THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 27, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs met with videoconference this day at 10:34 a.m. [ET] to study Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
Senator Denise Batters (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Good morning, my name is Denise Batters. I’m a senator for Saskatchewan. I’m deputy chair of this committee and have the chance to act as chair today. I invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Tannas: Scott Tannas, Alberta.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Manuelle Oudar from Quebec.
[English]
Senator K. Wells: Kristopher Wells, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory, clearly the best territory.
Senator Pate: Welcome, all of you. I’m Kim Pate. I live here in the unceded, unsurrendered and unreturned land of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: Raymonde Saint-Germain from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Dhillon: Good morning. I’m Baltej Dhillon from British Columbia.
The Deputy Chair: Today, we are meeting to continue our study of Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
We are pleased to welcome with us today, from the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, Frédérick Lebeau, National President; and Jeff Wilkins, National Vice President. Also, we have with us Catherine Latimer, Executive Director of the John Howard Society of Canada. Online, we have Emilie Coyle, Co‑Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, or CAEFS. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining us.
We’ll begin with your opening remarks before we move to questions from senators. We’ll hear first from the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, followed by Catherine Latimer and then Emilie Coyle. The floor is yours to each of you for five minutes each when you are ready. We’ll start with the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. Thank you.
[Translation]
Frédérick Lebeau, National President, Union of Canadian Correctional Officers: Good morning, everyone. Let me introduce myself; I am Frédérick Lebeau, president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, affiliated with the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, or CSN. Although I have been in this position for almost a year, my substantive position is still that of a level 2 correctional officer at Archambault Institution in Quebec, a medium-security institution, specifically at the Regional Mental Health Centre. I have been working as a correctional officer since 2010.
With me today is the union’s vice-president, Jeff Wilkins, who is also a correctional officer at Springhill Institution, in the Atlantic region. Mr. Wilkins has also served as president of our union for the past six years.
As representatives of 7,500 federal correctional officers, we are speaking out today to share our perspective on Bill S-205. Our role is to speak on behalf of all officers on the issues that this bill could raise, both in terms of working conditions and the overall mission of the Correctional Service of Canada.
In the brief we submitted to this committee, which reiterated the points already made during the study of Bill S-230, we clearly identified our main concerns regarding this bill.
Three important elements are of particular concern to us today because of their significant impact on our members’ working conditions, their safety, and public safety, or because of the scale of their implementation given the already insufficient resources in a tight budgetary context. These three elements are the proposed change to structured intervention units, or SIUs; the new mental health measures; and the possibility for any inmate to ask the court to reduce their sentence.
If the bill is passed, it will place a major strain on Correctional Service Canada. When it comes to the addition of this broad concept of disabling mental health issues, we believe that the chronic shortage of health professionals will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to assess the mental health of each inmate in a timely manner upon their arrival in the prison system. Escorting inmates to provincial institutions is also unrealistic, given the lack of human resources both at Correctional Service Canada and in the provincial health care systems.
As for the part of the bill that deals with structured intervention units, the correctional environment is a fragile ecosystem. Any change to operations, no matter how minor, should be weighed carefully, since it could have major repercussions on the safety and well-being of employees, inmates and the public.
However, what we’re seeing is that this ecosystem has been profoundly disrupted by the changes made to our work procedures since administrative and disciplinary segregation were eliminated and replaced by structured intervention units. Adapting to the challenges that stem from that legislative change remains a major concern for our members. Still, I would like to emphasize that our members have demonstrated great flexibility, approaching this complex development with diligence and professionalism.
Throughout the transition, the health, safety and legal obligations of all those involved have always been a priority. Our officers have upheld these fundamental principles while striving to foster significant engagement among inmates in the new units. However, it should be noted that operational challenges remain to this day. These include issues related to infrastructure, compatibility between certain inmates, and unit capacity, which is sometimes insufficient given the size of the prison population to manage.
In particular, the elimination of disciplinary segregation as a tool for holding inmates accountable and its replacement by structured intervention units has already had consequences: A decrease in inmate accountability inevitably leads to an increase in violence in our prisons. Since 2019, when administrative and disciplinary segregation were abolished, we have seen a significant increase in acts of violence in our workplaces, both inside and outside the structured intervention units. That correlation highlights the importance of rigorous supervision to ensure a safe environment for all. It’s a reminder of the delicate balance that characterizes the Canadian prison system and that must be taken into account when any changes are considered.
Unfortunately, the financial outlook announced in the latest budget suggests that the coming years will be particularly difficult. This worrying situation affects not only our members, but also other employees and, more broadly, the entire prison population. These circumstances exacerbate the daily challenges encountered in our institutions.
I would also like to raise the committee’s awareness of the mental health crisis that affects not only the prison population, but also our correctional officers, and is particularly concerning on a national scale. In 2018, the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment, comprised of a multidisciplinary team, undertook a study of the mental health effects of the demands of various occupations in the public safety portfolio. This study’s findings were telling, indicating that correctional officers are frequently exposed to working conditions that are detrimental to their mental health, due to the dangerous and often stressful nature of their profession and the psychological stresses inherent to it. We believe that the changes proposed in this bill will only exacerbate the real mental health crisis that afflicts so many of our members by increasing the volatility and danger in our prisons.
I would like to conclude by emphasizing how proud I am of the tireless work of our members, who carry out their duties as correctional officers on a daily basis, under particularly demanding conditions. It should be noted that very few children grow up dreaming of becoming correctional officers; we usually become correctional officers because of individual circumstances specific to our lives. This often unsung vocation reveals the strength and resilience of these women and men who choose to carry out an essential mission within society.
We are happy to answer any questions you may have.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. Next we’ll hear from the John Howard Society of Canada. I’ll ask all of you to please keep it to five minutes. I’ve been trying to allow extra time to finish, but we want to make sure we have the appropriate time. Thank you.
Catherine Latimer, Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada: Thank you very much. The John Howard Society of Canada is pleased to appear before the committee in support of Bill S-205, which proposes important amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that will make the corrections system more effective, just and humane. It will do this primarily in two ways: judicial oversight and more effective civilian and community-based alternatives to institutional corrections. It is urgent that there be judicial oversight of decisions and practices that affect the rights and mental health of prisoners. The bill proposes doing that in two ways: limiting Structured Intervention Unit, or SIU, placements to 48 hours, unless there is judicial authorization for a longer period, and judicial review of sentences of prisoners and parolees who have experienced abuse.
The structured intervention units perpetuate, rather than correct, the practices found by the courts that violate Charter rights related to isolated confinement. As you’ve heard from Howard Sapers, the SIU Implementation Advisory Panel found that those subjected to SIU placements experience solitary confinement, and a proportion of them experience prolonged solitary confinement, which is prohibited by the UN as a form of torture or cruelty. Canadian courts have determined that placements in solitary confinement that do not include independent external review of both the initial placement decisions and decisions to maintain prisoners in isolated confinement violates section 7 of the Charter rights.
The B.C. Court of Appeal, in the BCCLA John Howard Society case against administrative segregation, could not have been clearer on this. In paragraph 83, the court states that many cases involving involuntary placements in administrative segregation necessitate the adjudication of a factual dispute between the institution and an inmate and are adversarial in nature. That court held that Charter compliance requires prisoners to be entitled to an independent external adjudication within five days related to their placement in isolate confinement. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that correctional decisions that violate Charter rights are without jurisdiction and are unlawful.
The SIU regime does not provide for independent external adjudication of the placement decisions within the required five days. Therefore, SIUs are full of prisoners whose section 7 Charter rights have been infringed and who are unlawfully in isolated confinement. The most secure way to remedy this problem is through judicial oversight of the placement decisions. Bill S-205 would achieve this.
