THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 30, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs met this day at 11:49 a.m. [ET] to study Bill S-230, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, Bill S-13, An Act to amend the Interpretation Act and to make related amendments to other Acts, and proposals to correct certain anomalies, inconsistencies, outdated terminology and errors and to deal with other matters of a non-controversial and uncomplicated nature in the Statutes and Regulations of Canada, and to repeal certain provisions that have expired, lapsed or otherwise ceased to have effect.
Senator Brent Cotter (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.
[English]
My name is Brent Cotter. I am a senator from Saskatchewan and chair of the committee. I would like to take this opportunity to invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, deputy chair of the committee, from Quebec.
Senator Patterson: My name is Dennis Patterson. I’m a senator from Nunavut.
[English]
Senator Prosper: Senator Paul Prosper, Nova Scotia, land of the Mi’kma’ki.
[Translation]
Senator Dalphond: My name is Pierre Dalphond, senator for the De Lorimier senatorial division in Quebec.
[English]
Senator Klyne: Good morning and welcome. Marty Klyne, a senator from Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory.
Senator McCallum: Mary Jane McCallum from the Barren Lands First Nation, Treaty 10, Manitoba region.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Renée Dupuis, independent senator, senatorial division of The Laurentides, Quebec.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: Mobina Jaffer from British Columbia. Welcome.
The Chair: At this point, I would like to welcome our witnesses today. We have the special opportunity, the second in recent days, to welcome a senator as the lead witness. She is the sponsor of the bill we’ll be considering today. We are now beginning consideration, with Senator Pate, of Bill S-230, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I would like to welcome Senator Pate. She is jointed by Emily Grant, her Director of Parliamentary Affairs. Senator Pate, as you know, is a bit of a wallflower and will need assistance, I’m sure. Senator Pate, welcome. The floor is yours for approximately 7 to 10 minutes, after which we will move into the conversation with you.
Hon. Kim Pate, sponsor of the bill: Thank you very much, and thank you for welcoming me here.
I thank Ms. Grant for joining me to ensure that I navigate these papers, if I need to, and for all the incredible support and assistance she provides to me every day in my office.
Bill S-230 is a law we have subtitled “Providing Alternatives to Isolation and Ensuring Oversight and Remedies in the Correctional System Act (Tona’s Law).” The genesis of this bill was the decision of the government to not accept the Senate amendments to Bill C-83, which was ostensibly supposed to eliminate the use of segregation and solitary confinement in federal penitentiaries and replace them with structured intervention units. When that bill passed in 2019 — or as it was being considered — the Senate Social Affairs Committee made a number of amendments that were accepted by the Senate, which then went to the House of Commons. They were rejected by the government. Those are essentially the amendments we are including in this bill. I should also point out that everything in this bill was also a part of the report of the Human Rights Committee on the human rights of federally sentenced persons. That report was tabled in 2021.
The context for this is that when the Corrections and Conditional Release Act was introduced in 1992 — or when it was promulgated — it was introduced as a piece of human rights legislation with one of the primary focuses being to reduce incarceration and incarceration with restraint in Canada, but according to Canada’s own data, it has not achieved that. We know that Bill C-83 some few decades later shows we have not ended the use of segregation and that, in fact, according to the government’s own data, SIU’s replicate conditions of segregation and solitary confinement. At least one in three people locked in SIUs experience solitary confinement, defined internationally as being in a cell for 22 hours or more without meaningful human contact. For 1 in 10 people in SIUs, the solitary confinement is so prolonged, ranging from sixteen to hundreds of days, that it is recognized under Canadian law and international standards as tantamount to torture.
Conditions of isolation and segregation have also continued to expand outside SIUs in other areas of the prison. As the Correctional Investigator has pointed out in his most recent report, that can come in all kinds of forms. We see it in terms of things that are listed as medical observation, voluntary limited association ranges and even modified movement within penitentiary units. As recently as Friday, when I was in Collins Bay Institution, we heard from medium-, minimum- and maximum-security prisoners that movement within that institution is also severely limited. Currently, that is in part a combination of the post-COVID measures that have not been lifted in terms of limited movement.
In addition, the Correctional Investigator points out that the range of options that are not covered by the current provisions within the Corrections and Conditional Release Act as a result of the amendments made by Bill C-83 are things referred to as secure units, therapeutic units, maximum security, dry cells and what the Correctional Investigator refers to as “hidden cells,” cells that are not categorized either way but that keep people isolated.
The proposed approach in Bill S-230 is four measures to actually end the use of solitary confinement. It would involve requiring judicial oversight of the use of solitary confinement beyond 48 hours. That is consistent with the decision of the courts in Ontario, where it was found that keeping someone in segregation for 48 hours could result in mental health and psychological consequences that could be irredeemable and potentially permanent.
Certainly, the recommendation first came from Louise Arbour following the Commission of Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston in 1996 when she recommended that segregation come under the supervision of the courts. In her estimation at that time, more than 20 years ago, the reality was that Corrections could not be relied upon to ensure that the law was followed.
The ministerial advisory panel that was put in place to monitor structured intervention units has repeated this message. In fact, it has indicated that, as of mid-2020, Correctional Service Canada itself was recognizing that many of its decisions were not being followed and that the oversight was inadequate to ensure adherence with the law.
The other recommendation for judicial oversight involves the recognition that Louise Arbour made, also in 1996, that where the treatment individuals receive at the hands of CSC amounts to correctional interference with the lawful sanction, that should be reviewable by a judge in the same way a judge can, in a sentencing situation, review sentence and determine that the conditions of confinement pretrial should be recognized in shortening a sentence. So that remedy is also included.
In addition, given the reality that we disproportionately see Indigenous and Black prisoners in segregation, consistent, again, with the amendments that the Senate made in 2019 to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act when Bill C-83 was being considered, there is an expansion of the sections 29, 81 and 84 provisions. Those would encourage the use of mental health services in the community through section 29 for those individuals with disabling mental health issues. They would also push for the increased use of community-based options consistent with sections 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act for Indigenous peoples, while also recognizing the legislative intent was also that those provisions could apply to non-Indigenous prisoners to expand that in light of the proliferation of individuals, particularly those of African descent as well as other prisoners, whether trans prisoners or others finding themselves disproportionately segregated.
