THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, October 18, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 11:30 a.m. to study the issues relating to the human rights of prisoners in the correctional system.
Senator Jim Munson (Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: Good morning to the general public and my fellow senators. We have quorum. Other senators and witnesses will be coming and the room should fill up, so we’ll begin.
Senator Ataullahjan, the deputy chair, will be along shortly. She is at another meeting. I would like the senators who are here to introduce themselves, and then we will start with our witnesses. I will start on my right.
Senator Eaton: Senator Eaton from Ontario.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate from Ontario.
Senator Bernard: Senator Bernard from Nova Scotia.
The Chair: I am Jim Munson from Ontario.
We are continuing discussing a timely issue relating to the human rights of prisoners in the corrections system.
On our panel today, from Audmax Inc., are Maxcine Telfer, Director General; and Aundre Green-Telfer, Managing Director, Ethnocultural Programs and Services.
Along shortly will be two witnesses from Urban Rez Solutions, Farley Flex, Director and Founder; and Roderick Brereton, Director and Founder.
As I said, other senators will be here, but we will begin now. Who would like to start?
Aundre Green-Telfer, Managing Director, Ethnocultural Programs and Services, Audmax Inc.: I will begin. Thank you very much for having us.
To the esteemed members of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, first I would like to thank you for your time today and for the opportunity to be part of this discussion at such a high level.
First, here’s a bit about myself and Maxcine. We are the management team of Audmax Inc., which stands for Aundre and Maxcine. We do cultural policy integration consultations, which is what put us on the radar for the Correctional Service of Canada program, and through our work on that program we are here to testify to you today.
In 2010, Audmax Inc. was chosen to deliver the ethnocultural program on behalf of the Correctional Service of Canada, which I will refer to as CSC.
From then until March 2015, most decision making and programming with regard to non-White, non-Aboriginal offenders were either assumed by us on behalf of the CSC or done by the CSC with substantial input from us. This put us in the unique position to meet the offender population in Ontario and see the current rehabilitation and reintegration efforts of the Correctional Service of Canada.
While I have its time, this committee will learn of the term “unconscious bias” and its persistency within the Correctional Service of Canada towards ethnocultural offenders — again, those being non-White and non-Aboriginal. This committee will understand the need for more resources to be put into interventions like the ethnocultural program, the need for its scope and like scopes to be enlarged, as well as the delivery area to be increased, and the need for more advocacy for ethnocultural offenders.
To bring you back to this term of “unconscious bias,” I chose to use it because what is going on is not a deliberate action of the Correctional Service of Canada but stems from a broader lack of interventions earlier in the life of the ethnocultural offender.
Most White offenders are offenders because of white-collar crimes. Most of them are educated and at least have some level of faith in the systems in place, even those governing correctional facilities.
Ethnocultural offenders — and more specifically, Black offenders — are offenders mainly because of drugs, weapons, assaults and other such crimes. They have a lack of faith in public institutions and systems and do not know their way around them. They are the victims of unconscious bias.
To illustrate how this actually occurs in the institutions, picture yourself as someone within federal custody. Picture yourself as someone who wants to put together some kind of event to which offenders at your institution can come, eat, learn and be merry. What would be the necessary steps from the inception of this idea to execution of the event?
First, you would establish your team, identify which of your fellow inmates and who on the institution staff will help you plan this event. You would meet with your team to develop the proposal at some sort of designated space you’ve been given permission to use by the warden.
Third, you would complete a proposal and submit it to the person in the position referred to at the institutional level as the manager of programs. He or she submits this to the assistant warden of interventions, and then it goes up to the warden for final approval.
Fourth, you would continue to meet with your group and get updates on preparations, ideas and so on and make amendments to your proposal as necessary.
Fifth, you would place any and all orders for outside services like food, speakers, entertainment, decorations and so on. You would then canvass the area to decorate it, cook the food and start the show.
Finally, everyone comes, eats, learns and then leaves happy.
But what if you had been given the runaround just to choose and meet your group? What if substantial roadblocks to being able to say, “I want to work with this or that person” had been thrown at you? What if a meeting room you have been waiting for is never given to you? What if you develop a proposal, but it doesn’t make it all the way up the food chain and you aren’t given a reason why? What if parts of your proposal that are routinely granted to others are rejected for a less-than-satisfactory reason for you?
This is what many ethnocultural offenders go through because of unconscious bias.
Senators, as I am sure you already know, this is it not a rare occurrence. More important, it’s a massive barrier to the imperative trust between offenders and those who are to rehabilitate them into law-abiding citizens. The problem in this arrangement is apparent. For those who have never had any trust in public or social systems like the education system or the legal system, this is just another arm of the government they won’t trust or respect. For them, there is very little rehabilitation.
These issues don’t stop simply at the correctional institutions. When Audmax Inc. held the contract for the ethnocultural program, at one point there was a clear reporting structure. Audmax Inc. management, Maxcine, me and our lead volunteers, would report to the project manager, which eventually became what was called the manager of ethnocultural programs and services, an individual and team with an adequate level of autonomy within the Correctional Service Canada’s Ontario regional headquarters.
Toward the end of the program’s life, these positions were folded into the communications department, adding extra layers of bureaucracy and eroding the autonomy and decision making. This means that as part of the communications department’s tasks, ethnocultural issues just won’t be prioritized when dealing with issues such as the aftermath of Ashley Smith’s passing. Not to downplay the significance of the Ashley Smith case, but at a time when public trust of Correctional Service Canada’s programming is brought into question, how can ethnocultural issues be important to decision makers in the communications department when they are having to deal with such a public relations nightmare?
These issues deserve a dedicated team solely committed to responding to them without the burden of other responsibilities. The evidence of this need is clear. While the CSC was making these administrative changes, ethnocultural issues did not get the attention they needed and policies were not developed and enacted by the regional headquarters. Black women at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener had little, if any, access to ethnically specific hygiene products, to the point that their hair had begun to thin and recede. This is documented.
Desperately needed canteen products for the Black men at Warkworth Institution, as an example, were unavailable. Items like tea tree oil, which Black males often use to deal with ingrown hairs that are almost always a direct result of the manual razor blades they are forced to use inside the correctional institutions, are not available. If left untreated, these little things like ingrown hairs can turn into serious health issues and are not to be taken lightly.
On a site-by-site basis, Audmax Inc. took it upon itself to lobby wardens and assistant wardens to make changes to the policies and bring to their attention how these little changes can have massive impacts on the behaviour of the offenders affected.
It became Audmax Inc.’s duty to advocate for these offenders if Correctional Service Canada had any hope of fulfilling its mandate to rehabilitate them. It became Audmax Inc.’s duty to work with CORCAN, the private arm of Correctional Service Canada, which operates facilities at each institution.
It became our responsibility to work with them to educate employers in ethnic communities about the skills offenders are learning while working as plumbers, technicians, welders, computer-aided design specialists and other highly sought-after professions inside CSC institutions. It became Audmax Inc.’s duty to work with ethnocultural offenders who hold these positions to teach them about institutions like the Ontario College of Trades, something they should have been taught already, especially holding positions like plumbers, welders and so on. It became Audmax Inc.’s responsibility to ensure CORCAN was keeping the records of these trades intact and making sure they were up to date with the Ontario College of Trades.
Last, Audmax Inc. took it upon itself to teach offenders how to be a productive part of a small-business operation, as many of them who find employment after incarceration won’t find it with a big organization. When they do find employment, nine times out of 10 it is with a small operation, such as a small mechanics shop in Etobicoke or a four-man plumbing operation in North Bay.
Members of the committee, I bring these issues up because Audmax Inc. no longer holds the ethnocultural program contract. It no longer has the authority nor the resources to run the program, and there has, to this day, been no replacement.
Second, these issues are not unique to the Ontario region. It is a widely accepted consensus that the Quebec, Atlantic, Pacific and Prairie regions have similar roadblocks. This is a conclusion endorsed by Correctional Service Canada’s National Ethnocultural Advisory Committee, NEAC. A REAC would be the regional ethnocultural advisory committee that each region has.
