Proceeding of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue No. 32 - Evidence - Meeting of August 7, 2018
EDMONTON, Tuesday, August 7, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 6:08 p.m. to study the issues relating to the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system.
Senator Wanda Elaine Thomas Bernard (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening, senators and guests. Before we begin, is it agreed, senators, that photography and filming be authorized for this meeting?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Second, is it agreed that for the purposes of receiving testimony during our public hearings on August 7 and 11, 2018, quorum be any two members of the committee?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you. I will now ask senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Ataullahjan: Salma Ataullahjan from Ontario.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy, and I’m a senator from Nova Scotia.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate from Ontario.
The Chair: I’m Wanda Thomas Bernard, senator from Nova Scotia, and chair of the committee.
We are honoured to be in Edmonton tonight to continue our study on the issues relating to the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system. We visited the Stan Daniels Healing Centre today and will be visiting the Edmonton Institution tomorrow, followed by the Edmonton Institution for Women and the Buffalo Sage Wellness House on Wednesday. We will then continue on to Abbotsford for further visits and hearings.
For our first panel today, we are pleased to welcome, as an individual, Ms. Lisa Neve; and from the John Howard Society of Alberta, Mr. Chris Hay, Executive Director.
Ms. Neve, you have the floor first, followed by Mr. Hay.
Lisa Neve, as an individual: First, thank you for having me here today. It’s been wonderful. I’ve known Kim since I was 13 years old, and I was shocked and amazed that she’s here today. And my partner is over there, and I’m very happy he’s here today.
I would like to start off by saying that my experience with the criminal justice system is different and it’s unusual. In 1993, I was declared the most dangerous woman in Canada and given a life sentence and — well, an indeterminate sentence, and I went from maximum security to maximum security and have always been treated differently because of my sentence. It wasn’t my behaviour — well, my behaviour, I would hurt myself, but not other people and stuff.
Being stuck in maximum security with no hope of getting to a medium security prison leads you to do crazy things. I used to break the windows, or I’d do all this stuff, but it was out of frustration. I never once believed that I was the most dangerous woman in Canada. I believed that I was Lisa Neve, sister, daughter, friend. I didn’t believe that I was the worst person in Canada. And so in 1990 — when did my appeal happen?
Senator Pate: January 29.
Ms. Neve: January 29, yeah. I won my appeal, and I was released from custody, and I’ve been out of prison for 18 years. That’s it.
The Chair: Thank you. Did you want to share anything else with us at this time? If not, we’ll have questions for you.
Ms. Neve: There are a lot of things I experienced that I found helpful. The Native elders are helpful. I was doing this course called the Victim Reconciliation Program, which is by far the best program I’ve ever taken. It was about the effects that break and enters have on families and people and stuff. And you met these people, so I learned how it affects people. Even if I was starving now, I would never go in anybody else’s home ever again. And so I had that. I had the elders and my friends, my family, my partner. I have so many things to be grateful for.
But when I wanted to fight, sometimes it’s hard, because I felt like I don’t want to be in prison for the rest of my life. And if I lost my appeal, I would still be in prison.
Little things that made me happy were big deals to me, seeing my family or talking to Michael every Sunday and things that I had to do that made me happy.
I called Kim probably about five times a day. It was difficult with a label, you know, because then how do you make someone minimum, medium security when they’re the most dangerous woman in Canada? It just doesn’t add up. So I found it very difficult to adjust.
Finally, on my sixth year in, I was moved to the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge. I stayed there for six months, and my appeal came through and I went home.
The Chair: Wonderful. Thank you.
We’ll hear from Mr. Hay, and then we’ll have some questions.
Chris Hay, Executive Director, John Howard Society of Alberta: Thank you for the opportunity to come before you. I think you have a document in front of you. I’m not going to read it to you, obviously, but I want to highlight the five main points at the top of the first page when we’re talking about incarceration. Some of this is somewhat detailed and some of it is more, I suppose, philosophical, a little more 30,000, 40,000 feet.
The first one is a very fine point, and that’s solitary confinement. On the next two pages we have some statistics about solitary confinement. The United Nations has declared that, I think, 16 days should be the maximum that someone should be in solitary confinement. I have all the references for you should you want them.
That was just declared about a year or two ago. But we have people in Canada who have hundreds of days, hundreds and hundreds of days in solitary, administrative segregation. So the statistics reveal that here, but really solitary should be used as a last resort, as short a time as possible. And there are a few other details, but that’s one point I wanted to make. And if there are questions about that, I’ll entertain those, I guess, after.
The next one I would like to talk about is overrepresentation, and that starts on the bottom of page 2 and goes into page 3 and 4. Just some numbers again. I think we’re all well aware of the overrepresentation of Indigenous populations. Just speaking in general, Indigenous populations are somewhere around 4 or 5 per cent of the Canadian population but represent anywhere from 18 to 23 per cent of our prisons depending on if you’re looking at remand, provincial or federal institutions.
I’ve been with the John Howard Society for the last decade, but prior to that I used to consult with police services around the world, and I used to work with the Edmonton Police. What’s ironic to me — not funny ironic — but what’s ironic to me is that my job with the police service was to be in charge of the intelligence unit and basically build priority and prolific lists meaning who are the top offenders in Edmonton. And I tell you when we built these lists, eight out of 10 people were young white males. They were not Indigenous males. So I find it quite disturbing that we have overrepresentation for decades and decades.
The second thing I find disturbing about it is that we’ve held royal commission after royal commission, study after study, and, you know what? I’m engaging with the Alberta government right now, the University of Alberta and with the John Howard Society, and we’re writing a SSHRC grant. So I’m to blame as well. Nonetheless, we’ve had I don’t know how many studies for about 20 years now, and if you actually look at the data, overrepresentation seems to be getting worse. It’s not even staying level, and this is after our knowledge. That, to me, is quite disturbing. So we hope we’re going to do our SSHRC grant to see if we can study why it is we can have all this research and yet be going in the exact opposite direction. We would at least hope that it would stay level. I would have hoped that it would have been getting better, but it’s not.
So we know there are cultural and structural reasons for overrepresentation. There are many of them. If that’s a question you would like to ask after, I’d be happy to entertain that.
The third, fourth and fifth points are on the last page. These are more philosophical, but if I’m teaching classes at the University of Alberta or MacEwan, this is the stuff that I enjoy.
Incarceration to achieve deterrence. Deterrence theory is a fantastic theory, but it’s only good in theory. It doesn’t work in practice one bit. For deterrence to work, you need certainty of punishment, swiftness of punishment, and severe enough punishment. All three must be working in unison to achieve deterrence.
Certainty of punishment is an impossibility; therefore, you can’t have deterrence. We don’t want swiftness because we’ll erode due process. And, arguably, Canada has severe enough punishments. So Canada only has one out of the three.
By the way, no civilization in the history of humankind has ever been able to get all three down. Therefore, from a philosophical point of view, incarceration for the sake of deterrence doesn’t work.
The fourth point, incarceration to achieve public safety, I might actually argue with you that incarceration leads to less public safety. We have a number of studies. A number of individuals who are released say, “I went in kind of rough, but when you go in, you have to join a gang. I wasn’t drug addicted, now I am.” A lot of people are leaving prisons worse than when they came in.
That leads me to the same point that I’ve argued here. Especially at the provincial level — now, I know we’re here federally, but it’s too difficult to separate them, quite frankly. Who we have in our prisons is not the danger to the community for the most part. They’re not the priority and not prolific for the most part. Who we have in our prisons are the socioeconomically disadvantaged, those with limited education, substance abuse, addiction issues, mental illness, lack of housing, lack of employment, lack of social supports, and I could go on. There are 40-something risk factors associated with delinquency and criminality.
So we’re packing our prisons full of people. There are two reasons for prison: You’re a flight risk from court or you’re a danger to the public, and there are so many people in jail who are neither of those. We have a lot of anecdotal stories as well as research to support that.
Think about this: Put someone in jail who has Grade 3 or Grade 7, who doesn’t have a home or a job, who has mental issues and maybe has substance abuse issues. How do you think they’re going to fare in prison? And how do you think they’re going to come out of prison?
Which leads to my final point, number five, rehab and reintegration. I use the word “reintegration,” by the way, very loosely. You can’t be reintegrated into something you were never integrated into in the first place. I would suggest that there are a lot of people in our prison environments who were never integrated into society in the first place. So how about we call that rehabilitation and integration?
There are sources that indicate that a very small percentage of the Correctional Service Canada budget actually goes toward rehab and integration strategies.
So if you go to jail for seven years, how do you think you’re coming out? Not only socially, behaviourally. If you didn’t have the support set up and a good integration plan or a good release plan — we say we’re doing release planning. We’re not doing release planning the way we should be. So we’re going to leave someone who maybe has a mental issue, addiction issues, who is homeless because they’ve been in jail for seven years, is gang affiliated now because that’s what happened when they went through the prison, and we release them to their own devices, and then we kind of complain when recidivism happens, when they commit crimes again.
And I think, why are we complaining? What outcome did you actually expect to achieve? What did you think was going to happen? That leads to the statement or the saying that prison is a revolving door.
I know that you folks are here to look at the state of prisons and the state of humanity within. That’s great, but I don’t think we can just do that in isolation or in a vacuum. I think we have to look at the state of prisons as a whole. If you want to cure one part, you can’t do it without looking at it all, in my opinion. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Now we’ll have questions from senators.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you to both of you for being here.
Mr. Hay, do you think it’s time that we totally overhaul the way we look at incarceration? The idea of solitary confinement in the olden days was you thought about what you had done, and maybe you needed time to repent. I’m just repeating what I’ve read. This was the idea. But now we are hearing from experts that it doesn’t work. Solitary confinement doesn’t work. The statistics are proving that it doesn’t work. Yet we see the studies that have been ongoing for some time, and we keep hearing of people who have been incarcerated for as long as 20 months. I mean, what needs to change, and how do we bring this change about when all the experts are saying, yes, this needs to change?
Mr. Hay: Yes. If you pick up a criminology textbook from 1982, it said the same thing back then. We’ve known for four decades, easily, that incarceration really doesn’t work. Now, maybe in those crim textbooks they were playing around with the notion that incarceration may not work. Now we know it doesn’t work.
I’m not here from the John Howard Society to say we need to close all our prisons. We need prisons. There are some people who need to be in prison without a doubt. The majority of people in prison don’t need to be there.
But I get it, and you folks are in difficult positions. Maybe that is why I’ve never wanted to be political. Because I think incarceration is easy. As long as we have the cash, it’s simple. People get it. I think that a lot of people in the general public tend to believe that incarceration, punishment models work, and that people shall be deterred because 99 per cent of the population don’t commit crimes. It’s only 1 per cent of the random population that at any given time is criminal. And so those 99 out of 100, people like you and me, think prison is a deterrent. I don’t want to go to jail. So we see that building, and it scares us. On my drive over here, I passed the Remand Centre on the Henday, and I thought, boy, I wouldn’t like to be in there. But the people who are going to jail, it’s not a deterrent.
So what we have to do is start looking at things like crime prevention through social development. We have to look at the social risk factors. We have to look at the risk factors of why people are there in the first place.
Now, this is not bleeding heart theory. This is not let’s all hug and we’ll figure out your problems. But I do believe in tabula rasa. I do believe that people are not born evil and that something does happen over the course of years, decades, a lifetime.
And I think what we have to do is start looking more holistically at our — I was going to say crime issues, but I don’t want to say that — social issues because I think our social issues often create our crime issues. And I think they need an overhaul, quite frankly.
If I could give you one example, I’m pretty proud of the Alberta government. I’ve been on a committee for about two and a half years and we’ve been looking really hard at the remand numbers. I’ve been saying it for years, but the government approached me to say, “Would you like to come on this committee? We’re going to figure out how to reduce our remand numbers.” And I said, “Wow, good for you,” and, “Yes, I’d be happy to.” And they’re looking real hard at this issue.
The tricky part is how do you do it? In two and a half years, we’ve been slightly successful. Not as much as we’d all like to have been, but there are a lot of issues there. There’s public sentiment, how fast you can move on these things.
A police officer was killed by a person on bail in St. Albert just outside the city here about two or three years ago. Well, as soon as that happens, you can bet there’s public outrage around who’s going on bail? Why aren’t these people locked up? Well, now you’re going to have a year or so of everyone should be locked up. It’s the not-in-my-backyard syndrome.
So I think politically you have to make some tough decisions, and I think you might have to go against status quo because what the experts are saying may not be what status quo is. And so I think you might have to put up a bit of a fight against those out there who believe that tough punishment equals less crime, and, in fact, it never has.
I did three years in Trinidad and Tobago as the tactical advisor to the Minister of National Security, and I can actually show you that the tougher you get on crime, the tougher you get in your laws, it can actually increase the criminal behaviour for which you have attached that punishment. And I won’t now, but if you ever want to hear that, I can show you how. So watch what you ask for. It’s a very good question, but it’s difficult to really say these are the two things that we need to do and it’s cured.
This is a long-haul approach. We’re not going to cure this in two or four years. This is going to be a generational thing. But, again, in my opinion, it’s move away from law, move away from punishment models because they don’t work — intro psych would have taught all of us that — and move more toward social risk factors, beefing up our protective factors, and looking at crime prevention through social development. That’s your biggest bang for your buck long term.
I get that it’s not politically fun, and I get that it doesn’t resonate with the public. Hey, we’re going to do something. It might take 20 years or 10 or 15 years and it’s going to cost us money, but it’s going to work down the road. People don’t envision 30 years from now. I get that. But that’s the right thing to do, in my opinion.
Senator Cordy: My question is along the same line, Mr. Hay. When governments want to show that they’re reacting quickly, they come out with the tough-on-crime legislation. We’ve seen it, and we’ve seen politicians refer to federal prisons as “Club Fed,” which shows well in the newspaper. We’ve got double bunking and —
Mr. Hay: And triple.
Senator Cordy: — and triple. And when you ask questions, which I have done in Question Period, it’s, “Well, if they don’t want to be double bunked, they shouldn’t be in jail,” which is a horrible thing.
Mandatory minimums, we’ll show those judges they can’t deter. We will say minimum —
Mr. Hay: Bill C-10 was not a good piece of legislation.
Senator Cordy: Right, I agree with you. So how do we take what are long-term fixes — first of all, those who are mentally ill do not belong in a prison.
Mr. Hay: Yes.
Senator Cordy: Those who have limited education, socioeconomic problems, the list that you gave us, they are long-term fixes. And it’s not the fault of the prison system that so many mentally ill people are in there. They’re trying to deal with them.
Mr. Hay: That’s right.
Senator Cordy: So how do we go for the long term and sell it? Selling it is the big thing.
Mr. Hay: Yes.
Well, to the first question, we started to and then we clawed back. We started to with things like drug treatment courts. We have one in Edmonton and in Calgary, and they are extremely successful. But for every person going through drug treatment court, their budget is this big. I mean, you might get 10 people in a year — don’t quote me on that, please. I don’t know the numbers. I don’t work for them, but I used to be on the board of directors many years ago, and they were very successful at finally getting people on the right path.
