Proceeding of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue No. 33 - Evidence - Meeting of October 4, 2018
WINNIPEG, Thursday, October 4, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 5:59 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: Senators, is it agreed that photography and filming be authorized during this meeting?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: I would like the senators to introduce themselves, and we will begin with the deputy chair.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy from Nova Scotia.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate from Ontario.
The Chair: Wanda Thomas Bernard from Nova Scotia, Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.
We are honoured to be at the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre in Winnipeg tonight to continue our study on the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system.
Earlier this week we were in Saskatchewan, where we visited the Saskatchewan Penitentiary, the Prince Albert Grand Council Spiritual Healing Lodge, the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge and the Regional Psychiatric Centre. This morning in Manitoba we visited Stony Mountain Institution.
We are pleased to be welcoming so many witnesses this evening for the public hearings. We have three panels, and each panel is large. Each panellist has been asked to bring five minutes of opening remarks, and I will set the timer. Then we will have questions from the senators, and we will end this panel just prior to 7 p.m., at which time the next panel will have the floor.
For our first panel we welcome, from the John Howard Society of Manitoba, John Hutton, Executive Director; from the Micah Mission, Reverend David Feick, Executive Director; from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon, Dianne Anderson, Coordinator of Restorative Ministry; from the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba, Ashley Pankiw, Provincial Reintegration Worker; and from the Indigenous Women’s Healing Centre, Annetta Armstrong, Executive Director.
I will ask you to speak in that order. Mr. Hutton, you have the floor first.
John Hutton, Executive Director, John Howard Society of Manitoba: I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene Peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. I thank the Standing Committee for the invitation to take part in this panel, to extend my appreciation to the other panellist, and to thank the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre for hosting us this evening.
The John Howard Society of Manitoba, one of 63 John Howard societies across Canada, advocates for change from the inside. We provide a number of services and programs to our clients who are generally incarcerated men. We also advocate on behalf of our clients, bringing their voices to events such as this one.
I would like to make an obvious but important point. Human rights do not stop at the prison door. Those who are incarcerated do not lose their human rights when they go into custody. This is set out in section 4(d) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act: “offenders retain the rights of all members of society” with this caveat: “except those that are, as a consequence of the sentence, lawfully and necessarily removed or restricted.”
The challenge is to ensure that those held in custody lose no more of their rights than is necessary to ensure their safe, just and humane incarceration. To put it another way, every person on Canadian soil, including those in our prisons, deserves to be treated with humanity and dignity and to have full access to Canada’s human rights protections. As you listen to me and the others speak this evening, I would ask that you use this point of view to filter what you see and hear.
I will be talking about the rights of those who die in custody and their right to have those deaths investigated in an open proceeding charged with making recommendations to prevent similar deaths in future.
The most common form of this is a coroner’s inquest called under provincial legislation, yet these proceedings are severely limited when the death in question occurs in a federal correctional centre. Last month saw the conclusion of the Sampson inquest at which we had standing. It examined the death of two inmates at Stony Mountain Institution in 2013. While Correctional Service Canada did participate voluntarily, they were under no compulsion to do so. As well, they were not bound by any of the recommendations as the provincial court judge hearing the matter had no jurisdiction over federal departments.
We are recommending that the Senate create legislation which would mandate a federal court judge to hold an inquest when prisoners die in the custody of Correctional Service Canada. Proceedings under federal law would require CSC participation and have the authority to make binding recommendations on federal officials. Without such a provision, federally sentenced prisoners do not have the same rights as those in provincial custody following an in-custody death.
I should note that CSC creates a board of investigation to look at the deaths of inmates in federal custody, but these reports are not made public and are usually not shared with the family of the deceased or their advocates. Sealed findings do not bring about systematic change.
I have one example from Dorchester Institution in 2015. A man died from asphyxiation after being pepper sprayed repeatedly in the prison, but his family was not even told the true cause of his death. They were told he had a heart attack. It was only after the story was reported in the media and the Correctional Investigator of Canada looked into the matter that the actual circumstances emerged. Fortunately, this did lead to a number of changes being made, but only because external bodies were looking into it.
On funding for families and advocates, it is important, if you are to have an inquest, that funding needs to be attached to help ensure that families and organizations that advocate on behalf of the incarcerated have legal counsel represent them at the proceedings. At the Sampson inquest, we were represented pro bono by lawyers from the Public Interest Law Centre, but if that had not been the case we would have been at a disadvantage because I would have had to represent the agency myself. I am not a lawyer, and therefore families and their advocates wouldn’t be getting the same kind of representation. I would ask that you consider that as well. Thank you.
The Chair: We may get to some of your other points through questions.
David Feick, Executive Director, The Micah Mission: Honourable members of the committee, fellow panellists, ladies and gentlemen, I express appreciation for the invitation and opportunity to speak to you this evening, to be here in this place and to be on Treaty 1 territory. It was quite a shock to receive the invitation and to learn that people in Ottawa actually know a bit about our small organization out in Saskatoon.
I am an ordained minister and spiritual care practitioner. I have worked for 6.5 years with the Micah Mission, now as executive director and reintegration chaplain. The Micah Mission is a volunteer-based restorative justice organization. We have three programs: a visitation program in the Regional Psychiatric Centre where our volunteers visit one on one with inmates; Circles of Support and Accountability that provide support for people who are released, specifically people who have offended sexually; and a Faith Community Reintegration Project where we seek to match released offenders with a faith community of their choice. Recently we also hired an Indigenous elder to help teach and train our volunteers who are mostly non-Indigenous to know more about the people, many of whom they will meet inside.
I know time is short, but I would like to share three brief stories of people I have met while working in this work. I won’t use their actual names. I don’t tell their stories for their sympathy but to point to needs that exist.
Joe was an inmate at one of the institutions when I met him. He is a young Indigenous man. The first thing you notice about him is that he has a huge piece of gauze taped over his nose on his face. I didn’t ask him about that but he was very quick to tell me about how, when he was in the one institution, he was housed in segregation for months on end. As he told it, he finally snapped and as a result, as a cry for help perhaps, he says he got something sharp and tried to cut off his nose. He did have a number of surgeries to reconstruct it while he was incarcerated. He took the gauze off and showed me. It looked quite well. They did a good job of it, but he still feels rather self-conscious about it and keeps the gauze on his face. It points to the fact that prison is a traumatic place and that sometimes we are using forms of punishment other than the person being in prison itself as enough punishment. We need to recognize that segregation is something we need to reconsider.
The second person I want to talk about is Lee, a transgender woman, a man who identifies as a woman. She resides in one of the prisons in Saskatchewan. She admits that recent legislation regarding transgender persons in prisons has served to reduce any derogatory comments that she hears from corrections workers, but she feels there is still some discrimination and that respect and cordiality may be missing. Some guards may like to push buttons and provoke prisoners. She feels that some of that is directed toward her because of who she is. It also points to the fact, if you can imagine somebody who identifies as a woman being in a prison full of men, that it is a difficult to imagine and that we need to look at how we work with people who are transgender or in the LGBTQ community.
The third person is Fred who is incarcerated for sexual offences against his own children. He will be released next month on statutory release. He has worked hard to come up with a good release plan. He has supportive people in place but the plan was rejected. That set him for a loop. He was quite devastated by it and was returned to his unit. He was distressed, depressed and angry. Fortunately another inmate recognized the situation and took him back to the main building and said, “This person needs some mental health care support.” They determined that he did, but when they called the mental health people it took them 2,5 hours to get there.
I don’t think that had anything to do with people’s attitudes or anything like that. It just shows there is a lack of support for that in the institution. We need more mental health support and we need to find more restorative ways of working with people both inside and outside. Thanks for the opportunity.
Dianne Anderson, Coordinator, Restorative Ministry, Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon: I have worked for the Diocese of Saskatoon in the office of prison ministry for the last 13 years. I have recently been honoured as an elder in my community of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I spend half my time at the Catholic Pastoral Centre. For the other half I work at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre. Frankly, I would rather be there than speaking right now, and I would like to thank my husband for supporting me to do this.
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights has asked us to share some of our insights on issues relating to human rights of prisoners in the correctional system. One of the greatest barriers for the human rights of inmates stems from the lack of access to programming and other opportunities for healing and self-reflection.
Programs are essential in a correctional sector if we want people to become less violent and to move the men in different trains of thought. Otherwise, they are stuck in little areas being bored. Aggression can appear and tempers can flare. The programs I speak of include anger management, parenting classes, Bedtime Stories with Dad, grief and trauma sessions, chapel for prayer and liturgy, and Returning to Spirit, to highlight one program.
Return to Spirit is a five-day program that helps Indigenous people to heal from residential school trauma. The first 2.5 days focus on their personal stories of trauma and abuse. The second half is a journey of acceptance and healing. This program really works. It helps the men to see how their past experiences, whether with their parents, grandparents or in foster care, has affected their future.
I want to share one story. There was a guy in a session. I was afraid of him. I put an emotional barrier between him and me. I feared him physically. I am not usually afraid of the guys. I know who they are and I know what they’ve done. They are like family to me. They are someone’s son, nephew, dad, uncle or mooshum. He came in with a mask of who he is: angry, scary, violent and untouchable. I helped him walk through his story in a healing way. Within two days of meeting, the mask came off and he allowed himself to be a real human. He cried and he wept. This led to a smile that brightened the room. His eyes were so bright and clear and filled with happiness. His hug was intensely joyful. It was like a hug you give to a friend you haven’t seen for a long time.
He came back and showed me a picture of his family, his wife and his kids. He said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know now I can be a good dad and husband, and good to myself and my siblings. I don’t have to come back in here.” He is an example of how we want people to leave prison: healed, not angry. That healing can’t happen when programs aren’t offered.
I get it. Most people see guys in prisons as bad people who should be punished. People say, “Prisons are too soft and too easy.” These people have never been in a prison. They have never walked a mile in the shoes of a man who grew up without a father, who grew up in poverty, who grew up raised by parents or grandparents who had been hurt by the residential school system. The men in prison are human beings who deserve a chance to become better men.
We all want the same thing. Whether you are a Conservative or a Liberal, a judge or a criminal, a victim or a visitor, we want the people in prison to come out better people, better citizens, better parents. This can’t happen when programs aren’t offered. Thank you for your time today.
Ashley Pankiw, Provincial Reintegration Worker, Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba: Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak on behalf of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba regarding the committee’s study on the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system. I look forward to providing insight to help inform your study.
I acknowledge that we are on Treaty 1 territory and that the land on which we gather is the traditional territory for the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene Peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.
As you may already know, the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba is one of 24 societies across Canada. We work with marginalized, victimized, criminalized and institutionalized women. We at the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba have two main branches of service: supervising women while they are in the community on bail and helping women transition back into the community upon their release. We do this through offering support, advocacy and programming to the women we serve.
I work with women in custody to develop individualized release plans. I meet with women currently in custody about concerns they have regarding their treatment. I advocate on behalf of my clients with various agencies, institutions and systems. Today I will address the overrepresentation of Indigenous women in correctional institutions, the use and misuse of segregation and state-perpetrated sexual assault in the form of strip searching.
First, Manitoba has the highest incarceration rate in Canada, with the number of women being held in custody increasing by 233 per cent between 2003 and 2012. In Manitoba, Indigenous people account for 15 per cent of the population, yet make up 70 per cent of the province’s incarcerated adults.
We know that women in conflict with the law have complex patterns of trauma, abuse and violence. When we examine the personal histories of remanded and sentenced women in Manitoba, we see a history of mental health and addiction issues, poverty, and simply women being punished and imprisoned for their attempts to survive colonization.
Second, I will explore how solitary confinement perpetuates a destructive cycle which negatively impacts and neglects the mental health of women in custody. The use of segregation fails to acknowledge women’s past traumatic experiences and how these without being addressed lead to negative, sometimes defiant behaviour. This negative behaviour is acknowledged and subsequently addressed, rather than the lack of mental health support offered by the institutions. Thus segregation is an avoidance strategy. The negative psychological effects caused by solitary confinement further perpetuate the negative behaviour and unreceptiveness of the individuals in custody, therefore layering trauma on top of trauma and offering no hope to break the damaging cycle.
The use of segregation fails to acknowledge the complex pattern of trauma women involved in the criminal justice system experience. Attempting to address negative behaviour without acknowledging the cause is a failure and an injustice to individuals in custody. The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies calls for an end to the use of segregation. The practice of solitary confinement is a clear breach of human rights. Correctional officers need trauma-informed training. They need to be able to recognize and adequately address signs of mental health distress and post traumatic stress disorder. Correctional officers need adequate tools to be able to recognize complex needs and refer women to mental health specialists when needed. Failure to provide adequate mental health care amounts to cruelty.