NEAC has repeatedly made recommendations that a program like the one in Ontario run by Audmax Inc. be extended to or separately implemented in their regions. It becomes a question: With a $2.6 billion budget, why is less than one thousandth of a percentage of Correctional Service Canada’s operational resources being given to run an ethnocultural program? That one thousandth of a percentage was when we ran the program from 2010 to 2015; now, zero per cent is spent on programs like this.
The need for new ideas, processes and programs is evident. This government and cabinet must develop these with an awareness of the unconscious bias and the mistrust that has developed accordingly. This is not something that can continue to be done behind closed doors, nor is it something that can continue to be done with only the input and execution of one entity. Ottawa will have to find a way to establish and work with culturally sensitive service providers in cities, towns and communities across the country, as right now, there are very few with the capacity to make any lasting impact.
With that statement, I will turn the floor over to Maxcine.
Maxcine Telfer, Director General, Audmax Inc.: Thank you. I will add to a few areas. I have in my possession a copy of a letter that was given to us on February 23, 2015, at a Black History Month celebration. This letter comes from an offender; we didn’t write it. It is an approved copy. It was addressed to Mr. Head, but it was presented at a Black History Month celebration, hence our copy: “Racism within CSC including and especially WI.”
This gentleman, Frank Dorsey, writes on behalf of the ethnocultural population throughout Canada, not only in Ontario. He is a lifer and has served 30 years in the system. He has moved all over Canada. I have some excerpts from his presentation.
Before I get into that, however, a key piece I would like to add to Aundre’s presentation is that we have been researching the CD 767 along with Senator Bernard. She was on board from the university. One of the key reasons we decided to focus on the CD 767 — I’ll tell you what it means. It’s a commissioner’s directive that was put together around ethnocultural populations in Canada.
Unfortunately, in 2015, CD 767 was removed from the top area of Correctional Service Canada. When we asked about it, we were told that it is being worked on. So we questioned it.
With regard to the NEAC and the REAC, we decided to put together a policy paper around bringing it forth so that at least the CD 767 can be in the light.
And so I move forward, quoting from “Racism within CSC including and especially WI” -- which is Warkworth Institution:
Systemic recidivism in Ontario Institutions starts at the bottom and works its way through all the provincial and federal Institutions. As we work our way through, systematically racism in Ontario starts at the police to the courts. To provincial Institution to federal Institution.
Racism runs rampant at every stage.
He said this matter was visited by Don Head, Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada and Correctional Investigator, but he alone cannot do the work.
One man that worked for CSC had an idea and after he went to his superiors and then came to see me because I was the sports commissioner at Joyceville at the time and he said he wanted to put a committee together, separate from the inmate committee and called it the Multi Cultural committee.
According to what he said, this was shoved under the rug because Correctional Service Canada — and he specifically said the Ontario region — did not see the need for this. They did not see the need for the multicultural committee in that context.
He continues:
In my opinion, racism has got worse in all CSC Institution since I’m here I will only focus on WI. In my opinion . . . racism at WI is at all time high and runs rampantly at WI.
I will cover another aspect of what he has to write which is relevant to our justification. He goes on to say:
Just as globally, there are more good practices with regard to ethnocultural, Blacks, Muslim and others here at Warkworth. Year in and year out, this is eroded.
There are more antisocial behaviours going on in these neighbourhood communities because of the struggle. CSC has got to hire more black facilitators [to undertake the ethnocultural program and services].
He goes on to say:
I am for Equality for every one, not just for one nationality. Forget me I have had my chances at life and blew it, but now as I look back to when I was here in 1985 if I would have got the proper programming of ethno culture I might not have been here for 30 years later. CSC warehouses young Black youth and black youth just don’t go to minimum security from Warkworth Institution. Black inmates are told to go to Bath or Fenbrook. It makes no sense. White lifers go to camp.
I’m not sure if you know the meaning of “camp,” but it is the lower minimum institutions. Black inmates are told to go to higher maximum institutions.
I will tell you why CSC staff believes that a lot of young black men are pants dropping, ignorant, Loud music, Rap listening, dope smokers that have lots of baby mommas. Listen to me; we listen to rap music because of the struggle and the freedom to express ourselves. Rap music is us, pants dropping is us [a part of our culture] . . . .
I started doing time at Warkworth in 1985. CSC doesn’t hire black Correctional managers, wardens or any warden delegations. They might throw you a bone and hire a PO. Since 1985 I have seen one Black keeper, Mr. Foster, and one Deputy Warden, Mr. Hypolite. The struggle is just not towards black inmates and minority. This systemic racism also exists within and towards black staff and management.
Before I go on, let me tell you a quick story.
This is his story. As I said before, he has moved on to all the institutions.
I was in Frontenac Institution in the 1990s and in the cafeteria during the week the staff and inmates would eat in the same dining hall. The rumour from staff was Frontenac Institution was getting a black deputy warden who was of African descent. I wanted to see this because I couldn’t believe this would happen. So while I am sitting at my table, in walks this African gentleman whose name was Mr. Hypolite. He was a very dark skinned man. He stood in line to get his food and I happened to look at the rest of the staff. They were all leaned over trying to avoid eye contact with him and made no space for him to sit at. .
He said he saw this was part of racism. According to his statement, the overall context is that we need to start looking at this. We need to start investigating. We need to start creating a culture that represents all Canadian culture.
The Chair: Ms. Telfer, we do have another hour with the four of you and we would like to have you table these letters, if you could. Could you wrap up in the next couple of minutes for the next witnesses? I am sure the questions we will have for you will speak to your heart and to your knowledge as well.
Ms. Telfer: Okay, yes. Thank you. I am almost done.
Putting together all of this to summarize this letter from the inmates, among all the others, on my way yesterday we had a call from Bath Institution regarding another Canada-wide lifer. We couldn’t help him because we don’t have a contract, and no one else has one, so they still call us.
In essence, to summarize — and I am building on what Aundre had put together — what we are asking for is to look at what is actually happening in Correctional Service Canada both inside the institutions and outside in the communities. We are saying that there is a need.
According to John Clark, after looking down inside after 30 years in the institution, we need to start looking at change. We need to start incorporating everyone, the culture and the representation of Canada, to make change. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much. The idea of this void and that what you folks have been doing for five years is no longer there speaks to this issue. We will have to ask you more questions about why that happened.
We have Urban Rez Solutions with us. Thank you for being with us, gentlemen. We have Farley Flex, Director, Founder and Roderick Brereton, Director, Founder. Five to seven minutes would be good because, as you know, we would love to ask questions and have answers.
Roderick Brereton, Director, Founder, Urban Rez Solutions: Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for having us. I am the director and founder of Urban Rez Solutions, which is a conflict management and social change company based out of Toronto, Ontario.
We are here to talk to you today about changing the culture of the institutions and also how we have been able to work successfully with Corrections Canada, specifically regarding parole in Toronto with the guns and gangs unit and also making some recommendations on what we see as best practices.
Farley Flex, Director, Founder, Urban Rez Solutions: I am also a co-founder of Urban Rez Solutions. The area I will be focusing on is cultural identity and systemic racism and how those two components are critical in terms of eradicating the inequities and disparities we see in the institutions.
It is important to understand that systemic racism is literally a silent killer in terms of the awareness of those who are members of the incumbent society, as well as the lack of resilience of those who are victimized by systemic racism both in the incarcerated world as well as in our communities.
Mr. Brereton: I will be talking to you today about the culturally sensitive programming that, again, we employ with stakeholders in this regard.
About two years ago, we received a call from Collins Bay Institution. It was from a coordinator who had been working there for the last 30 years. She was getting ready to retire and she does the programming with inmates. Her major concern was that the programming of yesteryear — of the 1980s — is no longer relevant.
In terms of engaging the inmate population, the demographics have obviously changed. In her own words, 30 years ago it was mainly Anglo-Saxon inmates who had maybe been from the biker networks and just some people from rural Canada who were occupying the jail cells, with whom she was coordinating the program. However, she said that in this day and age now, that has pretty much become obsolete. She’s seeing “gang members” from the inner cities of Ontario, Quebec and whatnot in the populations she’s now having to serve, and she has nowhere in terms of engagement to relate to.
She said that for her it has actually become even more dangerous within the institutions because people are not able to engage. For instance, she may have talked about going into the woods or to the cottage. A lot of these inmates now from these environments have no clue or idea what a cottage even looks like.