So then there’s word going around about starting mental health courts. That’s an excellent thing too, but those are sporadic if they’re going at all. The drug treatment court in Edmonton, half its budget disappeared a handful of years ago. And it’s federally funded, not provincially.
So if we want to take a stab at this, mental health courts, drug treatment courts, that’s a good start. We have to deal with the risk factors of low education. We do have the risk factors ranked now. And within the top five is lack of or poor education.
Like I said, sometimes to deal with crime, everyone says, “Where do you work?” “I work in health care.” “And where do you work?” “I work in the justice system.” “Oh, okay.” You know, we’re this far apart. No, we’re not. We’re like this. In other words, people who are heavy users of the criminal justice system are heavy users of the health care system as well.
We know that if you get a lack of an education or a poor education, that’s going to burden justice later on. Education, health care and justice are intertwined, but we don’t see it that way, but they have to be intertwined.
So if we want to look at mental illness, mental health courts are a good success, but we can talk about other options as well. Little things. Alberta in 2012 relinquished control in the prison environment of certain health issues to Alberta Health Services. Good for them. Now, I still argue what are mentally ill people doing in prisons in the first place, but good for you for relinquishing control to Alberta Health Services. So we’re trying. We’re making these little steps. But we’ll still build a remand centre for $800 million. Do you think the non-profits of Elizabeth Fry or John Howard or anyone are getting $800 million to do crime prevention through social development? We’re the scraps off the table.
So if 98 per cent of all the money goes into bars, guards and guns, we need to start directing resources more to the other side of things if we want long-term sustainable impact. Going to jail for two years is great. That’s fine. But if you want to change that person’s life, we need to start shifting to — and I’m not saying mine, but organizations out there. I see them here. Organizations out there that actually do solid work over years with people because that’s what it takes.
You know, you go to jail, and you’re severely drug addicted. You go to jail for seven months. You’re in your cell for 23 out of 24 hours a day with one or two other people, with no counselling or no programming, and then we release you thinking we’re going to expect a different outcome. That’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it?
Drug treatment court says we’re going to work with you for up to 18 months and it’s going to be painful. But that’s the way you change behaviour. It takes a long time. So we need to direct resources into those things, too. We need to put more resources into healthy families. We need to start early. We need to start FAS. I could go on and on. All I’m really doing is thinking of risk factors in my head and thinking of those entities or the solutions to cure those risk factors because that’s the way we’re going to cure any crime problem if we have a problem.
Senator Cordy: And so, in fact, with health care we’ve gone into more of preventative mode than just doctors and hospitals. We’re moving in that direction. So I think in this we’ve got to start putting more than 2 per cent for rehab and reintegration, and even more than that in keeping people out of prisons who shouldn’t be there.
Mr. Hay: That’s right. We have to be proactive. Absolutely. And our system of justice — again, I’m not blaming anyone. It’s our system currently, and everything can change. But our system of justice is very reactive.
I think of other models, too. I think about restorative justice in Indigenous populations. You made a comment about a process and program you went through. That’s very restorative justice. I’m thinking about the Good Lives Model in Australia. It’s very proactive — we’re going to fix something once and for all — rather than just keep doing what we keep doing and expecting a different outcome.
Ms. Neve: I think the program that I took, the success rate was overwhelming.
Mr. Hay: Yes.
Ms. Neve: It was amazing. People who committed crimes for years and took this course found out how detrimental it was to other people. It was really effective. I think that if they had more things that applied to you — like saying, “Oh, if you take this program, it would be good for this.” It has to be things that apply to you, that are part of your crime pattern or part of your history. If it’s addiction, they should have addiction courses, instead of just having this blanket effect, “Oh, we’ll do life skills and teach you how to live.” Well, I’m doing life in prison, so what do I need to live for? I think that they have to teach you things that apply to your life and that affect you and make your sentence work with you not against you. You can say, “I walked out of prison and I knew I was never going back,” and that takes a long time and a lot of work.
Senator Cordy: Is this what changed it for you? You said that in 1993 you were known as the most dangerous woman in Canada, and yet here you are appearing before a Senate committee in 2018. So was it finding the right fit, the right programs for you?
Ms. Neve: I think it was the fact that I was so scared of spending my life in prison. I thought I would do anything it takes to get better, so I applied for things like Bible study, and I paid for it myself. I went to courses that I thought would apply to me, and I didn’t let anybody tell me what would make me better when I knew myself. I knew that if I take all these courses, yeah, I can get parole. If I do this, if I play the game, you know, but if you really apply it to your life, it’s totally a separate situation than if you’re just doing it to get out of prison and not have it affect you in any way.
Mr. Hay: Senator, if I may, can I answer the second part? I think your second question is even more important. Your second question was, well, how do we convince people? You know, groups are dangerous. Individuals are smart but are only smart when they’re educated and when they have proper information.
As humans, we’ll always go toward the conservative — and I don’t mean that politically — when we’re unsure about things. So if we’re unsure about whether we should release that person, “No, you better go to jail,” because then we know no one is going to make a mistake.
But we know that when we educate people and give them proper information, they make very intelligent choices. I’ll give you one good example. You bring 40 people into a room — and we’ve done this — and give them a disposition from a court. You give them the offence, like an assault on three people, a fairly bad assault, and the disposition was a $200 fine. You give them that so that the 40 people are going to say, “All right, the disposition does not match the offence. Our system is broken.”
Then what you do is you get the whole court case, and you feed them bits of information over the next couple hours. You ask them from time to time, “How do you feel now?” And you say, “Well, how do you feel now that you know this man has six kids and he’s the sole provider for them? How do you feel now that this man is A, B, C, D?”
What we have found is by the end of the two hours, the vast majority of the people who said that guy should be hung, let alone be put in prison, all of a sudden say, “You know, that disposition, that wasn’t so bad.”
I’m being facetious about the hundred dollar kind of thing, but let’s say it’s one year of probation. In fact, you even have some people say, “Geez, I think the punishment was too harsh now.” But that’s people who with information become intelligent now. But without it, they see a prison, and they can touch it, and they think, “This is what keeps me safe.” And they couldn’t be so wrong. That’s not what keeps you safe. In fact, someone getting out of that jail in three years or seven or three months might actually be worse than when they went in.
Ms. Neve: I kind of noticed in my whole history that the people that are the most badly behaved in jail, and Kim can verify this, end up getting out and being the most successful because they hate prison. They hate every part of the prison experience. They hate it so much. And sure they act out, and it’s because they’re frustrated and angry. But when they get out of prison, they stay out. People that coast through and take every course and stuff come back.
So I think it’s difficult to say, “Oh, so-and-so’s behaviour will lead to recidivism” when some of the most dangerous people I ever met in prison got out and were successful.
Senator Pate: Picking up on where you just left off, Ms. Neve, when you say the most dangerous people, you’re talking about people labelled the most dangerous.
Ms. Neve: Yeah, Sandy —
Senator Pate: But not necessarily those who have been dangerous; mostly they are self-harming.
Ms. Neve: Yes.
Senator Pate: One of the things you short-cut a bit was how you ended up in the system. Are you comfortable talking about —
Ms. Neve: You can say it.
Senator Pate: No, you’re the witness. But in terms of your background and — because one of the things we’re looking at, too, is what can be done to help prevent situations like —
Ms. Neve: So my juvenile incarceration or prostitution?
Senator Pate: And being adopted, all of those things. The sorts of recommendations, places where there could have been intervention before you ended up in the situation that had you labelled as a dangerous offender.
Ms. Neve: I left home at the age of 12, and all this stuff happened. So I got taken out of my parents’ house, and I was made a temporary ward of the government. I was put in the children’s service centre shipping and receiving home in Calgary.
And the girls didn’t like me because I had a family. They were very mean to me. So I took a metal bowl and went up to the meanest girl and hit her with it. And I got put in secure treatment, which is a locked facility.
My behaviour escalated and escalated, but nobody wanted to help me. They just wanted to control me. They wanted to be like, you know, you’re dangerous, you’re this, you’re that, you’re cutting yourself, or you’re doing this. It’s inappropriate and you’re not acting like a lady.
Through my whole life, from 12 to even now, I don’t think that anything — one thing stands out that really defined what I wanted to become. I think it was every little thing added up to me wanting to be a better person.
Senator Pate: When were you finally diagnosed?
Ms. Neve: Schizophrenia, 1997. I was put on clozapine, and I haven’t had any problems. I go AC, BC, after clozapine and before clozapine. So, yeah, I think I was mentally ill long before that.
Senator Pate: And how long did you stay in segregated conditions?
Ms. Neve: A lot. Because I held hostages, remember, and stuff. I had 22 convictions, but there are only five incidents. I know it sounds bad when they say she’s got 22 convictions, but it’s five incidents. But you know how you get charged with uttering threats, possession of a weapon for hostage taking and stuff. So it wasn’t like I had this huge record, but it just looked really damaging.
Senator Pate: And do you remember what the Court of Appeal of Alberta said when you were released, when they overturned your dangerous offender designation?
Ms. Neve: They just said I could go home.
Senator Pate: Well, they challenged the entire classification scheme that was being used for Indigenous women such as you and others, but you in particular.
The Chair: Sounds like you don’t remember that.
Senator Ataullahjan: Listening to you speak and watching you, how did you feel at that time that you were one of the two women declared a dangerous offender? I mean, did you realize that you would be classified as a dangerous offender?
Ms. Neve: I went to court for my trial. They called me down to the visiting room. There was a policeman there. He gave me a piece of paper, and it said they were planning to have me declared a dangerous offender. I had no idea what it was. I had no idea what it meant. So I called my lawyer, and she was freaking out.
So I didn’t know exactly what it meant. I didn’t know that it meant that I would never get out of prison. I didn’t know that — Marlene Moore was declared a dangerous offender and she got two years instead of the indeterminate. So in a way I was hopeful that I would get the determinate sentence, but unfortunately I got the indeterminate sentence. But there’s nothing that can prepare you for that. And the judge said your sentence expires at your natural time of death. Just hearing that is shocking. It’s like, you know, what do you say? What do you do? I had no idea how to live my life thinking I’d never see my family again or that I’d never be able to go home and stuff.
I think my sentencing was the hardest thing I ever went through because it’s like I lost my life and everything. And I hurt so many people along the way. When you’re in a courtroom and you hear all these people testify about all those awful things you’ve done, it makes you feel less than human, because you hurt these people with no regard until it’s too late. You can’t say sorry. So all I wish to do now is just be a better person and just do good things.
Senator Pate: Mr. Hay, one of the comments you made was that only about 1 per cent of people commit crime, yet we know self-report studies show that in fact the majority of people commit crimes, but they’re never prosecuted, charged. I just wanted to ensure that I didn’t mishear you. Or you’re talking about the people who are prosecuted and jailed and —
Mr. Hay: No.
Senator Pate: I’ve got a series of questions, so I’ll cite them all.
The other thing you talked about was solitary confinement. And thank you for providing all of the stats. One of the things that the stats don’t show, though, and by naming it solitary confinement, the situation of women seems to be ignored because, as Ms. Neve has just indicated, for every woman who is classified as maximum security in this country, they end up living in a state of segregation, segregated from the rest of general population. So the stats on segregation don’t capture that because they capture only the place segregation, not the status of segregation. So one of the challenges is, of course, that if corrections can show the kinds of decreases they have shown, the Elizabeth Fry Society and others have shown that in fact they can get rid of segregation, and they have in men’s prisons and women’s and in youth at different times. So I’m curious as to how you see sections 29, 81, 84 being used.
Louise Arbour made some recommendations about this and most recently called for the end of the use of segregation for women, for Indigenous prisoners and for those with mental health issues.
And why would you suggest special circumstance courts instead of moving it further downstream and providing those services in the community? Because right now one of the biggest challenges is people are saying if we put it in a court system, we still first have to have charges, and yet the majority of police officers will say, when they have people they pick up, if there aren’t services in the community, our only recourse is to use the jails to try and address mental health, homelessness, violence and that sort of thing. I’m curious about that.
Finally, on the whole issue of grievances, as you probably know, when Catherine Latimer appeared before this committee on the study, she talked about the fact that the grievance system for prisoners is broken, that in fact there isn’t recourse.
There has been a fair bit of information, certainly in the media and in court documents, the public documents that have been filed, about the fact that the system is also broken for staff.
Given that you’re dealing with Edmonton Institution and likely dealing with some of those issues, how do you see those being remedied? If staff are being treated in the ways that have been described in court documents and media reports, what’s happening to prisoners? How do you see that being remedied? And what recommendations do you have? Ms. Neve may want to comment on that as well.
Ms. Neve: I would like to comment on the grievance process.
Mr. Hay: To your last question, the grievance, the John Howard Society runs as a flat organization, but anything federally, so federal institutions, would be dealt with primarily by Catherine Latimer. I’m the provincial entity. Then we have our John Howards dispersed throughout Canada. There are 68 offices, and they deal with local issues.
So if something comes up in Lethbridge, Lethbridge John Howard will handle it. If something is an Alberta thing, I will handle it. Something that’s more federal, even if it’s out of Edmonton max, that would be Catherine.
That said, the Edmonton max is extremely closed. Good luck finding anything or getting any information or even getting access. For example, I was phoned by a reporter who wanted me to comment on the dog runs at Edmonton max. I said, “What?” And he said, “Well, yeah, out in the yard, there are dog runs, and you let the prisoner out, and they can run like a dog up and down.” I said, “Well, I’m not allowed in so I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, let me tell you what I think of dog runs for human beings.” And so I said my piece.
It’s a long story to answer your question. I think Lisa can probably answer the grievance process a lot better than I can because I don’t have much contact with the Edmonton max. My contact is big time with remand and provincial institutions, but not Edmonton max or other max.
Senator Pate: So you’re denied access to Edmonton max?
Mr. Hay: No, I wouldn’t call it denied. It’s very difficult to access that institution. I wouldn’t call it denied, though. It’s not like I formally asked, “Can I please come in?” No, not necessarily. But they’re a very closed system as opposed to our provincial institutions which are very open.
So the grievance issue that I’m aware of comes from anecdotal stories from people that tell me. But I’m not aware of the formal process that happens at the Edmonton max, for example.
I think Lisa might be able to comment a little bit more about that.
Ms. Neve: I think that the grievance process is difficult. The guards kind of intimidate — not intimidate, but they’re saying go ahead, grieve it, grieve it, grieve it. And nothing ever gets done. And then Kim taught us how to do it, and it got through, like the ghost issue, right? That issue. Should I tell them? That’s okay.
It’s just the grievance issue is so political. It’s not like an independent body that looks at it, and it’s guards and the head of the security or whoever else. I think it’s not productive, and it causes you great grief with the staff. They say, “What are you going to do? Call Kim Pate?” Things like that. They’re just awful.