Bill S-205 would also allow those whose rights are infringed, or whose sentence was maladministered, to apply to the courts for remedial reduction in the sentence. If such abuse had occurred in pretrial detention, sentencing judges would have reduced the sentence to account for the mistreatment. It seems logical and desirable to extend that remedy to those who were undersentenced.
As the most recent report of the Correctional Investigator reveals, the Correctional Service Canada, or CSC, is not able to adequately respond to the needs of the mentally ill. The proposed legislative reforms in Bill S-205 would both facilitate the appropriate diagnosis of mental illnesses and provide an avenue for those who are suffering from them to receive treatment in civilian hospitals. The John Howard Society position is that if the jailers are the health care providers, appropriate medical decisions are skewed by security and financial concerns. Facilitating access to civilian hospitals would help to ensure appropriate health care, particularly for those with serious mental illnesses.
While the John Howard Society fully supports the expansion of access to community correctional opportunities for those who have experienced disadvantage and discrimination, we wish to make it clear that this would need to be in addition to those provided already to Indigenous Community Corrections. It should not be a reduction but an expansion of both. The John Howard Society’s immediate interest in this expansion is for the aging prisoners whose physical health and cognitive decline cannot be adequately accommodated in federal prisons. Palliative care and nursing home support would be better achieved in community correctional sentence.
In conclusion, I would say that SIUs are not working. Other reforms and required statutory reviews, followed by amendments, are not happening. Bill S-205 is an important and timely opportunity to respond to the crisis in our federal prisons, and we urge you to pass Bill S-205. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate that. You had very good timing. Could I next hear from the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies for five minutes? Thank you.
Emilie Coyle, Co-Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies: Thank you very much for inviting us to speak to this bill. I’m coming to you today from the shared traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, which is colonially known as Whitehorse.
As many of you know, for nearly 50 years, our organization has worked inside the federal penitentiaries designated for women. We monitor conditions of confinement. We support criminalized women and gender-diverse people to understand themselves as rights holders and to seek better outcomes through legal means. Our mandate places us in a unique but troubling place. We support people to use the law to achieve justice and dignity, yet our daily work reveals a fundamental impossibility of accessing true justice within the prison environment. It is this contradiction that is at the heart of our testimony today.
We must also name the tough-on-crime trends that underpin this discussion: the crisis of mass incarceration of Indigenous Peoples and the continued disproportionate incarceration of the most victimized and marginalized women in our country. The system we are now trying to reform through Bill S-205 is warehousing, punishing and disappearing those deemed socially expendable. The improvements proposed in Bill S-205 are urgently needed and strongly supported by CAEFS. They are also adjustments to a fundamentally harmful system. We are reducing harm within a carceral framework that conditions to grow and cause suffering. We assert, then, that anything we can do to make this system less harmful, we must do. Lives are at stake today.
Bill S-205 represents necessary, meaningful progress. In order to give you the context, status quo is a humanitarian crisis. We will shortly be releasing a special advisory report based on our monthly monitoring of conditions of confinement that shows that, at this very moment, the federal prisons designated for women are operating in conditions violating basic human dignity and international standards.
Double-bunking is routine, which means that women are sleeping inches from toilets. Program spaces have been converted to makeshift living quarters. Persistent mould, water contamination, inadequate and nutritionally poor food, the mother-child program and private family visiting have been suspended or severely curtailed in multiple institutions. Indigenous women, who you know are over 50% of the federally incarcerated women’s population, are routinely moved far from their communities, severing cultural and family times. Despite reforms to end solitary confinement, restricted movement and isolation are increasingly categorical. These are not administrative inconveniences; these are conditions that cause lasting psychological and physical harm. They are conditions that international and domestic law through the Office of the Correctional Investigator have repeatedly identified as cruel, inhumane and degrading.
To the specific sections in the bill, I will touch on a few points, and if there are specific questions later, I’d be happy to attempt to answer them.
We believe that a time-framed judicial oversight requirement for solitary confinement would likely work to ensure that the prison seriously consider less restrictive alternatives. This is especially important in the context of the prisons designated for women, where there are easily accessible SIUs in all of them, unlike the prisons designated for men, and where the SIUs are used for reasons other than providing structured intervention.
When it comes to transfers to hospitals, CSC currently refuses to cede jurisdiction over security standards for people transferred to them. The bill has to clarify whether when someone is transferred to hospital the standards of confinement are determined by the hospital and not the prison, as these transfers may replicate carceral conditions in hospital settings.
As for oversight and reduction of sentence, there is precedent for this that is well established in the provincial system, with reduction of sentences for time spent inside. We also want to ensure that this section captures the ongoing nature of most rights violations in prisons, which are rarely discrete events.
I will end by saying that, in the context of the current trend on tough-on-crime politics that are only serving to worsen conditions, Bill S-205 represents a rare moment of legislative attention to the dignity and rights of all incarcerated people. Thank you very much.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. We will now go to questions from senators.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: My question is for Mr. Frédérick Lebeau.
The bill limits confinement in structured intervention units to 48 hours. You said that this concerned you. You said that there has already been an increase in acts of violence since the changes that took place regarding segregation.
Please explain to us in concrete terms how you interact with inmates in segregation. How often do you visit them? Are there regular visits from psychiatrists or expert staff? How does this work for people who aren’t in prison, like us? Why are you concerned? What violent elements can you report that make you think the bill goes too far?
Mr. Lebeau: Thank you, senator. That’s an excellent question.
Forty-eight hours in a structured intervention unit — Mr. Pyke, from Correctional Service Canada, testified on this matter during the committee’s proceedings — isn’t enough time to conduct a thorough investigation and analysis of what happened. Often, when we see acts of violence, they can be linked to contraband or assaults. It’s important to take the time to analyze things and investigate what’s happening and what has happened on the scene. Is it related to street gangs? Is it related to crime within the walls? Is it an isolated incident? It’s important to take the time to conduct those investigations, watch the videos and talk to the inmates. Security intelligence officers in institutions also have sources, so it’s important to contact those sources and ensure the well-being and safety of inmates, civilian staff, and correctional officers.
How does that work in a structured intervention unit? Inmates who are placed there have four hours out of their cell and two hours of meaningful interaction. Rounds are conducted every hour. The health care centre comes every day. Nurses come and assess the inmates.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do you work there personally?
Mr. Lebeau: No, I work at the Regional Mental Health Centre. I have never worked in a structured intervention unit to date.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Has your colleague worked in units like that?
Mr. Lebeau: No.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: You’re talking about how things normally happen, but you’re also reporting that there is more violence now than there was a few years ago. What are you basing that on? On what are you basing your claim that this is linked to changes in conditions for voluntary segregation? I would like to know what kind of violence we’re talking about. Is it toward your officers? Toward whom, toward what, since they’re locked up?
Mr. Lebeau: Toward inmates and correctional officers. Not a day goes by without the Correctional Service’s National Monitoring Centre contacting the union to tell us that there has been an assault on a correctional officer. There has been an increase since 2019 because of a lack of accountability from inmates. With Bill C-83, disciplinary segregation has been eliminated, so there’s a gap on that front. There is more or less accountability on the part of inmates. Some inmates commit acts as a way to get transferred to a structured intervention unit or another institution, so violence has really increased. We see a correlation between this bill and the introduction of structured intervention units at the time.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: When an inmate in a structured intervention unit becomes agitated or appears to have psychological or psychiatric problems, what do you do? Do you have resources available to send to the scene?
Mr. Lebeau: Unfortunately, we lack training. We try, as best we can, to defuse the situation, to intervene and to interact with the inmate. We often call on elders and certain resources. Nurses, psychologists, and psychiatrists may also be there to work in an interdisciplinary manner. Those are the tools we have.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: You’re saying, then, that 48 hours doesn’t work for you?