Also, it encouraged the use of mental health professionals to ensure that when assessments are being done in terms of mental health issues, that the reliance is not on individuals who don’t have mental health training. For instance, currently, those assessments can be done by someone who has literally a page with a tick-box exercise but doesn’t necessarily have mental health training to perform those assessments. So it is really reinforcing again what the Social Affairs Committee amendment recommended, which was that mental health professionals be the ones conducting assessments, and where those are not available within the prisons — based on evidence of Correctional Service Canada and the Correctional Investigator — those assessments should be done outside the prison.
I think my time is probably done. I welcome your questions. This bill represents provisions that the Senate has already passed and has already considered in both the Social Affairs Committee and the Human Rights Committee, as well as in passing the amendments to Bill C-83.
The Chair: We will now turn to questions from senators.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Welcome, Senator Pate.
I would like to correct a piece of information, namely that Canada practised torture in penitentiaries, whereas actually, intervention units comply with the Nelson Mandela Rules, which stipulate, among other things, that an inmate in a structured unit must spend at least four hours a day outside his cell and two hours interacting with other inmates. This statement needed to be corrected.
This is my first question: the patients you are targeting in your bill would likely be transferred, in part, to provincial hospitals, right?
[English]
Senator Pate: First of all, in terms of your comments about torture, it is very clear that the Nelson Mandela Rules outline that anything beyond 15 days is tantamount to torture, and these are not just my words. These are the conclusions that the Structured Intervention Unit Implementation Advisory Panel to the minister have identified, and as part of that evidence, they internally produced a memo —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Canada applies the Nelson Mandela Rules; it wasn’t a question.
My question is about the people who will be covered by your bill. Can a certain number of people be transferred to provincially-run hospitals?
[English]
Senator Pate: Yes. So individuals with mental health issues —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Fine. Can —
[English]
The Chair: Senator, you posed a question. Let Senator Pate answer, please. I’ll give you more time. You are the critic on the bill.
Senator Pate: In fact, what you are identifying, in terms of the rules that are supposed to be applied, and what I was highlighting, is that there is evidence from Corrections itself that they are not following those rules. That’s an indication that the Mandela Rules aren’t being followed.
In terms of the mental health issues, if I understand your question, I’m proposing that those mental health issues, where that’s the primary reason — and as the Correctional Investigator and the minister’s independent advisory panel have shown, the majority of people who are in the Structured Intervention Units, or SIUs, multiple times, are there for mental health reasons. Particularly, the people where the law is being violated are most likely to be there because of mental health issues, not because they pose a risk to others.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: So the transfers are going to pose security problems for the hospitals, because they’re not equipped to ensure the safety of dangerous inmates. It will also pose financial problems, because the provinces are already overstretched when it comes to psychiatric services.
Have you consulted all Canadian provinces regarding your bill?
[English]
Senator Pate: There are currently exchange of services agreements between every province and territory and Correctional Service Canada for health agreements for the provision of health care services. Those provisions already exist, and yes, I have been in discussion with not every single province and territory but with a number of them around the need for more resources.
Senator Boisvenu: Quebec?
Senator Pate: I have been in touch with L’Institut national de psychiatrie légale Philippe-Pinel in Quebec, but not the Quebec government, and the reality is that there is already an exchange of services agreement with Quebec for Pinel for the provision of these exact services. In every province and territory, there is an agreement.
There was a commitment made, in fact, during the hearings on Bill C-83 by Correctional Service Canada to implement those resources, and there were additional budgetary allocations provided to Correctional Service Canada for those beds. They have not yet been promulgated, and so at a time when certainly we see more people with mental health issues in the prison system, that’s part of the reason we are including this, reiterating this provision that, in fact, we should be doing these assessments.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: How will your bill define disabling mental disorders?
[English]
Senator Pate: If you look at the current definition in section 37.11 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, it talks about the grounds that are considered for determining that somebody has deteriorating mental health. I haven’t proposed a particular definition because this definition is already there, and it talks about refusing to interact with others, engaging in self-injurious behaviour, showing symptoms of drug overdose, showing signs of emotional distress or exhibiting behaviour that suggests they are in urgent need of mental health care. That describes, I think, disabling mental health issues.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: How many inmates could be transferred to provincial hospitals?
[English]
Senator Pate: It would certainly be better than what we have now in terms of what is provided, and right now, when every other system —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: How many will there be?
[English]
Senator Pate: We don’t know for certain. Corrections has various estimates. I don’t have access to those stats. The Corrections —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: If we say that 40% of men and 50% of women suffer from mental disorders, we are talking about thousands of people.
[English]
Senator Pate: The reality is that every time our mental health systems fail in the community, one of the systems that can’t refuse them is our prison system. The reality is that we know for all kinds of other reasons that there is a mental health crisis. We know from the previous work of the Senate on the Kirby Report that there is a need to shore up mental health services. Certainly if we’re talking —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Do you think the provinces have the capacity to receive 1,000 or 1,500 patients in their psychiatric units?
[English]
Senator Pate: We’re not talking about 1,000 or 1,500 off the bat. We’re talking about the numbers of people who are currently being held.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: However, it’s a possibility. If 15,000 people are incarcerated, and we say that 40% of these people suffer from mental disorders — let’s say that 10% of people have disabling mental disorders. We could be talking about 1,500 people who could be transferred to hospitals.
[English]
Senator Pate: If they are the individuals that the Correctional Service of Canada itself, the Correctional Investigator, the ministerial advisory panel as well as numerous lawsuits are identifying, and the inquests into various deaths, including the death of Ashley Smith , underscore that these are individuals who are primarily there for mental health reasons, not because they pose a risk to society, then, yes, I would be suggesting we should be looking at the provision of mental health services.
The Chair: I have you on the second round, Senator Boisvenu, if you need it.
Senator Dalphond: Can you provide more information — to follow up on the questions of Senator Boisvenu — that 40% to 50% of inmates are suffering some kind of mental problem or illness? This is not the threshold you are proposing here. It has to be a disabling mental illness. How do we define a disabling mental illness?
Senator Pate: We didn’t define it in the Human Rights Committee or in Social Affairs because we saw the definition in the CCRA as something we could use in terms of when there should be an assessment of a prisoner’s mental health. Those were the provisions that I indicated are in section 37.11. Do you want me to read them again?
Senator Dalphond: No, but maybe you can provide a copy to the members of the committee.
Senator Pate: Sure. It’s in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
Senator Dalphond: My next question is about something different. I think you seemed to agree with Senator Boisvenu that there are 15,000 people who are serving time in federal penitentiaries now across Canada and that between 40% to 50% of them will be suffering some kind of mental illness.