Third, when considering the personal histories of trauma, neglect, abuse and violence of the women in custody, to further subjugate them to regular strip searches is a conscious revictimization of a vulnerable population. Strip searches being conducted by correctional officers of the same sex in an effort to be less uncomfortable is a discriminatory assumption based on heteronormative values and norms. It is an example of policy and the resulting treatment of prisoners being governed by bigoted ideas about gender, sex, sexual orientation and sexual preference. When women in custody have visits with loved ones, they are always followed by a dehumanizing, sexually forceful triggering of sexual assault in the form of an invasive strip search. Many women find this a deterrent to connect with the healthy supports in the form of attending visits.
We know that healthy supports are a detrimental factor for successful reintegration back into the community. These connections are vital to the mental well-being of criminalized women during their time in custody. These connections are also vital to their successful transition back into the community. A successful transition influences recidivism rates. We know this.
In closing, I reiterate that we already know recidivism rates drop when transitional supports are in place. At the Elizabeth Fry Society, we know that women need safe and secure housing, adequate mental health services, effective addictions treatment and access to education or employment. They need positive supports and mentorships. They need to heal. They do not need incarceration.
Annetta Armstrong, Executive Director, Indigenous Women’s Healing Centre: The Indigenous Women’s Healing Centre operates three residential facilities for women, one specifically being our Eagle Women’s Lodge site currently partnered with Correctional Service Canada. We have some CRF beds, and currently we have approximately 11 ladies who have just been released from prison. It is no secret that there are Indigenous women overrepresenting the populations of prisons across Canada. It is also no secret that our Indigenous women are overclassified at a danger level they don’t deserve. It is no secret these women are getting longer sentences that they don’t deserve.
The Indigenous Women’s Healing Centre is entering into a section 81 agreement with Correctional Service Canada. Right now, if a woman is sentenced federally in Manitoba there is nowhere for them to go, except to be shipped out of province, away from their families and away from their children. It is about time this section 81 agreement is coming to Winnipeg and to the Indigenous Women’s Healing Centre. We have been waiting a long time to have the agreement approved. When organizations such as Correctional Service Canada and Canada, as well, are ready and able to facilitate section 81 and bring our women home, we don’t need to wait. I have been waiting a very long time. It’s about time to repatriate these women with their families and reunite them with their children.
We are struggling with the women who are being released to us right now. They have their stat releases and then have housing issues. Homelessness post release has been an incredible challenge for us to work with the women coming out of jails. There is a lot of Housing First programs out there, but the gap in the service is working with incarcerated women, and men actually, who are having a hard time to find housing.
I usually prefer to have a woman come and speak on behalf of the organization as an experience. I try to be their voice as much as I can. I want to talk about overclassification of the women coming to us. I’ve been reading a lot of the files and I am finding out that the women are stuck in institutions. No one in Canada wants to take them because their files are telling them that they’re too dangerous. In my experience, I’ve taken quite a few of these women to come live with us. They are quite pleasant. It is really about the basic human right of being respected and being treated with respect.
Section 81 and the best practice we are to show everyone need to be duplicated and replicated all across Canada. We need more section 81 agreements. Our Indigenous organizations need to take the lead in healing Indigenous women in the system. We need to end the retraumatization of our women. In the true spirit of reconciliation, we need to learn to heal the intergenerational trauma of residential schools. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you all very much for the evidence you have provided. Now we will go to questions.
I will actually time my colleagues as well so that we end this panel on time.
Senator Cordy: Thanks to each and every one of you for being here tonight and for the work you do.
Many people unfortunately don’t understand the needs of prisoners need. This is Canada. They should have their human rights. A number of you mentioned that in your speeches. We heard those kinds of things across the country where human rights seem to stop at the door. When we asked prisoners why they don’t present their concerns, they said, “We’re not even heard, you know” or “Even a dog gets a bone.” They are almost comparing themselves because in many cases that is the way they’ve been treated with a lack of human rights.
Mr. Hutton touched briefly on solitary confinement, and Ashley Pankiw also spoke about solitary confinement. As we travelled across the country, we heard that it’s not happening very often. Then, when we were in the prisons and spoke to prisoners, we learned that it might not be called solitary confinement but a rose by any other name is solitary confinement. Would the two of you, or anybody else, comment on solitary confinement and how we would change that? They’re saying it has changed but from what we’ve seen it has not.
Ms. Pankiw: From my experience, there is one unit they transfer inmates to where even service providers such as John Howard or Elizabeth Fry can’t access. They will request to be seen, and we aren’t given access to the prisoners to provide the services they are requesting, whether it’s for reintegration or even possibly pursuing bail.
Mr. Hutton: I prefer to use the term solitary confinement because it describes what is happening better than administrative segregation. Also, there are so many forms of segregation it is hard to keep track of punitive segregation and administrative segregation so I prefer to think of it as solitary confinement.
We are not seeing an improvement. Some 40 years ago an inmate committed suicide while he was being held in solitary confinement, and we’re still seeing inmates committing suicide while they are being held in solitary confinement.
Mental health is a big issue. As John Howard of Canada and I think Elizabeth Fry Societies of Canada have argued, along with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, we should not be using solitary confinement for anyone with a diagnosed mental health problem because of the high rates of self-harm, suicide, and just because of what it does to somebody. If you already have weak mental health, to be locked in a 10-by-7 room for 23.5 hours a day can only make your mental health worse.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Feick and Ms. Anderson spoke about trauma. You said that prison was a traumatic place and you spoke about the need for trauma sessions. Many prisoners have had extensive trauma before they’ve arrived in prison. The fact of being in prison itself is pretty traumatic when they see a tiny little prison cell.
What programs do we need? You recommended programming for it. Have you seen successful programs that are working to relate to the trauma?
Ms. Anderson: Once a month I do the Return to Spirit program and it works. The change I’ve seen in the men is amazing. It took me four months to become a trainer, but I chose not to do the circuit with them and chose to stay with the diocese so that I could offer it to the correctional centre. The trainers from Return to Spirit tried to get into the penitentiary. They said yes, but there was a catch. They had to do 12 sessions before they were paid. You can’t do that. Just doing the training was these people’s living, so they couldn’t bring it in there.
This training is important. We need to see what hurts. Once they can heal from that story, I believe they can move forward because otherwise they’re stuck in the past.
Senator Pate: You’re talking about doing that work in the provincial jail, correct?
Ms. Anderson: I do it in the provincial jail, but other trainers have offered to do it in the penitentiary.
The Chair: My supplementary question is around the trauma as well. I am wondering if any of you could speak to the availability of trauma-informed mental health professionals in the federal system.
Are any of you aware of work that is being done on trauma in the federal penitentiaries?
Mr. Feick: All that I am aware of are programs like what Dianne Anderson, the chaplains and the volunteer chaplains are bringing in. I don’t know of any psychologists or anyone who is doing that kind of programming, but there may be some I am not aware of.
Mr. Hutton: We have begun an Indigenous men’s healing program for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. We’re drawing our clients from those who are incarcerated. We’ve run three programs now. It’s an elder-led program. We’ve drawn about half of our participants from Stony Mountain Institution who come out on an escorted absence. It has been very good.
I have just a quick shout-out. I don’t know if you met anyone today when you were at Stony Mountain. They have a program called POPS, the Peer Offender Prevention Service that does amazing work. I would say it’s very professional and trauma informed, even though the practitioners are all inmates and many of them are men serving life sentences.
Senator Pate: One of the things that struck us when we were meeting with the fellows involved in POPS is that they are doing an awful lot of work that otherwise is done by paid professionals within the Correctional Service Canada: psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and correctional officers. They are not paid anything except an institutional wage. They get no credit for it. They have no prospect of employment when they are released. As Senator Cordy said, the sense of discouragement was more than palpable.
One talked about coming out and spending three weeks or three months looking for work. All he had to show was the certificates that were given, some through those programs. Basically employers laughed at him. That wouldn’t get him a job.
It strikes me that it is very positive, but would you agree that there should be an obligation on the part of corrections to actually do more than that?
I will ask my second question as well. Ms. Armstrong, most of the section 81 agreements with Correctional Service Canada in my experience are limited in terms of lower security prisoners, even though the legislative intent was to allow communities with those kinds of agreements to welcome back people, even if they were starting a life sentence.
Are you following the correctional strictures, or have you been requesting to take maximum security women as part of your contract? Perhaps you can both speak to that. Generally, I think the position of Elizabeth Fry is different from that of John Howard on segregation, which is eliminating it. We have observed in men’s prisons as well as in women’s prisons that anybody classified as maximum security is living in a state of segregation in every federal penitentiary we have visited so far.
Do you have any comments on those points?
Ms. Armstrong: That’s a very good question. Right now with our current agreement, which isn’t a section 81, we are already taking women who are classified as maximum security status. When we become a section 81 we have applied for medium. We were the ones to apply for the medium and minimum status.
From what I am learning right now, as soon as we open our doors to section 81 we will have applications from every level. To answer your question as best as I can, I won’t close my doors or turn down any woman who is interested in coming.
I am thinking that Correctional Service Canada is working with us collaboratively enough. I think they will try it for anyone who is from Manitoba. My primary goal is to start repatriating our women back to this province, whatever level they’re at.
Mr. Hutton: I would like to quickly answer part of your question in terms of everyone who is in maximum security is living in solitary confinement. If you’re not already aware of it — and I am sure Senator Pate is — it is a practice and not a law that everyone starting a life sentence has to go for two years to maximum security. There is no security rationale for that. You could assess somebody as being a very low risk, but they still have to spend two years in solitary confinement at the start.
I wonder if that is something that the Senate could look at. It is a policy that was put in place under the previous government, but it was not as a result of any law or legislation. That might be a place to go. I will acknowledge that the Elizabeth Fry Society is probably further than the John Howard Society in terms of solitary confinement, but the issue of the mandatory maximum security classification is certainly a concern to us as well.
Senator Pate: Can you comment on the POPS?
Mr. Hutton: I want to be careful. My understanding is that POPS was kind of created locally, internally, and almost on the side of the desk, by a very good coordinator out there. I don’t think it’s officially recognized or nationally recognized or being replicated. Perhaps part of the success would be to recognize it and to maybe see it replicated in other places.
My understanding is that it’s sort of not quite under the table. It’s just off to the side of the table. I don’t understand the politics. The last time I brought somebody in to see the excellent work they were doing, they were afraid I was critical of their work. I haven’t actually been in to see the POPS since.
The Chair: Was there another part to your question, senator?
Senator Pate: No. That answered my question.
The Chair: Mr. Feick, you mentioned trans prisoners. We have asked questions across the country in the institutions we’ve visited about the experience of trans prisoners. What we’ve been told is that there aren’t issues, but we’ve detected in language some transphobia and just general ignorance about trans realities.
I am wondering if you have any recommendations that would help improve the experiences of transgender prisoners.
Mr. Feick: I have been looking for people who can at least help in counselling, giving direction or just helping trans people in the institutions. I was able to talk to someone with John Howard in Saskatoon. I think they are attempting to do some of that. There has to be some better way of housing them in a different unit or something where they can be on their own and not have to worry about looking over their shoulders and somebody doing something untoward to them, whatever it might be.
Yes, we just need to look at how. As somebody else said, they don’t need to be there in the first place, but, yes, some of them have committed some crimes they need incarceration for.
The Chair: Does anyone else want to comment on that?
Ms. Armstrong: I would like to say that we’ve established with Correctional Service Canada that men identifying as women are more than welcome to come live with us.
Senator Cordy: Ms. Pankiw, you spoke about strip searching. In every women’s institution that we went to we heard from women about the humiliation, the degradation and the trauma, over and over and over again. They are going out to work five days a week and they’re being strip searched five times a week. If they’re going out with a volunteer or a staff member and are coming back, they’re being strip searched.
The institutions will say that they have to do it for security reasons. Is there a way around it? Listening to what they are going through was heartbreaking. Did you make any recommendations, or did you speak to Correctional Service Canada?
Ms. Pankiw: I would have to agree that it is revictimizing. I honestly don’t see a way around it. I don’t really believe that it increases the amount of contraband found. I have never heard of contraband being found in the institutions I work in from a strip search. I believe it’s more of a practice that has just stuck with us through time.
Senator Cordy: You don’t think that there is any evidence or statistics to show that it has to be done?
Ms. Pankiw: Not in my personal experience from working with institutions.
Senator Cordy: Does Correctional Service Canada give out statistics like the number of strip searches and the amount of contraband that is found? We didn’t see any of that, I don’t think, did we? Are there any statistics?
Ms. Pankiw: I am not entirely sure.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Feick, you spoke about the lack of mental health supports. We heard that many institutions have mental health support between the hours of 9 and 5, so if it happens before or after that time you will have to wait.
Do you or anybody have any recommendations about mental health supports within the institutions?
Mr. Feick: When I first started with the Person to Person program and meeting people at the Regional Psychiatric Centre, I heard them say, “This is the best prison there is.” I think it’s because there is a lot more mental health support there. It is a mental health hospital as well as a prison. We need more of that.
Senator Cordy: Where was this?
Mr. Feick: That’s the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon.
Senator Cordy: Yes.
Mr. Feick: I don’t know what you heard or what you encountered when you visited there, but I think that is the direction we should be going. There are people on staff there all around the clock.