Mr. Lebeau: That would create immense pressure. We can see that. I’m not sure that all the provincial court systems would be able to accommodate a flood of inmates and have 48 hours of supervision for each transfer to a structured intervention unit. I don’t think that’s possible. That means we would end up in a situation where inmates would probably be placed in a structured intervention unit for 48 hours and then released. There would probably be potentially explosive situations.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: You say they would be released; they would remain in prison?
Mr. Lebeau: Yes, they would remain in prison. They would go to their respective units, but is it healthy for them to go back there? Has the conflict been resolved? Is a gang war looming on the horizon? Are there still tensions? Are the debts still being managed by the individual or not? We have to answer all those questions and make sure that management is effective and that the information is accurate. It’s also a matter of the inmate’s protection.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: I would like to ask Mr. Wilkins a question. In previous testimony before this committee, when you were the national president of your organization, you stated that institutional violence has increased since the end of segregation in 2019, particularly when inmate accountability is degraded. I’m just wondering — similar to what Senator Miville-Dechêne was asking — if you could expand on that point. What does that mean in concrete operational terms for front-line correctional officers? How does that affect staff safety on a daily basis?
Jeff Wilkins, National Vice President, Union of Canadian Correctional Officers: Thank you very much for the questions. Just as my colleague Frédérick Lebeau has stated, we have noticed a severe uptake in institutional violence since 2019.
One of the reasons in particular is inmate accountability, especially violence against staff. One thing that we noticed is that it was not easy to get to the SIU when it was first established. An easy way for an inmate to get to the SIU — which might be hiding from debt in the institution, for example, trying to escape their own potential violence against themselves and hide, essentially, in the institution — was to assault a correctional officer. We saw that the uptake in violence against staff happened during that time.
The Deputy Chair: Okay. Also, I would like to ask about this 48-hour mark. Your colleague indicated that it is likely too short. To either of you, I’m just wondering if potentially imposing that new mandatory deadline would make corrections officers more vulnerable by adding another layer of constraints at moments when you might need to use swift and flexible action to keep people safe.
Mr. Wilkins: Absolutely. You could imagine that if an inmate knew that I’m only going to the SIU to hide, for example, for 48 hours, and that I’m going to back, what are they going to do? They’re going to assault another corrections officer or cause another assault in the institution. I believe it will cause an uptake in violence at the institution once again.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: My questions are for Mr. Lebeau and Mr. Wilkins, and they build on those asked by the two colleagues who spoke before me.
You are presenting a rather unique point of view here. We have mainly heard from organizations and academics specializing in the defence of inmates’ rights.
You talked about your reality on the ground and what you have heard, which enables us to see the extent to which the bill, in a way, jeopardizes the defence of inmates’ residual rights, in particular the right of all inmates to safety.
I would like you to highlight certain prejudices that you believe are behind this bill, certain information that is exaggerated in relation to the reality of prison life, and the main challenges you see in relation to implementing this bill.
Mr. Lebeau: Thank you, senator.
There are many prejudices. One of the prejudices we face is that all inmates are uncooperative and mean; that is not true. Some co-operate and follow their correctional plan.
We work hand in hand with these inmates as a case management team when things are going well. That’s often the majority of cases in an institution; we don’t just see horror stories.
Things are different when it comes to dealing with criminal groups. We can see that there’s often a correlation with what’s happening outside, because that’s often replicated within the ecosystem inside. That’s where it becomes a problem; that’s where it affects the progress and rehabilitation of these inmates.
When you’re dealing with an opioid crisis within the walls, when you’re dealing with a rise in violence, daily drug deliveries by drones, and a lack of resources and tools — situations that correctional officers have to deal with on a daily basis — it’s clear that this influences and increases those prejudices.
Senator Saint-Germain: Do you think the bill offers constructive solutions to these problems, both internally — that is, in detention centres, including in terms of available medical services — and in hospital systems, particularly in mental health treatment centres? Do you believe that this bill can improve the situation and can be implemented?
I would like to emphasize the comments you made on the issue of structured intervention units, on the broad definition of a structured intervention unit, in relation to the reality you would face in terms of enforcing the law if such a definition were to be adopted and become law as a result.
Mr. Lebeau: For us, this bill would somewhat undermine what we do on a daily basis. It would not necessarily be effective and would not address our needs.
The government needs to invest more in prisons; the infrastructure needs to be equipped and modernized. That’s what needs to be done. Until now, we have mainly had intervention programs that work reasonably well, but it is the general lack of tools that has become problematic.
As for implementation within 48 hours, when we look at this in a structured intervention unit, as I testified earlier, it becomes difficult. There are people who commit acts, and it’s like in society in general, as if we were saying, “We no longer have short-term prisons, we no longer imprison people who commit acts of violence. After 48 hours, we’ll let them out.” Sometimes it takes time to conduct these investigations, to find out the truth and all the ins and outs of what happened. So we need to give ourselves time to ensure everyone’s safety.
Senator Saint-Germain: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Simons: My question is for Mr. Lebeau and also for Mr. Wilkins.
I just want to clarify something: The 48-hour review doesn’t mean that people are released from SIU after 48 hours; it is only means that there needs to be notice before a judge that they are in SIU. Is that not how you would interpret the legislation? It is not a 48-hour hold; it is a 48-hour maximum without judicial review. Is that right?
[Translation]
Mr. Lebeau: Thank you for the question.
That’s true, except that in reality, we believe that this constraint will actually lead to a relaxation, a transfer outside the SIU. We can see it: Our courts are overwhelmed. There are many people awaiting trial before the Superior Court. This adds an extra layer, and we are not sure that this 48-hour period will work. Going to court, preparing the legal case and gathering evidence — we believe that this will be impossible to manage in 48 hours.
[English]
Senator Simons: If it were longer? If it were 72 hours? Or do you think there should not be judicial review?
Mr. Lebeau: For sure, it has to be more than 48 hours. I say that because in Bill C-83 at this point, we have an overview with the heads. Probably it is not enough, but we have some kind of review.
Senator Simons: I had the opportunity to visit the Edmonton Institution in Edmonton — not last January but the January before that. The correctional staff I spoke to there spoke quite highly of the SIUs and said they had allowed people to have more programming so that they were more safely able to transition back into the general prison population. They were also using SIUs extensively to deal with gang management — if I can put it that way — with people who certainly didn’t assault a guard but had asked for protection, and they were allowed to be put into the SIU because of that and because the prison staff deemed that there was a reasonable likelihood of violence if they remained in the general prison population. What do you say to your colleagues who think that the SIUs have been a tool that have allowed them to manage populations more successfully?
Mr. Wilkins: I don’t disagree. The SIUs are, in fact, a good tool. It is, in fact, the only tool. Since the abolishment of administrative segregation, the significant majority of inmates who were under that regime were there on their own check‑ins — that is the term. They checked into segregation because they needed to escape the general population. Very few were there for disciplinary reasons.
Here we have an SIU regime where the inmate is afforded maximum opportunity to be outside of their cell. They can still involve themselves in programming and education in the institution. I’m hearing a lot about this being a continuance of solitary confinement, but it is very far from what solitary confinement is defined as under the Mandela Rules. So I agree with my colleagues that SIU is a valuable tool for managing some of those population stresses.
Senator Simons: Nonetheless, you have made an argument without any evidence beyond anecdotal recitation that the SIUs are responsible for an increase in violence in the prisons.
I can imagine that there would be other things. First, if there is an increase in violence, I would like to see those statistics; second, I would like to see any evidence that it is being driven — in whole or in part — by the change to SIUs. I am imagining that there are other factors. If there is an increase in violence — and there may well be because we are talking about people who are predisposed to violence or they wouldn’t be there — how can you tease out what is causing that: whether it is an increase in gang affiliation, an increase in drug trafficking in prisons or an increase in the severity of people who are deemed a maximum risk? Why blame the SIUs?