Senator Pate: Part of the challenge, as we know from other work that we’ve done in this committee, is that the holders of those records is Correctional Service Canada. Their estimates can go anywhere from 10% to 95% when we’re talking about federally sentenced women, particularly federally sentenced Indigenous women who are dealing with past trauma and abuse. The numbers are elusive in terms of how many we would be dealing with.
I would suggest we focus on what the ministerial advisory panel and the Office of the Correctional Investigator have focused on, and that is the people who are currently spending most of their time in maximum security and segregation because they pose a risk to themselves, not because they pose a risk to public safety. That is who we are talking about. That, then, limits the number significantly, but it behooves us to actually look at — the reason you’re supposed to be in maximum security or segregation has more to do with the risk you’re posing to other people; it shouldn’t be because you’re a risk to yourself, so that’s —
Senator Dalphond: If I can change topics?
Senator Pate: Sure.
Senator Dalphond: There is another topic I’d like to cover, and that is the review by the superior court. If you are confined for more than 48 hours in these special units, then Correctional Service Canada will have to apply to the superior court to extend that period. How many people are there, on average, in these special units across Canada?
Senator Pate: On average, I don’t know what the number is today, but there are 15 units. There are 5 in prisons designated for women and 10 in prisons designated for men. I can get the capacity. I don’t know if we have the capacity numbers handy. We don’t have the total numbers at this stage.
I will turn to the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report which looked at the current provision and talked about the costs of this versus, for instance — to pick up on Senator Boisvenu’s point again, that it would be a better human result as well as a cost savings if we used the mental health system and funded that. The Parliamentary Budget Officer found that there would be huge cost savings to use $900-a-day beds in psychiatric facilities rather than $600,000 —
Senator Dalphond: Sorry to interrupt, but time is running out.
The Chair: I wanted to follow up and see, Senator Pate, whether, on the specific question that Senator Dalphond asked you, if you could subsequently provide, as best you can, the numbers of people who were in the category that he asked about?
Senator Pate: I can provide the capacity of the units — I just don’t recall them off the top of my head — and certainly the ministerial advisory panel’s best estimate of the numbers based on the information they’ve been receiving.
The Chair: I think that would be helpful in response.
Senator Dalphond, I stole some of your time, so you should proceed if you have another question.
Senator Dalphond: Maybe I have a last question, but I don’t want to prevent other people from asking questions.
After 48 hours, Correctional Service Canada has to apply to a judge for permission to keep the person in confinement. Will the judge have the power to refuse it and say, “I order transfer to a mental hospital”?
Senator Pate: It’s possible that the judge could do that.
I just want to underscore that the numbers we have for that, based on current estimates, is about 1,500, which may give us also the number of people who are being kept in longer. It’s estimated that it would be somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 applications of this sort per year, maximum, based on current figures in Structured Intervention Units.
What’s important to note, however —
Senator Dalphond: Sorry to interrupt, but I once ordered a patient to be transferred from one hospital to another hospital because I thought he would get better mental services, and I was politely reminded by the Attorney General and the health service that I don’t manage hospitals and that there was needed capacity to welcome the patient and there was no capacity in the place I wanted to send him. Therefore, they would not execute my judgment.
Senator Pate: That’s exactly why, in my humble opinion, Correctional Service Canada was provided with the resources to contract those beds that they have not yet done since Bill C-83 was passed.
I have been part of cases where individuals have been transferred. Tona Mills is one of them. Tona was transferred from the prison setting to a mental health setting. I can tell you that, within 24 hours, every person I’ve seen go from those conditions, from segregation to a mental health setting, has improved immeasurably, because then their behaviour is seen as symptomatic of their mental health condition and is not treated as a security threat risk, first and foremost. We see —
The Chair: Can I stop you there, Senator Pate? We have quite a few people who are keen to have a conversation with you.
Senator Prosper: I think earlier in your testimony you mentioned that there is evidence that — I think the context is that Corrections can’t really be relied upon to follow through on their legal obligations, and I want you to get a bit more into that evidence. Thus, I would imagine the need for judicial oversight and things of that nature. Could you just expand upon that a bit?
Senator Pate: Yes. In fact, in the more than 40 years that I worked in and around the prison systems, Louise Arbour, I think, captured it best when she said, “The Rule of Law is absent, although rules are everywhere,” within the prison system. She said that following events in 1996. Both judicial oversight remedies were actually first recommended by her in 1996, and since then, we’ve had all kinds of expressions of how we can do things differently.
For instance, after Bill C-83, Correctional Service Canada implemented the ministerial advisory panel. That panel itself is saying that their recommendations aren’t followed. When Professor Doob, who was then the chair, made submissions to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights on the RIDR report, the Human Rights Committee report, he indicated that they were making recommendations, and they couldn’t even get the data. Senator Boisvenu asked me for data. The ministerial advisory committee couldn’t even get the data.
The decisions of the Independent External Decision Makers who were put in place to monitor the use of Structured Intervention Units haven’t even been released, and I’m not sure why. In order to actually even have an Independent External Decision Maker render a decision, Corrections has to refer the person to them. Regarding the Independent External Decision Maker decision, this memo that the ministerial advisory panel got hold of indicates that 79 decisions in 2020 to transfer people out of Structured Intervention Units were not followed. Some of them were made by senior Corrections people, and some were made by the Independent External Decision Maker.
Now we have a proliferation of court cases. We’ve had inquests into deaths. Ashley Smith’s inquest recommended that all people with mental health issues never be held in segregation and that they be released. Correctional Service Canada made a commitment to that as part of the Nelson Mandela Rules as well, and yet it persists.
Part of the reason for the 48-hour review — I apologize for going over Senator Dalphond’s time — but part of the reason we recommend that is because in just pinpointing what’s happened in the prison system, and one of the last things I was working on before I was appointed was the elimination of segregation in prisons designated for women, and just by focusing on that and starting some legal actions, the numbers went down to five people — five across the country — in segregation units throughout this country. The estimation and, certainly, the prediction of many people, both within Corrections that I’ve talked to, within Public Safety and as well as within the community, is that that provision alone would also limit the use of the Structured Intervention Units.