Senator Cordy: What struck me when I went there for the very first time was: What are these people doing in a prison setting?
Mr. Feick: Yes, for sure.
Senator Pate: Picking up on both of those questions, I am interested in what you were saying. As Senator Cordy pointed out, when we were there we heard of examples where security always trumps health, and in particular mental health at RPC, because it is dually designated a psychiatric hospital under provincial legislation and a federal penitentiary. However, if push comes to shove, security trumps therapy.
I am curious as to why. Is it because you presume that you would need to have someone in a federal penitentiary? Section 29 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act actually allows corrections to transfer people out of prisons into appropriate settings, including forensic mental health settings. Would you think that is a better option, if that were available?
Mr. Feick: Yes, I would say so. Like the senator said, it is not the place for people with a lot of mental health issues. We need more facilities within the health district, rather than in the prison system.
Yes, it’s very much an issue that the majority of people in prison have mental health issues with which they need some significant help. We need to find ways to deal with that.
Senator Pate: Ms. Pankiw, I don’t know if you are aware, but in 2005 all deputy wardens in the prisons for women in the country came together and actually suggested to national headquarters of the Correctional Service Canada that they eliminate the use of routine strip searches for women. Part of the issue was that in fact they did not find contraband. Occasionally they might find a cigarette or money or jewellery but in fact it wasn’t something that was posing a risk.
Because of the history of abuse, 91 per cent of Indigenous women and 87 per cent of women overall had experienced physical and/or sexual abuse. It was actually retraumatizing. They were actually seeing self-harming behaviours or sometimes assaultive behaviours in response to that.
Is that information still widely available, or is it something that people even know about in your experience within the system?
Ms. Pankiw: Within the system I would say it’s not widely available unless you have a personal interest to go and retrieve such statistics.
Senator Pate: Has the report the deputy wardens produced ever been shared with you?
Ms. Pankiw: Not that I can recall.
Senator Pate: That might be something we want to ask for, because I think we heard it as well from Amanda George who was visiting from Australia.
The Chair: Ms. Pankiw, you mentioned the needs of prisoners after release including housing, employment, education and so on. I think Ms. Armstrong spoke about that as well.
Are there any particular recommendations that you would make for practices or programs that would be beneficial before release to help prepare for the transition? Are there programs that could be offered in the institutions that would help with that transition?
Ms. Pankiw: I would say first and foremost there would need to be some sort of housing program in one form or another, primarily transitional housing, because most subsidized housing in Winnipeg has tremendous wait times.
Again, you need proof of income. You need your income taxes done. You need all your ducks in a row. You need all your IDs, and that takes time. A lot of the women we work with need transitional housing. They need a few months to tide themselves over to organize their next move. That could very easily start while they are in the institution organizing what is their next step and where to move forward.
Ms. Armstrong: I will agree with that and just add that getting their IDs and getting their EIA confirmed prior to release is essential so that being released into homelessness doesn’t happen and they are set up in the system to start having the ability to pay rent. Having a housing support worker or someone like that to start working with them and connecting with them while they are incarcerated is essential so that on the day of release they have a place to go. They would have a support worker who could help guide them through the intimidating process of change to living on their own and everything that involves.
Ms. Pankiw: There needs to be more of a connection between employment and income assistance while they are in the institution. One of the barriers that women I work with face is getting their IDs without having Employment Income Assistance to cover the cost of it. We can’t move forward until they are released and are out in the community where they complete an intake. They have to go down to the office to get on welfare and to get their applications for identification even processed.
The Chair: Thank you all very much for your time this evening and for giving us the benefit of your perspectives on these important issues.
For our second panel this evening we are pleased to welcome, from the Manitoba Metis Federation, Minister of Justice Julyda Lagimodiere; from the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, Chantell Barker, Community Justice Development Coordinator; and, as an individual, Ryan Beardy, a former prisoner, political science student at the University of Winnipeg and member of the Board of Directors of the John Howard Society of Manitoba.
We think Mr. Dubois is on his way, but we will start with the three of you. Because this panel is a bit smaller, each of you will have seven minutes. I will use the timer because we are on such a tight time frame.
We will have the minister start.
Julyda Lagimodiere, Minister of Justice, Manitoba Metis Federation: The Manitoba Metis Federation would like to thank the Senate committee for the invitation to be a part of the panel discussion regarding the human rights of Indigenous offenders within the correctional system.
The Manitoba Metis Federation is the official democratic and self-governing political representative for the Métis Nation’s Manitoba Metis community. The MMF promotes the political, social, cultural and economic interests of the Metis in Manitoba. In addition, the MMF delivers programs and services to our community, including child and family services, justice, housing, youth, education, human resources, economic development and natural resources.
The Metis Justice Institute was established in July 2003 and is assigned the task of focusing responsibility and authority for justice issues within the Manitoba Metis Federation.
Our mandate is to develop and maintain a full range of justice services and programs that meet the expectations of the Metis community in Manitoba. The MJI is guided by the MMF cabinet to establish working relationships and partnerships that provide support and advocacy to Metis citizens in need of justice support.
Since our inception the MJI has continued to lobby Manitoba and Canada to work toward the development of Metis justice programs and services. The MJI utilizes information obtained through Metis community consultations to focus efforts to develop Metis community justice programming that will support Metis citizens involved in the criminal justice system.
In terms of our background, in 2004, a joint project was conducted by Correctional Service Canada, Manitoba Metis Federation and Métis National Council to examine the needs of Metis offenders in Manitoba. Due to the overrepresentation of Indigenous people, Metis offender research was undertaken to see if Metis offenders have needs that are unique, compared to those of other Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous offenders. This was deemed necessary, as a majority of programs and services for Indigenous offenders typically reflects a pan-Indigenous approach that is not encompassing to meet the needs of Metis offenders.
Some highlights from the information obtained from this study included a profile of Metis offenders. A large proportion of Metis offenders were under the age of 35 and single. Compared to non-Indigenous, Metis offenders were much more likely to be unemployed and lack a high school diploma. Metis offenders were considered to have a high reintegration potential at intake. A majority of Metis offenders spent their childhood in urban centres and were ultimately arrested in urban locations. Metis offenders have experienced or witnessed violence in their homes and communities. Metis offenders indicated that they had family members involved in crime. A majority of Metis offenders do not speak an Indigenous language and did not identify with First Nations culture. This difference and the environmental and cultural backgrounds point to the need for interventions adapted to the experiences of Metis offenders.
The needs of Metis offenders revealed that upon intake Metis offenders demonstrated need for programming in several criminogenic domains, including personal and emotional states, substance abuse, employability and separation from criminal associates. Although Metis offenders who participated in programming within the institution found it to be useful, it was not clear whether the programs met the cultural or spiritual needs of Metis offenders. Although the programs target criminogenic needs identified at intake, Metis offenders may not fully respond to the programs unless they are given in an appropriate cultural context and in a way that is meaningful to the lives of Metis offenders. When asked to identify specific needs, Metis offenders indicated personal concerns that they had with employment, anger, finances, substance abuse and self-esteem. Metis offenders indicated that their needs were different from those of other Indigenous and non-Indigenous offenders.
In response to this study, the MMF developed the Justice Support Program to work with Metis offenders reintegrating back into the community upon release from correctional institutions. Our program and services available for programming are supported fully by the MMF. No outside funding is provided to assist Metis offenders. Support is provided based on the needs identified by our citizens.
The Justice Support Program assists individuals to overcome barriers and address basic needs that ultimately support individuals to become employment or education ready. Upon release from incarceration, the Metis Justice Institute and the Justice Support Program undertake a client intake with the individual to develop a client action plan. This action plan allows individuals to identify the types of support they require.
The MMF provides support to help them find resources that assist them with Legal Aid, Aboriginal court workers, record suspensions, victims’ rights, et cetera. In education, the MMF provides support to access the Louis Riel Institute that assists with educational upgrading, grade 12 diploma and vocation college courses. In terms of employment and training, Metis offenders have identified that support for employment and training is required for successful reintegration. The MMF provides support to access Metis employment and training recruitment that assists with job searching and employability.
Metis offenders have identified that accommodations is one area of support required for successful reintegration. The MMF provides support to find resources within Manitoba to assist with emergency housing access and assistance to find suitable long-term housing.
Metis offenders have identified that financial assistance is one area of support required for successful reintegration. The MMF provides advocacy and support to assist with applications and requirements for employment and income assistance.
The MMF provides support to access programming in the areas of domestic violence, anger management and life skills. Resources are also sought to assist clients with addictions and mental health programming. In personal documentation, the MMF provides supports to access required documentation for clients through vital statistics, Manitoba public insurance, et cetera. I tried to say all that in one breath.
The Chair: I am sorry to have to be the person to interrupt you. Hopefully you will have an opportunity through the senators’ questions to share the additional information that you have.
Chantell Barker, Community Justice Development Coordinator, Southern Chiefs’ Organization: When I heard five minutes I told Ryan Beardy that it takes me five minutes just to say my name in Cree, but I am putting my timer on now. My spirit name is Getchi Nodin Ikwe, which means Strong Wind Woman. I am from the Deer Clan of the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation.
Just so that you can be aware, I didn’t come here thinking we could dress casually. The sweater or hoodie I am wearing is actually called Protecting Our Women. It is a program that we run at Southern Chiefs’ Organization in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous women. I wanted to wear it in honour of them because not only am I a worker at SCO, but I am also a family member of a woman who was murdered in 1999. This kind of catalyzed my career into working with domestic violence and getting into the justice system. That is why I got involved.
Just some contextual background on myself. When I do presentations I try to do them holistically by talking about where I come from, who I am and where I am going. Prior to Southern Chiefs’ Organization, I worked with Manitoba Justice for 10 years in the capacity of a probation officer and program development. I worked up north in The Pas where my average caseload was around 100, which was 95 per cent Indigenous. I was also involved in writing probably many thousands of Gladue reports, as well as pre-sentence reports, and I did thousands of risk assessments. The risk assessments are used on everybody, but what I found is that they criminalize Indigenous people.
I did a risk assessment on myself just to see my risk level. Even though I have never been involved in the system, I am a medium risk to commit a crime. That is because of factors on the assessment that are out of my control. In Indigenous country it asks you questions. Do you have criminal peers? Yes. Have you ever had an addiction, ever? Yes. Are you involved in any leisure recreation? Up north there wasn’t really much. So, no, I am not involved. Do you have any family that is involved in the system? Yes.
When you look at those factors and those questions they do criminalize our people. That assessment is used in pre-sentence reports which then determine whether they are to get provincial time, federal time, how much time, and the Gladue reports. I was part of the committee in charge of revamping the Gladue reports because, if you recall, a few years ago Manitoba was getting a lot of negative attention for the poor Gladue reports that were being written. I sat on the committee revamping them. They weren’t exactly how I wanted them done, but I do know that they do make an impact when they are written properly.
I was just sharing with Ryan Beardy today that I wrote a Gladue report for a guy who had stabbed a cab driver. I found out that he had FASD. I went right back into his community, his grandparents going to residential school and his mother who suffered from addiction issues because of that disconnect of her parents having parenting issues, right down to his having FASD and seeing how that was impacted by relocation. The Crown was asking for 11.5 years, but because of the Gladue report and how much effort I put into it he ended up getting 4.5 years.
When written properly by someone well trained, Gladue reports are effective. When I would write my Gladue reports, my recommendations in the pre-sentence report would be based on the Gladue factors. Being in the justice system, not so much in the north but in the south, I have noticed that many of our Gladue reports are written by non-Indigenous people who have no idea or have little cross-cultural training on colonization and the impacts of residential school. Sometimes they end up causing more harm and damage than good.
With that, I also criss-crossed Manitoba. I developed the Culturally Appropriate Program. It is Manitoba Justice’s only recognized cultural program. It is evaluated and evidence based. In the last 10 years, I probably put about 5,000 First Nations people through the program on probation. As well, I went across Manitoba to 45 First Nations communities. This is what I really want to talk about. I looked at the panel list and I thought who is going to be talking, what is the gap, and how does the Southern Chiefs’ Organization fit into the picture?”
I will talk about the impact when somebody leaves the community on the community that is left behind. For example, prior to contact we had our own justice systems in place based on wellness, harmony and bringing people back into balance. Elders would state that they were acting out because they were not balanced. They would work together as a community to bring them back to balance. They would use ceremonies, sharing circles, healing circles and land-based teachings by taking them out to the land. Then, with colonization, they dismantled our traditional justice systems based on healing and replaced them with a model based on punishment. Now those systems are broken down and we have been introduced to a new system that is foreign to us. With the impacts of colonization, residential schools and intergenerational impacts, we see the current conditions of today. What we have in our communities are symptoms of colonization, residential schools, and in particular lateral violence.
When persons are taken out of the community because they are getting sentenced to jail, they are not the only ones being punished. The families left behind are also being punished. A mother who might have depended on her partner to help her raise her kids no longer has that support and falls into a life of poverty. If she has no coping skills, there are no resources in our First Nations communities to help her. Even for victims of crime there are no resources in our communities.