In regard to helping, finding and formulating relevant programming, that’s what she was requesting of us.
She brought that to her higher-ups, and we’re still waiting for some type of answer.
Again, in terms of even making the institutions safer, it is a known fact that when people are engaged, when people see that they can weigh in, they can get that buy-in. In the correspondence we had, we know we obviously gave some pointers and tips, but in terms of the systemic racism that exists in Canada, often unbeknownst to the people in power who are the decision makers, the changes have to occur now from the top down in terms of community safety, safety for inmates and safety for the people working in the institutions.
I’ll talk briefly about our experience of working with Correctional Service Canada in terms of the guns and gangs task force in Toronto. We do a lot of community programming for “high-risk” individuals, and we found that when there is relevance, when they can bring their expertise to the table, there is obviously a better likelihood that they can have true rehabilitation in terms of their strengths.
We look at their skills, interests and personality traits, and then we’re able to help those people with finding their “true calling,” or areas of intersection or intersectionality, to be able to participate meaningfully within society. Obviously there’s a lot of handholding, because institutionalization does make you even more marginalized. But in terms of reintegration, we found that allowing people to bring their expertise and tapping into that is very beneficial for all elements of society.
In doing so, we’ve worked with several offenders. To this point and to this day the offenders, no matter how long they spent with us, have not actually gone back into the institutions. There’s very low recidivism in that regard. Again, in terms of having them be able to weigh in, we find it very beneficial. Again, there are new skill sets, values and ethics often that they have not learned within the institutions that they are now putting into play within the community.
We find that having that in the institutions, even within the discharge planning or whatnot, if that can occur, the likelihood, again, of people being able to learn, retain and also reverberate that when they get back into the communities is very much a better plan, so that we’re not just continuing to recycle inmates or have people coming in and out.
One last thing before I pass it off to Farley: These people who spent several years in institutions are excellent spokespersons to help people who are on the cusp of making wrong decisions and whatnot in terms of having them speak to young people, especially, and allowing them to hear what institutionalization really is. There is a miscommunication and a misconception of what that is in the streets. It’s very beneficial.
Even if they haven’t found a calling, a career or where they’re suited, speaking to people is one of the areas where, again, we can see that there’s different benefit to acting as a deterrent for people who may be thinking of joining a certain lifestyle.
Mr. Flex: I want to preface my presentation by ensuring that you understand that we do all of our work from what we call “the lens of pop culture.” Pop culture and having been in the entertainment industry for many years informs you as to aspects of systemic racism that the average layperson may not be aware of.
When we look at institutions and we understand the impact of systemic racism, which is distinctly different than anti-Black racism, we have to understand that the training that Roderick is speaking of and the awareness are the critical aspects of how we address the issue. Most people who participate in systemic racism are not even aware that they are. Awareness really becomes the first step to mitigating the issue. We have to ensure that folks are aware they’re actually contributing to systemic racism through their normal behaviours. Until the incumbents in charge of the institutions and the issues that we’re addressing are aware of that, made aware of that, trained and their brains are unwashed, literally, to understand what equity actually means and what fairness actually is and so on and so forth, it will be a futile issue to address and go down the list of issues to claim that we’re resolving and using terms like that, because it does, in fact, start with the system itself.
Second, from the bottom up, those who are victimized by systemic racism, the general issue and requirement from our standpoint is the development of a cultural identity. For those of you who are familiar with the history of people of African descent, I’ll do as brief a version of that as I can. When we talk about the Middle Passage or the geographic transition from the Atlantic slave trade to the Western hemisphere, we have to understand that only one third of our ancestors made it across that journey. So the message we have to send to our youth and to those who are in jeopardy of interacting with the criminal justice system has to be about that elite gene pool that they actually come from and building a sense of confidence in the society where they’re perceived to be minorities.
There’s a great book I’m reading right now called The Triple Package, which identifies the rise and fall of immigrant communities as being contributed to by three factors. First, one has to recognize that they are, in fact, prejudiced against; two, they have to have a sense of superiority in terms of their perspective on those who are prejudiced against them. This is not from a racist standpoint but from a standpoint of confidence, self-esteem, et cetera. Many immigrant communities exhibit those traits.
The third thing, and most important, quite frankly, or at least equally important, is the sense of deferred gratification. When you come from poverty, deferred gratification is hard to implement into your lifestyle. When you are marginalized, deferred gratification is also difficult to come by. When we marry that to what’s happening with technology, we realize that technology really purports a message of having everything now.
If we’re not looking at the true root cause of the issues, which is systemic racism, all of what was listed by our colleagues here in terms of the disparities we’re seeing in the institutions — the folks who are managing those circumstances may be oblivious to their acts, in many cases. In many cases, they are aware. Physical separation and physical disparities are one thing, but the mental propensity to be racist, when you’re oblivious to your actions, is a massive issue.
We won’t be able to resolve anything on anyone’s list until those who are the incumbents of the institutions are open and honest and recognize, especially from an HR perspective, how we are vetting the folks who are working in our institutions. What do we know about their racist tendencies that they’re aware of and the ones that they’re oblivious to?
It’s important that we look at it from the perspective of equity and balance. A population that’s reflective of the incarcerated has to be reflective in terms of those who manage and provide services to the incarcerated.
Mr. Brereton: To dovetail to what Farley was saying, people have to see the residuals in terms of what happens thereafter. When people are incarcerated and institutionalized, when released, if there hasn’t been any true intervention, this becomes the culture in the streets. We don’t have to look very far to our American neighbours to see how prison culture, negative and anti-social culture, has permeated the actual societies in cities.
As Canadians, we obviously have a responsibility, and we also have a leg in terms of making positive changes systemically and to be an example for the world on how to do it right. I think we can still do that. Every day is another day, and time ticks, but we definitely have to take a stance to make a true change.
We also have to look at our history. It hasn’t been peaches and cream, but we definitely have to recognize where we have made mistakes or have gone wrong and make changes to correct.
The Chair: I’d like to open it up to questions, unless, Mr. Flex, you had a final point.
Mr. Flex: That’s fine.
Senator Eaton: Mr. Flex, I was very taken with what you said that you’re not trying to create victims. You want to give them confidence and build them up.
My first questions are to the Telfers. Could you give us some good examples of some ethnocultural programs that you’ve started in prisons that have been successful?
Mr. Green-Telfer: To give you a bit of history, originally what we were there to do was to help bridge the divide between the management and the ethnocultural offenders. That meant providing people who could speak the language of an offender who was going before the Parole Board so that that particular offender would understand what was actually happening to them, as is their right, before any judicial committee such as that.
Also, the original contract meant that we had to go into each of the 13 Ontario institutions at the time and provide what we called diversity and inclusiveness workshops. These were given to offenders, institutional officers, staff and so on.
That being said, the success that we had with some of these programs and parts of the visitation program that we also had to do under that contract -- We developed proposals to say, “Some of the issues that you’re having here are because the information that is needed for the offenders isn’t getting through.” Take, for instance, an offender who is eligible for parole and wants to, of course, get out and go back to his or her family. The problem with that is that you have to come up with a release plan that the Parole Board will accept. I did attest to this in my original speech.
A lot of that means that you have to know what you’re going to be doing if you’re going to be going to any post-secondary institution, or if your plan is to become a tradesperson, what you would have to do. That information was not really conveyed very well to the ethnocultural population.
To answer your question, senator, one of the most successful programs that we did was called the Education and Trades Workshop, where I would go into each of the institutions. For the men’s institution, I did this. Any question with respect to the women’s institution will have to be referred to Maxcine.
I went into the institutions and said to them, “If you are going to be doing any sort of post-secondary education, this is how you actually have to apply, and this is how you go about obtaining financial aid.” I brought in a lot of the materials. I worked with a lot of the admissions departments for colleges and universities. They sent me information that I could then make sure was available to offenders there.
The other one would be the small-business preparedness program that was introduced. It wasn’t just ethnocultural offenders that were there. It was catered to them, but it wasn’t just non-White, non-Aboriginal. I did have a lot of White and Aboriginal offenders come in. It was there to say, “This is how you actually transition some of the skills that you would have learned in the institution into the actual workplace,” and so on.