That’s a very long answer to say that there is a long history of the law not being followed, and because of the nature of prisons, it’s very difficult to get that information. As Emma Cunliffe, professor at UBC has articulated in the Supreme Court Law Review, the evidence of Corrections should not ever be accepted without question because they are the creators of the conditions and creators of the documents. We probably saw that best revealed in the Ashley Smith inquest, where there was evidence from witness after witness from the Correctional Service Canada, including contracted health professionals. Evidence was put before them of what their report said and then video evidence that contradicted what they said had actually happened. Even in light of that, people said, “If I go against what my colleagues say, then I may not have protection or it will be hard to work with them.” We had clear evidence in that case, the clearest evidence I’ve ever seen in a public forum, where you could see that the visual evidence and the videotaped evidence did not match up with the written evidence.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you, Senator Pate. Ever since you’ve come to the Senate, and even before, you have done tremendous work for the most vulnerable people in society, and that is people in prison. You’ve also opened up the prison situation to many of us. I want to thank you for the tremendous work that you’ve done. You never stop. Thank you so much.
I wanted to go to another subject completely and ask you why we need to extend sections 81 and 84 for Black and racialized prisoners.
Senator Pate: Thank you very much for those kind comments, Senator Jaffer. I was remiss in not saying that this was actually a bill that Josée Forest-Niesing was planning to introduce had she not passed, because it was with Senator Forest-Niesing and Senator Kutcher in particular that we worked on these amendments to Bill C-83. Thank you, and I apologize for not acknowledging that leadership from the beginning.
Part of the reason we need to extend it, as I mentioned at the beginning, is that sections 81 and 84 are provisions that were put in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act back in the early 1990s with a specific recognition that Indigenous peoples were overrepresented in the prison system and that there needed to be robust measures to actually help extricate them from that system. There hadn’t been the same assessments that have since happened.
Since then, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, various courts, the Human Rights Committee and the Social Affairs Committee here, two committees at the House of Commons level and the Correctional Investigator have identified that the risk assessment process used for Indigenous people and for other racialized people, particularly those of African descent, is discriminatory and that they’re disproportionately more likely to be in maximum security and in segregation. In fact, the stats coming out from the ministerial advisory panel reveal that as well.
Subsection (2) of sections 81 and 84 allowed for these provisions to be applied to non-Indigenous individuals, but very rarely did that ever happen. At the Social Affairs Committee, in discussing it, the decision was that we should actually be more explicit and lay out that we should also be looking at targeted measures for other prisoners who are overrepresented. That was the reason we included that.
Senator Jaffer: Can you explain to me what “hidden cells” means?
Senator Pate: “Hidden cells” is a term the Correctional Investigator used. According to Dr. Zinger and his team, the pressure to keep SIU numbers low resulted in the use of hidden cells where prisoners are kept in solitary confinement conditions for weeks on end but are not identified as such. It could be in their own cells. It could be in a cell in a particular unit. As we’ve seen in going into the prisons, for senators who have been going into the prisons, sometimes you go into a unit they say is empty and you find someone at the end of the hall locked in their cell. That’s what I understand hidden cells to be.
Senator Jaffer: When we went to Halifax and the women’s prison, if I’m not mistaken, there were some people who were in SIU, but the rules were not being followed. In fact, an authority didn’t even know what the rules were. Is that a correct impression that I’ve come back with, or am I mistaken?
Senator Pate: Yes.
This is not Halifax. I don’t know if you can see that. This is a photograph of the Edmonton Institution SIU unit. You can see it’s just been written over. It said “segregation.” It’s been written over as “SIU.” The unit we went into in the Nova prison was the former segregation unit, then the SIU unit, but because they said the individuals in there had mental health issues — you’ll see a theme — none of the individuals we met with in that unit, the segregation/SIU unit, were classified as in SIU; they were classified as medical observation because of their mental health issues.
None of the oversight provisions that used to exist in the CCRA before Bill C-83 apply unless you were in segregation, and even if you’re in the SIU, if you’re not labelled as being in the SIU, then none of those provisions apply. Even if they do apply, as I’ve mentioned, there’s no guarantee that they will be followed.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you.
The Chair: We have half a dozen senators who want to pose questions, and we’re going to be pushed to go a bit past the time for this session. I hope you might indulge us in that respect, Senator Pate and colleagues.
Senator Simons: I had the privilege of being with you, Senator Pate, when we visited the women’s prison in Edmonton, and you pointed out to me the absurdity of changing the name of the room. The function of the room doesn’t change just because you put a different label on it.
I wanted to ask you about some of the specifics of the 48-hour judicial review. As I understand it, the bill calls for that to be done by a superior court. I worry a bit about the workload and the capacity of superior courts to do that work. Is it because it’s federal that a justice of the peace or a provincial court judge couldn’t provide that oversight?
Senator Pate: It’s similar to a bail provision. That was the approach we were looking at. Yes, it would need to be. The person is already in federal custody, so our understanding, and based on the legal advice we received, was to use the superior court model.
Senator Simons: I don’t know if it was you or Senator Forest-Niesing who first proposed this amendment. That was before COVID, and it was at a time when we were not being nearly as flexible about using technology for hearings. Do you think it would be easier now to make that 48-hour deadline because of the way the courts have had to be more nimble during the pandemic?
Senator Pate: I think that’s an excellent point. In fact, in every federal penitentiary, many hearings are being held by video as well. It’s something that could be possible as well.
Senator Simons: You used the term “dry cells.” I wonder if you could tell us what a dry cell is.
Senator Pate: A dry cell is one in which everything that goes into the cell is monitored, and everything that comes out of the cell, including out of a person’s body, is monitored. It also means there’s no water in the cell. Even if there’s a toilet in the cell, it’s turned off, and everything is monitored in and out. I don’t recall if I have a picture in here. Yes, there is. There is a dry cell. That’s a picture of a dry cell. The toilet is there. You go up the stairs, go onto the toilet, and what goes into the toilet goes next door, gets examined by the Correctional officers and then is disposed of.
Senator Simons: How many of the SIUs are dry cells? Or are dry cells something completely different that are being used in place of a SIU unit?
Senator Pate: Virtually every prison cell could be made into a dry cell, and certainly every SIU cell, because they have the capacity to turn off the water to each of the cells.
Senator Simons: Is there any way to track how often that is done?
Senator Pate: Correctional Services is supposed to track it, but whether or not the numbers are accurate is questionable, I would say.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Senator Klyne had a connection with some of this in the past. I think he’ll not quite testify, but he’ll make an introductory observation briefly before posing his question.
Senator Klyne: What I’m about to lay out would likely lend to the corroboration or complement some of the testimony that Senator Pate has provided.