Mr. Wilkins: There are certainly many variables that go along with the phenomenon that we’re seeing inside the institutions now with the increased violence. Drugs are certainly one. What we’ve seen in the past six, seven, eight years with drone deliveries of narcotics in our institutions — we’ve never seen so many drugs. We aren’t just talking about tobacco or things like that, which used to be what was delivered into institutions, but about methamphetamine, fentanyl and some very dangerous substances. Of course, drugs are a variable. That culture is increasing the violence in our institutions. SIUs are the only tool that we have to manage some of those populations.
When somebody is charged with participating in the drug culture or caught with drugs, we want to make sure that they can be returned to the general population at some point, but we have to structurally intervene in that type of behaviour. Maybe they need to transfer to another institution, or maybe they need to go to a different institution within their region, in order to try to control that behaviour.
It is not so much that SIUs have increased the violence in the institution. We believe that the abolishment of segregation —
Senator Simons: You did say that.
Mr. Wilkins: Since the introduction of the SIUs, we have seen an increase in violence, but that’s because of the abolishment of segregation.
Senator Simons: Do you have any statistics on that?
Mr. Wilkins: We can certainly look about providing statistics. This is something that we report to the CSC every single month. Every month, we sit in front of our commissioner and give her statistics that we calculate and gather from our various regions about the institutional violence, and every single month, it increases. We can certainly look about providing you something.
Senator Simons: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: I had one question that just came up in the course of that exchange: Could you explain to us and the public what the major differences are between solitary confinement, which people are familiar with, and the SIUs?
Mr. Wilkins: As I understand it, the definition of “solitary confinement” that came from the Mandela Rules is that you are locked in your cell for 22 hours a day without meaningful human contact. In fact, it goes on to say that prolonged periods of that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
An SIU affords an inmate a minimum of four hours every single day outside of their cell. Some will refuse that. They want to stay in their cell. We keep track of all inmate movement in an SIU. There is a minimum of four hours outside their cell and meaningful human contact in the day. In an SIU unit, there is more presence of health care professionals and correctional officers. There is more presence of everybody inside of that unit, so it is very different from what is referred to as “solitary confinement.”
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: I would like to give the floor to Mr. Lebeau and Mr. Wilkins, if they wish. You have raised a point that we need to address as a committee. As a former chair of the CNESST, your words resonate with me. I would like to reassure Senator Simons: these are statistics that I have seen in provincial institutions. I can confirm that the increase in violence is very well documented. I am sure you will be able to provide the committee with all of these statistics.
I would like to return to my concern. Thank you for bringing up the issue of correctional officers’ safety here today. You mentioned earlier that the bill would only worsen — or even destroy, to use your words — what you do on a daily basis. I would like to give you all my speaking time so that you can continue to raise the committee’s awareness of this very important issue. Afterwards, I would like to hear your final recommendation. Should we reject the bill, or should we delay its implementation until all the conditions are in place, so as not to create a second problem while trying to solve this one? Thank you in advance, Mr. Lebeau.
Mr. Lebeau: Thank you, senator. As we can see, and as I mentioned in my opening remarks about the mental health crisis, being a correctional officer is difficult on a daily basis. It is a closed and often negative environment. As correctional officers, we work very hard to avoid being hurt on a daily basis. While working at the Regional Mental Health Centre, I myself witnessed acts of violence and self-harm. I saw inmates attempt to take their own lives on numerous occasions. When we go home to take care of our families, it has an impact.
When we don’t address this issue, when we don’t intervene, that’s when workplace accidents happen. That’s when people suffer from post-traumatic stress, mental health issues, increased drinking, or drug addiction. It’s not easy to deal with. It takes support.
When there are more workplace accidents in an environment — as you have witnessed throughout your career — it has a negative impact on work. There is more forced overtime, so people have to stay at work to compensate for the lack of staff. There are institutions where up to 30% of the correctional officer workforce is often missing because they are simply absent. They are sick or psychologically injured. That has an impact.
Your role, as senators, is to ensure that this aspect is also addressed in your work. To answer your question about whether or not to pass the bill, I will leave you to work on and examine the bill in its entirety. One thing is certain: As it stands, the bill would undoubtedly have a negative impact on correctional services in Canada’s 49 institutions. Undoubtedly.
Senator Oudar: Thank you. Do you have anything to add, Mr. Wilkins?
[English]
Mr. Wilkins: Progressively, over time, we have been seeing a decrease in the budget for Correctional Service Canada. This bill touches on a couple of key issues that are essentially facts. Mental health issues are increasing in our institutions for both inmates and, as my colleague explained, for staff members. Mental health is a serious concern in the world that we’re living in today.
That the funding should be attached to a specialized mental health person outside of an institution doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, considering that we are charged with, and responsible for, the care, custody and control of that inmate through their sentence. They are supposed to receive programming inside of our institutions so that when they get back on the street — because they will get back on the street — they will be rehabilitated. Those resources should be dedicated to our institutions.
Do we need more psychologists? Yes. Do we need more psychiatrists? Yes. Do we need them for staff members sometimes as well? I think so. We need to focus on incentivizing good behaviour and having true consequences for bad behaviour in our institutions.
Senator Dhillon: Thank you, folks, for being here. Thank you, gentlemen, for your service and the work that you do. It is a difficult job. I understand and recognize that. I don’t think — I certainly speak for myself — that it is the committee’s intention in the work we are doing here to put you in greater harm by moving the needle by the work that we need to do insofar as protecting the rights of inmates. I think that’s an agreed, shared sentiment. I feel that you folks are caught in the middle here a little bit.
With that, what is your current ratio of corrections officers to inmates across the country?
Mr. Lebeau: Specifically, we don’t have that information. Usually, if we are talking about an institution of over 400 inmates, it can be over 30 or 40 officers on a day shift. It depends.
Mr. Wilkins: Maybe I can clarify your question. Are you asking overall how many inmates we have in proportion to how many correctional officers? Or are we talking about a single shift?
Senator Dhillon: No, that’s what I’m looking for.
Mr. Wilkins: Overall? Well, we represent about 7,400 correctional officers across the country. I’m not exactly sure of the current population of inmates across the country, but I’m sure we can find that out. I am hearing 14,000 from the other witness. Perfect.
Senator Dhillon: I appreciate that. Thank you. I would also like to reiterate the request for that data.
Thank you, Senator Oudar, for confirming some of that. Having those numbers would be helpful for us as far as the increase in violence pre- and post-2019, and having some understanding of it. What do you believe is contributing to that violence? That would be helpful. Some of your anecdotal evidence with respect to increase in drugs, gangs and organized crime is useful, but if you can nail that down in some way through metrics and data, that would be helpful as well.
I will direct my next question to Ms. Latimer. When Mr. Wilkins was speaking about the distinction he was making between the Mandela Rules and what we have for SIU, I noticed that you were shaking your head.
Ms. Latimer: I was. I was doing that because, within the structured intervention units, people are held in accordance with the Mandela definition of solitary confinement. So when Professor Doob and Professor Sprott did their study, they found that about 10%, or 195 people in their particular study, were subjected to solitary confinement that is consistent with the Mandela Rules, for a protracted 15 days, which makes it a form of torture.
We are being a bit misled if we actually believe that people in structured intervention units get out of their cells four hours a day. They are offered four hours a day, often in circumstances that would jeopardize their personal safety. There are, as my colleagues here mentioned, infrastructure problems. For example, at Millhaven, the greatest number of prisoners they can have in the structured intervention unit and provide those four hours a day out of cell is about 22 or 23 prisoners. However, there are usually close to 50. So there is a built-in non‑compliance with the required four hours a day. It cannot be delivered in those SIUs.