As part of the program, these were some of the most successful services that we provided.
Senator Eaton: I think you said in your remarks that a lot of the Black inmate population were in there because of drugs.
Mr. Green-Telfer: A lot of them drugs, guns, assaults.
Senator Eaton: Do you have programs that help them if they’re addicted? Do you have anti-drug programs that would be specialized for the Black population?
Ms. Telfer: Correctional Service Canada, first of all, has their correctional programming. They do have, in all their institutions within Canada, the correctional component to correct that component, so drugs and all the other aspects.
Our component with regard to the ethnocultural diversity aspect was really to complement what they have to offer. We did what was called a shopping list. Our shopping list entailed all 12 institutions in 2012 to find out what the needs were. The shopping list consisted of all the offenders, wardens, management. Once we found out what the needs were, then we set out solutions to fill those needs.
What we found was that the management team — and again, I say a great management team, but as Farley just said, and Aundre in his presentation, the ethnocultural unconscious bias is missing, and they’re aware of that. So we had to go in and develop programs and services where we trained the parole officers, wardens and managers that sat in the program on diversity, equity and inclusiveness.
Another piece of what we did was that every month we would send off reports. Tri-monthly we would meet with the regional managers. Yearly we will do our report, and in our report there are recommendations. From those recommendations we created policies.
One of the policies was called Behind the Ethnocultural Door, and that was a sensitivity policy to engage the workers to better understand what is meant by hissing the teeth and not being escalated and what is meant by even gesticulating and not being escalated, because once they do that, once they sit before their parole officers, these are the things that usually happen.
Another context of it, we had Chris Mangan at the time. She had actually given us the go-ahead to broaden the contract. The contract was broadened in the context that we had the Consul General series. Why? Because we work with Border Services, with immigration people, and also we work with the Ontario provincial government once they move from the federal into the Ontario for deportation.
What we found was that when we called to prepare them for deportation, the Consul General didn’t know what we were talking about. As a matter of fact, we must applaud Chris Mangan and Correctional Service Canada for changing the system with the women’s institution, at the time, for them to re-entry. So they’re deported, and many times they come back in. This could not have happened, because what we now had to do was to communicate with each country to accept the deportee. In accepting the deportee, we also had to communicate with the country itself to say these are the new changes. In doing the Consul General series, at the time we had a member of Parliament coming in for some of the events that we had.
I could go on and on.
Senator Eaton: Thank you very much. My colleagues would like to ask questions.
Senator Bernard: I’ll just ask one question for now. Thank you all for your presentation and for speaking to us specifically about the Black offenders, men and women, because that’s an important part of our work.
If you could, I’d like you to talk a bit about the funding streams and what information or knowledge you may have around why successful programs are not continuing to be funded.
Ms. Telfer: I’ll take this on. I have two minutes and I’ll try to do that in two minutes. First of all, our understanding of the funding stream is based on our work with Citizenship and Immigration Canada and all the others. What happens with regard to the funding stream is that when you to the proposal, money is granted. If you don’t have numbers, funding goes away. That’s with Citizenship and Immigration and all the others. For us, we won the contract over 20 people that had applied for the Correctional Service Canada funding component.
That was three years. We were paid $11,000 monthly, but we had an astronomical amount of work because our passion lies in really reintegrating these citizens. We call them the returning citizens — we didn’t want to call them prisoners — because we believe more in the powerful component instead of negativity in that context.
Within that context, the work we did was extraordinary, but what we were paid for it was a small amount. This contract was extended to five years based on our performance. So the question that you asked with regard to the funding, that’s really that tiny bit of information that I can actually give to you.
We further requested more funding or more money, and we were told that Correctional Service Canada didn’t have the funds.
Senator Bernard: Just so I’m clear on this, was there another opportunity to apply, or has that whole pot of money been discontinued? You said that you applied.
Mr. Green-Telfer: When the original program from 2010 to 2015 was nearing the end of its cycle, as Maxcine stated, throughout its lifetime we had asked for more resources. I should say that one of the biggest culprits for why we didn’t get more resources or why there is no program is because of the budget cuts that were going on during that time. I remember vividly the deputy commissioner, when we asked, said, “We really like your program, we really do,” but at the time, in 2013 or 2014, Public Safety had asked them to give back $300 million out of the previous budget. They would be getting $300 million less in the next budget. To answer your question, this was one of the big roadblocks. That’s probably one of the biggest reasons why.
The second-biggest reason, and I want to be careful as to how I say this, is — I don’t want to say lack of interest. I don’t really want to use such a harsh term, but the interest in providing some of these programs wasn’t there. The recommendations were heavy. The recommendations to the commissioner came from his advisers, the National Ethnocultural Advisory Committee, the Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee and from the Office of the Correctional Investigator, who did find out about our program, and I think the current holder of that office is Ivan Zinger. We have with met with him several times, and he has made recommendations, but it has not gone anywhere.
The last thing I’ll say in answering your question, senator, is that we did get some directives from Minister Goodale. We sent him the proposal — what we proposed to do. This was with the backing of the National Ethnocultural Advisory Committee to take this ethnocultural program, extend it and add more resources to what’s going on in Ontario to build on our success there and to add it to the Atlantic region, the Quebec region and the Pacific region. When that went to Minister Goodale, he informed us that we need to be talking to Scott Harris.
When it went before him, Mr. Harris, being mindful of a lot of the budget cuts that had been happening, continually asked us to lower the scope of these programs. So originally what we proposed was an extensive program that would have been Canada-wide. The feedback we got was to only focus on one part of the Toronto area, say Scarborough, North York or Etobicoke. That’s the response we had been getting with respect to that. To this day, still nothing has fully replaced our program within the institutions. I hope that answers your question.
Senator Bernard: It does, thank you. If you have a specific recommendation for us that you’d like us to consider, please do that.
The Chair: I was going to say this is not about the money. This is about the lives of people who are incarcerated. That void is there and we’re just talking about money. I’ll finish on that. This is not happening in other provinces. You addressed human cases that should be addressed each and every day. As chair of this committee, I don’t usually speak out, but I’m shocked to see that this has happened. It shouldn’t have been allowed to happen when you’re talking about money and people.
Senator Pate: I just wanted to clarify that the DRAP initiative was when your contract was cut. I want to be clear for the record.
Mr. Green-Telfer: It was almost every year the deficit program was enacted. At the end of 2013, after the first three years were up, the ethnocultural program and services manager really did have to fight. The Correctional Service was ready to axe the program at the end of the original lifetime of the contract and not act on the two option years that were written into the original contract. He was ready to axe it. It was through the effort of the ethnocultural programs and services manager who, at the time was Blair Donovan; he still works with the Correctional Service of Canada in a different capacity now. Some of the previous managers had to come in and say, “If you take this away, there are going to be real consequences.”
Senator Pate: I’m just trying to clarify for the record. It was the DRAP that caused the cut, and then am I to understand that you were then told to go to each regional deputy commissioner? Was there not a national commissioner?
Ms. Telfer: After three years we recommended it move on for an extension. We were looking at making it Canada-wide because the national committee, NEAC, and the regional committees had gotten together and given their consent. We created target solutions, applying the best practices in Ontario. So it’s all over Canada right now, because they’re waiting for it on that level. That’s my answer.
After three years the regional ethnocultural manager had to negotiate with the commissioner to extend the program. So in 2015, we submitted proposals Canada-wide because the National Ethnocultural Advisory Committee recommended that we take it Canada-wide. We’re waiting.
Senator Omidvar: I want to move on to another line of inquiry. All four of you have spoken at length about the experience of Black inmates. Can you help me and us understand more directly the experience of Black women in prisons? What interventions have proven successful in terms of attaching them, let’s say, to prison employment or to community-based programming that helps them integrate back into society? What have you observed? I ask all of you that, because we are interested in the prison population in general, but I think many of us are specifically interested in the experiences of women in those prisons and what we can do to improve that.
Mr. Brereton: Our experience has been that when women are released out of the prison systems, the training that the prisons actually offer is very narrow. It doesn’t allow for experiential learning in terms of developing skill sets, a different trade or whatnot. In fact, a lot of Black women who are released end up on social services. With the charges and convictions on their name and with the bill that you have to present that you have a conviction, the likelihood of employment is very low when being released.