The justification for placing an inmate in an SIU is the same as administrative segregation in that there must be reasonable grounds to believe that allowing the inmate to remain in the general population would risk the safety of the penitentiary or another person, the inmate’s safety or would interfere with an investigation that could lead to a criminal charge or a serious disciplinary offence.
Where SIU and administrative segregation would differ is an inmate held in the SIU has the right each day to at least four hours out of their cell and at least two hours of interaction with others through leisure time, programs, interventions or services. These rights may not apply or may be limited where the inmate refuses to exercise them or, in certain circumstances, such as where there are security concerns.
Further, the use of SIUs is subject to external oversight by independent external decision makers, or IEDMs. Review by an IEDM is triggered when an inmate’s time spent either out of the cell or with human contact does not meet the required standard, when a committee of senior staff members does not agree with the recommendation of its registered health care professional that the inmate should not remain in an SIU or their SIU conditions should be altered, or when an inmate is in an SIU longer than 90 consecutive days and every subsequent 60 days.
The Chair: Senator Klyne, this is helpful, but you promised me that you would get to a question.
Senator Klyne: I have three questions that tie into all this that I think are important for our senators here.
The Chair: I think that’s true, but in order to keep on going, you would need to change seats with Senator Pate, so I’m going to encourage you to pose questions. Senator Pate is liable to round out your observation, but it is a dialogue with Senator Pate.
Senator Klyne: Yes, so questions?
The Chair: Please.
Senator Klyne: I will try to make them quick and respectfully ask that you give answers quickly. Who is the commissioner of the Correctional Service Canada today?
Senator Pate: Anne Kelly.
Senator Klyne: Who was the commissioner when CAA came into force?
Senator Pate: Anne Kelly.
Senator Klyne: You may recall, as I do, during testimony, great assurances that the execution and implementation of this would follow. Did you examine who is on the IEDM today?
Senator Pate: Yes. I have actually met with members of the IEDM.
Senator Klyne: Do you consider them qualified?
Senator Pate: It varies. It depends on the individual. Certainly, the expectation was that they would be independent. Some are people who have worked for Corrections in the past.
Senator Klyne: I do recall during testimony there was a good discussion about judicial oversight, which maybe should have been preferred over the IEDM. Would you agree?
Senator Pate: Well, I certainly agree with that.
Senator Klyne: To wrap up on all that, I would say that this could be described as a failed experiment. However, I would describe it as a well-intended plan poorly executed, poorly implemented, and failed oversight without the necessary follow-up and authority to follow up with some authority.
The Chair: Could you comment on that, Senator Pate, and give your perspective?
Senator Pate: I want to thank you, Senator Klyne, because after Bill C-83 passed, Senator Klyne and a number of other senators came together and suggested we evaluate what was happening. This report, Senators Go to Jail, which has a number of these issues covered, was, thanks to the work of Senator Klyne’s office, assisting us to start gathering the data and lay the framework.
To give an example, with the IEDMs, often, there is no ability to make a decision until someone has been in segregation for 90 days, which outstrips the UN standard, the Mandela Rules, by six times. The reality that we don’t have meaningful oversight can’t be underscored enough.
Senator Batters: Before I get into my questions, today is the day when, finally, Canada will have a three-digit suicide prevention hotline, 988, so that is fantastic. In light of that, I wanted to emphasize it is important when we’re discussing this topic to use sensitive and appropriate language. For example, it’s not mental problems — it is mental illness. It’s not mental hospital — it’s psychiatric hospital. It’s not mental services — it’s mental health care. I think those phrases are important when it is already something that still involves stigma to receive help. We always want to make sure we’re using the appropriate language.
Senator Pate, first of all, the Senate made amendments to the Trudeau government’s Bill C-83 in 2019. I believe those were your amendments, or you worked significantly on them, and that formed the basis of this bill that you are testifying about here today, Bill S-230. But the Trudeau government, back in 2019, rejected those amendments. Those amendments were passed by the Senate more than four and half years ago, and you introduced this bill about two years ago. I want to know how likely you think it is that the Trudeau government will actually do anything on these issues that you have been bringing forward here for more than five years. Has this been in the Public Safety or the Justice minister’s mandate since then? Have you had discussions with the Public Safety minister or the Justice minister about this, and have they told you that, if the bill passes the Senate, it would have the Liberal government support to pass the House of Commons?
Senator Pate: I want to thank you for all your work on mental health. We’ve tried to use language that is accurate.
We have consulted with those, and the reality is that there is still resistance within the Correctional Service Canada and in Public Safety to this kind of approach. Many individuals working within the Correctional Service Canada and Public Safety have individually indicated that they are hoping something like this might pass. My hope is that it will encourage greater action, and if the government does not accept it, that, at the very least, it will assist.
Unfortunately, too often, decisions are taken that first require legal action and defending indefensible actions. I think it was the Correctional Investigator, or maybe it was Louise Arbour, who said that the standard usually is to deny responsibility, deflect and then defend. I think we’re in those stages. The number of court cases now being successful against the Correctional Service Canada because of the failure to implement these kinds of initiatives speaks volumes.
My hope is it will be accepted. To be clear, the minister has not said that he would support these amendments.
Senator Batters: So not the more recent Justice minister that was in place, Justice Minister Lametti, or Public Safety Minister Mendicino, and not the current ones, either.
Senator Pate: Minister Mendicino expressed an interest in this. I can’t say there wasn’t interest, but I would be remiss if I actually characterized that as support.
Senator Batters: Right. I’m assuming it has not been in any mandate letters? Of course, they have not issued a new one since 2021, but it wasn’t in the previous mandate letters, I’m assuming, or was it? None of them have told you, “You have had this bill. If it passes the Senate, yes.” Have you asked them about that?
Senator Pate: Yes. To be clear, the recommendations from the inquest into the death of Ashley Smith are in the mandate letters, and one of the recommendations is, for instance, transfer people with mental health out of prisons, never segregate and better oversight mechanisms. As well, in the mandate letters is the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Calls for Justice include a number of the provisions. So yes, it is in the mandate letters, not directly saying, “Support Bill S-230,” but certainly where we have pulled many of these ideas from. These weren’t things that I dreamed up.
Senator Batters: Certainly not. What year were those mandate letters? Do you recall?
Senator Pate: The most recent ones I do not think have come out yet.
Senator Batters: No, they will not put any new ones out, so the most recent ones were 2021. Were they in those 2021 letters?
Senator Pate: Yes, they were in 2021.
Senator Batters: My last question is this: You have termed this bill Tona’s Law. Can you tell me what that means? Who is Tona? What is that situation?