I am proud to say that we got funding this year to create a community healing program that is specifically for victims of crime. We at SCO are trying to look at the gaps and trying to fill those gaps in. As a result, there are no supports or resources for the families of the offenders and the victims. When we’re dealing with a community that is still trying to recover from the impacts of residential school and colonization, it’s kind of like, as Ryan Beardy says, “Crabs in the bucket.” Instead of fighting against the colonizer, we start fighting among ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong. Even though we may fight among ourselves and there are symptoms of lateral violence, at the same time in our blood memory we have that internal belief of harmony and coming together in unity. When something bad happens in the community, the community comes together and supports the individual. When there is a death in the family, the whole community shuts down to honour that person. When they have a feast everybody still brings food, which is a traditional part of who we were. Even though we have the negatives, we still have the strong positive cultural aspects in our communities.
How does that reflect on corrections? If there is no education and awareness regarding the individual and understanding why people did what they did, then it becomes a stigma. Many times, then, they are frowned upon by the community. When they come back to the community it’s very hard for them to restart. Housing is a huge issue on the reserves. If they are coming back from corrections, where are they going to live? There is poverty. There is no employment. Where are they going to get jobs? Then they have all of these probation orders and parole orders saying that they have to find a house and they have to find a job. They have to do this. They don’t go back to their communities that don’t have those resources. They go into the cities or into urban areas where they could find those resources.
We at Southern Chiefs’ Organization are working on a mandate and a direction to create an Indigenous justice commission. We feel we have to take on the responsibility and start to fix ourselves. We don’t want to go to the government and say, “Do something about it.” We need to do it ourselves because we’re the ones who have a vested interest.
We are working on issues like that but we also need allies. We need government support. We need funding. In particular, a vision we would love to have is community-based healing centres for anybody who involved in the system and going back to our traditional ways of where we took them on the land. They got their teachings. There was ceremony. The elders were there. Not only would it help to heal the person, but it would also provide jobs in the community. Then the people who would be working there would have an investment because they are the ones who have to live the community, versus sending them to corrections and once they leave those cell doors never seeing them again. If we have a community solution based on our culture and our history, I feel it would be more effective than sending someone away who won’t have access to any resources and when coming back to the community will have to start over again.
The Chair: Ms. Barker, I am sorry to have to interrupt you. I think through questions we’ll get to hear more about the vision of your organization. If you have a written submission that you want to leave with us, you can do that. Thank you.
Ryan Steven Beardy, Former Inmate; Political Science Student, University of Winnipeg; Board of Directors, John Howard Society, as an individual: I am nervous to be here today. I acknowledge that we are on Treaty 1 territory, the original lands of the Anishinaabeg people, and thank Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard for not only inviting me but for attending my last presentation in Ottawa and having the insight to include me in this discussion today.
I will speak to three points. First, I will start with my personal account and how it is relevant to this conversation. As well, when I was in Ottawa I presented 10 calls to action. I will speak to four of those here as they relate to human rights abuses in relation to international law and the disproportion that exists in the system. As well, I will advocate for the implementation of restorative justice in our country.
I mention my last presentation because it has implications here. I spoke to the Liberal Senate Open Caucus in Ottawa last week of injustices and specific human rights offences regarding our prisoners. I presented 10 personal recommendations for justice reform and reframed them as calls to action to the senators. I would also like to submit these to this committee as they will be utilized in your study. I feel strongly that these are answers to some of the problems we face in Canada.
Allow me to give a summary of my background. I am from Lake St. Martin First Nation. I spent most of my youth in and out of detention centres since 12 or 13 years old. I sort of grew up there. I formed my identity in those centres. That disconnect affected me as I was institutionalized at a very young age. Going into adulthood, the last 20 years of my entire life were spent either running from the law or being involved in the criminal justice system. I spent several years behind bars. That doesn’t include my lost youth, actually, which would put that number higher. I don’t want to add any more notches to a tattoo that I have on my chest. That is a reality that I defeated. I changed that mentality. Actually, I changed my whole life around.
I was released from prison 18 months ago and spent one week on parole. I applied and was accepted to the University of Winnipeg where I am studying political science and conflict resolution. I am chasing my dreams, essentially. I have my kids back in my life. I healed the rift that I created. I can actually feel it in their embraces now. There is a difference. I got us a place and I co-parent them. I get them tomorrow, actually. I am very excited. I go to school from that place. I work at the university as a student mentor now. I am also a freelance journalist. I advocate for equal rights in three publications, so far, anyway.
I am also very involved in the community. I am president of the Aboriginal Student Council at the University of Winnipeg. I am on the boards of both the Canadian Federation of Students — we have an AGM next month — and the University of Winnipeg Student Association. I am also on the board of directors of the John Howard Society of Manitoba, as was introduced. I guess you could say I came a long way.
How did I do this? I didn’t quite address in my notes, but when I spoke to the senators at the Liberal Senate Open Caucus I told them that I found change in restorative justice practices. To me, it wasn’t restorative justice practices. It was my tradition. It was a journey that I was on. It was a journey of not wanting to victimize anymore, of wanting better for myself and of escaping that cycle. It is a cycle that is perpetuated in policy.
I look back to this panel back in December 2016 when the Honourable Jim Munson, among others, motioned to the senators that this committee investigate all this. I was in prison. I was witnessing these offences first hand. I was actually very verbal about the disproportion, but I didn’t have a good audience in there. A bunch of inmates would tell me to, “Shut up, you won’t make a difference.” I beg to differ.
I mention this because I want to encourage you that you are headed in the right direction. I read some of the first-hand accounts of prisoners, and I implore you to believe them. I implore you. I know the next report will speak to restorative justice. I feel it’s imperative, absolutely vital, that you take my personal account of how restorative justice practices changed my life. It is causing a brighter future not only for me but for the community and society as a whole. My instance can be replicated in Canada if Canada implements restorative justice.
Now I will speak to my 10 calls to action. Although each is very important, I will only speak to the top four on the list.
First is the end of solitary confinement. I am sure in such a long study you have seen a lot of statistics. I would like to tell you that I saw it first hand. The culture of fear of solitary confinement exists among inmates because we understand that once you’re exposed you’re different. I saw the difference first hand where inmates would be plucked from general population, thrown into solitary confinement and when they came back were not the same.
You speak of disproportionate numbers of health and mental health problems. It is contributing and it is undiagnosed. I was talking to Senator Kim Pate before this presentation about how I walked down the hallways of these ranges and all I see is hopelessness and mental health issues. We obviously know it is unconstitutional. We know it shouldn’t exist in Canada. I want to see amendments to section 31 of the CCRA. Essentially it is important right now to stem this problem, to stem the disproportion that exists in the system before we end solitary confinement. We need to act now. We need to fully adhere to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. It is a guideline set out internationally. Canada is a founding member. We need to adhere to those rules.
The final point is on the decarceration of Indigenous prisoners. Indigenous women are among the most vulnerable in this country. They are exposed to solitary confinement at disproportionate rates. It is statistically there and it is alarming. The decarceration of Indigenous prisoners is important. We have a system that is not necessarily designed for what we’re using it. It is a punitive measure. It seems like the system is going scarily toward punishment. I saw that first hand when I was in there.
You have to understand that I spent my whole life behind bars and saw these trends. The numbers of whites and Indigenous prisoners are skewed and their sentences actually get longer. An assault 10 or 15 years ago would net you two years; today it nets you five if you are brown. That happens. That is an injustice in itself. It is contributing to the being of my people. That was all I saw in there before I was released.
There is a lot more that I would like to speak to, but I am afraid I am running short on time. I implore you all to ask me any questions that you have. This is absolutely a huge endeavour you guys are undertaking, and I would like to thank you for your time. Meegwetch.
The Chair: Thank you all very much. If you have written copies of notes you would like to leave with us, we would welcome them. We will now go to questions.
Senator Pate: I thank all of you for your work and for being here. These are important times.
I want to ask all of you to comment on something that you raised, Mr. Beardy, around the UN Minimum Standard Rules. For women, there are also the Bangkok Rules which add a component to the minimum standard rules. Too often they are treated as aspirational, that is it is something we aspire to instead of recognizing that the UN has come up with a standard that is supposed to fit for the entire world. Many of us think that they should actually be the floor and not the ceiling, that we shouldn’t be aspiring to them, that they should be the basis and that we should be aspiring to far greater. I am wondering if any of you have any comments about that.
You mentioned decarceration, Mr. Beardy. There are provisions in the legislation right now that allow for decarceration. You don’t have to make any legislative changes. Section 29 of the CCRA says that for health or mental health reasons people can be taken out into health facilities.
Section 81 says that individuals who are serving their sentences can be taken into Indigenous communities, but there is also subsection 2 that can apply to non-Indigenous prisoners too. Section 84 says that people who Indigenous communities want, or again non-Indigenous, can be welcomed into the community for parole purposes or conditional release.
It strikes me that much of that is being controlled right now by the way corrections policy is implemented, but I would like to hear all of you talk a bit more about what could be possible if you actually provided the resources for communities to do what they would want to do and would see as useful to address the needs of those who have been victimized, but also to ensure what those who have been accused and convicted could be doing differently in their home communities.
There are a number of questions. I apologize, Madam Chair, that I’ve crammed them all in and then lobbed it over to our witnesses.
Mr. Beardy: Could you reiterate the first question?
Senator Pate: I believe the first one was on the UN Minimum Standard Rules.
Mr. Beardy: Yes, we would be aspiring to something that should very well be the humanity of the population. Somewhere along the line the justice system has lost that humanity. We have to climb further than we have. We have to keep an open mind that there exists some really dark things that happen right now.
When you look back at the historical injustices and how Canada is apologizing for things, I fear that unless we act now we’re going to be apologizing for this.
Ms. Barker: I would like to add for us the barriers that government has put up. For example, last year we submitted a proposal. We had a partnership with a trades program, as well as with Stony Mountain. We did a proposal to create a trades program for inmates that had family group and community group conferencing to help them reintegrate into the community as a restorative approach.
Stony Mountain has all of the big buildings where they do construction. We also discussed with Red River to create a trades program for the inmates so that they could come back to their communities and give back with the trade that they learned. As you know, in our First Nations communities we lack tradespeople, carpenters, electricians and plumbers. As a way of the communities welcoming them back, we made a proposal where they could gain a trade and then come back and give back to their communities.
Unfortunately, that proposal was denied, but it is an example of how we try to come up with initiatives and creative ideas but get stopped at some point in the government process.
The Chair: Could you tell us whom that proposal was submitted to?
Ms. Barker: I am trying to think. There are so many. There is crime prevention.
The Chair: Was it the federal government?
Ms. Barker: Federal, yes.
Senator Pate: I have a supplementary question. Would it be possible to send us a copy of that proposal?
Ms. Barker: Yes, absolutely.
The Chair: We’ve heard a lot about the lack of trades training in federal institutions, so it would be really helpful to see what you were proposing.
Mr. Beardy: I recognize section 84 and section 81. I recognize those. I was actually released on section 81, I believe. One of the barriers that we have is very individual decisions by people that harbour racist views. I saw that. There is a kind of culture in federal corrections and provincial corrections.
One of the honest questions is: Who is your PO? That should not be the issue. That should not be the guiding factor of when you’re going to be out, are resources going to be available, or are you going to be given a chance. I was given a chance, and look how much I thrived. We need to give them a chance.
The Chair: Does anyone else want to respond to Senator Pate’s questions?
Ms. Lagimodiere: I am not sure that I clearly understand the question, but I am going to try to give an answer anyhow. Rather than have a base, I tried to express a concern in one breath. As I mentioned, when you have a pan-Aboriginal approach you miss specific needs. When we did the research I know our Metis offenders identified that their cultural needs were not met.
Trying to make something that will fit everyone will always be problematic. Certainly it was identified through our research that was done years ago, but it hasn’t changed. I believe it to be the same.
We do not go into the federal penitentiaries, so I can’t say that I have worked directly with any of the offenders. We work with them when they’ve been released. Tat’s problematic. It’s almost like it becomes a crisis situation because you’re trying to deal immediately with housing, income assistance, and trying to get documentation, photo identification and so forth.
It is also problematic due to funding. I think that is the same as my colleagues here are saying in terms of funding being an issue. I can’t tell you specifically which ones we applied for, as my office does that, but I am aware that we’re denied funding applications. Many times we are unable to meet the needs of our people because of that. That is wrong.
I firmly believe we know what is best for our people. We can speak the language. I don’t mean the English language or an Indigenous language. We can speak because we know what people have experienced, and we understand it in a way that you have to have lived it.
I ask permission, if I may, to share a personal story. First of all, being Catholic I was always too scared to break the law. I’ll put that aside, but I had a niece in federal penitentiary. She had the greatest of supports while she was in there. She had an elder supporting her. She did really well. Maybe she was a model person in there. She got out, and today she is on the streets. She is back into the sex trade. She is back into addictions. She couldn’t bring with her those supports that were provided in the penitentiary. I went to visit her in Edmonton when she was in there. She needed them at home but they weren’t provided. My colleague here has talked about that. That’s exactly true.