Mr. Hay: If I could further that, again, there are anecdotal stories. It’s not firsthand knowledge. What I’ve generally found in most institutions — and I’m going to stretch it here a little bit. I would think Edmonton max would necessarily not be any different than any other institution. Anything that might be considered, let’s say, a privilege or something that would help you out would not be seen as something that people are either going to necessarily offer you or be in a rush to offer you.
For example, do you know how long it takes a person to get a pair of eyeglasses in prison, if they ever get a pair of eyeglasses? Reading is a privilege, and you’re supposed to be in jail to be punished. So why should we?
When you go to jail, you don’t get your medication the next day. You don’t sometimes get it for weeks. So if you have a significant issue, you could relapse into that.
I would add grievance to the list of things that would be considered not your right but rather something that if it’s a benefit to you, we’ll either slow it down or we’ll just not do it.
Ms. Neve: I think the grievance thing, you have an option to get in touch with the ombudsman in your area, and you’re very much discouraged from doing that. And when the ombudsman comes to see you in prison, the guards kind of let you know it’s not a great idea to be crying to the ombudsman.
So I think that it has to be more of a fair independent body of people that are looking at grievances or at issues that the ombudsman is in charge of. I think that they have to be more independent and less stuck together.
Mr. Hay: That’s exactly right. But before you can go to the ombudsman, they’ll ask you, “Have you taken this through the channels of the prison in the first place?” And a lot of offenders will say, “Oh, God, really? That’s what you want me to do. Right.”
Ms. Neve: Yeah, you’re right.
Mr. Hay: You can go to the Correctional Investigator of Canada if you want. But Howard Sapers once told me they always asked them: Did you go through the process of the prison environment locally first to reach us, so on and so forth.
Ms. Neve: That is so true. Yeah.
Mr. Hay: That’s a scary process to a lot of people.
Senator Pate: Just to be clear, that’s not a legal requirement. And when you mentioned things like eyeglasses and health, medication, those are actually Charter protected rights.
Mr. Hay: So?
Senator Pate: So I’m pointing out that those aren’t privileges.
Mr. Hay: No, but that’s my point.
Senator Pate: They’re treated as privileges.
Mr. Hay: Exactly, and that’s my point, though, is that they’re treated as well. “You’re here to be punished for your offence. You shouldn’t receive any kind of treatment.” Dentistry, anything like that. So whether it’s enshrined in law or it’s in the Charter, so what? The way that the Edmonton max or any other institution is going to work, they’re going to work the way they’re going to work. Often I’ve said that I just pray we have a good warden at the time because sometimes this goes from the top down. Sometimes.
Senator Pate: In the interest of time, did you have comments on the other questions I asked?
Mr. Hay: Yes.
The 1 per cent was at any given time, meaning they were close to “priority and prolific.” It wasn’t just a random person who might be doing random crime. That’s my 1 per cent.
Senator Pate: And then the use of sections 81, 84 and 29 —
Mr. Hay: Segregation.
Senator Pate: — to get people out of — to decarcerate. So section 29 for people with health issues; Indigenous prisoners, sections 81 and 84, have you seen any —
Mr. Hay: What was the question around that again? I’ve forgotten.
Senator Pate: Have you seen examples of those being used? Or what kind of work is your organization doing there? And then the other was about healthy communities as opposed to a special circumstances approach to talk about social development.
Mr. Hay: Maybe I’ll deal with that one first. Absolutely. When I speak of mental health courts and drug treatment courts, I would like to back it up all the way. But I do recognize, given my discussion so far, that for you folks or for us as a nation to go from here to here is a big stretch. So I’m willing for now to call it success if we go from here to start doing more mental health courts, drug treatment courts and things of that nature. But I’m not satisfied with that. If we can go from there, and everyone starts to get comfortable around this, then we can back it up even more. That’s why I made my comment around healthy families and so on and so forth.
I mean, honestly, when we were looking at the remand numbers in Edmonton, the committee said we got to start slow. We wanted to start looking at police charges and how it happens and how it operates. Where I wanted to start in my head was, well, let’s fix it at the very beginning here. Let’s prevent it before it even happens in the first place. But that’s not a reality. So, Kim, I completely agree.
My comment around creating yet another court like a mental health court or a drug treatment court, that’s not my complete fix. It’s better than imprisonment. My complete fix is, yeah, why don’t we prevent it all so that we don’t even need police involvement, which is contributing to justice dollars, and we don’t need a drug treatment court to repair the damage that’s been done over years of addictions, let’s say?
So, absolutely I’m agreeing with you, but I recognize to go from here to here might be a bit of a stretch for the Canadian government, for the public, whomever.
The sections you refer to, I’m sorry, Kim, I don’t really have a lot to comment on. I don’t have any specific examples of limiting segregation for Indigenous populations or women through use of those sections specifically. I can get them for you. I don’t have that information now. My apologies.
The Chair: Thank you both very much for giving us your time this evening. We don’t have time for a second round. Unfortunately, we have three panels that we’re going to hear from this evening.
For our second panel this evening, we are pleased to welcome from Correctional Service Canada, Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee, Ms. Newman and Ms. Morales. And then from Correctional Service Canada, Ms. Sue Coatham, Parole Officer Supervisor, Calgary area parole officer.
Ms. Newman, you have the floor.
Anoush Newman, Correctional Service Canada Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee: Thank you. Greetings colleagues and good evening. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to present to you and share with you our observations and perspectives about human rights related to the service delivery model for Correctional Services Canada.
Currently, I am the chair for the Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee and a member of the national NEAC committee, which is the main body. My colleague Maria Morales is the vice chair for the Prairie region committee.
Professionally, I am a regional trainer for the refugee sponsorship training program through IRCC in Calgary, Alberta.
I’m aware that you had the opportunity to speak to our colleagues and counterparts in Nova Scotia, so therefore you’re familiar with the program. So I’m going to introduce myself and leave lots of time for questions and answers later on.
Here’s a quick background and history: I was born into a Christian Armenian family in Baghdad, Iraq. We grew up as a protected minority with full rights to perform our faith and carry out cultural practices. Our church, school, and community institutions were totally protected and respected by the Iraqi government and its people. We enjoyed equal rights and were active members of society. My family immigrated in 1972, so I grew up in Canada and obtained my schooling, my post-secondary in Edmonton, Alberta.
I’m a proud mother of three: Eli, Ari and Raffi.
I have spent the last 25 years working for the not-for-profit sector supporting individuals towards their integration or reintegration in the community. Most of my experience has been working with new Canadians such as immigrants and refugees. Thus I gained extensive knowledge about various cultural beliefs, values, and practices.
Additionally, as part of my past role, I have delivered workshops about cross-cultural practices and communication styles. That’s including to correctional services at Bowden, Alberta.
In 2015, I was recruited to lead the task force with the settlement of Syrian refugees in Calgary.
So why am I here today? Why are we so passionate about our role here? Because human rights means the rights of individuals to live in dignity and peace where they can dream and pursue their aspirations, practice what they believe with sense of sovereignty, be productive, contributing members without infringing on the rights of the others with similar aspirations.
So you may ask why I joined Correctional Service Canada as a volunteer for NEAC and REAC. I’m a granddaughter of a survivor of the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authority in the early 1900s, very similar to what happened to the Yazidi people just recently because of ideology.
I understand firsthand what the loss of the basic human rights and violation of dignity means. And because of my family’s experience, I am here today to discuss the inherent right of every human being to be treated with a fair and just approach regardless of his or her faith, culture, values or station in society.
With this vision and conviction, I accepted to join the REAC committee and support this very valuable project. I joined because I wanted to ensure that our institutions maintain the practice of high standards and principles that built this nation.
These democratic principles and practices ensure that everyone is treated with respect. As a committee, we have been able to achieve many successes in our endeavours, and I have a list here I’d like to share with you later on about our accomplishments.
One of the most tangible accomplishments of our committee was the revision of CD 767. As a volunteer, I joined the subgroup that took on the directive from the commissioner to review, revise and update the directive to make it on par with the other CD that deals with populations.
I know that during our nation’s past journey, we have experienced dark periods where Indigenous people of this land suffered grave consequences, but our nation has admitted and is trying to address and remedy the consequences.
I guess that is the reason that Canadians are the light in the lantern that illuminates the path for other nations to seek clarity.
As you may have surmised by now, my personal conviction, history and experience working in the human service industry, originally rehabilitation, has been a perfect match to the task at hand to share my expertise and experiences with institutions, to ensure that inmates in the institutions are afforded the right to their religious and culture practices and stay in spiritual contact with their ethno-Indigenous and religious community.
This sustained contact will prove to be a valuable tool during the reintegration of the released offender back into their communities and society in general.
As offenders serve their time in incarceration and earn their right to return to society, their chances of success and integration will be maximized if they have the support of their community and the society is ready to receive them.
I’m a firm believer that the democratic principles that are the hallmark of this nation, such as liberty, equality, fair treatment, justice, rule of the law, along with the freedom of speech and freedom of expression cannot be compromised under any circumstances.
These values have built this great nation where I would like to see our children continue to enjoy and cherish. Thank you.
Maria Morales, Correctional Service Canada Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee: Thank you. My background is Hispanic from Central America, Nicaragua. I was born there, but I was raised here and been here over 30 years. My professional background is a human services professional. I work with individuals who have in the past been in the correctional system and have mental health issues at this moment. My job is to be a front-line worker working with them one on one, reintegrating them back into the community, into employment, volunteer and so on.
How did I get into the REAC? First of all, several years ago, my human rights were violated as a victim and a survivor of domestic violence, and I became an advocate for victims of crime. That’s when I heard about Correctional Service having a victim advisory committee for the Prairie region, and I’m still involved with them.
They also introduced me to this regional ethnocultural advisory committee where I decided to join just because I wanted to get to the root why, you know, there are victims and survivors of domestic violence and so on.
In my first meeting at the victim advisory committee, I learned that the prisoner or the offender is not there forever. That the key is not thrown away. So I decided that, you know what, if that’s how the system is, then I need to find out and help out the prisoners get to the root, get connection and links so this repetitious cycle of abuse stops. I didn’t want to see other women or children get hurt as I or my kids did.
And I think it’s important to human rights for everyone, not just victims or survivors or prisoners, but for society itself. We need a safe society for our children and grandchildren. This is the reason why I got involved with the REAC as well. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Sue Coatham, Parole Officer Supervisor, Calgary Area Parole Office, Correctional Service Canada: Good evening. I am honoured to have been asked to attend this public meeting, and thank you for the invitation and ability to share some thoughts. I would also like to thank Edmonton and area for this deep and smoky, sexy voice I now have, but I don’t know how long it’s going to last.
As background, my employment history consists of working for provincial corrections, not-for-profit agency the John Howard Society, and I started with Correctional Service Canada in 1996.
Prior to working with women offenders since 1998, my specialty was working with mentally ill offenders as well as sexual offenders.
In terms of what I want to talk about tonight, first, I want to give some background into the women offenders as well as some context into the national perspective. I worked briefly in the women offender sector, and so I can provide some context to that.
I’m currently the supervisor in the Calgary Women’s Supervision Unit, the WSU. The Calgary unit is one of nine women supervision units across the country. The goal of the WSUs is to support a continuum of care from sentencing into the federal institution and on to warrant expiry date.
The Calgary WSU is responsible for the release planning, supervision of generally around 35 to 45 women, including transgendered women, in Calgary and the surrounding area. The unit consists of two dedicated parole officers or POs, as they’re known, as well as a program officer, an Aboriginal community liaison officer, Aboriginal and community development officer, employment coordinator, and our mental health team. This team and unit works together quite closely. We meet weekly to review the impending cases, develop release plans, as well as talk about the current cases that are out.
I’d just like to point out that there’s research that indicates that a significant proportion of women who have succeeded in their transition to the community identified a positive relationship with their parole officer. I’ve seen this time and again in my career with the women and the level of confidence they have in their parole officer. Many women continue to connect with the POs long after their sentence. I think they get a good sense that there’s a genuine care and concern for them.
Working within a team concept offers different insight and potential for other resources for the women, particularly when they present with technical violations or violations on the conditions of their parole.
Some of the more complex cases of women under supervision can present with difficulties in their integration into the community, including having multiple technical violations, and this is where the POs rely on the unit for support and guidance.
In 2009, I was offered an assignment with the Women Offender Sector at national headquarters to update the 2002 National Community Strategy For Women. The document, “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety 2007,” otherwise known as the blue-ribbon panel, recommended the strategy of enhanced transition services in the area of supervision, accommodation and intervention, including consideration of initiatives, supporting employment and employability for women who are on conditional release.
The finalized Community Strategy and Action Plan that we worked on focused on several key components that offered funding to enhance results. The themes were: integration between the institution and the community, supervising women with children, comprehensive release planning, Indigenous women, mental health services and education and employability.
I want to point this out because these documents became instrumental in providing a framework for those of us working with women and strengthening the relationship between the WSUs and the regional women’s facilities. I believe that allowing for that integration or opportunities for that integration is critical for solid and timely release planning.
One of the themes of the strategy was to focus on women’s preferred release destination and initiate the communication between the institution and the community as soon as necessary. The average woman requires little advance intervention by community staff. Those with more complex needs require more communication and intervention between the institution and the community. It makes sense that when the community team becomes more involved with release planning of the complex cases, including regular communication with the women and potentially their family, the woman offender is more prepared and settled when she’s released. Having this link to the community often motivates the women to work with their institutional team and potentially become less confrontational. There’s a goal that they need. They can see the end of their institutional time.
The National Community Strategy For Women was revised in 2016 — now referred to as the Reintegration Support Structure for Women. It focuses on two streams of funding available through the sector: first, for specialized reintegration funding and, second, for complex case funding.
When it comes to release planning, the Calgary WSU typically works with the institutions around Edmonton Institution for Women, the Regional Psych Centre, Okimaw Ohci, Buffalo Sage. We work really hard to have a good relationship with them. They readily facilitate calls with the women when we’re releasing, and they don’t hesitate to call us.
Calgary is fortunate to have an intensive residential substance abuse treatment facility called Aventa. We also have a facility operated by the John Howard and E. Fry Societies jointly called Berkana House. These two facilities are excellent resources for us. They have a good understanding of the women we supervise including those with mental health issues and transgender women. Berkana House has independent apartments which allows for women to have their children live with them in an independent apartment setting.
In closing, community corrections, in particular, women’s corrections has been a passion of mine for nearly two decades. I’ve had the privilege of being mentored by many of the leaders in women’s corrections, some who have helped develop the Creating Choices document, I’m sure you’ve heard of, and some who were instrumental in the design and opening of the regional prisons for women. Their guidance, encouragement and leadership has truly been instrumental in me developing a thorough understanding of the population, and, in particular, providing me the courage to be creative and become a strong advocate for the women. The Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety was focused on accountability and responsibility of offenders, and our team supervision allows women just to do that — to be responsible, be accountable, which is what they want.
With that, I want to say thank you and open the floor to questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much to all three of you, and we’ll go to senators’ questions, starting with Senator Cordy.