Senator Dhillon: Those are my questions. Thank you very much.
Senator Pate: I have a series of questions. I will ask them all and hope you will each have time to answer. I also have a starting observation.
Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Lebeau, I’m struck by this: When I first started doing the work in the prisons, the guards’ unions were often of the same view as the organizations that you are on the panel with today — that a good living environment for prisoners was a good working environment for staff. If that has changed, I’d like to hear it.
I’d also like your comments on the fact that we’ve heard from the Correctional Investigator that the staff-to-prisoner ratio is at least a one-to-one ratio, and sometimes a one-to-three ratio of staff to prisoners, in terms of the overall budget. We’ve also heard that linked to the increased violence is the increased use of force, the increased use of isolation and the decrease in access to programs. That has been well documented over time.
There’s also been evidence by the Correctional Service Canada in their own documentation that the grievance system is ineffective and, therefore, the avenues for prisoners to raise concerns are at issue.
I am interested in each of your opinions about how the definition of pre-Bill-C-83 solitary confinement differs from the definition in Bill S-205, because it is, in fact, the same definition that was used that pre-existed Bill C-83. What are the current requirements to place someone in SIU?
Ms. Latimer: I’ll start, if I may, in connection with the failure to actually allow prisoners to contest and have an independent external decision maker look at the grounds on which they are being placed in the SIUs. I spent quite a bit of time in the SIUs, and many of the prisoners are contesting the basis on which they are there. Many are held for very protracted periods of time — I’m talking four months — because they are placed there on the third grounds, which is that it would interfere with an investigation.
There’s absolutely no structured intervention that you can give to a person that would speed up an external investigation into whether an incident occurred. Why they are in the structured intervention units, I do not know. That’s something that needs to be looked at.
This internal mechanism for looking at validating is extremely inadequate. I can give you an example. A staff member has to authorize the thing, and he has to have reasonable grounds to believe that one of those following conditions has been met. The staff member said the prisoner pushed the guard — so there was an assault, an act of violence. The videotape revealed that there was no such act of violence; no touching had occurred.
I attended the review of the placement. The deputy warden was presiding, and he said they had reviewed the tapes and, yes, there had been no touching, but there was aggressive body language or assertive body language.
Putting a large Black man in a restricted-liberties situation because of body language is totally unsupported and not a good idea. That is why you need judicial oversight. That’s why you need independent oversight of those decisions of placement.
Senator Pate: What is the current review process?
Ms. Latimer: The current process is an internal one. It is up to 90 days into it when you finally get the external independent decision makers. The test that they are looking at is this: Has CSC done everything it could to get that person out of the SIU? No one is now checking to see whether or not they were legitimately and validly placed in the SIU, which is a section 7 violation, and it offends fundamental principles of justice. That needs to be changed.
Senator Pate: In my reading of the law, within 24 hours, paperwork is supposed to be done on why someone was placed in the SIU, which is shorter than the period that would be required to present it to a judge.
Ms. Latimer: Yes.
Senator Pate: Would the union respond? I would be happy to have it in writing, too.
[Translation]
Mr. Lebeau: If I may return to Ms. Latimer’s example, to use your words, when you take a large Black man who is placed in a structured intervention unit, it really takes time to conduct this investigation and these inquiries.
What we see on the camera is an action that is happening, but what happened before? Was the man involved in his correctional plan? Is it working well? Is the event related to street gangs?
There are several functions and several things that need to be validated beforehand to ensure the safety of the public, the prison and, ultimately, all inmates.
[English]
Senator K. Wells: My question is for Ms. Coyle and Ms. Latimer. From your experience, could you comment on the new SIU policy that we’re talking about as well as the claims that this compromises the safety of guards and inmates?
Ms. Coyle: Thank you. What’s happening here is that we’re having a fundamental disagreement on the purpose of SIUs. Some are looking at it from a population control perspective, which is what is happening here today, which is looking at solitary confinement as a tool to manage many bodies and behaviours in institutions. However, we are coming at it — and we believe the Senate should be coming at it — from a human rights perspective, which treats people who are in prison as rights holders, whose dignity and health care should be placing hard limits on what the state can do to them. These are fundamentally different.
That’s why we’re having these different perspectives coming at you today. I would ask, when you are considering this legislation, that you think about who is in there. If it were one of your family members or loved ones, we wouldn’t be talking about an abstract policy dispute about managing difficult inmates. We would be talking about that person who is in front of you, and that’s who we see every day. That’s where we’re coming from.
If we have this human rights perspective, a basic sense of shared humanity amongst all of us, we’re going to ask ourselves different questions. For example, what are we doing to a person’s body and mind when we put them in solitary confinement?
We have a lot of evidence from international law and Canadian law that tells us that if we do not put restrictions on that, we are going to be treating people with cruelty and ultimately torturing them. I’ll leave it there.
Ms. Latimer: Ms. Coyle phrased that very well. There is a lot of violence in prison these days. The fact that it’s also happening at provincial institutions would suggest that it’s not connected with the SIU because they don’t have that in the provincial institutions.
Frankly, there’s just a lack of humanity. As one prisoner was telling me, when first coming in, he was referred to as “Mr. so‑and-so.” Now they’re only referred to by their last name, and the prisoners refer to correctional officers as “Mr. so‑and‑so.” It built in a little bit of respect, but now that has completely diminished, such that there’s active hostility, and often prisoners are being set up to be assaulted by correctional officers. There are some really difficult things that are happening behind bars, and it needs to be addressed.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. Just one thing before we conclude: We heard quite a discrepancy in the inmate-to-correction-officer ratio. If you could please provide us in writing what you contend the actual ratio is, from your perspective, that would be helpful.
Senator Pate: Also, please let us know if you disagree with the Correctional Investigator’s numbers on these, how they differ and what your explanation for those differences are.
Mr. Wilkins: Ultimately, if there are 14,000 inmates, we represent 7,500 correctional officers. I think the one-to-one ratio might be all staff.
The Deputy Chair: We’re actually talking about the correctional works, the front line.
Mr. Wilkins: It would be close to a two-to-one ratio: two inmates to one correctional officer.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate all of our witnesses taking the time to be with us today, to answer our questions and help us with this study.
For our second panel today, we are pleased to welcome Dr. Mathieu Dufour, Forensic Psychiatrist, Head of the Department of Psychiatry of the Philippe-Pinel National Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. He is with us via video conference. We have in person today, Farhat Rehman, Co-Founder of Mothers Offering Mutual Support. Also via video conference, we have Dr. Gary A. Chaimowitz, Board Member and Head of Service, Forensic Psychiatry, St. Joseph’s Healthcare.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining us. We’ll begin with your opening remarks before we move to questions from senators.
Our first speaker will be Dr. Mathieu Dufour, followed by Farhat Rehman and Dr. Chaimowitz.
Dr. Mathieu Dufour, Forensic Psychiatrist, Head of the Department of Psychiatry, Philippe-Pinel National Institute of Forensic Psychiatry: Thank you. I will do my speech in English, but I am open to answering questions in French as well.
I am a forensic psychiatrist. I’m based in Montreal, Quebec. I’m also the head of the Department of Psychiatry at the Philippe-Pinel National Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. Most of us are also professors at universities, so I’m an associate professor at the University of Montreal.
I’m here to represent the Pinel Institute. As you know, the Pinel Institute is the largest forensic-only facility or hospital within Canada. We’re a high-secure facility. There are three high-secure facilities in forensics in Canada, and we are one of them.
We have a provincial mandate within the province of Quebec where we give advice. We do some coordination on behalf of the Ministry of Health within the province of Quebec to coordinate the whole forensic system in Quebec, which is quite large, with 45 designated hospitals.
One of our unique roles within the province of Quebec, and within Canada, is our connections with correctional partners. We have some strong connections, obviously, in the province of Quebec with provincial jails and prisons where we provide psychiatric care within those jails in Montreal.