The trust that we can provide has to come back, but we need the means to do it. It’s not enough to tell me that I can enter the race. If I have a broken leg, how can I properly compete in that race?
I have also had a grandson murdered. With all my good intentions to provide him with the best of care, identity was an issue or who he was as a person. I need to impress upon you that it is important we are trusted to know what is best. We know what is needed. I am not saying we want to do it by ourselves, but we need to be part of that plan in terms of reintegration and support.
Senator Pate: That revealed how unclear my question was, so I apologize for that.
The sections I am talking about allow for communities to apply to the Minister of Public Safety to get resources to integrate people individually. It is a general category that allows for individualized approaches. Right now it costs for men, according to the last number that we saw, are about $120,000 or $130,000 a year. For women, they are about $200,000. For Indigenous women who are classified as maximum security, it is over half a million and more.
Let me be more clear. What kinds of things could you set up in your community for your niece with half of the money that it costs to keep her in custody if those resources were available instead of just in prison? Is that more clear? I hope that is more clear.
Ms. Lagimodiere: As you know, we offer our own justice support program within the MMF. The MMF is self-government, so we have many services. If we could provide further programs and services to our citizens, I believe our success rate would be far greater.
I unfortunately don’t have the statistics to say. After being imprisoned, those people come to us voluntarily. I can’t say for sure that 98 per cent or 50 per cent of the 100 who came succeeded. I can’t say that because once we assisted the usually they’re on their own.
I don’t think I am answering your question.
Senator Pate: No, it is helping me be clearer about what I am trying to ask. If you went to the prison and you saw your niece when she was there, and if you were able to work with her to offer something different, what could you do? What housing could you provide? What supports could you provide with, say, half of that money or $100,000 per year?
Ms. Lagimodiere: The first thing I would have done is made sure that she had appropriate counselling for her addictions. She wanted to go to school. I think she still wants to go to school, but I don’t know that she’s capable now. She needed to have a career. She needed to be employable. She would hold jobs but they weren’t very long-term careers. She also needed housing.
Most importantly, she needed acceptance. She needed to know that somebody in the community cared besides the criminals she was involved with that were into drugs and in the sex trade. She needed to know that we cared.
It’s not that we didn’t care, but when you live in poverty it is Maslow’s theory. You try to take care of your basic needs first. I don’t think we were able to take care of our basic needs, and she couldn’t take care of her basic needs. Those needed to be taken care of. She needed to have housing. She needed to have an education. She needed to have a job. She needed to feel like she was a healthy part of the community. She was part of a community, but not the part I wanted her involved in.
Mr. Beardy: If I could interject, I know I am not in the field but I think she is asking if we can develop frameworks and programs that implement perhaps restorative justice to approach alternatives to incarceration. Sections 81 and 84 releases already exist, so Indigenous inmates can be released, but where will they go and what kinds of resources can we provide them?
Senator Pate: That’s exactly right. You’re already an example of someone who is doing something in the community. If, let’s say two years before that happened, someone had come to you and said they were going to use $50,000 to $75,000 a year to invest in your future, what would you have invested it in if you had that opportunity?
I have some idea because you’re already doing it, but what else would you have done with those resources?
Mr. Beardy: Education would be at the top of the list. Education is at the root of a lot of the problems we face in terms of educating our citizenry about the abuses. Obviously, everybody here is educated about them. It has been a long study, but education is at the top of what I would do. I know what education provided me. As well, it just gives them more of a chance than just to release them.
For sure, education and shelter. There is a huge lack of available shelters for men. What I see is that we go to halfway houses. I was officially homeless 16-17 months ago because of the way the system was set up. I had this one address I had to be at. Then the halfway house ended and I had to be at that address. There were family problems and I couldn’t be at the house. My brother was like, “You’re not going to live with me” because of my past. Anyway, I was actually homeless.
I would have used some of that money for rent. I would have used some of that money to increase my employability skills. I look like I am employable, but with a record it’s very hard for me to actually get a job in the system, in this society. When I was released, I applied over and over and over and over everywhere, and nothing. I had to go to these temporary labour agencies to pay for rent, food and stuff like that. It would be education, shelter and housing.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Beardy, you didn’t talk about the Gladue reports and the Gladue factors, but they are on your list. Ms. Barker, you spoke about the Gladue reports in your comments when you said that they should be written by an Indigenous person because these reports are used to classify people and so on.
Could both of you just expand a l bit on the importance of the Gladue reports and the Gladue factors? If we were to make a recommendation surrounding them, what should it be?
Ms. Barker: For myself, the reason I say that Indigenous people should be writing them is because Indigenous people have lived that life, walked that life, or were impacted by colonization and residential schools. They can relate to the intergenerational impacts.
If they are written by non-Indigenous people, there needs to be intensive cross-cultural training for them. I find that two-day training on cross-cultural awareness is not effective. It has to get to the real root cause of colonization and not just, “Oh, they speak this language,” or “This is what culture they’re from.” It really has to get deep, to where that seed was first planted that caused them to change their life and go down this other path.
I feel they should be written by Indigenous people. We can relate to them because we’ve all been impacted by colonization.
Mr. Beardy: We need more Aboriginal liaison officers in federal prisons. I recall one and oftentimes not being able to get hold of her or him. The Gladue reports and Gladue factors need more educated officers handling them, if not an ALO.
Ms. Barker said investing in cultural sensitivity training and trauma awareness training. I say investing because it is a preventative measure. If you put a price tag of $500,000 on it, how much is it costing us? How much are all these problems costing society?
Senator Cordy: Senator Pate spoke about the amount of money that we’re spending per year for prisoners overall, but particularly Indigenous prisoners. Ms. Barker, you spoke about a community healing program because when a person is removed from the community, it causes problems for those who are remaining, spouses, partners, parents or whomever. Several of you also spoke about the stigma if the person is released and comes back to the community, about housing being at a premium, and about all those kinds of things. You also spoke about an Indigenous justice committee.
If you were to have access to some of the money that is being spent for Indigenous prisoners, how would you see these programs working?
Ms. Barker: In particular, if we had a community healing centre in a community, it would be holistically based and going back to our traditional ways of how we used to heal our community members prior to colonization through ceremony, land-based teachings, elder teachings and community support.
If we were able to have the funding that could go into a community healing centre, we would look at their physical wellness such as how they are treating their body, the impacts of addictions on their body, healthy eating, exercise, mental health and their self-talk.
Do they need education for employment? How do we prepare them to go in that direction? Do they need to address any mental health issues? How can we resource them? Do we need to have a mental health therapist on staff or an elder who has the same level of expertise?
Turning to emotional, do we connect with them? How do we reconnect them with their families and their communities? Do we get them counselling? How do we get them to be in balance spiritually? We have different spiritual belief systems but the underlying foundation is: How do we get them to come back to believe in themselves? The spiritual part is a belief in yourself, and then all of the other stuff is how we make that happen.
I’ve learned through my experience in CAP programing. I’ve seen epiphanies in people and the power of learning one’s identity. I’ve seen how they realized they were just contributing to the same cycles of colonization and I didn’t even know it. The majority of our people don’t know the history, and so they fall into the trap of normalizing the social conditions they see around them.
If I had that funding, it would be based on a holistic world view that addresses the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Senator Cordy: We heard numerous times about the overclassification of Aboriginals in the penal system. By the way, Senator Pate has a bill in the Senate to do away with mandatory minimums.
Mr. Beardy, I know one of your suggestions is to end solitary confinement. If you talk to those in the prisons that we were in, they would say that it is used very little. In fact, when we go in, we hear that there is very little solitary confinement. We also know that it’s not necessarily called solitary confinement but it is. Could you speak to that? If the Indigenous people going in are overclassified, they are more likely to be in solitary confinement called by another name.
Mr. Beardy: Indigenous people are more likely to go to solitary confinement. They are given higher security levels. There are always these tests. This is what I remember from my personal perspective. There are always these tests. When I am done with the tests, my security level shoots up. I don’t know but it seems very discriminatory. Chantell Barker did one on herself, so you can see how that contributes to high security levels.
I actually wrote an article that talked about solitary confinement. It shouldn’t even exist because it’s causing severe psychiatric and psychological harm. I was in solitary confinement. I was put into solitary confinement for 36 hours straight. I was not allowed to leave that cell. People talk about a 23.5-hour lock-up. You hear about things like that, but I was actually plucked from minimum security, a model inmate, and thrown into solitary confinement.
What was cited to me was section 31 of the CCRA. I have reasonable doubt. I didn’t believe. Honestly, I sat there and I was in disbelief that this guy could throw me in solitary confinement, a model inmate, but he did. I was in there for 36 hours straight and it affected me, but not so much because I’ve developed emotional intelligence. At the time I was really on a path of humility and trying to understand the situation. When I sat in that cell for 36 hours straight, I really think that was unconstitutional. I don’t think that should exist.
To address your question about solitary confinement, I use the words solitary confinement because it is solitary confinement as defined by the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules that call for a certain amount of time. I don’t recall the timing, but there is a certain amount of time. They say it’s administrative segregation. I have looked at the actual website. It says administrative segregation, but it’s not administrative segregation. It’s solitary confinement. They are hiding behind terminology.
In the inmate culture, all the inmates know it’s solitary confinement. They call it the hole. Nobody uses administrative segregation. It’s a Justice word. It’s a corrections word. It’s not correcting us, that’s for sure, but it hinges on their disputing the fact that the psychiatric and psychological harm involved is up for debate. That’s pretty much what the government is hiding behind in terms of terminology for solitary confinement.
Let me find it here, actually.
The Chair: We are just about out of time.
Mr. Beardy: I’ll just submit this. It is in writing. I have two articles I can submit.
Senator Cordy: Yes.
Mr. Beardy: There’s another article I wish to submit to you as well that is very relevant to this conversation.
The Chair: We are out of time for this panel, so I am sorry there will not be time for a second round.
I want to thank all three of you for coming and sharing with us this evening. We have appreciated hearing from you. As we said, we would like to have whatever documents you want to give to us in writing. We would be very happy to receive those.
We are very pleased to welcome as our third and final panel for the evening, Jason Demers, Katharina Maier, Alexa Potashnik, Zilla Jones and Allison Fenske. I have neglected to say where you work, so when I invite you to speak it would be helpful if you would tell us that.
I will set the timer again, but because we have five people on the panel this time they will have five minutes each. Then we will have time for questions from the senators.
Mr. Demers, the floor is yours.
Jason Demers, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Regina, as an individual: I am Jason Demers, a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Regina. I thank the committee for the very important work that it is doing and for inviting me here today.
I come here with a focus on the Saskatchewan provincial prison system, where my focus in particular was consulting with currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families. Among my findings when I studied the provincial prison system was that it was extremely overcrowded. It was operating at double its capacity. The institutions were double bunked as is standard practice. All kinds of spaces from gymnasiums to classrooms, workshops and visiting rooms had been converted either temporarily or permanently into sleeping quarters.
These are warehousing conditions. When we talk about warehousing conditions, we don’t only think about the conversion of sleeping quarters, but also the fact that the rehabilitative mission of these institutions is being sidelined as people are being stored. That programming was pushed off to the end of sentences.
People also spoke about difficulty in accessing proper health care or dental care. There were problems with the use of segregation. Food had been privatized. What this meant was that diet was inadequate across the board. People were complaining about unidentifiable food. Food was making them sick. People who had special dietary requirements, like pregnant women or people with diabetes, were being given the standard diet, which included as a staple nine slices of Wonder Bread a day.
Alongside food services being privatized there were phone services with the American company Telmate that took over phone services. There was a system of hidden fees, connection fees, processing fees, and so on, that was costing families hundreds of dollars a month to keep in touch with one another.
Alongside privatized phone services, no-contact visits had become standard. People had to visit their partner or their father across a pane of glass. Children weren’t allowed to be in contact with their fathers. The exception was mothers, but there is only one institution for women in the province. The complaint there is that women in general don’t get visits because it is too far away for people to visit. It’s too costly for accommodations and the transportation to get there.
All of this is in the context of the spaces being filled with 75 per cent to 95 per cent Indigenous people in a province where the population is 15 per cent to 17 per cent Indigenous. When people talk about prisons being the new residential schools, it doesn’t only have to do with these demographic issues. It also has to do with the narrative that I just told you: all of these practices that run in parallel from inadequate nutrition to family separation and denial of spiritual practices as a matter of policy.
All of this has to do with a system that operates based on security practices of risk management. When we think about a pane of glass separating people, it’s for the purpose of getting the number of incident reports down to as minimum a number as possible. You make it impossible for there to be a security breach, but I think we need to be working toward a system that thinks in terms of public health, that thinks in terms of the rehabilitative needs that people come in with, that thinks in terms of people being incarcerated for a short period of time, and that thinks in general that prisons probably aren’t the best places to deal with the problems that they’re tasked to solve.