Senator Cordy: Thank you all very much and thank you for the work that you do in trying to help with the human rights of prisoners.
With the Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee, what exactly do you do? I know you said that regardless of your faith, community or your race that you need respect, and we all have certainly heard that many times. Just because you’re in prison doesn’t mean that you should lack respect being given to you. First of all, can you tell me what percentage of prisoners in Alberta are members of a minority group?
Ms. Newman: Thank you. It is the third after the Indigenous population. So it is rising. So we’re looking at about 8 to 9 per cent approximately, and it’s beginning to increase more and more as we get people coming from various parts of the world.
Senator Cordy: You said you serve as advisors to Correctional Service Canada for this region. So do you hear of issues related to racism or sexism within the prison system, and then you advise what you should do? Or do you just advise Corrections Canada generally? Do you get involved in individual cases or is it general advisory?
Ms. Newman: Our role is slightly different than what you’re describing. We have been brought in as community support to the staff in terms of helping them —
Senator Cordy: To the staff or to the prisoners?
Ms. Newman: No, let me explain. Our role is to be advisors to the staff in terms of the cultural needs of various individuals with certain cultural background in terms of their beliefs, their values, their practices, and their needs to be staying in connection with their communities. So what is it that an inmate needs to be spiritually connected with their community so after the release they reconnect with their community and have a better chance of success and less chances of re-offending? Because the idea is that we know once they are incarcerated and they’re behind the walls, they tend to lose the contact because they are not within their cultural community. They’re not practising spiritually, and their cultural rituals, they lose the connection.
And when they come out, they may be perceived as strangers, aliens. They have disconnected from their culture, so they would be lacking the supports they need if they were connected.
So the idea is that while they are serving their time, rehabilitating, as my colleague earlier had said, they maintain some of their cultural practices so they stay spiritually connected to their culture and tradition. And also hopefully we connect — not us, we advise the staff — that the staff at Correctional Service Canada is aware of their cultural needs. And when they are released to the community, they are connected to their community and have built relationship with their community before they’ve been released because they stayed connected. Hopefully the supports they’re going to receive from the community will help them stay focused and out of trouble. That’s the idea.
We do not do any direct work with the staff or with the inmates themselves. We provide information, resources. We’re like the bridge between the community and CSC where we bring our expertise.
Between Maria and myself, we have various cultural perspectives. Most members of the advisory committee come with various cultural backgrounds. So we’re able to share our knowledge about specific faith, about specific practice. I come from an Arab Muslim country, so I am very familiar with the Islamic traditions, although I’m not a Muslim, but that’s good, too. That’s okay, I mean. So if there’s an issue to do with faith, Islam, I’m able to help because, as a matter of fact, one of my major papers at university was about Islam, Christianity and Judaism. I’m familiar with different Eastern philosophies.
So when there is an issue, we as an advisory committee can help the staff connect them with the resources they need in the community, connect them with the Buddhist community, connect them with the Afghani community, connect them with the Bulgarian community — I’m not going to just focus on Southeast Asia — or the French or the Moroccan. It doesn’t matter.
So we are sort of the connections. The staff need to be aware what’s in the community so they can help the inmates maintain this bridge and cultural connection to their culture and heritage because we all know that our heritage, our culture, our spirituality is a very strong part of our psyche and identity. And keeping that going, it’s going to be part of our healing process. So we are there to provide information and resources to the staff.
Maria?
Ms. Morales: Yes. I just want to add that because of my profession, I deal with individuals who have come out of the correctional service. They have nothing to do with the system anymore, and because of the mental issues they have, mental illness, they find it so hard getting that kind of spirituality or tradition because they were not allowed to receive that when they were in prison. They said that they just need to follow the correctional plan, and that’s it. Their human rights, you know, freedom of religion, and so on were not allowed in the system when they were in.
So they’re finding it very hard now, me working with them one to one, finding their faith and their culture, and they’re wanting to, but it’s been so many years that they’ve never been, and they re-offend. They’re back in there. So that’s the reason that we try to advise the correctional service on that. Thank you.
Senator Cordy: Thank you.
Ms. Coatham, for parole officers do you deal with the prisoners before they are released? I know that you’re sort of a liaison or a bridge between the prison and the community to ensure that they’re successful in their reintegration.
Ms. Coatham: Potentially. When I was speaking about sentencing, when individuals are sentenced in Calgary, we do the initial assessment, what we call the preliminary assessment. That may be the first time we’re meeting the women. If they are Calgary bound, then we will be seeing them again. So we do the initial assessment, give a synopsis of what it is. In particular, if there are issues with mental health and we know there’s going to be some release planning, some complex planning, we get involved right away and maintain contact with them through the institution.
Senator Cordy: One of the concerns that we heard at a women’s prison that we were in was that the integration program meant that the women had to get out in the community. They got out a certain number of times, and the first time they went out had to be with a staff member. The challenge was that one person — it was a month and a half or two months, and they still hadn’t been out because there was no staff person to take them. So then when they are actually leaving the prison, they haven’t had as much of the reintegration program as they should have had. That’s not the kind of thing that’s going to lead to success. So how do you —
Ms. Coatham: Well, there are a couple things. Sentences are short in length often, and so typically by the time they start the release planning, they haven’t had opportunities for ETAs or work releases or UTAs. So hopefully the focus is in — if they’re serving a shorter sentence, it’s on day parole. Getting them out to a halfway house.
I can speak for Edmonton and Okimaw Ohci. I know they struggled with trying to get work releases for the women. They’ve had varying successes over the years to get them out or to go to the meetings or something to have them leave the institution exactly like what we’re talking about.
For us, we’re three hours down the road. And so for them to come to us, that would be unique in the sense that on a work release, we haven’t really had any. Unescorted temporary absences, we certainly have. And they’re usually family contact where they will come to their folks or significant other and spend their 72 hours or 24 hours with them. We’ll meet with them and then hopefully they’re working toward their day parole release. So there are varying degrees of release options prior to.
Senator Cordy: But they weren’t able to get the first one. The first one had to be with the prison guard.
Ms. Coatham: And there was a staffing issue.
Senator Cordy: And it was a staffing issue. So the other ones were just not available to them at all. They couldn’t go with a volunteer. They just weren’t out in the community. And then suddenly time’s up, they’re ready for release on parole, and they haven’t been out yet.
Ms. Coatham: Yes. And that sounds like that would be a longer-term offender who would have been in there for a longer period of time. I can’t speak to how an institution manages their staffing, unfortunately.
Senator Cordy: Thank you.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thanks to all of you for your testimony.
Ms. Newman, how receptive is Correctional Service Canada to the needs of the ethnocultural groups? Is there a recognition that just because you’ve got a group of people from South Asia that they’re different? Because we did go to an institution where I asked, you know, “How many inmates here are of South Asian origin?” And I was just given a blank look. They didn’t understand what “South Asian” meant.
And just to clarify, Correctional Service will call you when they have ethnocultural groups and ask you to come and work with them? I’m a little confused as to what exactly you do.
Ms. Newman: For sure. I’ll go first and I’ll let my colleague step in as well.
As I mentioned earlier, we do not deal directly. If there is an issue or concern, we are available to the institutional liaison person who brings up the issue or concern that sends an email to all members of REAC. There’s an issue. Can we get some advice? You know, this is the situation.
Thank you for bringing that up, senator. A lot of people are very confused because of the geography issue. I had a big conversation one day with this lady who is from Chinese heritage, and she described herself as Asian. I said, “Well, I’m Asian as well.” She said, “No, you don’t look Chinese.” I said, “Not all Asians are Chinese. Not all Asians are Indians or Afghanis or Pakistanis or Japanese.” So there’s a big confusion out there. First of all, Asia is a very big continent, and there are 100-some countries.
Back to your question, we were in Drumheller recently. I have a list — and I don’t have that list with me, unfortunately; it’s in my other purse — of the population demographics. And they gave us the population of Drumheller, the number of people, and whoever self-disclosed their cultural heritage, because they have the right to disclose and sometimes they don’t disclose. They choose not to. So based on their disclosure, they have the numbers of people who are from certain parts of Asia. They usually clump them together in a region rather than, let’s say, somebody from Iraq. They’ll say Middle Eastern. Or somebody is from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Northwest Asia or Northeast Africa, Central Africa, those kinds of things. So they put them in a region rather than an individual country.
One of the challenges that a lot of the direct staff have is that we have a very large variety of populations serving in the system. It’s hard to address the individual needs of an individual country.
Our role has been always to advise based on the region. If somebody is from the Americas, South America, somebody like Maria will say, “Okay, in South America, these are some of the traditions, practices, belief system, and values.” If somebody is from Middle East, I would be called to talk about Middle Eastern culture and things like that.
Again, back to your question, the stats are available to the institutions because when we were there, he went in, within few minutes he gave me a printout of three, four institutions, and he highlighted Drumheller to say this is the number of people we have and these are all self-disclosed cultural groups that we have in the institution.
So if the staff themselves are not familiar, they can reach out to their ELOs, which we’ll call them the ethnocultural liaison officers, and we’ll be available to help. Does that answer your question?
Senator Ataullahjan: Yes. I have a follow-up question, but I want to listen to Ms. Morales.
Ms. Morales: Just adding to that, we went to Drumheller, and, for example, they wanted resources from Calgary such as a directory of community connections. As a committee, we are willing to collect those and send them out to Drumheller because some of the offenders might end up in Calgary. So they need that — it’s a booklet, a pamphlet where they have all the community connections where they can reach out.
Senator Ataullahjan: How often does CSC seek your advice? In a month, two months? How often would they call you and ask for advice?
Ms. Newman: They go through their ELOs first. They go first internally, and then they have people in the institutions who have that designation. For instance, we met this gentleman at Drumheller, and I’ve met some other people in other institutions where they are full-time staff, but they also have this additional task of being the ethnocultural advisor. They will go to those people first in the institution, and if they can’t resolve, then they will connect through our contact, which is Nel for us, for the Calgary regional committee, and then she will contact us.
How often? It depends on the needs. Sometimes we get connected once a year. Sometimes never. Sometimes two, three times a year. It depends on the situation and what’s happening. So it’s not consistent all the time, regularly. It’s not.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you.
The Chair: I have a supplementary question to Senator Ataullahjan’s question also around the ethnocultural work. Are you doing any proactive work to address issues that ethnocultural offenders, prisoners may be experiencing? Is there any proactive work happening, or do you just wait for referrals from CSC?
Ms. Newman: Well, we are an advisory committee, so we advise. Our role is to advocate as well. One of the reasons I’m here today is to advocate for more funding to support the staff if that’s what you mean. Our role is to see what the staff needs in order for them to do their job more professionally, what resources they need.
So our role is to let the commissioner and the CSC know that if they want this program to work in terms of helping the offenders or the inmates while they’re serving stay connected with their community, the staff need more resources. We need more dollars to support the program.
One of the areas of advocacy work that we’ve done, I got involved with the revision of CD 767, which brought it on par with the other CD that was established for the Indigenous population. Again, as an advocate, we like to advocate for the program called Targeted Solution, and you know about that one, senator, in terms of ensuring that the program for individuals who come from various ethnocultural groups is similar to the one that was afforded to the Indigenous people in terms of getting more community involvement, more resources involved and to ensure support services for the staff. In the long term, while we support the staff, the staff are doing the work. They are the front line. So we don’t do the work from the front line. We support the staff so they can do their work.
And our role sometimes is to be an advisory group in terms of the cultural issues we need to be aware of when certain holidays are happening, those kinds of things. Our proactive role is ensuring that the system is working well and that the staff have the resources they need to carry out the projects.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Pate: Thank you to all of you for attending and for the work you’re doing.
Ms. Morales and Ms. Newman, I’m curious as to how much you’ve been briefed by corrections on the provisions of the current legislation that could be used so that communities could actually access people while they’re in prison and get them out of prison. For instance, there are subsections that are usually applied to Indigenous prisoners but could also be applied to ethnocultural prisoners, trans prisoners, other prisoners. That’s one.
Also, how accessible are the prisons to those communities if they want to come in and have access to the prisoners?
Ms. Newman: I’ll answer the first one and she can answer the second one. Are you talking about sections 81 and 84?
Senator Pate: Could be 81, 84, 29.
Ms. Newman: Well, I get updates from our contact at CSC. His name is Donat, and he’s the one who keeps me updated about these things. As Senator Bernard mentioned, we like to advocate for those things and bring to the attention of the government the importance of the legislation that will improve the services and programs as supports to individuals from various ethnocultural groups.
I don’t like the phrase “ethnocultural offender.” It offends me personally, so I always try to say “an individual from an ethnocultural group” until we find a phrase that is better than ethnocultural offender.
So we would like to see the legislation, sections 81 and 84, brought up more. We want to see that happening because we’ve seen some successes with the program afforded to the Indigenous population. Similarly, the individuals who come from various ethnocultural groups should be able to have similar supports and programs in place. So we’re sort of kept in the loop, but not involved on very particular and specific details.
Senator Pate: So would communities know about those sections? Would the various groups you talked about, that you worked with, know about those sections?
Ms. Newman: Not very much yet, no, unfortunately.
Ms. Morales: With regard to the second question you were asking about whether communities have access to corrections, we found some issues with the Drumheller institution. Because of the staffing and the amount of work they have, it’s very hard for them to do all the screening and having a lot of people come in, volunteers, who are willing to do so. It’s just too much of a load for them because of the budget. They don’t have a resource person dedicated to getting resources out or getting the community connections for the prisoners.
We found that that’s part of the human rights. We sat down with an ethnocultural group in Drumheller, and they gave us a list. One member represented European, the other represented the Black population, and the other Asian. And they were requesting it. What we heard from the CSC staff is that they can’t do this. Sometimes they feel that the prisoners are just asking for free workshops or to hang out and have a free Saturday or Sunday, to get extra hours to get out and not be in their cell.
But for me it’s like, as we were talking about human rights, they want this. They don’t want to wait to get out and get all this information. They need this before. And that’s the issue that we found when we were at Drumheller recently.
Ms. Newman: Can I add to that? What I’ve observed the last few years — well, I’ve been with REAC for many years, and Maria has joined a few years ago. We see that lack of resources, i.e. funding for this kind of program is limited. We would like to see better funding. Ideally, it’s a wonderful program to have individuals who are serving their time to stay connected with a community. To help them reintegrate is great, but that takes resources.
And to expect the front-line staff to carry their duties and add on top of it these duties of being the ethnocultural liaison, it’s too heavy a load. We met an individual there, as I said, and he said he doesn’t have time. And he told us, which just blew us away, that their ethnocultural pocket of money for the year was a thousand dollars. What can you get for a thousand dollars a year for the whole institution? That’s not enough.