Senator Pate: Yes. In fact, Tona is watching. I was talking to her this morning. Tona is a woman I first met when she was 19. She had been jailed for breaking into a school after escaping her home situation where she was being raped by her birth father. She was part of the Sixties Scoop, and when she went to find her family, her birth father said she could live with them and then proceeded to rape her.
To give you an idea of the risk assessment process, Correctional Service Canada, up until we managed to get her out of segregation into the mental health system, described her as having a sexual relationship with her father. Nowhere else do I know where incestuous rape would be called a sexual relationship with your father.
She was locked in segregation for most of that time, starting with resisting strip searches, which is part of the reason we have called for using body scanners instead of using strip searches, particularly when we know that upwards of 90% of the women in custody have histories of abuse.
When she was at Kingston’s Prison for Women during the Arbour commission, part of the reason Louise Arbour’s recommendations, in my humble opinion, were so strong is Tona was one of the women still being held in segregation, chained to the floor at times, often restrained in her bed because she self-injured. When I first met her, I would have seen her as potentially someone who could have had the education that I have. She now has been diagnosed with isolation-induced schizophrenia because of those 10 years in isolation and has been in the mental health system. She was recently granted a full discharge from the mental health system, but it took almost 11 years of being in the mental health system to try as best possible to get her able to live in the community. She is now living in a structured, supported independent living environment with mental health support.
The Chair: Thank you both. I extended the time partly because I thought Senator Batters posed two very thoughtful observations around the language and to hear the story that is the basis of the bill. I expect you all agree with me on that.
Senator D. Patterson: Senator Batters asked my question about your interface with ministers and senior people in Correctional Service Canada. You knew and worked with Ashley Smith, I believe. This story drove the work on Bill C-83 and this bill. I know we don’t have a lot of time. Could you give us a short synopsis of that story to remind us of the issue that captivated the country at the time?
Senator Pate: Ashley Smith was another young woman who went into the system at 15. She had been in the child welfare system and came in on a breach of probation. She was arrested and, before she got to court, had resisted being strip searched and had accumulated charges by the time she got to court for the breach of probation. As a result, she was charged with assaults on officers for flailing out during the restraints. Incidentally, years later, when we had the inquest, it was determined that she had legally committed assault, but the most damage that had been caused was by pulling things off people’s shoulders or glasses off their face. I’m not suggesting that behaviour is not negative, but it’s very different from the way she was characterized.
She kept accumulating charges in the prison. She spent most of her time in juvenile detention in segregation. Interestingly enough, all the juvenile corrections folks had to do was say she could have a visit with her adopted family, her adopted mother in particular, Coralee Cusack-Smith, who sadly passed away just a few months ago, and that alone would calm her down, which was indicative of so much of what we see when people are out of the corrections system, that the approaches that could be used — behavioural, interpersonal dynamic approaches — can actually resolve a situation.
Nevertheless, she had accumulated sentences, so when she reached the age of 18, she was serving by then they thought a just-under-two-year sentence, so the Province of New Brunswick transferred her to provincial custody. There, she was tasered, pepper sprayed and kept in segregation. While they were doing the assessment of her, they determined that she now had a cumulative sentence of just over two years, so they transferred her into the federal system. She lasted 11 and a half months in the federal system, was transferred 17 times, was in segregation all of that time and was denied access to counsel for much of that time.
The first five times I tried to see her, I would get to a prison just after she had been transferred. The first time I got to a prison where she was still there, it was the Saskatchewan Regional Psychiatric Centre, which is a dually designated psychiatric hospital and prison. When I got there, they refused me access. I retrieved two of our colleagues, real lawyers, as I would say, practising in Saskatoon, Helen Semaganis and Cathy Knox. I got them to come with me to try to get access. The long and the short of it is that three of us with law degrees — I wasn’t a practising lawyer; they were — were refused access. I was being asked to see her by other women who were calling, and they were saying she was so bashed up, and it was one of the allegations that led to a correctional officer being charged. No one would testify against him, so those charges ended up not going through. But I didn’t see her then until three months later. There she was in segregation. I only got to see her in person twice, but I talked to her on the phone many times.
When the inquest was held, as I mentioned, every single correctional person would first testify. I asked our counsel to ask every witness what they knew about Ashley, how they knew it and how she was with them. Everyone said they knew they were getting the most dangerous, violent woman in the country. How did they know? They read the file. How was she with them? Each person would describe that she was actually okay with them. If you were respectful, she would be respectful back, but sometimes if you came on and the shift before may not have been, she might be a bit mouthy.
She died at 19. The only human intervention she had — the last time I saw her they wouldn’t even let sign her sign with a crayon a consent form that I asked her to sign to verify that she wanted me to try and get her paperwork. We had to go to court three times. The Privacy Commissioner had to rule that Corrections Canada could not deny us access to her paperwork. They wouldn’t give her her paperwork. They wouldn’t give me her paperwork when she asked me to get it.
Basically, the documentation showed, as I spoke about earlier, that with every one of those witness, they would say she hadn’t been harmful to them, that she hadn’t assaulted them, and yet they would sometimes write that she was in the midst of a full-blown psychotic episode or in the midst of attacking staff. You would show video and see just the opposite, and the explanation was that, well, maybe the timing was different. So sometimes there would be the deflection of responsibility. Other times, people would acknowledge that they felt the pressure to continue that documentation. It’s part of the reason, in the training that I subsequently have done with law students and social workers and psychologists, that I urge to never meet people through their files. Meet them, talk to them.
That is a big part of what I would say is a different approach, we would hope, in the mental health system and why we would push for a different approach, and yet the risk assessment process that is used by Correctional Service Canada routinely characterizes these individuals as high risk. They translate needs into risks. It’s part of why I did my postgraduate work in forensic mental health, to try and unravel that. People who come in with post-traumatic stress diagnoses, whether it is because of residential school experiences or other past trauma, will often be re-diagnosed as having personality or conduct disorders. Why? It is because it situates the responsibility within the individual to address. If you have a personality or conduct disorder, it is on you to address it. If it is post-traumatic stress disorder or schizophrenia, then it is the responsibility of the institution or state to actually provide the supports to address those issues.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Pate. We have two other senators to pose questions. I think we won’t get a chance for a second round.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Welcome to the witness before us today.