Also, a lot of Black women have children when they are institutionalized. There is obviously a lack of parenting taking place — or that catching up that has to happen.
The employment rates of Black women who have been institutionalized are very low.
Ms. Telfer: With regard to the Grand Valley Institution, we have been there. As a gender base, I will give you a roundabout. We have worked on many policies over the years. We worked on immigration policies and whatever. This lends itself to immigration and deportation.
Here is what we do at Grand Valley Institution. Grand Valley Institution specializes is sewing blankets for DND, which is National Defence. I do not know if everyone is aware of that. They have a sewing system there that they work with CORCAN. When we went in, we enabled them to get into the sewing system. There is also the salon there that they are supposed to be a part of.
Unfortunately, after the recommendations, they were not a part of it because of the kind of hair and also because of the trainers. They were looking at more Caucasian hair, so the Black ladies were not allowed in.
You must remember that we don’t only have drug dealers; we have doctors, lawyers and everyone. We also do community corrections. We had many conferences. One of them was “Removing the Stigma” with the not-for-profit organizations to connect them. In those conferences, those employers are aware of the women offenders coming outside. Some of them were ready, willing and able to work. They did customer service training in areas like food services and what you can do when you get outside.
There was that approach prior to getting out of the institutions.
However, there is always the lag that those who went in without any form of education still struggle.
Senator Omidvar: Can you tell me to what extent Black inmates, male or female, are able to complete high school education while they are in prison? Do you have any knowledge of programming and services?
Ms. Telfer: Is that for us?
Senator Omidvar: For the table.
Mr. Brereton: Our experience is that a lot of inmates complete high school or get their GED in prison. It is a good thing when they complete that because it makes them more competitive and for post-secondary education, but in the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t take prison to get their high school education, and it shows that in their day-to-day lives, prior to being institutionalized, the structure of education was not there, or there were other systemic pieces that made it more difficult for Black people to finish that rudimentary education.
Mr. Green-Telfer: To add to what Mr. Brereton was saying, completing your high school education is one thing; taking the equivalency test and doing that is one thing. Actually getting the courses that can advance you into post-secondary education or into trades is another.
To answer your question, it is not the fact that they can’t finish high school in the institutions. They can, and they are given the resources to do so. However, they don’t have guidance with respect to the courses they need to be taking.
To give you an example, for my small-business and educational workshop trades, a lot of them came in wanting to be electricians. A lot of them said, “I have completed my high school diploma.” My question to them is, “First, do you know what the Ontario College of Trades is?” They don’t know. There is a reason for that: A lot of them have been incarcerated since before the Ontario College of Trades was introduced. It used to be under the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. The Ontario College of Trades still answers to that ministry, but its organization is different.
So the information being given to them with respect to simply those wanting to go into the trades is not there. The issue is guidance.
Back to the people who wanted to be electricians. My first question to them is do they know what the electrician union is. Half say yes; half say no. For the people who say yes, I ask, “Do you know what high school courses they’ll be looking for? They will take your transcript, look at it and tell you you’re missing a high school course. Do you know what that course is?”
In my introductory speech, I told you it became Audmax Inc.’s job to give that information.
During my education and trades workshops, I would convey that if they want to be an electrician and get into the union, they have to take Grade 11 university-preparation physics, because the union has that as a prerequisite.
The issue is not simply whether they can finish high school; it is about when they finish high school, what they can do with that. Most of them don’t have the math or the prerequisites to do some kind of trade or to do post-secondary at the university level.
Ms. Telfer: Within that context, I would like to add that ESL is a challenge. The recommendation made to Correctional Service Canada was to look at the ESL for Black inmates and other languages. You have Black inmates coming from the Spanish-speaking countries.
Donovan Blair had contracted with an ESL specialist. The research is sitting there, but unfortunately, due to the program cuts, they didn’t move forward. So there is that aspect of it. There is a large percentage of those gentlemen in the maximum, minimum and medium institutions ready to come out, but unfortunately, that is a barrier.
Senator Bernard: My supplemental concerns this discussion around preparation in school in the prison system and the lack of awareness and information people have. Quite frankly, we see that in the high schools for Black students. That is one of the ways that systemic racism operates in the school system. Many Black students are not graduating from high schools and not getting that information or support to go on to post-secondary. That is how we see that whole school-to-prison pipeline.
This speaks to the work that needs to be done around prevention. Are any of you addressing that?
Mr. Flex: This will answer that question and dovetail on what was previously said.
We take a slightly different approach. Employment out of desperation is different than employment interests out of interest. Roderick mentioned earlier three components: interest, personality traits and skill sets. Those are fundamentally what we use in terms of student, community and individual engagement in general.
Essentially, we help folks discover themselves. We can align their interests, personality traits and skill sets with a particular profession. Generally speaking — and you heard me mention pop culture earlier — a lot of the youth that end up interacting with the criminal justice system come from a low-dimensional life in terms of interests and awareness of opportunities. We look at what they are interested in of their own volition. As stereotypical as it might sound, it will be sports, entertainment and components of pop culture; they are repeatedly inundated with those things through the media, whether it be social media or traditional media. That’s where you’ll find they have a heightened awareness.
What we do is we take that interest and what the media essentially does — and I am part of that — is purport the message that if you are into basketball, be LeBron James, or if you are into fashion, be this person, and if you are into music, be Beyoncé. We take that engagement catalyst and explore with them and introduce them to the infrastructure that supports those iconic positions.
If someone has a greater propensity for mathematics but is skewed to thinking about the music industry, it is not a pipeline from being interested in music to singing. It can be a pipeline to being a business manager. If you have a propensity for fashion, maybe there is a road for you in terms of being a wardrobe stylist.
We have done programs with the TDSB and the Durham District School Board, et cetera, with youth who have been interacting with the criminal justice system in communities like Jane and Finch and Malvern and helped them explore themselves based on a wider range of options. What happens is that if there are no intervention, prevention or reinvention opportunities, then they stick to what they know. If what you know is not enough, it is not good enough. We introduce what we call the buffet of life where they can be exposed to more things and choose their favourite meals out of those options. That measure of engagement is literally the critical difference between working with a sense of work ethic, desire, promise and vision and having a growth mindset for yourself to say, “I can become that because I have a propensity for it. I have the inclination and interest in it. I have the skill sets that complement my interests and my personality traits.” That is the model we use. We call it R.E.A.L. School, and the acronym means reality, education and applied life skills. It’s been very effective for us.
My voice and attire are as they are because I just got off a red-eye flight from Edmonton where I was working with First Nations students for the Yellow Head Tribal Council. It is the same scenario. When we look at the correlation between our indigenous population and people of African descent in this hemisphere, it is about the trauma that has gone unhealed. There has been no healing for that. These things have to be discussed openly and deeply to understand why there is a disproportionate amount of Black youth dropping out of school, populating the institutions and involved with the criminal justice system in general. We have to look at it from the root of the problem. Quite frankly, not enough of us are doing that. I will not say no one is doing it, but not enough of us are doing it.
All the icing on the cake is great. We can redecorate it all we want, but we don’t know what the ingredients of the cake are. Quite frankly, we are getting community organizations doing good work but work that is not necessarily good. We are spinning our wheels all over, and everyone is running for funding in little compartments, but that is why it is not sustainable.
For my recommendation, I would propose that we look at things from the root of the problem the way other communities have. Those of you who know who Simon Wiesenthal is, you will see how he addressed anti-Semitism in general and the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish population. It is looked at from a grassroots perspective. PTSD was understood through that lens. We haven’t addressed that what is happening to our First Nations brothers and sisters and our brothers and sisters of African descent is because that journey across the Atlantic impacted the kids who are in those prisons right now. If we don’t address all of this, with great respect, this is a waste of time.
Ms. Telfer: We have been in business for 24 years. We have been working with most of the school systems. So we take on challenged youth in the system. We are always called up to say we have one of your girls or guys. They come over and we do a six-month training program with them. We follow them through, whether it is high school, getting a job, training on food handlers, health and safety and all of the other aspects. That is one area that we focus on.