I would like to advocate right now — and I’ve mentioned this before, even to Commissioner Don Head when we had our last meeting — that each institution have a person dedicated to this who would not have other tasks in terms of being part of the staffing model of running the institution, but be exclusively focused on the cultural and religious perspectives and needs of the individuals there and build connections with the community and build a connection with us so we can have more interaction, more relationship. And hopefully, with our plea today, you can take this to the government and say it’s a wonderful idea, but it needs the resources in order to carry it forward and be more effective. It looks very good, and we’re trying the best that we can.
We’re all volunteers here ourselves. I mean, this is our own personal time. We’re here because we believe very strongly in this. Maria and I have come this far because we want to make sure that no matter who they are, where they are in their stage in their life, their status, they need to be treated with respect and dignity. And if we want them to be successfully reintegrated into the community, we need to make sure we put the systems and resources in place so when they are back in the community, they achieve success, experience success and move forward. And you can’t do that on a thousand dollars per institution, per year. Sorry to say that. Thank you.
Senator Pate: Thank you.
Ms. Coatham, thank you for all the work you’ve done in Calgary over the many years. I was surprised to hear you quote the blue ribbon task force because it seems to me it was rather light on women’s issues. I don’t know if you are comfortable commenting on the state of women’s corrections overall. I recognize you probably have to get approval for these things, so you may not be comfortable, which is fair enough.
But one of the things that you have, in my experience, stressed for a long period of time is the importance of resourcing women in the community to prevent them from going back once you get them out and provide them support. I’m curious as to what you see as the biggest impediment right now to CSC actually engaging in more section 81, 84, individualized approaches for women, in particular, and obviously most particularly Indigenous women, where you see things going.
There was a very good initiative of which I believe you were a part of in Calgary when the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, the Y, and E. Fry jointly came up with an employment program that also had counsellors and support services. To my knowledge, none of the women who were involved in that program ever ended up going back in. They all got jobs and moved on. But then it was a pilot. The funding was ended.
What are some of the recommendations this committee could make that would really assist in not just you and your team doing your work but also in alleviating some of the most egregious human rights violations that women prisoners and women parolees face?
Ms. Coatham: My reference to the blue-ribbon panel was that it was the impetus for us to update the community strategy. Along with that, it was timely in the sense that we were able to get attached funding with that. And it was significant funding. It was necessary funding because prior to that, when we looked at employment initiatives and complex case funding, the funds simply weren’t there. So it really was the impetus, and money followed that. That’s why I refer to that.
With regard to the initiatives in Calgary, and really initiatives everywhere, you’re right, they are lacking. If I could just refer to Indigenous offenders, Calgary has been a wasteland for resources for Indigenous individuals, and it fluctuates. We have a population coming to Calgary — we’re surrounded by reserves — and yet when we have the men and women go to sweats or to a ceremony, they are very difficult to find. In particular, when women want to go with other women, and they don’t want to go to the co-ed sweats, it just simply doesn’t happen. That has really been a problem in Calgary for my entire career.
In January, we finally got an Aboriginal community liaison officer in Calgary. There had always been one in Edmonton. We finally got one in Calgary. It’s really, since January, transformed the resources for the Indigenous population compared to what we had. For example, she has these connections, and she’s getting the women out to pick medicine and go on their sweats and do their ceremonies in a few short months. Whereas before, try as they might, they go to an agency and there would be internal strife, they would lose their funding, and the board would change and the resources wouldn’t be there.
In fact, I just heard this ACLO had arranged a sweat for women who desperately needed it. She contacted the agency, got ahold of the elder and said, “We’re ready to go; we’re excited.” And he said, “I’ve just been fired.” So the ceremony was cancelled, and that is more of the same.
Edmonton is resource rich for Indigenous offenders. We’re so jealous. I think, though, you’re right in the sense of where we are going with that. We’re trying to develop agreements. Right now we’re working with the City of Calgary, Fort Calgary and several agencies to try and have a teepee put in Fort Calgary to have a ceremonial ground. If it pans out — and this is the vision of the ACLO, the liaison officer, which I love — it will be in agreement, you know, government, non-government, and it will be a sacred place so we won’t have to go look for them to have ceremonies in the future. So right now it’s in the vision part, and I certainly hope it happens because it’s been lacking.
So you’re absolutely right. We are lacking in terms of human rights. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a hundred times, where the women would come from Okimaw Ohci. They’ve been participating in their morning circles, the horse program. They feel good. They’ve learned their culture for potentially the first time in their lives, and they come to a city of 1,200,000, and we say, “Go find something.” And they don’t feel strong enough, and they say, “Send me back; I want to go back.” It’s heartbreaking.
So I do think the challenge is there for us to increase those resources. We have an ACLO — I’m elated — and she’s got access to resources.
When it comes to women, in particular, and dealing with complex cases because we want people who have mental health issues outside, they don’t need to be languishing in an institution. I simply haven’t been refused resources or funding to have those resources. Finding the resources, on the other hand, when you have people who have been stigmatized and the agencies in Calgary who say, “Where are they from?” Well, they’re from an institution. And they say, “Oh,” and they put them on a wait list that never, ever comes to fruition. So when they don’t necessarily have to be in one of our facilities that we contract with, they should be somewhere else. It’s very difficult to open those doors. So I think we need to be more creative in terms of supporting that population, in particular, when things start going sideways and they’re exhibiting mental illness or violating a condition, usually substance abuse, and misuse comes along with that.
So you’re right, Kim. I mean, there is a lack of resources. We do what we can. Sometimes it seems like when one door opens with an agency and they seem to be saying, “Hey, come in,” the other door closes. It’s that back and forth thing.
With regard to the trades, it fluctuates. The agencies have an initiative, and they say, “Bring your women, come, learn the trades,” and then we simply have a downturn in women. There was a period of time where women simply were not getting day parole. They weren’t getting released on parole. And so then we start these initiatives, and our numbers plummet, and they’re looking for bodies, and there are no bodies because they’re all sitting in an institution.
We’re now back in an upswing. Several years ago, I’m sure you can say, we went from 60 per cent of the women being in the community and 40 per cent in institutions. And then it almost became 50-50, more so in the institutions. I think we’re back on the positive side. But having gone through the downturn where most of the men and women were sitting in an institution, we lose access to these programs because they simply don’t come. Well, we did lose a couple facilities. They closed their doors and quit their contract with us because they couldn’t afford to run empty.
Senator Pate: Just to be clear, these are situations like the one that happened at Buffalo Sage when they opened. There were no Indigenous women eligible to go there because of the classification. So the knock-on effect is that if you don’t deal with your classification, if you don’t deal with adequately funding sections 81 and 84 agreements, then you end up with no women to go into those.
And the other part of my question was in terms of sections 81 and 84, how many individualized agreements in your area are there, if any, with individual Indigenous communities?
Ms. Coatham: Are you talking about on the reserve or urban?
Senator Pate: On reserve or with Indigenous —
Ms. Coatham: On the reserves, they typically change with every band and council election. So there are agreements on several of the reserves. Now, they’re not solid agreements because they’re individual based. So they work with the individual.
Take the reserve west of Calgary. If you have a situation where a woman has committed a crime against another family — so you have two families on the reserve, this family and this family — the victimized family doesn’t ever want her back, and they have the power on the reserve. So it’s very difficult to work within the inner workings of those bands and support the women on those 84s — men, too. So it’s very tenuous at best to try and get a lot of people back out to their places.
In the city, when you look at the 84s, there are no facilities. There are our halfway houses, and we work with the various agencies to support the women, whether that be SAIT for education or the agencies that are there to support them.
Could we do more? We definitely have to do more in terms of accommodations. There are not enough. I have seen wait lists for I can’t tell you how long, and I went through facilities that are ready to close their doors. And now we have all these people that have been finally granted and are sitting in the institution because they don’t have a bed.
Senator Pate: Are there any other human rights issues for women and for men or mental health issues?
Ms. Coatham: I don’t know if you’d call it — I suppose it’s human rights. The one thing that I think concerns us the most is the women with children who lost custody when they were incarcerated. I’m not talking about the children in the institution with them. And it’s very difficult to work through systems to have these women see their kids again. There’s systemic discrimination that is just heartbreaking, and try as they might to be accountable and take that responsibility to work with these agencies, they simply don’t get called back. They will say, “Yes, we will bring your children to see you,” and then they don’t show up with the kids, and they don’t have a phone call. So what kind of rights does a mother have? Is that a human rights issue? I think it is. And I think the kids suffer.
We’ve been involved time and again with these agencies. The turnover is horrific. The way they treat the women who are trying to reunite with their children is sometimes just heartbreaking.
Senator Pate: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you all very much. We will not have time for a second round of questions. I want to thank the three of you for coming and giving us your time this evening and travelling here to meet with us. We appreciate it.
For our third panel this evening, we are pleased to welcome, as an individual, Ms. Clare McNab, former warden of the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge and former deputy warden of Bowden Institution with Correctional Service Canada. And from Treaty 8, we have Grand Chief Arthur Noskey.
Ms. McNab, you have the floor first.
Clare McNab, Retired, Warden of Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge and former Deputy Warden of Bowden Institution, Correctional Service Canada, as an individual: Thank you very much for inviting me here to speak with you. I’m a bit nervous, so I apologize. I went to Buffalo Sage earlier today. I believe you guys are going there later this week. The director there said, “Be a strong voice,” so I feel the pressure.
I’m a Metis woman originally from southern Saskatchewan. I worked for Correctional Service Canada for 17 years, initially as the kikawinaw — kikawinaw is a Cree word that means Our Mother. So it’s not warden, but it’s kikawinaw at Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge.
I then went to Ottawa and worked in the Aboriginal initiatives directorate for a few years, and then I returned to Bowden as deputy warden for three years. I am now retired. So my working days are — well, I’m still working, but anyway.
I’m not sure how to proceed. In the Indigenous community, we often tell stories. That’s what I thought I would do with you tonight, tell you a few stories.
I believe that when people are working in the Indigenous community, you need to listen in a different way. And we don’t always come with stats and facts and figures. We don’t always tell you what to do either. Sometimes you have to figure that out. But we tell stories, and hopefully you can find something in the stories.
When I first started at Okimaw Ohci, when I was first hired, because I had no background in corrections, they sent me to Ottawa for four weeks to work at national headquarters. On my way home on the plane, it just so happened that I was sitting next to an elder from Saskatchewan, elder Jimmy Myo. He has since passed away. I was very proud, and I was telling him that I was going to be the kikawinaw at Okimaw Ohci. And he told me, “I want you to remember that the women you’re going to work with need love.” And so that kind of carried me through my 10-plus years and maybe even more. You know, where in CSC do we ever talk about love and caring? The elders at the healing lodge tell the women, “Be kind to one another.” That’s difficult because for many of them, they never experienced kindness. So they don’t even know how to start with that.
Anyway, I got to know a number of the women and hear some of their stories. And some of their stories are very tragic. On my notes that are in front of you, I gave a few examples. One was Sheila. She came into my office and she was telling me her story. I’m not sure how old she was. Her mom had a new boyfriend, and the boyfriend was molesting her. So one day she went to school and told the teachers, and of course the teachers called social services, and a big event followed that. When she got home, social services had already been there and her mother was very angry at her for telling. And her mother tried to drown her in her bathtub. I sat there looking at her and I was thinking, “No wonder you’re here.” So, you know, these women don’t come from very good backgrounds, from very good families.
Another example was a woman, Odelia, and there were actually several of the family who were in jail. I used to go out in the evening and we would have a circle. There were a number of women who had been to residential school, and so I sat with them in the circle. One of the activities I had them do was we had the lights out, and I had them lay down in the circle, and I said, “I want you to imagine, visualize for yourself how you would look if you were successful.” I let them have a few minutes and then asked each of them to speak in turn. And when it got to Odelia, she said, “I couldn’t see anything.”
So if you can’t even visualize yourself, can’t even dream of being successful, how do you become successful? And Odelia is still, I think, in the system. I still hear about her. I think she’s actually at EIFW. Maybe you’ll see her when you visit there.
When I went to the healing lodge, I asked the staff, “Who was the best Aboriginal woman that was here?” And they all said Rose Bird. And I said, “Well, what happened to Rose Bird?” Well, she came to the healing lodge and did well, and when she left, she went and did her degree in social work. I think today she’s working at Pine Grove provincial women’s facility. So she actually got out of the system and now is working in the system and I think is doing some elder work as well.
And Lisa Neve, a good example you saw here earlier. She wasn’t there when I was there, but I think she’s a good example. There are several success stories, but we don’t always ask about those. We think about the ones that come back or the ones that weren’t successful.
When we are looking at Indigenous issues, we really have to think about intergenerational trauma. There are numerous cycles that occur in some of our communities and we need help to stop those cycles. There are cycles of incarceration. There are sometimes parents, children, grandchildren who are in jail and continue to return to jail. Cycles of abuse, cycles of violence. I can list all kinds of cycles that need to be addressed.
They were talking earlier about the impact of the tough-on-crime legislation that was put into place the last 10-plus years, and it has been significant in the Indigenous communities. The last stats I looked at, the numbers for non-Indigenous people in prison are dropping, and the Indigenous population is growing and growing. I believe it’s even higher than 25 per cent right now. So to me that’s really serious, and I don’t know that I have any great strategy to reduce it. But I think we need to continue to look at the social determinants, different things that have an impact in communities.
The other thing that’s happened within particularly women’s — I’m most familiar with women’s prisons — is there’s a lot of overcrowding. So when I first started at Okimaw Ohci, we were built for 29 beds, and we had a hard time keeping those beds full. So a lot of times we were at 20 or less. During my time there, we increased the capacity to 40, and we converted some of the spaces to that. Now they’re at 60. And so they have shared accommodation. They don’t call it double bunking there. The elders who were involved in the building of that place wanted the women to have larger bedrooms, to have individual space because when you’re doing your healing work, you need time, you need quiet, and you need reflection. So they had that there. A lot of that is gone now.
I think for options we need to address the social issues. We need to look at oppression in general. I don’t know how involved the Senate is in — I’m on Facebook and when Indigenous issues arise on Facebook — CBC, for example, won’t even allow comments because the comments will be so negative towards Indigenous people. So something has to happen in Canadian society as a whole that we’re not looked down upon anymore and that people have some respect for us.
There’s systemic discrimination. Some of that was talked about earlier here. The classification system, for example, to me doesn’t fit. I read Creating Choices so many times, and Creating Choices was very clear. It said high needs do not equal high risk, but that’s what I see in the system is women that are high needs very often end up in maximum security or beyond.
I added in the paper that Dr. Gabor Maté has been working in Indigenous communities. He’s a respected physician, and he’s been talking about adverse childhood events. So on your paper I have a little schematic there. I just printed that off of the internet. We need to start looking at what have children experienced and how many events have they had. And that has an effect on their development. So how can we begin to address some of those adverse childhood events and change that?
Even acknowledging trauma, I lived at Gordon First Nation for a few years and I was there when they closed the last residential school in 1996. My children didn’t live in residence, but they went to the school with the other children. I think I seen firsthand the impact of residential school. My grandfather went to residential school. People and generations following have trauma from that experience. I would say probably even post-traumatic stress disorder.