Senator Pate, I have two questions for you. Why are you proposing a judicial review mechanism by a Superior Court judge rather than a review or appeal mechanism by the Office of the Correctional Investigator, which already has a very good knowledge of the subject? One only has to read his latest report from 2022 to see that he has a very good knowledge of the subject and has made several recommendations on these issues.
I was wondering what led you to choose a process rather than something else, which would have required giving decision-making powers to the Office of the Correctional Investigator?
[English]
Senator Pate: The Correctional Investigator does an excellent job. Successive ones have done excellent jobs particularly over the last two decades. The challenge is that they are ombuds offices. They have the ability to make recommendations but no authority to implement. Similarly, they are not compellable, or competent in the legal terms, to give evidence, for instance, in court cases. It would require changing that position. I would encourage you to ask Dr. Zinger, if he appears, that question. Certainly, it has been the recommendation of many, starting with Louise Arbour, that we actually go directly to who is used to making this decision. As Louise Arbour said, the only arm of the criminal legal system that does not come under the courts is our prison system. Really, it’s to require the kind of due process and human rights and Charter protections that should exist now that don’t.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: My second question concerns the situation of women prisoners as compared to male prisoners. You say, as Justice Arbour indicated, that it’s a world of rules and that there are a lot of rules. However, the Correctional Investigator found that in the male world of federal penitentiaries, there were rules, whereas in the female penitentiary world, there were no rules. So inmates were subject to the arbitrary decision of each individual supervisor.
I don’t know if you can tell us more about that.
[English]
Senator Pate: Certainly the most recent report just issued in the last week or so from the Correctional Investigator updating Spirit Matters, which was their report 10 years ago on this situation, underscores the fact that in 2022, all but one placement in a structured intervention unit in the prisons designated for women were Indigenous women. Every other placement has been an Indigenous woman.
The fact is that the majority of these women have histories of abuse. The majority of these women, although may come in for offences that look like personal violence offences — and I’m not suggesting they aren’t — they’re usually in response to violence, and they are often guilty pleas, hence the reason why we need a review, separate from this bill, of the cases of many of those women.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Have you had an opportunity to document how correctional services are not applying what they should be doing already under Bill C-83, in the case of women, while they are perhaps doing it less badly in penitentiaries where men are detained?
[English]
Senator Pate: The situation is dire across the board, but there is a particular issue. The Human Rights Commission in 2003 characterized it as you cannot deny discrimination when you see the adverse impact. What they meant by that, of course, is that when you look today, one in two women serving a federal sentence is Indigenous, and one in 10 is Black. The majority have mental health issues and the majority have past histories of abuse, and those intersections mean you see the discriminatory impact. Then you see they are disproportionately classified as higher security, they are all but one of the placements in structured intervention units.
If you want the best record of that data, I already alluded to the annual reports of the Correctional Investigator. In fact, going back to the Arbour report, part of what gave rise to there being a commission of inquiry — with virtually none of us outside the prison saying what had happened to the women was wrong — the Correctional Investigator issued a special report, the first special report they had issued. When they issued that report, it was diametrically opposed to what the Correctional Service Canada said, and later it was shown who had been providing an accurate story and who hadn’t.
The Chair: I will stop you there, Senator Pate. I do want to give Senator McCallum a chance. She is joining our committee. With your indulgence, we might turn to her as the last witness.
Senator McCallum: Thank you so much for the work that you do and have done. I have gone with you to the psychiatric unit in Saskatoon.
It seems that Corrections itself creates or worsens the mental health issues just by being a gatekeeper, as a guard but also as a decision maker affecting the rights of the incarcerated. There is a violation of Mandela’s Rules contributing to hidden violence that exists within Corrections. I listened to Senator Simons saying function doesn’t change by changing the sign outside the facility. It shows the ongoing violence against the incarcerated, and the Senate has a duty when they look at working for the marginalized and the voiceless, and this issue needs to be dealt with.
You said that your amendments came from different committees of the Senate. Is there anything in this bill that the Senate has not already approved?
Looking at the expansion of clause 9 of section 81, could this bill affect the over-representation of Indigenous or marginalized people in federal penitentiaries, and if so, how?
Senator Pate: No. By my read, everything in this bill has been recommended. I have tabbed where they are in the Human Rights Committee report. This is the reports of the Human Rights Committee on the human rights of federally sentenced persons. As well, when the Social Affairs Committee considered Bill C-83, a number of these issues came up. There are some changes and some expansions in this bill versus what was in the Bill C-83 amendments, but it is essentially those amendments. Where it is different, I have indicated the expansion of the use of SIUs and that sort of thing and what constitutes isolation based on what’s happened since the bill. Where it is an expansion, it is based on that.
There is no guarantee that a change in law will reduce the numbers of people in prison, but the hope is and certainly sections 81 and 84 were put in with the specific objective to reduce the number of Indigenous people.
No one has asked this, so I will ask a question for you. Why would you have the Correctional Service Canada be responsible for reaching out to those communities? When those provisions were passed, they went into law. Three years later, Corrections started to pull all those provisions inside and use its contracting role to contract those services with individuals. Why did they do that? They said there were insufficient numbers, individuals, group, organizations, communities interested in sponsoring. Guess what? When we started going out to those communities, they didn’t even know the law existed. You can’t suck and blow, if you will. You can’t say, “We’re providing this provision and nobody took us up on it,” when nobody even knew it was there.
I’m working with a number of communities right now across the country, particularly in B.C., and I’ve worked with some in Atlantic Canada. They’re saying, “We would like to take back people from our community,” but they’re in maximum security. These provisions were never intended to be only for minimum security. That’s a policy decision that Corrections has taken. One of the communities said, “We know that so-and-so is classified as maximum security, but we think that if we can set up these supports for that individual, they’ll be okay in our community.” I would trust that community more than I would trust Corrections’ assessment of that individual. There must be some impetus for Corrections to have to implement that, and I think that could mean some differences.
Quite frankly, if an Indigenous community asked for even a quarter or a third of what it’s costing now to keep people — the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated $600,000 per year to keep someone in maximum security or SIU — what could $200,000 do for a community? It could not only benefit the one individual you might bring out but also the community writ large in terms of employment, housing and those sorts of things. It has the potential, but a lot would depend on, one, whether it passes, and two, whether it’s then implemented.
The Chair: Senator Pate, you’ve shown a gift of not only answering questions but answering your own questions. Thank you.
Colleagues, that brings this session of consideration of Bill S-230 to an end. I want to thank all of you for your engagement, and I’d like us now to move to a couple of items of business of the committee.