One of the things that we need to do along these lines is to look to Gladue reports, but one of the problems in Saskatchewan is that there is only one Gladue writer in the entire province. When we think about the amount of work that would be required for her to do, she is essentially inaccessible. As a result, people think that this basically isn’t a requirement. People aren’t ordering the Gladue reports that could be ordered to get people destreamed from the prison system and to cover the rehabilitative needs they actually do have.
What we’re dealing with in Saskatchewan effectively is the effects of colonialism and the residential school system. We need to begin to confront these problems head on. There are a number of calls to action from Senator Murray Sinclair. I think we really need to focus there if we want to take these problems seriously.
Katharina Maier, Assistant Professor, Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg, as an individual: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today and thank you for initiating this timely and pressing study of prisoner rights in the correctional system. I am grateful to be here on Treaty 1 territory as an uninvited guest.
I am an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. I conduct qualitative research on people’s experiences of imprisonment and prisoner re-entry and on the role of non-governmental organizations in shaping ex-prisoners’ lives and trajectories following incarceration.
Imprisonment is an extremely painful experience. Sometimes the pains associated with imprisonment are not obvious or visible. For example, based on research with 56 former male federal prisoners, my colleagues and I have shown that many prisoners experience a perpetual feeling of risk and threat while incarcerated.
In maximum security federal prisons, interviewees reported threats to their physical safety, describing a kind of anything can happen at any time dynamic. In lower security prisons, interviewees reported feeling at risk of institutional repercussions. They were stressed and worried about the potential of being transferred to a higher security institution or being denied parole for issues that they felt were often out of their control.
Feeling vulnerable and at constant risk of threat is certainly not part of the penal regime, yet these aspects of prison living are often experienced by individuals as a very real aspect of their punishment. We have to be mindful of these more hidden or covert realities of a person’s sentence and punishment, pains that can’t be measured and that don’t show up in official statistics.
I can talk more about these kinds of experiences later and I can speak to the challenges of re-entry, which is what my current research focuses on; but I thought I would use my remaining time to talk about possible alternatives to our current prison system. I will suggest to consider halfway houses as an alternative to incarceration.
When we discuss the issue of prisoner human rights I think we need to talk about the question both from an ideological and a practical perspective. What even makes a humane prison? What needs to happen in order for us to call a prison a humane place?
As part of my current research on halfway houses and prisoner re-entry, I spent some time in Oslo learning from Norwegian scholars about the Scandinavian prison systems. Looking to other countries is important in developing best practices for our own prison institutions.
In the realm of incarceration Nordic societies, as you may know, have a different vision. Their penal systems are commonly described as exceptional for two reasons. First, they have fairly low incarceration rates and, second, they detain people under unusually favourable and more humane prison conditions. Specifically, the extensive use of what are called open prisons is the staple of the more humane prison system of Nordic countries.
Looking to Canada, I find we often forget that we do have a Canadian form of open prison, and that is the halfway house. Halfway houses are small-scale institutions for federal ex-prisoners on conditional release. While at the halfway house, ex-prisoners are able to work or go to school, but they have to return to the halfway house for the night and they remain under strict supervision during the day. Currently, halfway houses are used as post prison institutions, meaning that they are the last institutional stop before a person is allowed to establish their own residency following incarceration.
Based on my current research with former prisoners and halfway house staff, I suggest that halfway houses offer a real, existing and more humane alternative to the current system of more closed prison institutions.
First, in comparison to more closed prisons, halfway houses are more naturally geared toward reintegration, treatment and inclusion. They ensure that offenders are put in close proximity to welfare services, employment opportunities and social supports, thereby helping to establish locally centred solutions to criminalized people’s problems and needs, rather than incarcerating people in more closed-off institutions that are often located farther away from urban centres, towns and employment opportunities.
Second, halfway houses produce better relationships between prisoners or ex-prisoners and staff. When we talk about the rights of prisoners, we have to talk about the working conditions of prison officers. That is because research shows that the prison environment shapes prison officers’ treatment of prisoners in very important ways. For example, research shows that smaller prisons produce better relationships between prisoners and staff, as well as improved prison officer satisfaction. My research with halfway house staff speaks to this.
Just to conclude, I know this committee has heard over the year that there are many concerns regarding the state of Canadian prisons. The prison system must be reformed, and my research suggests that halfway houses should receive more attention and should be considered as a more humane alternative to the closed prisons in Canada.
Alexa Potashnik, President and Founder, Black Space Winnipeg, as an individual: I am Alexa Potashnik, representing Black Space Winnipeg. We are a community non-profit grassroots group that advocates for Winnipeg’s Black community. It was founded in 2016, so for the past two years we’ve been really pushing the narrative that, first, Black people exist on the Prairies and outside Ontario, and that anti-Black racism and discrimination are very prevalent throughout Winnipeg and Manitoba.
It really started, actually, on the movement of Black Lives Matter. When you’re speaking about especially incarcerated Black folks, you can’t deny that movement and the steps that they’ve made for Black folks incarcerated across the country.
Furthermore, I kind of wanted to give a community organizer/activist perspective on what you folks are doing. Being born and raised in Winnipeg, I can tell you that Black people are displaced. We’re not in one centre or community. We’re all over the province and we’re all over the city. With that come moments of isolation and social isolation which is quite real.
By referring to the most recent story, I can give a perspective of what happens before Black people interact with the police and the real fear that Black people have of the relationship with the state and authority figures. This year, a gentleman by the name of Carl Felix was stopped by the police while he was riding his bicycle. He demanded to see his ID as he was just riding across the city. It’s something you don’t hear about a lot on the news. When we were approached to share his story, Winnipeg and Manitoba specifically were a little surprised that racial profiling and anti-Black racism do in fact persist in Manitoba.
When we’re talking about rights of prisoners and human rights, it is important to keep in mind that we cannot leave out the conversation of racism, white supremacy and systemic oppression that also exist within our system. I’ve been doing this work, I would say, for most of my academic career and moving into my professional career. I’ve seen the harsh effects of anti-Black racism and discrimination. They take a toll on Black people in Winnipeg. Recently we started a community group program called Project Heal that gives Black people in Winnipeg a safe space to talk about instances of racial profiling, police profiling and all accounts of racism directed toward Black people in Winnipeg and their effects on our mental health and as a community.
Yes, it’s important that we’re talking about the rights of folks who are incarcerated. We have to look at the practices happening and how the system is targeting Black people before we even get to that point. We put more resources and attention into cultural sensitivity training and the very complicated relationship that the state and police have with Black folks and Black communities. Thank you.
Zilla Jones, Defence Counsel, Jones Law Office, as an individual: Good evening, honourable senators. Thank you for your invitation. Welcome to Treaty 1 land and the home of the Métis Nation.
My name is Zilla Jones. I have been practising criminal defence in Winnipeg since 2012. Here in the centre of the country, I often feel that we are also in the centre of whatever storm befalls the criminal justice system. With the highest Indigenous population in the country, we are ground zero of the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis. The Tina Fontaine trial happened here this past summer; a good friend of mine was counsel. A generation earlier, the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry stemmed in large part from issues in Manitoba. We are now seeing waves of immigration from Africa and the Middle East, and some of those immigrants or their children end up as our clients.
We have almost if not the longest remand wait times, the highest rates of incarceration, the greatest rates of overcrowding in jails and prisons, and some of the highest crime rates in the country. As a woman of colour, an African-Canadian woman, I am constantly aware that I look more like many of my clients than I look like most of the other lawyers or judges. I consider that a privilege because it allows me a window into their lives, a kind of dual perspective shifting between the world of the marginalized and the world of the legal profession.
Tonight we are discussing the human rights of federal prisoners. I will briefly highlight some of the issues that have arisen in my practice with my clients. I know that my colleague Ms. Fenske will discuss mental health issues, so I will not discuss in detail but will echo whatever she says on that topic. Besides that, my concerns are the specific needs of female inmates, the spiritual needs of inmates, disparities in the granting of parole, and substance abuse and safety issues in the institutions.
Ultimately, if we are to address the human rights of inmates, there is a philosophical question behind all of this. The Criminal Code tells us that punishment is to denounce, deter and rehabilitate. The Gladue principles tell us that for Aboriginal accused we are to attempt to lessen their levels of incarceration, which have increased and not decreased since the Gladue decision. Similar principles for the sentencing of African Canadians accused have been extended by the courts recently in response to social disadvantage and overincarceration of African Canadians. A necessary part of addressing the human rights of federal inmates is to question the value of incarceration at all. Who needs to be there and why do they need to be there?
Regarding female inmates, in Manitoba there is no federal institution that houses female inmates. The closest one is in Edmonton. Women who are sentenced to federal time are thus sent on a 14-hour drive or two-hour, $4,500 plane ride away from their loved ones. Often these women are the sole parents of children. This is terrifying for women who are facing the prospect of a federal sentence because most families do not have the means to visit Edmonton. It is heartbreaking to see female clients receive sentences and to see them, their families and children all in court sobbing as the judge walks out of the courtroom. Sometimes they are too depressed to take full advantage of programming in custody because of the loss of their families, so deep is their grief.
I should point out that most of the women I have personally seen get federal sentences get them for assisting often abusive partners in trafficking drugs or trafficking weapons, or holding items for them, and often pursuant to mandatory minimum sentences where the judge has no discretion. Is incarceration really appropriate for these women? Incarcerating the mother often means sentencing the children as well, as children taken into care are much more likely to themselves become involved in the criminal justice system. The human rights of the child and the family are engaged here.
In terms of spiritual needs, the right to freedom of religion has been impacted now that the Correctional Service Canada provides all spiritual counselling through Christian chaplains. They do their best, but many inmates who are Muslim, Jewish or other faiths feel alienated from that.
In terms of parole disparity, many of my colleagues and I have noticed that it is much harder to get accelerated or early release now than it was a few years ago. There is lots of literature on how this is even more apparent for Indigenous and African-Canadian inmates.
Anecdotally, I grew up with a young man in my neighbourhood whom I used to see around all the time, a good friend who was very protective. He was 6’5” and probably 350 pounds; he used to play football. I did not see him for many years, and then I ran into him a couple of years ago. I asked him where he had been, and he said he was in Stony Mountain Penitentiary. His first offence was a house break and enter. He got a nine-year sentence and he served every day of it.
When I expressed surprise that he hadn’t received parole, he said, “Zilla, let’s put it this way: I served three years for the B and E, three years for being a Black man and three for being a big Black man.” It should not be this way. Everyone should have an equal chance at getting parole.
Finally, regarding substance abuse and safety, although this is a big topic, I have clients who were involved in investigations that resulted because correctional officers were bringing drugs and alcohol into minimum security and into the healing lodge facilities. This has been documented. Many clients tell me how easy it is to get drugs in the penitentiary.
As well, the prevalence of gang membership is a problem. There are separate gang ranges. There are issues with who gets placed where and if the right people are cleared by security or ultimately that people are put in gangs when they are really not a member anymore.
There are far too many murders at Stony Mountain. Almost everyone I know has lost a client at some point. There are far too many beatings and assaults. I have had clients be both victims and perpetrators of assaults at Stony Mountain more times than I could count.
Going to prison should not be dehumanizing to the point that people fear for their lives when they are sentenced. I have many people telling me they don’t want to go to Stony because they know they’ll be a target if they have testified against somebody, if they are co-accused with someone and that person perceives that they ratted them out, as they say. They are terrified to go there. The state has an obligation to ensure the safety of the people it keeps in its custody and to ensure that they come through that rehabilitated.
Thank you very much for listening and for caring about these issues. It was an honour to address you tonight. Meegwetch.
Allison Fenske, Attorney, Public Interest Law Centre, Legal Aid Manitoba, as an individual: I will start by acknowledging that we are in Treaty 1 territory, on the original lands of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene Peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Thank you to the committee for the invitation to present to you tonight.
My name is Allison Fenske. I am a lawyer with the Public Interest Law Centre here in Winnipeg, where we engage in evidence-based advocacy in order to bring to light to and address systemic issues and injustices, including prisoner rights and justice reform.
It is fitting that this hearing is actually happening during Mental Health Awareness Week because I would like to focus my remarks tonight on prisoners and mental health. In doing so, I will start by sharing a bit of a story with you about Devon Sampson, who John Hutton alluded to earlier this evening.
Devon first came into federal custody in 2005, already having been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression and having been hospitalized for lengthy periods of time around those illnesses. This was all known to the Correctional Service Canada, and yet addressing these mental health concerns was not a feature of correctional planning for Devon.
Instead, Devon’s time in custody over three federal sentences was really a revolving door in and out of solitary confinement. In some years he spent more time in solitary than out. In one instance, he spent 294 consecutive days in solitary confinement. The only reason he was released was because his sentence expired.
Leading up to Devon’s last placement in solitary, he had been off his medication for approximately six months and was experiencing symptoms of acute psychosis. Only his psychiatrists and a mental health nurse knew this. None of the other correctional staff were made aware.