We also have close partnerships, as you may know — hence, my invitation here today — with Correctional Service Canada, or CSC, where we have had a contract for numerous years for 20 beds. We have 15 beds for female patients, who can come from CSC to one of our units here at Pinel Institute. We also have a contract for five beds for male inmates who require psychiatric care.
We had a chance to review internally some of the proposed changes of the law. Our understanding is that it might be more difficult for some accused people — hence, some patients — and for us, to get bail.
One of the possible consequences we might observe is an increased prison population, mainly in provincial jails. We see in forensic psychiatry that when we work in jails, there is an over‑representation of people who suffer from serious mental illnesses.
In the general population, we have around 5% of the population who have either schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. In jail, in any correctional setting, that proportion of people with severe mental illness goes up to 15% — three times more.
We would expect to have more psychiatric care with interdisciplinary teams within the correctional setting because of that over-representation. I can speak for Quebec only because of my role. Right now, the psychiatric services within the jail system are not even equipped to deal with the current population with that over-representation. If there were even more people in prison and in jail, it might actually increase the burden and the demand for more psychiatric services within the jail system. Right now, we don’t even have enough services.
For example, in all of the detention centres managed by provincial ministries within the province of Quebec, only half of them have the presence of a psychiatrist. In the rest of the mental health profession, we’re lucky if we have mental health nurses and social workers. We don’t have psychologists or other interdisciplinary teams within provincial jails.
The solution to that is, obviously, to have more services within the jail system and also to consider having more agreements like we do between CSC and Pinel. That means that we need to have more services for inmates but within some provincial hospitals. That’s something that we’re going to aim to do in the province of Quebec and at Pinel.
That is the end of my opening remarks. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Next, we will hear from Farhat Rehman, who is here with us in person, for five minutes. Thank you.
Farhat Rehman, Co-Founder, Mothers Offering Mutual Support: Thank you. I’m grateful to be able to speak on behalf of the families of the many incarcerated loved ones who suffer from mental health challenges.
As a co-founder of Mothers Offering Mutual Support, or MOMS, a group established in 2010, we have over 160 women who have family members incarcerated in Canada’s federal and provincial prisons.
Throughout 15 years of meetings, my engagement with other community partners and through both reading and contributing to the research in this field, I have learned that my son’s experience is not wholly unique, but, rather, is a reflection of the stories of many others.
My son suffered from anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder in his teens and young adulthood. He was in treatment in and out of the Royal Ottawa Hospital for years before February 2001, when he was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his friend and mentor, and was remanded to the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.
During his time there, and particularly after 9/11, he suffered greatly due to racism from guards and prisoners alike, resulting in new symptoms of debilitating fear and paranoia. He would call and ask me to change the locks on my house or move. He would imagine me dead and was greatly relieved when I answered his phone calls.
At a court hearing in 2003, he was deemed unfit to stand trial, and the judge ordered him to remain at the Royal Ottawa Forensic Mental Health Centre. After almost five years in remand — this is in remand for five years — he pled guilty, expressed remorse to the family and was given a life sentence with a chance of parole after 15 years.
I had advocated with the lawyers and psychiatrists during this period in remand, drawing attention to his mental illnesses, hoping he would be found not criminally responsible, but that was not the case. My son was sent away to Kingston Penitentiary Regional Treatment Centre, not the general population.
He had numerous episodes over the years, including a serious case of catatonia that occurred in 2007, in which he did not sleep or eat for days. He was repeatedly put into segregation and solitary for weeks, if not months, under 24-hour observation with the lights on at night. His health deteriorated considerably with recurring episodes of psychosis.
The Office of the Correctional Investigator intervened several times, once in 2014 and another time in 2017, and twice recommended that the service should place my son in an outside forensic psychiatric hospital like Pinel, but his case management team did not explore such options.
After Kingston Penitentiary closed, my son was moved to the Millhaven maximum security Regional Treatment Centre, or RTC. It was not until October 2015 that my son came to the medium security Bath Institution.
Here, there were long periods of stable health and self‑improvement. However, all his requests for day parole or temporary absences to a local family or a halfway house were always denied. He did not get to attend the funerals of his two uncles or grandparents.
In July 2017, Rehan was found unresponsive on the floor at the Bath RTC. I was informed on the fourth day by a hospital intern that my son was in a coma, intubated and on life support in the ICU. My daughter and I rushed to his side after a day of seeking permission to be with him. He gained consciousness only after nine days and was sent back the same day to Millhaven RTC, maximum security. He had not yet recovered from diagnosed pneumonia, swelling in his arm due to an error in the intravenous placing and a clot in his vein. I asked why he was sent to Millhaven and not back to Bath. I was told that Millhaven was the only facility with 24-7 nursing care.
In the last few years, my son has been subjected to the use of force repeatedly when the correctional officers consider him threatening or aggressive and carry out an involuntary transfer from Bath to Millhaven. This roller coaster of transfers has played out at least half a dozen times in the last few years. Each time, it causes him irreparable harm and trauma as he is deprived of his personal effects and routine for weeks, if not months. At times, emergency response teams have also been called to forcibly administer antipsychotic drugs.
This coming February will mark 25 years that my son has been imprisoned. That’s 25 years of living from crisis to crisis, fearing the news of a relapse and worse, and the displacements.
My four years of experience serving on the SIU Implementation Advisory Panel further confirmed the fact that, across Canada, involuntary transfers are used to address the most challenging prisoners by institution heads who are not fully equipped to provide the necessary treatments. This is reinforced by the findings in the annual report of the OCI tabled earlier this month, as some of you may have seen. It highlights this very issue that prisoners with complex mental health need to be transferred to external hospitals. It is my fervent hope that Senator Kim Pate’s proposed Tona’s Law recommendations are implemented with the passing of this bill. Thank you very much.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much for your compelling story. I thought it was important to let you finish your remarks. I appreciate your advocacy. Thank you.
Dr. Gary A. Chaimowitz, Board Member and Head of Service, Forensic Psychiatry, St. Joseph’s Healthcare, Canadian Psychiatric Association: Thank you for inviting the Canadian Psychiatric Association, or CPA, to speak today.
The CPA was founded in 1951 and is the national voice of Canada’s psychiatrists and psychiatrists-in-training and is the leading authority on psychiatric matters in Canada. The CPA provides advice on the most effective programs, services and policies to achieve the best possible mental health care for Canadians and seeks to work collaboratively with governments and stakeholders to find solutions.
In terms of my own experience in the forensic psychiatry system, I am the head of service and academic lead of the Forensic Psychiatry Program at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton as well as a professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University. I have many years of experience working with individuals who have been in both the federal and provincial corrections systems.
In my experience, for far too long, people with major mental illnesses have languished in correctional facilities, untreated, or in circumstances not conducive to evidence-based, trauma-informed treatment.
People in Canada, including those in corrections, have a right to health care. People with mental illness often struggle to access psychiatric treatment hindered, in part, by their illnesses, stigma and discrimination and limited resources. These struggles are often amplified among those from marginalized groups. It is imperative that psychiatric services be made readily available to people involved with the correctional system, be they inmates, parolees or probationers.
Identifying who in corrections needs mental health services and providing timely care as early as possible is key at all points during a person’s journey through the system, from an initial assessment when they are sentenced, transferred or committed to a penitentiary, throughout their stay, and upon release into the community.
If the CSC cannot produce or implement services for inmates who are acutely unwell, those people should be moved to mental health facilities that can treat them, including to other mental health facilities with which the CSC has agreements. The cost for the treatment of penitentiary inmates should be borne by the federal government to prevent cost from becoming a barrier to timely care.