You may recall, colleagues, that we needed to finalize consideration of two reports. One is the observation on Bill S-13, which is the action plan to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and embedding in that the issues around the Interpretation Act. We have circulated what steering committee approved, called “Option 2.” I wanted to alert you to that and determine whether you’re satisfied with that and agreeable that I present the bill with that observation in the Senate today.
Senator Simons: Yes. I think it’s much sharper now.
The Chair: Thank you. We tried to be attentive to the suggestions that colleagues made. Can I take that motion to adopt?
An Hon. Senator: Yes.
The Chair: Thank you. If we had known this would go so quickly, Senator Pate, we could have kept you in the hot seat for longer.
The second item is what we’ve referred to as the Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act, MSLA. We have a second draft report that I think has also been circulated. You might recall the approach to this, which is that if a single member of the committee is opposed to a proposed amendment, that proposed amendment will not be included in the miscellaneous statute law amendment bill. Steering has therefore agreed to include a request from Senator Patterson to exclude one such provision. I will invite Senator Patterson to say a word about that, if he wishes. It’s sort of a veto approach, as I understand it. I don’t want to put it in quite that harsh language, Senator Patterson, but you did express a request to have one of the provisions removed.
Senator D. Patterson: I want to say that, as a soon-to-be-retired senator due to the age requirements in the Constitution Act, I don’t feel I’m in conflict in referring to a provision that deals with age limitations with respect to the Wheat Board. A principle of the Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act is that provisions should be non-controversial. I believe that these issues around age should be considered by parliamentarians and by Parliament. That is why I expressed my reservations about including this provision in the bill. It may well have merit, but I think it should be considered by Parliament and not as a result of recommendations from officials.
The Chair: Thank you. That’s very helpful, Senator Patterson. If you had proposed a change to the Constitution Act, you probably would have gotten some support around the table, but that’s a bigger project, I think.
Senator Batters: I’ve gone through this and I have a couple of minor wording changes or suggestions.
One of them relates to what Senator Patterson was just talking about but on the third page. A couple of paragraphs above that, I have a small wording change suggestion. At the end of the paragraph, it mentions that Bill C-49 was introduced in the House of Commons on May 30, 2023, and is currently at second reading. It’s probably well understood that it’s at second reading in the House of Commons but, because this is a Senate report, I think it could be helpful to just say, “second reading in that House.”
My other suggested change deals with a paragraph Senator Patterson was just speaking about. In the second-last line, I think it would be better English to say, instead of “a more fulsome study” — I don’t think “fulsome” is the correct word — I think it should say, “for a fuller study, the proposed amendment …”
The Chair: Agreed? Senator Simons, I know that “fulsome” is a word — you’re good? Okay, thank you.
Senator D. Patterson: I’m sorry; I misspoke, Mr. Chair. It’s the amendment to the Canadian Dairy Commission Act. Pardon me. Thank you.
The Chair: Are we comfortable with those amendments to the report as presented by both Senator Patterson and Senator Batters? Do I have agreement?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: If I can accomplish one thing in my career as a senator, it’s to extirpate the word “fulsome” from Senate reports.
The Chair: We might have to have some piece of legislation to do that. Thank you. I’m with you entirely, Senator Simons, with respect to that word.
Colleagues, I wanted to bring to your attention two other procedural challenges that we face. One is that it is speculated, with some reasonable justification, that we may not be in a position to sit the afternoon of Wednesday, December 13, there being some degree of speculation that we may go past the normal stopping time on Wednesdays. I bring that to your attention because we had planned a set of witnesses that day, but it’s quite possible that we might lose that day, unless we got permission to sit while the Senate is sitting, which tends to be unlikely, I think it’s fair to say. I wanted to alert you to the challenge of Wednesday, December 13, which would have been a day for continuing the study of Bill S-230.
Second, perhaps a bit of guidance with respect to Wednesday, December 6, which is a week from yesterday: as a reminder, on December 7, we are returning to clause-by-clause consideration of Bill S-231, the bill sponsored by Senator Carignan, but on December 6, we had intended to continue study of this bill. That had included invitations to various professors who claim that at this time of year they are incapacitated by other responsibilities. I think that’s fair enough, with exams and the like. For next week, Correctional Service Canada has declined our invitation to attend. It’s an invitation of some significance, considering the bill. It’s not clear whether they are saying they will not attend at all or just not on that particular day. It means that we might end up having a shortened day that day. With your indulgence, we would extend an invitation for them to come on another day. If it turns out to be a problem of resistance to coming at all, we might need clear direction on that question.
Senator Boisvenu: Can we know the reason why? Because I think they are key for the bill.
The Chair: So far, the message doesn’t have reasons attached. We will explore that. I’m hoping it’s just an inconvenience on the day. If not, we likely have to take a much firmer view, because it’s important for all of us to understand that perspective, including the sponsor.
Senator Boisvenu: If we invite them, we should have some data. We talk about 10% and 40%. We don’t know what the situation is exactly.
The Chair: We will do our best to get that background.
Senator Boisvenu: Thank you.
The Chair: Although, as we’ve heard, sometimes that’s been challenging in the past.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Could I also suggest that we invite the Minister of Public Safety, Correctional Service Canada and also the Office of the Correctional Investigator? We’re trying to understand and there seem to be games of authority, interpretation and enforcement of the law, and we’d like to take this opportunity to clarify the situation.
[English]
The Chair: For the work plan, the Correctional Investigator is on the list to be invited. Ironically, and a little bit sadly, that was going to be the day when we may not sit, Wednesday, December 13. We will certainly get to Dr. Zinger, for sure. Can I take it there’s consensus that we should invite the minister?
Senator Batters: Do ministers usually come on private members’ bills? I didn’t think they did. I thought they had made that a standing practice, not to come on private members’ bills.
The Chair: We have the Public Safety officials invited. Perhaps we should begin there. Senator Batters makes a good point. Maybe the minister would like to come. Why don’t we begin with the officials and see where we go from there, if that’s acceptable?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Can we consider inviting these people on December 6, since we seem to have time available to hear them?
[English]
The Chair: Yes. That’s the target date for having them come — that would be next Wednesday — along with a limited number of other people, with a few having declined. Professor Doob has declined but intends to submit a brief, just so that you know.
I believe that’s all of the matters for deliberation today. I want to thank you for the expeditious consideration of these reports. We are going to try our best to be able to present them in the Senate this afternoon.
There are no other matters of business today. With your indulgence, I’ll adjourn the meeting. Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)