When I was working with corrections, I was the co-chair for the committee for Aboriginal women, and I spoke with the loudest voice that I could that we needed to have trauma programs to help women begin to deal with their issues. They needed to address that trauma. Corrections did not agree, and so there are no trauma programs in place. They say their programs are trauma informed, which I’m not quite sure what that means.
The last thing I put on your paper is around protective factors. So when I was working, what crossed my mind was how come some people end up in jail and other people don’t? All of my friends that I talk to, most of us had experienced sexual abuse, some family violence, and I wasn’t in jail and my friends weren’t in jail. So I was reading, and some of the research that I read talked about protective factors. If kids have a positive role model, a mom, a dad, a grandma, a kokum, or a teacher at school or someone, or if they got involved in sports — you know, mine was education. I was smart, so that got me through. A lot of the women in prison don’t have any protective factors or have not enough. How can we give those protective factors to people?
In retirement, I’ve been going through my papers, and I found this letter about a month ago. I want to read it to you. Sorry, it’s a short letter. It was written March 26, 2004. It says:
Dear Clare.
Hello, these past couple of days I’ve been thinking about you. Why? Because there’s so many times I forgot to say thanks. I want to let you know that you truly have been a mother and a friend to me and for that I will always be grateful. I know I’ve made lots of mistakes and all, but it seemed like I could never do anything wrong in your eyes. You’ve always encouraged me to keep on going. I’m happy I got the chance to truly get to know you as a person. You might even say, yes, in a lot of ways you helped me grow. I hope down the road you’ll be able to understand why this letter is important to me to write. It simply says I love you, and I thank you for all that you’ve taught me.
Love, a daughter in spirit,
Cynthia Audy
And Cynthia is one of the women that is missing today. So I have a little piece of her with me today.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Arthur Noskey, Grand Chief, Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta: Good evening, senators. Thanks for the opportunity.
I guess I can go to greeting each one of you personally, and I would like to acknowledge the territory we’re in, Treaty 8, our Treaty 6 territory. It’s significant to First Nations people as to where they originated.
I have some speaking notes. I’ve distributed them, but basically my heart is in a different place having the audience and improving or, you know, at some point maybe legislating changes that will impact everybody, not just First Nations people.
I grew up with parents who weren’t in the residential school system. I grew up out in the bush practically. My upbringing basically got me to obey rules within chores, chores that need to happen: chop wood, get snow for water, melt snow for water, respect somebody else’s residence. If there’s a little string tied to a nail, nobody’s home. You don’t enter the yard. And then you go to respecting animals. You know, we lived, hunted and trapped as kids with nine other siblings. I have four sisters and five brothers. That’s the upbringing we had.
There wasn’t a time that I can recollect as a kid that I grew up cold in the winter months when it was minus 40 with just a wood stove. I can’t remember a time I woke up cold or hungry.
Our dad basically taught us boys to respect our sisters, the girls. As we were coming of age, teenagers, we were told you don’t talk about girls. You don’t talk about somebody else’s relative, a girl. It’s somebody’s sister, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s mother. That’s how our dad basically raised us.
With mom, it’s the other way around. The relationship is with the boys. So all this is training basically for growing up. You know how you respect and honour your wife in the same way a husband does for our sisters. So that’s the upbringing we had. Basically we loved each other. Back in those days, if there was disagreement with another family, you were taking on the whole family kind of thing. There’s just the respect and honour there.
Growing up in a community that didn’t have any electricity, no running water, the disciplines and the rules applied to every household in the community. If I was teasing somebody or disrespected a parent, if my dad found out about it eight days later or two weeks later, I would still get the spank because of me being disrespectful.
So we were taught to value life in everything that we grew up around, the animals and everything. You didn’t take anything that you were not going to eat or provide for somebody else. We were taught to share. On top of that, we were taught to value other people.
Through that process, with that mindset, the land and the resources that we grew up in Treaty 8 territory basically had a lot of value. It has a lot of resources there. And coming across, I guess, the thunder stick you’ll call it or the firearms versus bow and arrow or muskets at the time. When white trappers started coming to the territory, it made our animals more scarce because of the equipment they brought.
I can recollect to a point in 1927 where I read the commissioner’s report that white trappers can’t be taking up trap lines from First Nations because they’re killing off everything. And that’s because of the fur trade. They’re killing off their way of life.
So in 1899, when Treaty 8 was signed, basically our people signed an agreement with the colonized people to have education, to be able to farm, educate our people, live off the actual land as well instead of just living off trapping.
So our people agreed to education, to health care and then to economic development in the realm of farming equipment and cattle. I think the first, a family of three, there were three cattle issued and to the chief, one bull kind of thing, treaty history. The chief always ended up with the bull. But in saying that, that’s what our people agreed to. That was Treaty Number 8, which encompasses B.C., Northwest Territories, and a bit of Saskatchewan — 40 nations in all, 22 in Alberta that I sit as the Grand Chief of.
So with that history, that background and my upbringing as a kid, all of that was intact when the residential school came in. My dad remembers those days. He was seven years old, but his dad said, “No, you’re not going.” They took older siblings, three older brothers and two older sisters. And to date, my uncle’s family are still broken people.
The over-incarceration of First Nations people are residual effects of the residential school, the education system. And it doesn’t look like it’s changing because even with the child welfare stuff, basically it’s still the government looking after our children. We do not value possessions as a people. It’s good to have a nice house, yes, a vehicle, a good job. All of that is essential. But our value has always been the people because those are the relationships that last. You know, there are relationships, there are friendships, and there’s stuff that you learn from them.
All of that toppled, basically the compassion and the love, as my colleague addressed here already, that we had growing up. I was sad to be introduced to the other side, the wicked side of life, I would say. The reason I say that is as a First Nations people, we are always a spiritual people. We believe in two gods. One, the merciful, gracious God; the other one, the evil god like Satan, the wicked god. Our people did not mind the merciful and the gracious God because he’s loving, compassionate and caring. But they seemed like they always wanted to appease the evil god because he’s evil. He’s going to create havoc in the families.
So when Christianity came to us, our people, through the Catholic school, were basically introduced to a god in the name of the merciful God to create all this wickedness and atrocities to our children. And then a system agreed under treaty, which was education. And that’s what we still have today, the residual effects, like I said, from that.
Going forward, I know that in my speaking notes it says I wasn’t incarcerated. I was incarcerated twice for drinking; one night each time. The first time I woke up, I was behind bars with other people that I didn’t know. The thing that I hated about that experience was the fact that I couldn’t open the door, get out, and go live, just walk out, walk into the country and do whatever I wanted. The freedom wasn’t there. And that caused me to change my ways. I reconsidered how I was going to live. So I started going to school. I played hooky just to be on the trap line with my dad.
So I’ve sat as a politician for our community, Loon River First Nation, for 21 years. I served as a band councillor for nine years and a chief for 12 years. Our nation basically consider ourselves a Christian community. There are limited people that were involved in the residential school system. And then when the missionaries came in — the white missionaries out of United States came to preach the gospel to our people, they basically transitioned, converted from the way they were with traditional religion. They just converted knowing that the sacrifices they didn’t have to make anymore because Jesus was crucified on our behalf. So that converted practically the whole community, all the elders, the traditional people, everybody.
So in a way, I live in a blessed community. These people did not experience, other than a few, what the residential school offered. So in saying that, as a leader, in the history of Canada, 1992, Loon River got recognized, validated for a land claim. We settled in 1999, the fastest in the history of Canadian land claims. We held a plebiscite in the community to farm out the lands for economic development. We got 100 per cent vote in support of it, the first in the history of Canada. We settled in the land where there are disposed mines and minerals, oil and gas. And in the history of land claims, Canada has never foregone disposed mines and minerals or the province has never allowed mines and minerals that were disposed to transfer to federal jurisdiction for royalties to First Nations people. We did that on December 22, 2007. We were the first in the history of Canada.
Under that transition process, we looked at basically trying to educate ourselves from the past of what’s happening. We kind of lobbied some of the previous leaders from southern bands that have come across this money. And we wanted to look at how we ensure that our youth, when they come of age to get this money, don’t run into the atrocities, having received their money, and you’re conducting a funeral a week later.
So we tried to incorporate within the system, within our election codes that unless the youth have a Grade 12 diploma in their hands and a money management course, that’s the only way that the monies are going to be issued. We couldn’t go ahead with it. We couldn’t exercise that vision because of the Human Rights Tribunal. We couldn’t do that.
So in going forward, there are talks about programs within the institutions. I believe that in order for the transition to happen that there’s some healing happening within our First Nations people. One of our options is that there are missionaries out there who visit jails, who go to do prison ministry, and then there are First Nations that have access to some of that. I believe that’s a crucial point. But I think in going forward, too, there’s talk about programs. I heard from the previous presenters that there are trades available, education available.
For youth who sometimes don’t have a criminal history and they might get involved in something that lands them in prison for a while, what is there to subsidize their education so that they don’t walk out of there basically having lost five or ten years in there? I think those are areas that need to be looked at.
I know there’s a lot of truth from the reconciliation commission that’s happening. There are some recommendations that were given in relation to First Nations issues and how to resolve them. I believe that it’s a collective front. It’s a collective front regarding every facet of how we get our people or how we help them. From the previous comments that were made, I think the untapped resource may be the First Nations basically. We’re usually good at fundraising. I don’t know why. But maybe that’s another option to help support our people that are in there.
So with that, thank you.
The Chair: Thank you both very much for your testimony this evening. I think this time we’ll start with Senator Pate with questions.
Senator Pate: Thank you very much to both of you, grand chief and Ms. McNab, for coming.
Ms. McNab, my understanding is you’ve done some reviews of the healing lodges for men as well as the one you were kikawinaw at. I’m curious as to what recommendations you’ve made, whether you’d be willing to share your evaluations with us, and what you would recommend going forward. If you were now kikawinaw of Okimaw Ohci, what would you do differently? What would you do more of? How would you improve the human rights? And how would you imbue your work with the values that you talked about?
Ms. McNab: Yes, another lady and myself along with community members, we had different community members working with us at each site. And what we were reviewing, each of the healing lodges started with a memorandum of agreement and a memorandum of understanding. The memorandum of understanding was with Indian Affairs at that time and actually the Solicitor General. And then the memorandum of agreements were between CSC and the local community. So we were reviewing both of those documents and looking at how the various articles of the memorandums had been followed through.
And we did one for each site. For Okimaw Ohci, Willow Cree, and Pê Sâkâstêw. And in all cases we found probably that both sides hadn’t lived up to their agreements.
Okimaw Ohci was the first one signed in 1995. So they’ve been in operation close to 25 years. It’s a 25-year agreement. So 22, 23 years, and they’ll be looking to renegotiate that agreement shortly.
Some of the clauses in the agreements were, for example, that CSC would hire people from the local community, and it was supposed to be 50 per cent from the local community, 100 per cent Aboriginal. So what we found, the only one that was close was Willow Cree, and that’s at Beardy’s First Nation just north of Saskatoon. They were at, I don’t know, 60, 70 per cent local people, and actually very close to 100 per cent Aboriginal.
The rest didn’t meet any of it. There were also clauses in there that the local people would be considered for management positions. Again, Willow Cree was the only one that had local people in their management positions.
Regarding the whole focus on healing, when I was at the healing lodge, we met with our boss, the assistant deputy commissioner of institutional operations at the time, and we told him that we’re marginalized. That’s how I see women’s institutions and the healing lodges. This great big system exists, and along the edges there’s a little bit of something unique going on.
So when those healing lodges were put into place, did anybody say, “Hey, let’s see what they’re doing with Indigenous offenders. Let’s send our staff there to learn. Let’s have a look, and maybe there’s a way we can do things differently in the bigger prison”? No. They pushed us off to the side and mostly ignored us as long as there was no press around, something negative, nobody talked to us. I attended meetings and I can’t even recall an occasion when I was asked my opinion on anything. So we were really on the fringe.
And this has been ongoing. When the healing lodge was first planned, the elders had a planning circle. And they said that every time they would go to the meeting, the faces around the table would change. So they did their teachings over and over and over again. So the same thing happened at the healing lodges. We would get deputy commissioners, we would get assistant deputy commissioners who knew nothing about Indigenous people. So we would start doing our teachings. We try and engage them to try, and teach them to have respect like I talked about earlier.
When these agreements come up, one of our recommendations was that every year there should be a ceremony to honour these agreements. This allows CSC to be on reserve land, on First Nations’ land. And CSC hasn’t done anything for those.
I made a number of recommendations. Our reports were sent in, and I believe they were put on the shelf. And I felt that they were balanced. An example is the communities need to also get involved in programming. They’re the ones that know the culture, the language, the elders’ involvement there. So the only place right now where a program is being delivered by a First Nation is at Okimaw Ohci, and they have the horse program. That has been in place for a number of years. But at Willow Cree and Pê Sâkâstêw, there’s not any local program that has been developed or is being delivered right now. So it’s CSC programs coming in from the outside.
Anyway, there was a number of recommendations. I won’t go through all of them, but somebody asked earlier, “Does there need to be a major overhaul of the system?” I think so, yes. I think it’s failing. I think it’s failing Indigenous people. I can say that now. I don’t know that I could have said that a few years ago. I think also it has failed the Canadian public in teaching them more about offenders and who the offenders are instead of sensationalizing the things that go wrong and the bad things that happen by talking about the good things that happen. In the early years, I was allowed to talk to the press. I talked to them regularly. And then for a number of years I wasn’t allowed to say anything. I think we suffer because of that because the Canadian public doesn’t hear any stories or the front page, terrible things.
Sorry, that is a long-winded answer.
Senator Pate: If you had the job now?
Ms. McNab: Oh, if I had the job now. Well —
Senator Pate: You probably know that one of the recommendations Louise Arbour made in 1996 was that women’s and Indigenous corrections — women’s in particular but how Indigenous women were treated — could be used as a flagship for the Correctional Service Canada, and it sounds like your assessment is that has never been embraced.
Ms. McNab: No.
Senator Pate: So what would you do now?
Ms. McNab: To me it would be very difficult to go back, even Okimaw Ohci. My experience at Bowden was very enlightening because I had not worked with men. I would say at Bowden probably at least 75 per cent or more of our time was spent on security and operations, what was happening there, what the inmates were up to, what the staff were up to. We spent a lot of time talking and working on that. Very little attention was paid to programs or to case management. So I would say I’m assuming maybe that that’s similar in most other big sites. Bowden has approximately 700 men. I think Sask Pen is the biggest in the Prairies with 900. So we were, I think, second or third.
At Okimaw Ohci when I was there, when they first started the healing lodge, there was no obvious security, no static security. And over the years, it has just been piled on more and more. And so they put a gate halfway down the hill to stop people from coming up. They put in cameras all over. Now when you go in, it looks like the same as everywhere else, like the airport. You have to walk through scanners. You have to do all this stuff. And I see that everywhere.
Now, I know that we do have issues with drug interdiction, with drugs coming into prison, but I think there’s no logic behind it.