We also work with the University of Toronto and in the Mississauga area with the gender base because we also focus on that in the context of community, university, college and high school coming together. There is also that aspect that we do on a monthly basis in that area.
Mr. Green-Telfer: I will continue with what Maxcine was talking about. There is a gentleman called Leo Barbe who runs an organization called Think Don’t Shoot, which he recently rebranded as TDS Education because Think Don’t Shoot was too negative.
He goes into elementary, middle and high schools throughout Ontario. He has been in Montreal and Quebec City. I think he is in Halifax right now and is about to come back. He teaches about emotional growth. I think what Mr. Flex has been saying is that emotional growth is one of the big issues and roadblocks to real social and economic growth of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, to paraphrase him, and those of African descent.
When I went into the institutions to do the education in trades workshops, first I would ask, how many of you guys have jobs at CORCAN? Almost none of the Black offenders would put up their hands. My second question, knowing half of what the answer would be, was, why? The half of the answer that I know has to do with what we have been talking about with respect to systemic racism. The other half is the attitudes that are harboured towards working for CORCAN or for something that will give you a skill outside of the institution.
One of the first things I had to say to them would be to introduce myself as someone who used to live in the Keele and Finch community. As soon as I did that, the ice between myself and those offenders I was teaching was almost gone. I've looked at them and said, “You have to understand that issues with pay, dealing with a boss that you don’t like and all of those things will be present outside,” if you are not getting these jobs that CORCAN is offering, for example, for computer-aided design.
I, Maxcine and the NEAC committee members took a tour of the Warkworth Institution facility that CORCAN operates. At this facility they design a lot of the gazebos and huts that the Canada Border Services Agency has ordered from them to put up along the border between Manitoba and Minnesota, and so on, where there is no clear border.
For example, when you go across to the United States from here you would be crossing some kind of river or geographic landmark that would clearly say on one side you are in Canada and on the other side you are in the United States. In the Prairies, I’m sure the senator from Saskatchewan would understand that is not always the case. You could walk for 10 minutes, end up in the United States and never know it. So what Canada Border Services Agency ordered from the CORCAN facilities was their creation, from start to finish, for design, inventory, production and delivery.
We went in to take a tour to see how these were being made. What I saw there were computer-aided design workers, carpenters, welders, skilled tradespeople and so on. Out of about 100 people that I met that day, I would say two were Black. I asked the people at the Warkworth Institution if they had been offered jobs there. This stems from what my colleagues over here have been saying. The answer is no. Why? Well, why should I work doing that kind of job when I can get the same pay just mopping up the kitchen?
I looked at them and I said, “Well, that is a very short-term view because if you do this computer-aided design and have two years of working at it here, and CORCAN can vouch for that, guess how much you will make taking that skill out into the city of Toronto? Almost $100,000.” As soon as I said $100,000, you can imagine the change on the faces of some of these individuals.
To bring it back to the original question as to why this is happening and with respect to what is happening in the education system, there are two reports that I would like to bring to your attention. One was done by the Office of the Correctional Investigator in partnership with Ontario’s Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth. That report was called Missed Opportunities. Mr. Zinger did testify before the Public Safety Committee about this last week or two weeks ago. If you want to find more information, that would probably be the place to start.
What that report talks about is how these missed opportunities for intervention are now manifesting themselves in the scenario that I just described for you.
As a young person in high school, I remember when I went before the guidance counsellor to say that I wanted to do economics. I wasn’t told, “Try to look at the University of Toronto, or York University, or Western Ontario or Waterloo.” I was told to look at Trent or Nippissing. I don’t want to say “second tier” because these are fine institutions, but they are not the University of Toronto or Western or York.
There is a specific reason I was told to look at those institutions rather than at the top level of educational institutions that Ontario has to offer. This is not unique to me, and I am sure that Mr. Brereton and Mr. Flex will tell you that that’s not unique to me at all.
Youth are being — I don’t want to say forced -- but coerced into the applied stream in the Ontario education system. In the applied stream, you can’t get into university-level education with those courses. Those are specifically for people who want to go to college, because it is more hands-on, but those who just want to graduate.
That becomes a major sticking point as to why, later on in their lives, they are now coming before me and I have to tell them, “With this kind of job, you can get a lot of money.” This is common knowledge to most of us in this room. It is not really common knowledge to them. That is where some of the divide starts to come in.
To answer your question, are there programs for which they can get skills? Yes. The bigger question is, how many ethnocultural offenders are working these jobs? The answer is very few, and it stems from their lack of trust in the system.
The Chair: We will go until 1:15 because this is an interesting conversation. We will go in camera at 1:15 for a budget presentation on our continuing study. This study will continue for about another year and half, but just to let you know, we will have an interim report out in the next few weeks, we hope, but we have extended the timeline to October 2018. We need to get something out because we are working in real time.
We were supposed to finish at one o'clock, but senators are very curious folk. Please keep your questions short.
Senator Pate: Thank you all for coming and for the work you have been doing in the prisons.
Before coming to the Senate, I spent more than 35 years going in and out of prisons for young people, men and women. One of the things that struck me as you were speaking is that some of the information that gets re-characterized and repurposed as fact I heard from some of you. For instance, the fact that with CORCAN, so few people are in the jobs. It is not just an issue of racism. I agree it’s an issue of racism, but it is also an issue of, in most institutions, if there even is a CORCAN job, particularly for women. It is usually for anywhere from five to 10 when there may be up to 200 people. I want to put that in context.
Mr. Flex, I liked your comment about systemic issues and looking at some of the roots. I am sure you all share that.
One of the things that struck me is that much of the discussion has been around — and you called it the icing on the cake. Some would refer to it as rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.
The reality is that there are options that exist right now that would provide funding to do very creative options that, in my experience, many indigenous, Black and other communities don’t even know exist. For instance, sections 81 and 84 in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act allow for communities, particularly indigenous communities, to bring people out of prison not just for parole but to serve their sentences. Yet most communities don’t even know they exist and don’t know that even though the policies — the commissioner’s directives — really limit them, that, in fact, policy can’t limit law that way.
We have seen — not just from indigenous communities or any communities — few, if any, of those applications.
Could you give some thought to that and what you might do with some of those resources if you applied to the Minister of Public Safety to seek resources to actually have some of those Black prisoners, men and women — not so much young people unless they were transferred -- from the federal system in the community and how you could use those resources, particularly when we know what the costs of incarceration are? Indigenous and Black prisoners are more likely to be classified as higher security and less likely to have access to those programs.
For men, I’m not sure what the figure is right now. It was $117,000 per year. For women, it is at least $211,000 or $348,000 if you take the Parliamentary Budget Office figure.
What kinds of things could you be doing with those resources in the community, and how would you build community capacity to do those kinds of interventions? That is for all of you.
Also, you mentioned post-secondary education. There has been no funding for any kind of post-secondary education. Salons and all kinds of things have been closed in the federal prisons for years. None of that funding has been available since 1992, but it strikes me you are talking about educational opportunities that might benefit from being able to use those provisions.
Could you talk about what might be possible if you or your communities or communities of support for an individual or groups of Black prisoners would apply for those resources, what you might envision as possible?
Mr. Flex: I would like to offer two points in response to your question.
One of the things Roderick and I and our partners do is we believe that you have to reach before you teach. In general, that applies largely to youth in terms of engagement.
To your point about the use or the awareness of those programs, those programs are developed and they are researched, et cetera, and there is probably zero marketing applied to it. When I say “zero marketing,” I mean in terms of the community’s stakeholders that could actually build those programs like we do.
Again, I want to help you folks understand this. Because we come from a pop culture sensibility, we know that we have to market initiatives before we generate engagement and participation. If the programs exist and they are not being explored, utilized or applied for, the fundamental issue is a lack of awareness first.
If anyone is aware of the Black Youth Action Plan and the Anti-Racism Directorate, we are not seeing other folks’ applications, but we are aware of the massive amount of creativity that is being applied to the Black Youth Action Plan, as we speak. Folks are coming up with brilliant ideas, from comic books to creative integrated programs with community capacity building, et cetera, because the marketing around it is much more out there than it has been historically for other opportunities such as what you have mentioned.