While he was experiencing these psychotic symptoms, Devon assaulted a nurse and was immediately returned to solitary confinement. The mental health nurse who had been treating Devon had concerns that he was paranoid, psychotic, and that his behaviour was unpredictable; but these concerns were not communicated more widely. Correctional officers reviewing Devon’s placement in solitary noted no concerns with his continued placement in solitary. They even said that there were no concerns noted by the psychology department. Evidence suggested that Devon’s actions were treated as a security threat, as opposed to a symptom of a larger mental health crisis.
On November 23, 2013, nearly two weeks after being parked in solitary, Devon died by suicide, using his own shoelace to hang himself in his cell.
Devon’s is only one story, but it is no secret that mental health challenges present a stark reality for those incarcerated in federal prisons. Correctional Service Canada’s own research shows that over 70 per cent of male offenders are dealing with mental illnesses; nearly 80 per cent of women incarcerated; and for Indigenous women in prison, that rate is 95 per cent who are dealing with a mental illness.
With a continuing mental health crisis in Canada’s prisons, there is a lot that we can still learn from Devon’s story. When mental health concerns are ignored, minimized or mischaracterized as a security concern, they can become actual security concerns.
Correctional officers, the very people who are most responsible for the day-to-day well-being and safety of prisoners, have the least amount of mental health training within an institution.
Siloed operations cause real harm to inmates with mental illnesses. When solitary confinement is a tool available to an institution, it is too often used as a default. Security cannot be allowed to trump mental health.
Solitary confinement is not an appropriate or humane treatment for mental illness. Recent amendments to CSC policy placing limits on the use of solitary confinement for individuals with what CSC defines as a serious mental illness are too narrow and as a result lack any sort of meaningful protection for individuals who are ill.
We also cannot ignore the trauma of prison itself. People are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. The trauma of prison cannot be divorced from the additional burdens experienced by those most overrepresented within the criminal justice system. Nor can the trauma associated with colonization and the systemic oppression of Indigenous and other racialized peoples be ignored. Otherwise, prison is simply another tool of oppression.
Protecting mental health as a human right is consistent with Canada’s international and domestic legal obligations. Even though people’s liberty may be limited through incarceration, they still hold with them their right to fair access to mental health services and their inherent human dignity and worth.
I am mindful of the time. I would like to introduce recommendations for your consideration. I’ve provided written submissions to the panel that go into them in more detail, but I will just simply say that the four things I wanted to highlight were an opportunity to have attention to and promotion of mental health in correctional planning; enhancing mental health training for direct care staff; eliminating solitary confinement, or at the very least a complete prohibition on the use of solitary confinement on prisoners with mental illnesses; and the increased use of therapeutic environments for mental health care.
The Chair: I thank all of you for your evidence this evening.
Now we will go to questions and start with Senator Cordy.
Senator Cordy: I would like to start with the whole issue of mental health and mental illness. Several of you actually spoke briefly about it and, Ms. Fenske, you spoke in great detail about it.
We have been to a number of prisons. Yesterday when we were in Saskatoon and walking through the psychiatric facility one couldn’t help but think, “There has to be another answer. This is not the right place for people.”
You spoke about how the CSC definition of mental health should not be so narrow. Is one of your recommendations to change the definition?
Ms. Fenske: The definition is something that should be set by medical care professionals. It should be something that encompasses all mental illnesses. Right now, the policy statement encourages the institution not to use solitary confinement for those with serious mental illnesses. There was an inquest called in response to the death of Devon Sampson. In going through that, Correctional Service employees and counsel acknowledged that he may not have met the criteria for serious mental illness as it is defined by CSC.
The idea that someone who had been suffering from schizophrenia and depression and was being actively treated by psychiatrists within the institution might not meet that criteria and might have ended up in segregation or in solitary anyways is kind of mind-boggling. It’s really something that should be left to the discretion of mental health professionals and should be more encompassing, certainly.
Senator Cordy: We also saw when we were in the prisons that there were not a lot of people who had a strong background in trauma. We know that many prisoners receive trauma in their lives before they get to prison, which is probably why they’re in prison because it hasn’t been helped.
We also heard that mental health people are there to help the prisoners from 9 to 5. If your trauma or your episode occurs between 9 and 5, you’re lucky if you get taken down to see the person. Otherwise, you may be waiting until the morning or taken somewhere else.
Others may want to answer this, but is it your experience that there are not enough professionals in the prison system?
Ms. Fenske: Yes, I can address that question first. Certainly that has been my experience. While Mr. Sampson’s death happened in 2013, the inquest itself led evidence through 2017 and 2018. Currently, still, there have been cutbacks to the psychology department at Stony Mountain Institution even in the face of overwhelming caseloads.
The psychiatrists there are external contractors. They are coming into the institution half days a couple of times a week. One of the chief psychiatrists on contract carries a caseload of 120 patients with a psychiatric liaison nurse. That is 120 people out of 800 inmates at Stony who are under psychiatric care, never mind those with more moderate mental health needs that we would suggest can’t be met by the current complement of psychology and social workers.
The other really difficult part of it is that psychiatry is dealt with through the health services department, whereas the psychology department has a separate department that has the psychologists and the social workers. While there are integrated mental health guidelines in place, they certainly were not operating the way they were intended to while Mr. Sampson was incarcerated. I don’t believe, based on the evidence that we heard in the inquest, the improvements that have been made have gone far enough to ensure integrated and trauma-informed care for anyone who is incarcerated.
Ms. Jones: If I could add to that, what I’ve noticed is that a lot of the treatment that my clients get is in a group setting. That is not appropriate for everybody. Some people who are really traumatized, such as males who have been sexually abused, don’t want to talk about it in front of a bunch of other guys. A lot of what is offered is group therapy. Of course, if you don’t participate, then when you come for parole you didn’t participate, you weren’t speaking in group and you skipped group.
Another issue would be that I know I have clients who were no longer allowed to continue with the psychiatrist they’d had when the cutbacks came. I have one client who had been seeing somebody whom he had built trust with over several years. They didn’t pay for that individual to go to Stony anymore, so he has to go to somebody new whom he doesn’t have that relationship with. They don’t allow the choice of psychiatrist. In fact, I think the person he is seeing is just a counsellor and not someone who has as deep training in his issues.
Senator Cordy: They’re almost retraumatized again.
Ms. Jones: Exactly.
Senator Cordy: Ms. Maier, you commented about the prison systems in the other countries. I think Norway was the example that you gave. I agree with your comments that we have to do a better job and we have to make significant changes.
You have certainly gathered a lot of information and statistics. Have you considered at all in your studies how to sell that? We hear governments talking about being tough on crime. We hear of mandatory minimums being implemented. Double bunking was not a big deal; if you don’t want to be double bunked then you shouldn’t be in jail.
How do you sell it? Have you looked at that? I ask because I would like to sell it.
Ms. Maier: There are various ways you could sell it. One thing to highlight is that supervision in the community like parole is extremely hard and can also be painful. When you talk to people who have just come from prison, they sometimes even say that prison was painful but being on parole is also hard because now they are in a position where they have to find a job. They have to reconnect with their families. They have to do their programming. They have to abide by their conditions of parole. There is a lot going on during that time.
If people are not in prison but at the halfway house, they’re not free. It is quite the opposite. They are still under very strict control by halfway house staff and parole officers. They work with different treatment providers. I find that often useful to clarify because some people may not be aware of what being at a halfway house entails. It entails people calling in every time they change their location in the community, for example, go from work to get a coffee. It involves a lot and some people are not aware of that.
I talk to my students a lot about another way to sell it. Every person who goes to prison is going to come out, eventually, unless they die in prison. Whenever we talk about incarceration, we have to think about release. As soon as a person gets into prison, the focus must be on the person’s release.
That should be the focus. When we think about halfway houses, even though that challenge is a more tough on crime agenda, we can point to the positives regarding a person’s reintegration and release.
Senator Pate: Thanks to all of you for your work in these areas.
I have a couple of questions that I am going to try again. If you weren’t here for the last panel, I made it more confusing. I am not planning to do that, but you never know.
The Chair: You can ask them separately.
Senator Pate: I am feeling the constraints of time too.
The halfway house model you are talking about was actually a model that was put in place post World War II because it was the way most single men lived. Many people have criticized that model as not really appropriate anymore. I am curious as to whether you’ve looked at or examined the possibilities of using sections 81 and 84, which are primarily focused on reducing the number of Indigenous people in prison and on conditional release into the community. They also allow for individualized approaches. Subsection 2 of those provisions allow them to be used for non-Indigenous prisoners. That is one question.
I also have a question in terms of the issues being raised around mental health. Have you looked at section 29 and really expanding the use of that in the courts? We have heard in many institutions, and today again at Stony, that those people who are supposed to be doing the mental health work actually don’t. They become very institutionalized themselves and start to respond in the same way as the correctional authorities, partly because of pressure probably. You mentioned that in fact they end up assessing basically whether someone can stay in segregation, not whether they actually need other kinds of intervention, when looking at using the exchange of services agreements that exist and section 29 to argue for people to be out.
In Canada we have 14 people doing multiple life sentences since 2011. It’s not true that everybody can get out of prison. There are now 14 people who can never get out of prison, based on those sentencing changes and just in terms of what we say.
It might have been Ms. Potashnik or Ms. Jones who raised the issue of women going to prison and getting separated from their children. I was struck today because we went and saw the Mandela exhibit in between everything. One of the first things Nelson Mandela did that many people don’t know about when he became president was to free all the women in prison who had children under the age of 12. I can’t remember the name of the case, but just recently in Brazil a similar decision was made. They actually freed all of the women who were on remand, as well as all the women sentenced who had children under the age of 12, using the Hugo case from South Africa.
I am curious as to whether all of you’ve seen any examples of that being tried here. Have you seen attempts here to use, for example, the type of remedy that Louise Arbour recommended where the way that the sentence is managed amounts to correctional interference with the lawful sanction, extended periods in segregation, lack of access to programs, lack of access to their children and to the community?
Those are a lot of questions. The benefit is I guess you can pick and choose what you want to answer.
Ms. Maier: I guess I can start. I haven’t looked specifically at section 81, but I think I am getting at similar ideas. On the one hand, I am talking about decarceration, coupled with placing people in close proximity either to their communities or at least to different welfare services, mental health services, employment opportunities and so forth. Obviously there are already things in place in Canada to achieve that. On the other hand, I am trying to look at new ways and other ways to do that.
Especially when you’re looking at barriers to re-entry, just the shock of coming back from prison is huge for people who reflect back on the first day they are coming out and the first few weeks and months after, re-establishing your connection with your family and friends, finding housing, looking for a job and dealing with stigma. Even finding ID was one of the main challenges that people talked about in my research. To sort of ease these barriers, we can look at what are ways to keep people in the community and what real, existing alternatives are already in place.
I would say the halfway house is a structure that we have already in place. We can kind of think about the current system as it is used right now. Does that make sense? Is there room to sort of expand that system and kind of rethink how we might use it in the future?
Ms. Jones: I can address the issue of women and your question, senator, about creative alternatives to sentencing. Again, one of the big restrictions to that is mandatory minimums. Also you cannot get an elimination of conditional sentence orders for a lot of drug offences and so-called violent offences. The judge’s hands are really tied.
A lot of judges who would like to keep these women out of prison are limited, absent a challenge or a successful challenge to those minimums which not every lawyer does every time or is always successful. They have to send them to penitentiary or at least to jail time in other cases. The sentencing regimes have to be looked at, especially with regard to Gladue considerations, African Canadians and other disadvantaged groups. There is just not the opportunity to give people something like a conditional sentence.
That’s a very good alternative when it is available. I know many women that have done very well on conditional sentences. They are strict. They are not a get out of jail free card. As my friend over here said, there are a lot of conditions on people who are on conditional sentences. It was a mistake to take those away and to look at them as being lenient.
In fact, people often serve a longer sentence on a conditional sentence because they don’t get the remissions they would get in correctional institutions. If they get a two-year conditional sentence, that’s what they are serving. That whole entire time there will be reporting and there will be restrictions. I think a lot of judges would like to use those tools but no longer can do so.
Senator Pate: Are you recommending to re-examine mandatory minimums to this committee?
Ms. Jones: Absolutely, I recommend to examine mandatory minimums and to look at cutting back on a lot of those to allow for conditional sentencing to come back in.
We also have intermittent sentences which allow weekend time, but criminal court only allows that for up to 90-day sentences. That should be available for a longer period of time so that they could perhaps do up to maybe two years less a day on an intermittent sentence. This would also allow women to be home with their kids in the week and somebody could watch them on the weekend. When they are able to, they could be in the community working during the week or taking care of their kids. Right now, that is only available if their sentence is 90 days or less. Another option is to serve their time every weekend, which adds up to a long period of time when they are under a requirement to report and are under these restrictions.
Ms. Fenske: I would echo Ms. Jones’ comments about the sentencing regime, the abolishment of mandatory minimums, looking at increasing opportunities around intermittent sentencing, and other creative avenues of sentencing.