Okimaw Ohci has 160 acres out in the middle of nowhere. They’re not going to walk through the front door if they’re bringing in drugs. They’re going to throw them in the trees somewhere and somebody’s going to find them. But we have all this evidence of security. But that’s what is a real struggle. And even now would I have a louder voice? I don’t think I would.
I’ve seen changes in senior managers, and I would say people know less and less about Indigenous people instead of more.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Ataullahjan.
Senator Ataullahjan: I was the one who asked the question about overhaul of the system because in any other field if something wasn’t working, we’d look for alternative ways to fix this system. But you must have heard the answer. It’s going to take a long, long time. And there are success stories, but, like you say, we don’t hear the success stories, neither does the public. And I think everyone’s complicit in that. We try and tell the stories, but somehow they’re getting lost and the narrative is not being heard.
What we’re hearing — I mean, maybe earlier we heard about success stories. Sometimes all the prisoners needed was to be treated with respect. Let them know they were worth something, and they turned their lives around. That’s a very simple thing to ask, yet they don’t seem to be able to get that. How do we change this mindset?
Ms. McNab: When I think of the system, I think really big picture because to me it involves the judges in the courts and that whole system. Maybe even the police before that because, from an Indigenous perspective, we have several people this last couple years that have been killed, and the people who have killed them have been let go. There have been no consequences whatsoever. So that’s challenging in our communities and correctional systems as well.
One of the things the elders at Okimaw Ohci in the beginning requested of CSC, and CSC did follow it, was they wanted staff that had no experience in CSC. And so the early staff that were there, almost all of them had no experience.
The other thing they did was four to six months of training with that first staff, and they sent them to a treatment centre. So they had an experience themselves of some healing work and treatment. Most of them talked about how profound that was, plus they had lost their freedom. Because in a treatment centre, you can’t always talk to your family. You can’t always do things you want. That never occurred again. And to me that was something really important.
What I see and what I know of staff right now, a lot of staff — well, I shouldn’t generalize, but some of the staff that I know at Okimaw Ohci and at other sites, there’s a lot of drinking. And we talk in the healing community that if you haven’t done the work yourself, you can’t take anyone else with you. So if you are not clean and sober, and you’re not doing your own healing work, how can you bring people along with you? So we have staff that have mental health issues. We have staff with addictions issues. Some haven’t done very much healing work. And there are, of course, rules and regulations around privacy and questions you can ask when you’re hiring staff and what you can request from them. So to make staff more respectful, it’s challenging.
Senator Cordy: Thank you both very much. It’s been very helpful for us, and, Ms. McNab, we will tell your friend tomorrow that you did a great job.
I’d like to go back to the comment that was made to you by the elder: remember that women need love and kindness.
We spent the afternoon at the Stan Daniels Healing Centre, and what we heard over and over from all of the men who were there was they loved the Stan Daniels place because they were treated with respect. They said that the staff treated them like they were humans, which was good to hear, but also very sad to hear at the same time that they would not be treated as humans as they said was the situation when they were in institutions, sadly enough.
How do we make sure of the ideal of showing respect and that prisoners are indeed humans? As you said Chief Noskey, they are somebody’s brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children. How do we permeate that through the system? Because nobody is going to be cured if they’re not feeling like they are human. And the example that you gave about the woman who was not able to picture herself as being successful, there would be a case of not believing that she was good and human and special.
Ms. McNab: Part of what has to change, and this is why we need to change the system, is that I was at the healing lodge — there’s a program they call new employee orientation that corrections has. I think the criteria is that you’re supposed to go within your first six months of being hired. This new orientation program is for new employees, but I didn’t go until I had five years in. It was a 10-day program, so I was there for two weeks. Some of the things they said there was — I just kept putting up my hand and saying, “No, that’s not right. No.” So they tell people, “Don’t tell them that you have family. Don’t tell them your address. Don’t tell them who you are. Don’t talk to inmates because they’ll use it against you.”
I know one place they said their first answer every time an inmate asks a question is “No.” And I won’t say where that was.
At the healing lodge, we did the exact opposite of that. I lived in town. The women knew where I lived. I’m sure the staff said, “Oh, there’s Clare’s house on the way by.” And if not, they could have gone to the local Co-op, and they would have gotten directions.
You know, I brought my children to the healing lodge for ceremonies. I’m sure some of you heard a year ago or two years ago that there was a big kerfuffle about children going to prison and how terrible that was. It’s not, by the way. Because there that was why my title was kikawinaw. The managers were kikawisinaw, aunties. The correctional staff were older sisters. We were supposed to be a family. That was the idea there. But in mainstream CSC, that’s not accepted. And they knew we did that. They called us the huggy lodge because we hugged the women. You’re not supposed to touch people. So there are always some formal and some informal rules of what you can and can’t do.
When I was at the lodge, after women would leave, some of them would get a Facebook account. So I had, I don’t know, 40, 50 women on my Facebook account that I would just keep tabs on, whatever. When I was at Bowden, somebody told the warden, and he came to my office and told me that I had to get rid of all of them, so I did. That’s not allowed. Not once did anyone ever come and ask me. I was not involved in women’s corrections anymore. I don’t know what they could have asked me for anyway. But I was there as a support, as that mother role, and it was nice to see the women and their progression. That made me feel good.
So there are all these rules around that humanness. And maybe my perception is skewed about that. I believe I have good boundaries, and to me that’s an important part. You have to have boundaries. You don’t have relationships or cross-relationships with offenders, but you can be real. You can be human. You can be respectful. And they appreciate that.
When I was at Bowden, I used to have a sharing circle one evening a week. One time we were in the cultural centre, and there was something going on. A bunch of inmates were gathering and so the staff came, and I think they locked us in the cultural centre. And the men were saying, “They won’t get you. We’ll stand in a line.” You know, so they were my protectors in there, which shows you a little bit about how they respected me for me, what I was doing on my own time.
Senator Cordy: We haven’t been to Saskatchewan or Manitoba yet or British Columbia; we’re going to go later. But we’ve heard comments from staff members from the other provinces that we’ve been in about the racist and sexist comments and behaviours that have been made to them, which is pretty scary. The staff certainly should not be treated like that. But you also start to question if they’re treating staff like that, what are they doing to the prisoners? Is that something that’s engrained in the system?
Ms. McNab: I don’t know that it’s engrained in the system, but there are not always checks and balances in place to stop it.
I hadn’t been with corrections very long, and I came to a meeting in Edmonton. The chiefs from the communities had come. It was a healing lodge meeting. And when I heard them talk about treaty — and I worked for a tribal council and some other organizations — it kind of got me all stirred up. So I was saying in the meeting, “Corrections doesn’t know and doesn’t support the healing lodges.” And I said, “It’s an old boys’ club.” At the time most of the managers were men. So here were a few of us women, and me the only Indigenous woman in the group. That was maybe a Wednesday or Thursday in Edmonton.
When I got home, I had an email demanding that I go see my boss in Saskatoon on a Monday, and I drove up there. Some of the others from the meeting were there, and we were called in. I was scolded like a school kid for, to me, speaking some truth and was bullied, I guess.
What I learned from that was that the deputy commissioner moved along, so my problem moved along. So I just had to wait it out.
I was threatened to be fired, I don’t know, probably a dozen times for various things that I did. And some was taking risks. People couldn’t understand how I would make the decisions I did and take the risks I did, but I also didn’t have 20 years of corrections training to stop me from doing that.
Senator Cordy: Thank you.
The Chair: So if you had to do it over in terms of challenging some of those structural issues, what might you do differently?
Ms. McNab: Well, one of the things I learned at Bowden when I was there was the power that the warden has. And I guess because I hadn’t been in corrections, I didn’t know that. The warden has a lot of power and can say, boom, this is how it’s going to be. And I didn’t do that. But I’m also much more a team person, so I was trying to get my management team to work alongside with me.
Other than that, in the system often I felt powerless, and I think the system is still there today. So we don’t have any say in the managers that are hired and our supervisors.
Kim mentioned the Arbour commission. She recommended that there be a deputy commissioner for women, which was put into place, but she also said that the women sites should report to the deputy commissioner for women. We asked for that when I was part of the women’s warden team because we were marginalized, because we were not really engaged in the system. And at that time it was turned down.
I’m not sure if it’s in the Arbour report, but there was also a recommendation that there be a director general for Indigenous issues, and that has never been implemented either. Anyway, I think some of these pieces that don’t fit, maybe they need to be accountable somewhere else, not to the mainstream system.
What has happened now, too, even at the women’s sites, is there has been so much exchange of staff. At Okimaw Ohci when I was there, we had no male correctional officers. Now I don’t know how many they have.
And, you know, men aren’t always aware of the impact they have on women and particularly women who have a history of abuse with men and whatnot, men in authority. I haven’t been there lately, but I’ve heard a lot of stories from EIFW, and they’ve had a lot of influence of correctional officers from other sites coming in.
I was just thinking as people were talking, we could never hire correctional managers or correctional supervisors at Okimaw Ohci back in the day. Nobody wanted to go there. We had a hard time getting staff because nobody wanted to live in Maple Creek and be out in the middle of nowhere. So I got a correctional supervisor. I had funding. So a guy came from the Regional Psychiatric Centre. Honestly, just about every day he would come in and say to me, “Clare, you’re operating on the edge of the law. They’re going to come in here and shut you down.” And I would say, “Well, we’ve been doing this and it’s working, so we’re going to keep on doing it.” So it was almost a daily fight with people to have a different approach and do some different things.
So it’s a tough challenge. I don’t know how you revolutionize the system. Maybe I’m being romantic about the past, but when I first started, Ole Ingstrup was our commissioner. To me, he had a vision and moved things along. Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe other people have a different point of view. But when he would talk, that’s what he put into place, the focus on reintegration, and people pushed that agenda. But since that time, there has not been a clear focus.
Senator Pate: Just a supplementary question, if I could.
You mentioned that you were told you were operating on the edge of the law, but, in fact, it was the edge of CSC policy, would be my recollection. Would that be your agreement? It wasn’t actually that you were doing anything unlawful. It was corrections’ policy that was interfering with the ability —
Ms. McNab: Well, what I’ve discovered a lot of times is that it’s not even policy. You ask people, “Why do you do that?” “Well, it’s policy.” Well, show me in policy where it is. People don’t even know policy. They don’t even read it. And that’s what I learned when I was in Ottawa. I read policy, which I hadn’t before. But also CSC was told a long time ago that they have too much in policy. They’re always making mistakes because there’s so much in policy, they’re going to do something wrong.
Creating Choices was a good document. I read it many times and I followed it as much as I could. That was helping me in my decision making, but very little policy came out of Creating Choices. So a lot of what I was doing, there was nothing in policy to back it up. So I was not necessarily following policy.
The Chair: Thank you both very much for being here with us this evening and giving us your testimony for our study.
Colleagues, we have two people who have joined us for the town hall. Toni Sinclair is with the Elizabeth Fry Society in Edmonton, and Travis Dugas is appearing as an individual.
Toni, we’ll have you start first.
Toni Sinclair, Elizabeth Fry Society of Edmonton, as an individual: Thank you for this opportunity. I am the Executive Director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Edmonton, but I am also a regional advocate with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. I know that you’ve heard from many of my colleagues out east, so I won’t spend too much time, but I wanted to provide a little context locally to some of what I’ve been hearing today.
One of the comments I wanted to make was around the option of section 29s. I wanted to say that when we’ve had conversations locally around the feasibility of section 29. It has basically been articulated to me from management at Edmonton Institution for women that it is not at all possible and that the local hospitals in our area are not open to it.
So then when I had a corresponding meeting with the provincial Ministry of Health here, and I met with the Deputy Minister of Health, she then said that no one has even approached her. So how do we know it’s not possible if we’ve not even started to have the conversation about it being feasible?
What they have cited to me time and time again when we pushed for it is that they tried and it didn’t work. What they’re referring to is an instance where a very mentally unwell woman was placed in a section 29 agreement in Ontario, and it didn’t work because it was not appropriately funded and supported. So they’re using one example. As we know, mental health falls on a spectrum, and they used one example on the most extreme end of the spectrum referring to that as a failure and saying, “Look, we tried; it’s not possible.”
This is deeply concerning to me and to my colleagues because Edmonton Institution for Women, I would say, right now is full of women with severe mental health challenges and illnesses, some diagnosed, some not diagnosed. They’re not getting adequate treatment right now, and, in fact, we’re seeing the evisceration of any sort of stability that they had. The conditions of confinement are so harsh that we are seeing them become more unhealthy, and we are seeing more harm done than any good. So we would really like to see them have the opportunity to seek treatment in a health care setting, one with mandates for health and well-being and not a mandate around corrections and punishment. That’s one of the comments I wanted to make.
I also want to create a bit of context around the treatment by staff as a human rights related issue and a concern. I don’t think this can or should be overlooked at all. Treatment by staff can either set women up for success who are incarcerated or it can send them down a very dangerous and slippery slope towards harm. And at EIFW, it’s probably the worst in the past several months that I’ve ever seen it in terms of the poor treatment of our most vulnerable women. The considerable lack of care and lack of kindness and lack of professionalism shown to women is deeply concerning to me. It’s things like telling the women, “Don’t bother grieving. You’re not going to win it anyway. You’re just being a nuisance.” Grieving, as we know, is one of the only remedies available to women to have their matters dealt with and to have it addressed by management and by the actual institution. It’s calling them names. It’s degrading them. It is not believing them when they mention serious health care concerns and telling them, “Just go back to bed. I’m tired of hearing from you, and I don’t care that your chest is hurting you right now.” It is the complete evisceration of any kind of adequate treatment, and it is completely unacceptable.
So it is a human rights issue because it directly affects their health and well-being and it directly affects their ability to prepare for release. It’s overlooking deadlines, and so then they’re not going up for parole on time. It is not filing papers properly for them, and so then they miss their parole eligibility deadline. So then it’s affecting their liberty. So treatment by staff cannot be ignored, and it is an extremely serious issue that we are deeply concerned about.
The third and final thing I wanted to bring up is just a little bit of context around our health care concerns out of EIFW right now and how significant and serious it is. Again, this speaks to section 29s not being possible, but the concerns we have are around — I mean, even the lack of appropriate health care. We’ve had women wait up to eight months with multiple issues and chest pain and serious concerns. We have several women in there with broken bones right now who haven’t been seen by doctors appropriately. One of the women — I’m sorry this is disturbing — but when I saw her a few weeks ago, she said, “Toni, look,” and she actually popped her bone out of her arm. Like, it is completely broken. And then when we bring it up to the warden, he says, “Oh, you mean the woman who tried to escape and fell and broke her arm?” As if to say because they didn’t like her behaviour that that somehow equated with not giving her adequate health care.
We see time and time again that same attitude that we heard earlier about: “Well, don’t come to prison, then. If you want proper health care, don’t come to prison.”