An inmate’s confinement in an SIU should be strictly reviewed and monitored and end as soon as possible. Confinement is damaging to anyone’s mental health, but especially to psychiatric patients at risk of self-harm. If someone had acute appendicitis, you wouldn’t put them in a room for three days to see if it settles. These are medical emergencies, and it makes all sorts of sense to move people who can’t be treated within corrections to outside services as soon as possible.
Expanding the list of the organizations the CSC may contract with to include community groups and services, makes sense, provided these organizations and services are adequately resourced and experienced to receive these patients. Obliging the CSC to work closely with community agencies and inmates to arrange follow-up mental health care upon release is especially important to ensure probationers and parolees are set up for a successful transition back into society. This helps prevent the cycle where people are released into the community without appropriate services and supports and shortly find themselves back in jail.
In addition to improving access to civilian mental health services when the CSC cannot provide the level of care needed, greater efforts must also be made to provide inmates, parolees and probationers with regular access to psychiatrists. This should allow for psychiatric interviews to have a modicum of privacy as well as provide assessment and treatment sessions approximating the appropriate length of sessions in the community.
Given the prevalence of addictions, addiction services should be bolstered and integrated into correctional mental health services especially with our youth and adolescents. Consideration should also be given to creating a special mobile team within Correctional Service Canada to deal with complex, treatment refractory inmates who engage in repeated self‑injurious behaviour.
Thank you. Those are my opening comments.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much to all of you. You’ve brought up a lot of things that are important for us to remember: the connection between mental illness and addictions oftentimes and also the significant impact that not only these situations have on the inmates but also on family members for 25 years. That’s an extreme amount of time.
We appreciate your valuable testimony to our committee’s work. We’re grateful for your appearance today.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: This question is for Dr. Mathieu Dufour.
I would like to return to Bill S-205, which requires that isolation last no longer than 48 hours and that any person suffering from disabling mental disorders be transferred to a hospital. I imagine you are familiar with the definition. Let me remind you: The prisoner refuses to interact with others, commits acts of self-harm, shows symptoms of drug overdose, shows signs of emotional distress or behaviour suggesting an urgent need for mental health care. That being said, you did not mention the capacity of the Philippe Pinel National Institute of Legal Psychiatry to accommodate these prisoners. I would like you to tell me a little more about that. You only have five beds for men — which seems to me to be very few, given the relatively large male prison population — and 15 for women. What do you think of this definition? Does it meet the requirements for hospitalizing a patient? How is your institute able to accommodate these individuals?
Dr. Dufour: Thank you for your question.
In my opinion as a forensic psychiatrist, this definition is a little too broad. I’m not even talking about forensic psychiatry, but in general psychiatry, when you’re in the emergency room and you have to admit a patient under the current criteria contained in Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of persons whose mental state presents a danger to themselves or to others, for involuntary hospitalization, there often has to be a serious and immediate danger. These are often patients who are in very intense crises, who have psychoses; they hear voices, they have delusions. People who engage in self-harming behaviour or who suffer from less severe distress than someone experiencing a serious episode of psychosis are not normally admitted to hospital; we try to treat them in outpatient clinics with other types of follow-up. The definition is too broad for what actually exists in the field of general psychiatry.
When these patients are only distressed, engage in self-harm or have chronic suicidal thoughts, they are not necessarily admitted to hospital, but are offered outpatient psychiatric care. As for the second question, do we have the capacity at Pinel to admit more than five male patients? The answer is no, not currently, not with the current contract and all the pressures we are under. We are a forensic psychiatry centre, we receive requests from all over Quebec and we do not have the resources to admit more than 5 male patients and 15 female patients.
If, with the bill, there are many more transfers to provincial hospitals such as Pinel, we need to have more beds in places like Pinel. I would also argue that Pinel is a maximum-security hospital. We should therefore receive patients who have greater psychiatric needs, but also, from a security standpoint, who need a maximum security environment, which is not the case for all patients.
I also work at the penitentiary, at the Regional Mental Health Centre in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec. There are patients who need to go to hospital but who do not necessarily need the secure environment of Pinel. There could be other contracts with more regional hospitals and other medium-security forensic psychiatric programs to increase capacity.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: You have been very clear. I’m happy with that.
Senator Saint-Germain: My questions are also addressed to Dr. Dufour. I will continue in the same vein by taking you back to the 1960s and 1970s when there was a deinstitutionalization of mental health care in Quebec. Since then, there have been constant complaints about the lack of resources in the community. With regard to this bill, in the wake of the definition of mental health, but also the need for additional recourse to the courts within 48 or 72 hours after an assessment, rights of appeal and additional remedies given to detainees . . .
Here is my question. On the one hand, can you tell us if you see any impact in terms of the risk of converting psychiatric hospitals into psychiatric prison hospitals? On the other hand, do you foresee an impact on the increased need for psychiatrists to serve as expert witnesses in court?
Dr. Dufour: For the first question, you asked whether there would be an impact if, for example, more prisoners were sent to general hospitals, both at the provincial and federal levels. I can speak more authoritatively about Quebec; I have other roles, but I represent the Institut national de psychiatrie légale Philippe-Pinel, which is part of the Quebec system. I would say that there would be a major impact, because the Quebec system is already struggling to meet basic psychiatric needs. We are barely able to provide enough beds to hospitalize these patients when needed.
If we add more people who need to be assessed and possibly hospitalized, with the current capacity of the provincial hospital network, I don’t think we have the resources to do that. Would having more resources be a solution? Yes, but that’s up to each provincial government; there could also be a middle ground solution. We have five treatment centres at the federal level that work quite well, in our experience in forensic psychiatry; it’s not perfect, but it works quite well nonetheless. However, we don’t have the equivalent at the provincial level. Some hospitals have contracts with provincial prisons to access beds, but this is often not enough to meet the needs. There will be an impact, and more resources will clearly be needed if the bill is passed so that we can provide care to these inmates in psychiatric hospitals under the current system.
To answer your second question, which was about the use of psychiatrists working in the correctional system as expert witnesses, most of us are forensic psychiatrists. This is an additional year of forensic psychiatry, on top of our five years of residency and four or five years of medical school. There are 160 forensic psychiatrists in Canada and about 40 in Quebec.
We are accustomed to testifying in court as expert witnesses; it is within our comfort zone. However, this is not the case for general psychiatrists, for whom, in an increasingly legalistic world, this could be a deterrent to working in a correctional setting if they were also required to be expert witnesses. In Quebec, we have great difficulty recruiting psychiatrists to work in correctional settings. Conditions are difficult, as patients’ movements are often restricted for security reasons. This could therefore complicate the recruitment of psychiatrists in correctional settings.
Senator Saint-Germain: We have heard testimony about the 48-hour limit on detention in structured intervention units. We are told that it is sometimes obvious that it is better for certain prisoners to be isolated for their own safety, but that some prisoners themselves are more comfortable being in isolation in certain situations when their mental health is at risk. Do you have any comments on this?
Dr. Dufour: This is strictly a comment based on my clinical experience. I have patients with acute psychosis, hallucinations or delusions, who are so paranoid that they feel safer in isolation. This may be good for people in acute episodes, but as soon as they start to get better, isolation could have an impact and worsen the psychosis in the long term. Rapid access to therapy groups and psychosocial activities is necessary to prevent the psychosis from worsening.
Senator Saint-Germain: Thank you very much.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: First, I would like to ask Ms. Rehman a question.
Yesterday, we heard from Mr. Spratt, an experienced criminal lawyer who came to testify. He talked about some different areas that could be helpful. He is in favour of this bill, but he thought there were a few areas that could help inmates and the system. A few of those areas were as follows: allowing for a proactive kind of disclosure as the type that would be given in criminal proceedings; allowing for counsel appointment, like lawyer appointment, to help inmates dealing with these issues; and also allowing video conferencing available so that inmates don’t have to constantly transfer back and forth to deal with court proceedings in person.