To address your question, Senator Pate, about the use of section 29, it’s underutilized and it presents an existing opportunity to provide transfers into a therapeutic setting. There are a few stages to it. First, there need to be more investments in community-based mental health support programs and services in order to ensure that folks who are dealing with mental illnesses don’t even get into the criminal justice system and aren’t even being incarcerated.
Folks are being incarcerated too many times because the community has been unable to address their mental health concerns. They are essentially being punished for a disability. A lot of these folks should just not be in jail to begin with.
A lot of those who are in jail could be managed within a therapeutic setting, one that has security provisions around it. More investments in those opportunities outside the walls of prisons are very important.
Another aspect I’ve alluded in my presentation notes is the increased use of therapeutic environments within the prison walls. For those who actually must be imprisoned, which I would suggest is actually quite a small number of folks, the opportunities to use more therapeutic settings should be increased. There are some supported living ranges or mental health ranges. CSC tends to change the names of them from time to time. Those offer some intermediate level interventions. They are bed limited, so we’re looking at 22 maxing out at about 33 beds at its highest in Stony Mountain in an offender population of 800, where they get additional supports, where they get almost one-on-one institutional parole officer support and regular contact with a whole team of folks who are taking a much more holistic approach to correctional planning.
I would suggest that is one of the current best practices within the institution. There is no reason why they couldn’t be doing that for more people who are incarcerated. They’ve already got some of those tools in place.
Certainly moving people out of jail would be the first thing I would suggest looking at. For those who have to be there, I would suggest increasing the opportunities around therapeutic settings or having even an accredited psychiatric wing to the prison itself.
If people need psychiatric care here in Manitoba, they end up having to be transferred to RPC, to the Regional Psychiatric Centre. That decision to transfer is one that is made on the basis of it being a warden-to-warden decision. A psychiatrist can only recommend. If that care is what is necessary, that level of care the RPC is offering, it means taking people out of the province to provide it. At the same time that you are trying to provide more intensive mental health supports, you are removing them from their family supports that might be here. That also raises a lot of concerns.
I am thinking of a client who has actually withdrawn consent to treatment because he didn’t want to miss his visits with his grandmother. He is refusing care and wouldn’t be transferred to RPC. Knowing that he needed that care and knowing that it was available for him, he just wouldn’t go.
The Chair: Those are tough decisions to have to make. We’re just about out of time but I actually have a couple of questions, if I can beg indulgence.
I would like to ask Alexa Potashnik a question. You spoke of the isolation of African Canadians in the Prairies in particular. I am wondering how that social isolation would impact the experiences of African Canadians in the prison system in the Prairies.
Ms. Potashnik: With just under 3 per cent of the population of Black people in Manitoba, like I said before, there are huge pockets of isolation. When you are one of the only Black people in your community there are not a lot of areas or community resources to really connect with folks you can identify with.
Specifically, within the prison system in Stony Mountain, from what I’ve heard throughout the community, for the activism and grassroots work that we do there is a smaller number of Black inmates. This leads to not a lot of opportunity for Black people in prison to have that connection to other Black people since they are the only ones who are incarcerated. There is not a community or anyone to talk to about experiences they face specifically when it comes to anti-Black racism and discrimination.
It’s difficult to pinpoint because there is no tangible evidence. It’s like emotional evidence that I am hearing from people, family and friends who have served a couple of years in Stony. They were oftentimes Black men, let’s say one Black inmate for every 30. The numbers are quite small and there is no foundation for built experience and shared experience.
There needs to be a system. When I was researching the African-Canadian Justice Strategy, similar to the Aboriginal Justice Strategy, the African Canadian Legal Clinic was presented. It hasn’t really taken off on a national level, from what I understand. Obviously anti-Black racism persists throughout Canada, but it also persists in other communities of colour. Although there is a high number of other inmates of colour, anti-Black racism is still real. They can’t connect with other people of colour within that system.
There needs to be a reassessment and support group. That’s why what was borne out of Black Space with Project Heal. Although we’re not dealing with people who have been incarcerated, the social isolation is very prevalent. There are not a lot of Black folks within many areas of Winnipeg. We’re very spread out.
The Chair: I have one other quick question for Zilla Jones. You mentioned in your opening remarks that many people fear going to Stony Mountain because of things they have previously experienced or things they have heard.
Can you speak at all to how staff deal with competing gangs and other kinds of conflicts that may occur?
Ms. Jones: My understanding is that they are assessed by security when they are first placed in a penitentiary. Some of them are coming out of provincial custody. They have already been on remand and they are now transferred. Some of them maybe weren’t in custody and now they are. It usually takes about two weeks, from what I am told, for them to figure out where to put them. They have a holding area. They talk to the former institution they’re coming from to see their gang connections. They ask them who they can and can’t be housed with. They ask if they have family members in the institution and if they get along with them. They go through this checklist and assessment with people, and then they determine their security placement.
Some people will have to go to maximum. Some might be able to start in medium. Within that they have their ranges. At Stony there is an Indian Posse range. That’s one of the big gangs in the province. Manitoba Warriors is another one. Those two don’t get along. Most of the gangs don’t. Most of the other gangs do not like the Indian Posse. They have to make sure, if they are associated with one or the other, that they don’t have contact. If one sees another they will kill them, and people know that.
Plus there is also the issue of whether they testified against somebody or whether they have some other reason that somebody doesn’t like them. What can be a problem for people is if they are already serving a sentence and then they get brought in to testify. They say that everyone sees them leaving and they know they’re going to rat. They don’t want to come back that night, and they have to because they’re inmates.
There are all these different security issues. The staff do their best to try to put people somewhere that’s safe, but they can’t watch people 24 hours a day. There have been times when a door gets opened and it takes seconds for somebody to get in and beat somebody. I’ve had clients do that. I’ve had it done to clients.
Sometimes the way to get along in the institution is to become a gang member, especially younger inmates. This is a problem for a lot of 18 or 19-year-olds in their first offence. They get sent to Stony Mountain. They get recruited. I know sometimes some of the white inmates get recruited into the white power groups. If they are from a community that has a lot of people in Indian Posse, it might be that gang. It depends on the gang. There are bikers.
They will get initiated. One of the things they have to do when they’re initiated is beat somebody up. The higher-ups will orchestrate it, put hits on people and have people do that. I have one client who ordered that and was found to have got some younger kid to attack somebody.
Often what the guards do is they are watching from a distance. They have surveillance but it’s on video. If it gets too dangerous, they’re not going in there because they don’t want to risk themselves. They have tasers and stuff like these carbines that they have. If they can’t get close enough to do that, they will retreat. They will lock the doors and they will call for backup, but they are not getting in there. In that time somebody can be beaten unconscious.
Inmates know this and they’re terrified. If a federal sentence is coming up, they don’t feel they will be protected. It’s a real concern for safety.
The Chair: I thank all of you very much for being here with us this evening, for your testimony and for your responses to our questions. We appreciate your time. If any of you have written submissions that you would like to leave with us, we would be happy to receive those.
We have one witness for the open panel. You are all free to stay.
I ask Serena Hickes to come forward, please.
Serena Hickes, as an individual: My name is Ekwalak, but my English name is Serena. I am an Inuit woman who grew up in the south. My father attended day school in the north. He was determined that he would arm his children with a western education so we could include our culture in that.
I am here on my own. I am sort of attached to Elizabeth Fry but not right now. I would like to put that on the record. One thing that surprised me is that I haven’t heard the Inuit perspective. Inuit people are brought south for incarceration, especially if they have a health condition because Nunavut does not have sustainable health care at all. Due to the fact of a low population, no specialists can consistently stay there because they will actually lose their specialty licences. People have a chronic health condition, especially the mental health issue that is usually brought on by attending residential or day schools. I think they have forgotten how horrific they were. They not only went through horrible treatment at residential school, but at 3:30 or four o’clock they were sent home to their parents who they were told to hate and back into a home of culture that they were told to hate and not to practise.
I wear my tattoos very proudly because my grandmother, my nanachuk, would have been arrested and put in jail for showing pride in her culture.
Speaking of the fact that we are on Treaty 1 land with five language groups and the Red River Metis, how do they pick which elder they are to have? They are going to leave somebody out. How do they choose what agency to represent them? We have five language groups. We have the Metis. We have Inuit people who are often triggered by the smell of sage.
That brings us right back into the trauma. It took me a long time to accept the fact that in my home where I do smudge I have to be very careful when family members come, especially my aunts, uncles and the elders. I have to hide it out of respect that it could trigger them, especially if they were incarcerated. I do have family members that have been incarcerated. For the Inuit people, that’s a $2,000 and up return ticket to visit a family member. Many Inuit people rely on those of us who live in the south to go and visit them. All of the jails in southern Manitoba are used to seeing my name because I am not there as a social worker but as a family friend. I am there to help keep the culture available.
It is really frustrating that still isn’t a topic. We have many people, as Alexa Potashnik, that are so marginalized they just don’t fit in. Every day I wake up here, I am the wrong Indigenous. I am told to go home, and I am sitting there thinking that I can’t. I have a child with three chronic health conditions. I can’t go home.
The racism the Inuit feel is hard. I am an educated woman with two degrees and I deal with racism on a weekly basis because I am the wrong Indigenous in this province. Not a lot of people like my boldness on that, but I’ll say it. I am. There is no representation of a cultural component in our southern jail systems. There isn’t even in Nunavut, to be quite honest.
My second point is preventative care. I’ll use sexual sadism as an example. Someone who is diagnosed with that by a forensic psychiatrist that recommends meeting once a week or biweekly with a forensic psychologist can’t afford that. It’s not covered. The only way to get it covered is to commit a crime.
Where is our preventative care? I could give a long list of preventative care that we could be doing in this province alone, but I’ll use that one as the extreme one. Forensic psychologists are not covered. How is it possible that we’re feeding into the business of prisons? I heard Senator Pate ask what we can do in our community. We would help people with preventative care so that we don’t have people utilizing our prison system like a revolving door.
I think it was Zilla Jones who said that they will refuse treatment. If they have someone like me who is visiting them, they will not be sent away. It is frustrating that we can’t even offer something like that. I am a firm believer that there is a very small percentage of people who actually should be in jail. It’s ridiculous that we’re still expanding and building, but that’s a whole other story. That’s what I would like to put forward.
Senator Pate: I thank you for raising the issue. As an Inuk woman, you have raised issues that we haven’t necessarily looked at here. As you probably know, there are jails in this region where they send Inuit men, and most of the Inuit women end up going to Joliette or to B.C.
The numbers are small, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be taken into account. Thank you for that.
That is just a comment and not really a question.
Senator Cordy: We’ve not heard about some of the issues you’ve raised. We certainly have heard about preventative care. We have certainly heard about a lot of the lack of psychiatrists and psychologists. We have heard about the cost also. Very few people have a health plan coverage. Even if they do, it will not cover the full cost and forensic psychologists are not covered.
I heard your comment on the small percentage of people who should be in jail. I think our previous witnesses talked a lot about alternatives to incarceration that we should be looking at. Thank you.
Ms. Hickes: Thank you very much for letting me be a witness.
The Chair: Serena, we didn’t dismiss you yet.
Ms. Hickes: I was terrible at school because I don’t sit well.
The Chair: Thank you so much for being here this evening and for sharing with us. Actually one of our analysts, Jean-Philippe, was just reminding me that we actually met with two Inuit prisoners in New Brunswick. They expressed a lot of frustrations about a number of things such as food, lack of access to culturally specific foods and not much awareness of or attention paid to their particular needs around ceremonies.
I don’t know if there was anything else that sort of stood out for you. He’s trying to talk to me while I am trying to listen, so I’ve invited him to take the microphone directly.
Jean-Philippe Duguay, Analyst, Library of Parliament: I would just add elder representation as well. They felt doubly discriminated against because of that. One of them was placed in a cell where I think a heater or something was running above his head the whole time. It was always on. They didn’t know where to move him because he didn’t exactly fit with the other Indigenous individuals, but he didn’t fit with the general population.
The Chair: It highlights what you were saying. It really reaffirms the isolation and marginalization of being the “wrong Indigenous group” in this part of the country. That is really important information for us to hear.
Ms. Hickes: What you said about the heater is funny because we’re storytellers. You gave me five minutes, and I thought I was never going to be able to pull this off.
I am always boiling in the south. I have other women come up to me and say, “Oh, menopause,” and I am like, “Actually, no, I am just Inuk. I am always warm.” That’s something that people don’t’ take into account. Even when they are transferred to the hospital I’ll have a family member text me or message me, and I know immediately why. It’s because they want a fan. If you see a shy Inuk or a quiet Inuk, it means something is wrong. We’re actually really bubbly and rambunctious. They feel very marginalized when they ask me to go down to the nurse’s desk and ask the guards to please give them a fan.
The Chair: They are feeling marginalized and disempowered. That’s a part of the conditions that get set up at that whole prison complex.
Ms. Hickes: Yes.
The Chair: As I said earlier, thank you very much for being here, for your interest and for sharing. We have your testimony now on the record.
Thanks to everyone for being here this evening and for contributing to this work. We appreciate it.
(The committee adjourned.)