The other piece is that we have a program right now — and this speaks to the creativity again — in partnership with Ryerson for a conflict management course on campus. We negotiated this relationship and said we would like to do it, but we would like the course to be available in the communities as well at little to no cost. Now, Ryerson doesn’t have the budget to finance that. We have to creatively go out and find third-party support to ensure that these mechanisms are available.
This is a preventative model in many cases. It’s interventive in some cases because some of the folks in the communities that we are dealing with do have interaction in the criminal justice system; some don’t, and some have, et cetera.
The idea is that before we go into those communities, we have to market that this is available to those folks. The way we choose to do it is from a standpoint of engagement. If you were to see one of our information flyers, you would think, quite frankly, that there was a party happening.
As simple and as frivolous as that sounds, I don’t think we have ever had less than a 100 per cent retention rate in our program over the last 10 years. We start off with a cohort of maybe 20. We end up with 35. We start off with 50, we end up with 75. We start off with 100, we end up with 130. The engagement, again, has to be there.
The kinds of programs you’re talking about will come with awareness when people who are concerned about their communities recognize that their ideas can now find funding and be supported.
Senator Pate: It’s not that there’s funding or a program right now. When these portions of the legislation were introduced, the purpose was to start to reduce the numbers of indigenous prisoners, in particular, but other groups were also looked at — Black and South Asian prisoners. The idea was that this was a mechanism whereby communities could apply to bring prisoners out of the prison into the community and then do the sorts of things you’re talking about.
So it’s not a funding arrangement per se; it’s an application to actually remove people from prison who are currently in prison, but it has hardly been used.
Mr. Flex: I understand.
Senator Pate: I don’t think it changes what you’re saying you might do with the resources, but just to be clear, I didn’t want to misinform.
Mr. Brereton: In terms of interventions, what’s meaningful is that when you build the esteem and confidence of somebody — again, our program, for the record, is called “Take Back Your World Navigate Your Life.” We’re speaking most in terms of relevance and people who leave institutions or who have not been gainfully employed or engaged. Our program focuses on just building that confidence and esteem that often, again, have not been there from the get-go.
When you find that people are able now to use their voice and critical analysis in making decisions and whatnot, the likelihood for employment or gainful, meaningful engagement is that much greater because they’ve now taken back something or found something that has not existed in the past.
The Chair: Ms. Telfer, I’d like to get you to answer this.
Ms. Telfer: I’ll be using the Elizabeth Fry model, because the Grand Valley Institution has looked at housing —the wraparound approach. Housing, employment and parenting are key foci that the Black offenders can actually look at. The wraparound model is when you get out of the institutions, you definitely have to have a house.
The Elizabeth Fry Society in 2010 introduced a new program whereupon a private person who has a house or room can rent it to Correctional Service Canada. I think it still exists today. That’s one area. Housing is a key component that we have to look at, which is a wraparound approach.
We also have to look at the mental health capacity of these ethnocultural people coming out of the institutions. You know the percentage, and I won’t go into that component of it, when you look at that piece.
The next component is whether you can afford to work, because that’s a mandatory requirement for you being on parole. You must work and comply with the Parole Board policies around the other aspects.
Last week, we were with Peel Children’s Aid. We’ll be working with them because they’re having a problem. They are the ones who — I wouldn’t say track into Correctional Service Canada — but their children in the system become that pathway into Correctional Service Canada. A key piece that we’ve presented to them is to look at food handlers. Train every child from age 15, everybody coming out of the institution, so they can work in any institution with a food handler certification.
The other component of that is to find housing. Next week, we will be there presenting on housing policy. We’ve developed an excellent relationship with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation that will provide us with a grant up to $50,000 to get housing. So we’re on board.
I love the fact that if we can get more of these resources — or recommended to utilize accordingly.
I’ll also say now that we would love to be a part of — I was going to do this after — because this is a collaborative approach. I love the excellent piece, the piece that is missing, because as the gentleman wrote — a Black guy, love the pants down, love the music and all the other aspects.
The Chair: We’ve done something good today.
Senator Andreychuk: Thank you for the information. You’ve covered a lot of ground and brought me up to date on a lot of what is going on, particularly in Ontario. We’re going to be looking nationally, so hopefully we’ll get all the other pieces fitting in.
I will have to review all your testimony, because you’ve covered programs that help the inmate population but that also make the prison safer for all in their ward. That’s one type of programming.
The other is to get them ready to leave. Then there’s the whole preventive side. It may not even be kids that are destined to jail. You’re doing programming for those to fit better into life; you’re giving them what we used to call life skills training. I’m getting that you’re involved in that program.
But having been in the court system way back when — and I’m told it’s not much different now — all of this is important: getting the education, et cetera. But you start with young offenders especially and then into adult correction services. They come with a lot of emotional needs and baggage at the start, and it’s drug addictions already, family violence — all of those issues. I haven’t heard you talk about how you bring that piece, which is extremely important. You can get all of the education you want, but if you haven’t sorted out some of your life and living experiences, you will go back into a community where those problems are still prevalent. The people who pulled you in are probably still there.
How do you do all this life skills training, not on the prevention, because I don’t think we have time, but with the people who may be destined to our prisons? How do we deal with them going in? Do you have programs for that, particularly when they’re coming out?
Mr. Flex: Ms. Telfer will have a specific answer, but I have a broader thing. The term “collective impact” to me is one of the biggest understandings that we have to have in terms of addressing issues such as this, because no one organization can represent all of the challenges and deal with all the challenges. It takes collaborative effort. I want to say that because it really addresses many of the questions that have been asked.
No societal issue can be resolved by any one entity. A collective approach has to be taken, and there are millions of models. We’ve developed one.
To answer that part of your question, I’ll tell you specifically that I haven’t mentioned it because I know other people who can address it. I don’t want to claim that I can or we can, but we do have partners that can because we work collaboratively. That’s the segue to the answer you’ll hear now.
Ms. Telfer: A key piece of what we’re looking at — we’ve applied it already and we will continue to apply it — is parenting coaching. Parents in general can be a challenge, and they’re one of the key pieces of what really formulates the child’s year. The parenting coaching is a key aspect of what we’re looking at.
We’re also looking at what we call the detached objective investigation. In the school system, Aundre, who’s my son — we do the mother-son approach when we go to the institution, which is a model — he spoke about when he was at high school. But when I told him that, as a teacher and a dietician from Jamaica, listen to me, “No, mommy, because the teacher knows best.”
So we’re also selecting these parents, training them to communicate with the school system. We’re also selecting non-profit organizations in the Black community to certify them as investigators within community corrections.
That’s part of our target solutions, which is part of the Canada-wide component.
Mr. Green-Telfer: I want to add one more thing, senator. One of the ways I found that I could help some of those individuals you were mentioning there comes back to engagement. With the diversity and inclusiveness workshop, the original program had to be delivered at the assessment units. For those of you who don’t understand what that is, when an offender is put into the federal system, if they’re in Ontario, they will go to the assessment unit. That used to be Millhaven. It’s still Millhaven. It’s Joyceville now, I think.
We delivered that programming there. Specifically for the offenders — because, as I mentioned, we did it for staff as well -- for the offenders, one of the things we looked at was their greatest stigma. In the prison system, especially for the institutions that I visited, if you call somebody a bird, that’s probably one of the most insulting things one offender can call another offender. We took that and incorporated it into the program, using birds as the examples, as the case studies. The question we got was, why did you use birds?
One of the big case studies was “Up the River, Down the River.” There’s also A Peacock in the Land of Penguins example we used. Offenders would ask, “Why do we use birds? Do you know what ’bird’ means in prisons?” I said, “Of course. I’ve watched a lot of prison shows like “Oz” and things like that. I know what that means. Why do you think I decided to use that for you?” They didn’t have an answer.
One of the things I said to them was, “What if I were to tell you that calling somebody a bird to insult them is counterproductive?” Because the biggest, most ferocious animals to have walked the earth, which are dinosaurs — today’s birds are genetically closest to dinosaurs. When I engaged their paradigms like that, that’s when you started to see the changes mentally that manifest themselves into physical changes.
To add to what Mr. Flex was saying, no one organization can do all of that. The reason we haven’t mentioned it, again, is because we know people who do. But there are subtle ways in which we have gone and introduced them to sort of change their paradigm towards what they think of each other, what they think of the system, and start to build some sort of trust, and we have seen some success in doing that.