And dental care, that’s a complete joke as well. We’re seeing waits of eight, nine months for adequate dental care, and then when they see the dentist, they’re getting entire mouths full of teeth pulled. That’s their solution. And then if they come, they have gaping wounds in their mouths because of inadequate dental care all along, and then they’re given Motrin. Motrin is overprescribed for everything. Chest pain, Motrin. Broken arm, Motrin. Dental pain, Motrin. This is a serious concern in and of itself because then Motrin, as many of you likely know, can eat away at stomach linings, cause ulcers and cause additional issues.
There are patterns of behaviour, as every other speaker who I was listening to tonight mentioned, that are very true and run wildly true at EIFW, but I wanted to provide some context around some of those themes that I was hearing in particular that women are facing and are subjected to at EIFW. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Travis Dugas, as an individual: My Indian name is Night Hawk, and I’m from the Treaty 8 area. My mother is from the Big Stone Cree Nation, and my father was a Metis from the Slave Lake area. My mother went to residential school.
I would like to acknowledge Treaty 6 territory. I would like to also acknowledge Treaty 8 territory because to us they’re one and the same. If you’re going to the store with your grandma or grandpa, you’re going to meet your friends along the way.
My mother, when she could leave the reserve at 16, left. I never knew that she went to residential school until I was in university reading about it and talking about it, and I never knew why my mom was so wounded.
I grew up in Beverly, and before that I grew up in Lethbridge, Grande Prairie, Peace River. What happened was my mother met an RCMP officer, and they started going together. He got arrested and, long story short, they did an assessment. They took his badge and his gun and said, “You got a choice to make. Are you going to take the badge or the squaw?” And he said, “I’ll take the squaw.” And he became my stepdad at four years of age. And I followed him, I ran with him, I ate with him, I learned with him, I prayed with him.
For four years it was good. I had those roots as a child about education, prayer, nutrition, family, the memories of family. And when my mom and dad started to fight — my dad left the RCMP to go train in corrections. So when I went to corrections as a kid of a correction officer who was training, or a contractor who was training correctional officers, I was seeing our Native people in there and I thought it was normal. And when I went home to the reserve, I was called a white kid because I only spoke English, and my mother didn’t want us to speak Cree. I was called a white kid. And when I went to the city, I was called a Native.
And when my mom and dad got together, he started training correctional officers. I remember seeing his correction books about how to subdue prisoners, how to get through the doors, how to hit shock points. And he would do these things to us and I remember that. And he would tell me about if you get into situations with the police, you got to know your rights, that you stand your ground, and you listen to what they’re saying, but you respond to them. I remember that. He said, “And you don’t touch them and don’t let them touch you unless it’s something you’ve done.” So my dad raised me with that understanding.
My mother said always treat people with respect. That’s what she was taught from her dad. And my grandpa, my moosum, my mom’s dad, wouldn’t take treaty because he didn’t want to be told what to do. And the Natives who were told what to do, it was a learned helplessness. Best way I can put it is it’s a trained learned helplessness that the people are still suffering from, the intergenerational issues of residential school. I was one of them. I didn’t even know I was a walking wounded.
When I was going through my years seeing the parties and the fights and the violence and the abuse, I thought it was normal, and I thought that’s what holidays were about. And when the families got together, that’s what it was about, that abuse, that energy coming out, and today I look back at it.
And with my mother, I never even knew when we lived in Beverly here, and my dad’s last job was in Fort Saskatchewan, and then they split up, that we ended up on welfare. We all stopped talking. And as kids, we all stood apart. We weren’t a family anymore. And that’s where the troubles began. That’s where new friends came in. That’s the fast lifestyle. So for me, at 15, I said, “I cannot drink anymore. It doesn’t lead anywhere. I see where this leads my family.” So I went back to school. Waking up to the parties, seeing people beat up or eating my food for the lunch that I budgeted off my welfare.
And so when I went to school, I didn’t tell anybody what it was like at home because I didn’t want us to be taken away from welfare when my mother left us when her issues were too much for her. When she left us as kids, we were quiet because we didn’t want to be taken away as foster kids. And she’s in the hospital now. The home liaison says, “I know your mother is not here. You could be taken away. But you take care of yourselves and stay clean, you go to school.” I remember eating potatoes for a month because that’s all we had to eat.
Those residential school issues were our residential issues. The trauma our mother went through, as children we were raised in that trauma and it was just waiting for us.
And when I was told, “You don’t want to be Indian,” going to school as a child, so nothing Indian. Then I get all these Native awards after high school: Native male athlete of the year, male athlete of the year, Native student award. I didn’t even want to go up for the award. And they said, “Travis, if you’re Native, you must have rights.”
My mother was denied her status in the Bill C-31. “Travis, you’re Bill C-31.” I get a letter in 1990 stating I was an Indian. I was so happy to be an Indian. That’s when I met a residential school survivor and all my issues came out.
From there I worked in corrections. Here I was supposed to help these people, and I was as deeply wounded as them. I was supposed to fill out the papers and everything. I couldn’t do that job because I still didn’t deal with my childhood abuse.
When I was getting into the arts, when I went to a round dance and met the elders, went to ceremonies, that’s what changed my life. When I went to the first sweat lodge, Douglas Cardinal’s sweat lodge, not too far from here, that’s when my life began to change.
When I got my Indian name at Bowden Institution, my grandfather was a lodge keeper there, the elder, and he invited me there for the ceremony. So I went there and made my offerings and I received my Indian name. And I saw those institutions. I sweated with the black men, the white men, the Asian men in there. And they talked about what was bothering them, a lot of them childhood issues. Canada has a lot of wounded children who grew up enraged. We need to heal those ones. We need to prevent them from going — and you know what I do today? I go to reserve and tell them my story. But I don’t want to be so entrenched in my story that they get lost in their own. I want them to see light of hope so that they can figure “What did he do that I can do that will make a difference in my life?” But is society ready? Is media ready?
I got into acting. The scripts I was reading — one of the last ones I got into was for the murdered and missing Indian women. I played an inmate. At first I was supposed to be this dream warrior and then later they turned me into this inmate. And I’m in this scene where I’m sitting with a serial killer in this movie. And for me I don’t want to do the things that show how our people are because as a single father to my son, I don’t want him to see us violent in jailhouse scenes and stuff like that. So for me, I stepped back from acting.
Today, in hearing all this reconciliation, we haven’t even reconciled with ourselves in our communities. There’s not a lot of healing. There’s still a lot of abuse that’s happening, still a lot of poverty. If people had support systems before that — even speaking at the National Mental Health Conference, National Suicide Prevention Conference, hearing judges say the system is broken and sitting back and that’s it, nobody says anything else. I think it’s the responsibility of anybody who is under treaty, settlers, non-Indian settlers, we all have the responsibility.
New immigrants need to be educated to what we went through because when they look at us, “You’re the burden of society.” I hear it; I face it. For me there’s an education that’s not happening out there that needs to happen, and it’s all in our karma to do it. Why would I say this? Because it’s not about me anymore as a parent. And I say this in respect to my grandma, to my mom and my sister, because when I, as a man, was falling, and I didn’t even know how to deal with my childhood abuse issues, my sister helped me get up again. And my mother said, “Return to the way that made you strong,” and I went and made my offerings to the elders. I would not be here today if it wasn’t for the ceremonies, for the tobacco offerings and for the elder ceremonies.
They used to call me Little Boy. Six feet tall. “Why do you call me Little Boy?” Because they saw a wounded little boy. When I did a film, broke as an actor, I did a film where I played a character that gets date raped, and that brought up my childhood issues. And that’s why the elders used to call me Little Boy, because I was wounded there.
And when I did that film, I started drinking. I started having blackouts, and I drank near seven years. In that time, I saw how people treated me on the street. I saw how people treated me, even the police if I was trying to make my way home walking or trying to get a cab. I see how on both sides we’re still us and them and we’re still enemies to each other.
And, yeah, it may take generations, but it’s got to start somewhere. For me, I think of education and empowerment. These kids say, “Travis, can you help us get our kids back to school or work or both?” “Sure, let’s do that.”
My sister’s company does that and we do this work. There are so many people against us. Who’s going to give these kids a job? Who’s going to give them a chance? And they’re so beautiful, these kids. They’re like us. They just need a chance. We made mistakes. We don’t have to make bigger ones.
So working in the reserves and coming back to the city, we need to find a balance in this country for the future generations. I think that if we call ourselves Kakinada, even something I was denied my own language, to hear the elders talk and laugh but not know their stories and really understand that, but I’ll continue on because I believe there’s something good there. Kakinada means clean. People say, isn’t it “village”? Yeah, but how do you want your village? Clean. And that balance between men and women, yes, those words — if it needs to be put on paper for men and women to understand that balance, we need both, then let it be.
In our culture, grandmother was so important because she lived longer. She’s the one who said, “This one’s ready to go out hunting. This one’s ready to go gathering.” They knew their roles and responsibilities, and if they didn’t follow through, then we wouldn’t survive. I say thank you to them because without those languages and everything, even our ancestors and settlers — because I have settler blood too — they wouldn’t survive. So I need to respect.
As the elders say, if I want to know where I’m going, I need to know where I come from. And for me, even doing the video for Edmonton Police Service, on the road ahead, preventing Native youth from being involved in the jail system, speaking at the national RCMP Aboriginal Youth Conference, sharing common ground, 1990, Aboriginal policing conference, being asked by two commissioners to become a cop, being asked by the Chief of Police of Edmonton, being waved right into training, and I made my offering to the elders right at that gathering. I said, “This is what they’re asking me.” They talked the language. And then they said to me, “But you’re such a nice boy,” and they laughed and they joked. I said, “What does that mean?” “That means you’re going to help the people, but you’re going to do it from another way.” And today I say thank you to those elders, because some of them are not here today. So us, we are left with that responsibility.
And it is beyond a treaty responsibility; it is a human responsibility. And people want rights. What’s the responsibility to that? How do we show the respect in this nation that was founded by people that we say we think we know? I think more truth needs to come out. And the work in these institutions across Alberta, B.C., the territories, there needs to be a common voice because they don’t even know what’s going on in each other’s communities, and they’re all suffering from the same issues.
Tonight I’m here by accident. I come here, and I play a game called disc golf on this old dump, Beverly dump. Now it has been made a park. And I throw these plastic things, like golf, but it’s cheaper than golf. And for me it’s a moment where I can just throw a disc and watch it fly and think of nothing. Because when that disc glides just like issues do, every day we see it, we feel it, even my own family — we’re all imprisoned. If you care, you want to be a human being, and you see what’s going on in today’s world, and you think you have nothing you can contribute, that’s imprisonment. We need to free our mind. Why? Because this is where life is, in the heart.
My elders, they believed in me. So today, I believe in them because I know what they’re saying was true: love and healing and connection.
Hugs? I never used to let anyone touch me because I was hurt by both men and women. When I played sports, oh, man, I hit people just to let out that rage. And slowly, slowly, I let out that pain.
And the healing? The elders said, “See, there are healthy touchers, people you can trust. You need to make a family again even though you walked away from yours.” That’s what I did, and I thank those families today.
Today I’m rebuilding my family. My brother worked in Stan Daniels. He burned out from it. He’s in a wheelchair today. His childhood traumas and issues put him in there. He never drank alcohol. Coca-Cola for 40 years, that was his rush. That was keeping his trauma alive. And today, helping him get up again and talking to him about issues, he can only go so far. Just like Ms. McNab says, you can only go as far as the people do. Staff need to be understanding of that because then they are carrying that karma, and they don’t know why they’re carrying that karma. So they can help people with their karma, with more awareness of education on all kinds of levels.
We have information today that was prophesized. The women will lead the way. When the eagle lands on the moon, the women will lead the people from the midnight to the twilight. And the Native people will be healing. Well, we’re all native to this planet. Why aren’t we all healing?
And to make it in corrections, why don’t we help on the other side, too? Prevention. For me, when I was a child in this neighbourhood, the cops, the principal, “Oh, is that your little gang?” Already they were programming us. I didn’t even know what they were doing. But there were good cops. They would say that there are new ways you can find. I want to say thank you to those people that are pivotal in my moments of weakness. Someone believed in me and supported me, and I think that if we can do that for each other every step along the way — because the lateral violence in their communities and the reservations and people spill out from the reservations and come here, and they’re lost. I was lost. I know what it’s like. We need to have identity. We need to clear the way. We need to know how come we’re this way. How come I was hurt?
When I did that film, and when I started drinking, and everybody started walking away from me because that rage took over, I sat there and looked at that bottle. I said, “Why am I doing this to myself?” And I never dreamed when I drank. I was 15 years sober before that. Dancing traditional, travelling to Australia, Korea, dancing. And that night I dreamt. And I saw a light on a floor, and I saw seven-year-old Travis holding one-year-old Travis. And then I saw these hands coming to grab baby Travis. And I was trying to go into that circle of light. But because I wasn’t with my spirit because I was drinking, I couldn’t go in that light. I couldn’t heal myself. That’s what that dream was telling me. But when those hands came in, then I knew and I pictured, back in my life, where I blacked out, where I repressed childhood memories when I was abused as a boy. And that tainted my manhood; that tainted my humanity. But I forgave for me, and I forgave for my ancestors because I want to hear them. I want to hear these languages and songs and dances.
I’m inspired by the future generations that do not get to see this. Today my son is 10, and I’m glad he hasn’t been abused or seen any of that. That’s my award. Nobody needs to know that. That’s for me. That my dad would never hug me, never told me he loved me. Why? Because he was abused, too. And he was probably afraid just like these residential school survivors. They told me they didn’t want to pick up their grandkids because they were afraid to do what the priests did to them. And they’re telling me this, and I’m thinking, “Geez, this is so much to hold on to.” And ceremony helps me let that go so I can have my mind back to enjoy life, because I think that’s what life’s about — enjoying life.
Today that sign fell when I was walking out, and I never knew and I asked —
The Chair: Travis, I want to thank you —
Mr. Dugas: I want to say thank you to this lady because I wouldn’t have known what was going on. She paid attention, and I just for a moment felt cared for.
When I was leaving, I left my cell phone at home or else I wouldn’t have been here. I came in to use the phone. And for me I don’t think of it as an accident. Everything has a reason.
And my mom and dad, I honour them. My dad lives in Kelowna now. He’s retired and trying to get his cop pension. And my mom, residential school survivor who keeps telling me to forgive, that’s my inspiration.
So for future generations, they need to know when they go to school, what was done, what was paid for them to go to that school. And that there’s going to be jobs, not just like — and the warden, yeah, I could have only gone so far in corrections. I realize that. And so for me I walked away from there. But I think it’s good to hear 28 years later what you guys are doing here today. To me, prayers are answered and they’re quietly answered. So I just want to say thank you.
The Chair: Thank you for coming and sharing part of your story with us this evening.
Mr. Dugas: You’re welcome, and I thank you.
The Chair: I want to thank both of you for staying this evening and for sharing with us and becoming part of the witness testimony this evening.
With that, I am going to adjourn the meeting. Thank you all very much.
(The committee adjourned.)