which offenders were being prepared and offered the services and programs that CSC had identified that they needed before their parole eligibility dates, before and after. So, no, we did not examine the experience of different racial groups within the correctional system, only the indigenous versus non-indigenous.
The Chair: So is that because of numbers? We’ve certainly heard from other witnesses that there is an overrepresentation of Black women in the correctional system. Is it because of lower numbers that you did not include them, or are there other reasons?
Ms. McCalla: I cannot tell you the number by different ethnic groups, but we examined indigenous versus non-indigenous because there is a specific requirement in the legislation to provide services for indigenous offenders specific to their needs, as well as for women offenders. We always go back to the mandate of the organization and what they are required to provide, and I am not aware of any specific services that they offer to racial groups for their reintegration beyond what they offer to indigenous offenders.
The Chair: I want to thank you both for your testimony today. It has been really informative. I appreciate your presentation and your responses to the senators’ questions. Thank you very much, and thank you, senators.
(The committee adjourned.)