Mr. Brereton: In terms of “Take Back Your World Navigate Your Life,” we explain the process of colonization. Our name, Urban Rez Solutions, is twofold. The “Urban” context usually includes Black and people living that “cultural” lifestyle; and the “Rez” stands for the reservation, short form.
A lot of people who are in the criminal justice system don’t understand exactly what has happened throughout that process of colonization. Understanding it, seeing how poverty works, seeing the disproportionate number of single homes and the impact of how that has continued to manifest itself just through the system of colonization, when you can weigh in, then you have a better-informed choice of stopping that behaviour.
Obviously, when you’re playing into that system, a lot of inmates don’t know how much it costs to house them per year, for instance. When you can look at $100,000 per year versus $6,000 to go to university or college, you do the math. It’s choices. But, again, when you’re more aware, when you’ve gained that awareness, then the likelihood of continuing to repeat that -- at least you’ve got that food for thought and you’re not ignorant anymore. You may be arrogant if you continue it, but at least now you’re equipped with understanding.
Senator Bernard: I want to give you an opportunity to speak very briefly to the impact that you think the recently released UN report on people of African descent in Canada may have on your work going forward.
The Chair: Senator Omidvar, could you put your question as well? We’ll make a notation of that, and we can have answers to both questions.
Senator Omidvar: Sure. It’s slightly unusual, chair, because they’re different, but that’s all right.
The Chair: Okay. We’ll wait. No problem. I’m an egalitarian person.
Answer this question and then we’ll move on to the other one.
Ms. Telfer: We have been working with the Correctional Investigator with regard to that United Nations report. We’ve also sent documentation to the Public Safety minister. There are a few things that report has brought forth.
First, it reintroduced the challenges faced over the years.
Second, it has opened our eyes that there are small, minuscule changes that have taken place over, say, the decades within the African-Canadian context.
Third, what I love about it is that it highlights the recommendations that must happen for Canada to be a part of the United Nations. As a matter of fact, a few years back, we had been meeting Status of Women because we set policies for gender-based Status of Women over the years with the United Nations. When I look at that report, it’s a reoccurrence. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed with regard to the needle on the clock. So it just goes around and around, and it comes back in our faces.
The key piece about it is that we are here to make a difference. We are here to be a part of the committee. We made a recommendation to the safety minister to set up services of Black organizations throughout Canada to make a change. That’s what we are definitely about right now.
Mr. Green-Telfer: To put it frankly, it hasn’t impacted what we do that much, because we’ve known that these issues have been there. The difference is that now the UN has signed off on what we’ve known for quite some time, to answer your question, senator.
Mr. Flex: I hope you’re all aware that the previous decade was a decade of Aboriginal people globally. If you speak to indigenous people in this country, they don’t really see any positive impact from that.
In terms of African Canadians, the demands that are being spoken about are to seek, for instance, an apology from the Queen and from the Prime Minister for the transatlantic slave trade, et cetera, and slavery that existed here in Canada, which most Canadians aren’t even aware of.
In terms of what can come of it from a positive standpoint is that it is a platform for increasing awareness. We do the work we do, collectively, because we believe people are inherently good. If they’re aware, then that goodness, plus their awareness, will hopefully evolve into action.
Mr. Brereton: It’s not just African Canadians’ awareness; it’s societal awareness, because everybody has a part to play.
The Chair: That’s good. It’s very important to hear this.
Senator Omidvar: I’ll make it very short, because I know we’re running out of time. And I don’t need everyone; I’ll leave it up to the chair to find out how many people need to answer this rather simple question.
As we’ve been reading about the issue and the context in prisons, we’ve also been reading about proposed solutions. I’d like your response to one of the solutions, and I’d like to know what you think about it. This relates to the creation of an ethnicity liaison officer in every federal institution. In this case, it would be, I imagine, a Black community liaison officer. I imagine this person would negotiate for the prisoner or prisoners inside and outside prison, and hopefully deconstruct the lived experience of systemic or individual racism to staff.
The Chair: One spokesperson from each organization.
Senator Omidvar: Is that a good idea? If so, should this individual be a member of Correctional Service Canada staff or should this be someone who is outside the institution?
Mr. Flex: Very briefly, if I may — ladies first.
Ms. Telfer: Excellent. That proposition came to us within the time of our five-year component. Grand Valley Institution started doing that, and they asked us what are their attributes and competencies, but we told them that it couldn’t happen like that. I’m a Black woman, and the Black community has Asians, which are part of the bigger Black component community. What we’re saying is that we need a team.
Mr. Flex: I’m glad I let the lady go first. Nova Scotia has a Ministry of African Nova Scotian Affairs. I believe that Ontario needs a ministry of African Ontarian affairs first, and within that, that position could certainly be an excellent idea.
Senator Bernard: I think the UN report recommended that there be something at the federal level, similar to the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs, that is, someone specifically federally addressing those issues.
Another one of the specific recommendations was that the government abolish the practice of segregation and solitary confinement and explore alternatives to imprisonment. I don’t know if you’ve looked specifically at that recommendation, but what are your thoughts about it?
Ms. Telfer: I agree with that completely. In Aundre’s presentation he touched on Ashley Smith. It was the segregation that created Ashley Smith’s case, where she killed herself.
Senator Pate: She didn’t kill herself.
Ms. Telfer: At Grand Valley?
Senator Pate: She believed that staff would go in and save her.
Ms. Telfer: I thought we were part of this whole thing. Whatever it is, it is stated that she was in confinement, among all the other aspects. You can look at Mr. John Clark’s 30 years in institutional confinement. Yes, we’re in agreement with that. We believe that human beings need human beings. We need the social cohesion and social touch. We also need to communicate. If you’re going to rehabilitate, you cannot rehabilitate to exclude; you rehabilitate to include, because you’re going to go back into the society as law-abiding citizens.
The Chair: Senator Pate, did you have a supplementary? No?
Senator Pate: Senator Bernard raised it, because the UN committee combined with the provisions of the CCRA would allow for some decarceration options.
The Chair: We want to thank you. We’ve been two hours. Knowledge is everything, and you’ve added a great deal of knowledge for our report. In fact, I hope the government is paying attention to what you were saying to us today before we even have a report out. I think that’s part of the process.
If you could be patient for us, we do believe in openness and transparency in the Senate in terms of spending money. This committee hopes, in the next phase, to go to Kitchener and Edmonton and to the Maritimes, to places like Truro and Dorchester. Part of the process is we’re asking the committee at this moment to approve an application that I will make to the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration for monies before Christmas. Hopefully we can do some of that. If we can get approval, I can read a pro forma statement to move this application process that goes to the subcommittee and then goes to the Senate. Do you agree? We can discuss it openly.
Senator Ngo: I don’t know.
The Chair: We just have to adopt the idea of giving me the authority to seek funding for these trips for hearings.
Before doing so, we really appreciate your being here. Thank you. This has been a very important part of our study.
As I mentioned, we are hopefully planning to go to Kitchener and Edmonton and to Eastern Canada as part of our study. We have a budget before us. I’m looking for approval from the committee to allow me to go to the subcommittee, and then the steering committee will sort out all the travel details, what we can do. Then it will go for the Senate in that process in another public, open and transparent fashion. Is it agreed?
Senator Bernard: I have a question about the air transportation. I notice that the senators’ travel is much higher. I’m assuming that’s because the proposal is that senators travel first class?
The Chair: No.
Senator Bernard: Business class?
The Chair: But for Atlantic Canada — being from there but living in Ontario — it’s economy. To Atlantic Canada, Kitchener, within this range, that would be economy. I think we’re talking about Edmonton. We can travel business class. There’s a rule that we have for all of us.
Senator Omidvar: There is a rule about when you can travel business.
Senator Ngo: Over two hours.
The Chair: Yes. I’m going to read a pro forma statement.
Is it agreed that the special study budget application for public hearings and fact finding in Kitchener, Edmonton and Eastern Canada, part of the committee’s study on issues pertaining to human rights of prisoners for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, be approved with the changes as we discussed today, and that the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure be authorized to approve the final version of the budget for the chair to submit to the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)