What is your point of view on those types of things? Would that be helpful?
Ms. Rehman: Anything that sees things from the perspective of the lived history of that inmate, which then is disclosed at that point, can only help the situation. Unfortunately, the mental health court wasn’t in existence when my son was arrested. I think that would have helped. Also, video conferencing wasn’t done in 2001. Transportation from the detention centre to the courthouse during the Ottawa winter is very damaging. They don’t have any particular safety things, and they have to wait in a basement cell until their turn. These are all time-consuming things that can be alleviated by what Michael Spratt proposed yesterday.
The Deputy Chair: I appreciate that.
Senator Simons: Thank you to all of our witnesses, but especially, if I may say, to Ms. Rehman for sharing your story with us. It takes real courage.
Ms. Rehman: Thank you, senator.
Senator Simons: I have a question I want to address to all three of you.
At the beginning of these proceedings, one of our witnesses was Marie Doyle, the Assistant Commissioner for Health Services at Correctional Service Canada. Senator Batters asked her a very thoughtful question, which was about how many people would be encompassed in the group of people who have disabling mental health issues that include symptoms such as refusal of social interaction, acts of self-harm, symptoms of drug overdose and signs of emotional distress or behaviour, indicating an urgent need for mental health care.
I was quite shocked when Ms. Doyle told us that the number was 160 — that there were only 160 people in the federal corrections system who were suffering from disabling mental health issues. So either this is a very easy problem to solve, and we should solve it because finding beds for 160 people should not be that hard, or that number is too low, as it seems to me, intuitively.
I would like you to each speak from your own professional and personal experiences about what you think of Ms. Doyle’s assessment that there are only 160 people in federal corrections — and we just heard that’s about 14,000 people — who have disabling mental health issues. Dr. Dufour, can we start with you?
Dr. Dufour: Thank you.
That’s a good question. I don’t have the numbers, and I didn’t do the research. However, 160 seems to be a bit low, at least, in terms of my own experience. I work at the RTC one day a week, and there 120 beds. There are usually more people who are required to be in a hospital. They are not all acute, obviously; many of these individuals have schizophrenia, but they are not in the acute phase, so they don’t have any psychosis anymore, or it is managed, and they can function reasonably well because they are taking their medications, have a structured environment, treatment, et cetera.
So the number 160 seems to be low overall. That being said, I’m not sure, again, that all these people who have emotional distress need to be in a hospital. They may need to have a more interdisciplinary-team-type of care within the prison system. This can be done. Depending on the hospital, it is not a panacea, either. We usually try to make sure that we deal with the crisis, and then most of the work is done on an outpatient basis with an interdisciplinary team.
Those are my initial thoughts.
Dr. Chaimowitz: Thank you. It is a great question.
The number of people with major mental illnesses in correctional institutions is pretty high — much, much higher than 160. However, as Dr. Dufour said, not everyone with a major mental illness requires hospitalization. I suspect the number is higher than 160, because it’s obviously where you draw the line, but we need that data. I can tell you that 160 is 160 too many. That number is a big psychiatric hospital. As Dr. Dufour said, the forensic system is running at over 100% capacity, so there are no beds. We are, at minimum, 160 beds short; in other words, we are one psychiatric hospital short. I suspect, depending on where you draw the line, that number may be higher; I suspect it is higher. Anyway, 160 is 160 too many, and we actually have nowhere to put those individuals in 2025.
Senator Simons: I don’t expect you to have a statistical answer, but based upon your observation —
Ms. Rehman: I can tell you that when 99% of our membership — these are 160 women as we speak — come and share their experiences with us, a common thread that runs through that is that they started in their formative years, either addictions followed by psychosis or other forms of mental health issues that they are facing. So 99% of them have these symptoms or mental health challenges, for which they have failed to receive adequate treatment in the community, and then it has been criminalized due to some act.
Then we also go by the statistics presented by the Office of the Correctional Investigator. We know that, in some cases, 70% of the population suffers from mental health issues. So, yes, the numbers may be much larger, but if Marie Doyle was speaking to the very critically mentally ill — I don’t know where that statistic comes from, but it is a generalized sort of situation with mental health issues.
Senator Simons: I will go on a second round if there is one.
The Deputy Chair: I don’t think there will be, but thank you.
Just to clarify: Yes, that is what I asked. Then she gave me the answer of 160, but I think she was focused more on the wording “disabling mental health condition,” so she gave that number of 160. Then I read her the definition, which is quite broad, and it is from the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which includes chronic self-harm, the refusal of social interaction, emotional distress and urgent mental health needs. To me, that’s a very broad, all-encompassing definition. As our witness, Ms. Rehman, would indicate, yes, it is probably 99%. It is almost misleading to use the term “disabling mental health condition,” because I would say that many people who are considered to have a mental illness but are still functioning and working members of society would probably fall within that.
So I asked her to follow up with the actual number, given that definition, and I think we are still waiting for that. Hopefully, we will receive that soon.
Senator Pate: Thank you to all the witnesses. My questions are for all of you. I will start by making some statements, and I want to know what each of you think about the statements.
Dr. Dufour, you talked about contracts with Pinel. As you know, I’ve been there a number of times. Dr. Chaimowitz, you testified at the Ashley Smith inquest and the Ontario segregation case. The history of the units being set up at Pinel was predicated on actions that were brought to challenge the treatment, or lack thereof, of mental health issues, in particular, for women. Initially, the CSC contracted the unit for women. The unit for men, as far as my understanding goes, is that there are five beds allocated, but it is a per diem basis.
When the CSC approached Pinel in the past, I believe there was an agreement for $3 million to add another unit, but the CSC balked at that and only wanted to do a per diem basis. Similar negotiations occurred with the Royal Ottawa Hospital around the development of a unit at St. Lawrence and with a Nova Scotia hospital around the development of a specified unit.
My understanding — and you may be aware — that the Correctional Investigator has just recommended that, instead of building the new unit for $1.3 million at Dorchester, the resources ought to be allocated to these types of units be developed in approaching provinces.
I would very much like your perspective on both that history and what you think about the Correctional Investigator’s recommendation.
Ms. Rehman, you talked about it a bit, but could you expand on the differences between when your son was under the jurisdiction of the Royal Ottawa Hospital and Millhaven? In my discussions with psychiatrists across this country and internationally, part of the reason there are recruitment issues is because, often, the therapeutic directions provided by psychiatrists are not followed in correctional environments, so their ability to actually fulfill their professional obligations are often challenged. I would be interested in hearing about that.
Perhaps we could start with Dr. Chaimowitz, then Dr. Dufour and Ms. Rehman.
Dr. Chaimowitz: I have a number of points.
Psychiatric services are not great in Canada. All of us know it is very difficult to get services for your loved ones, even if you are connected in the system. Psychiatric services for patients in correctional settings are doubly, triply and quadruply more difficult to access. Correctional settings are not set up to provide mental health services. Psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric settings are. I know corrections does create work in the space, but it is not a hospital. I believe we don’t have enough resources outside of the CSC. These things need to be put in place. These will cost money. This is not a matter of moving resources around. We need additional funds. Our country has grown population-wise. Our services have not grown in parallel. We are behind international benchmarks in terms of psychiatric services and, very importantly, the settings in which we house our people, our Canadians in correctional institutions.
None of you, I believe, would want to spend one night, or more than one night, in any type of correctional setting. It is an embarrassment to our country that we don’t have the appropriate resources.
We heard today that many places should have video conferencing in rooms and hospitals so you can talk to loved ones and go to courts. We need additional resources. I think the Correctional Investigator has thought long and hard about these things, but it is important to make sure these services and the hospitals are available, because our current system is running at over 100%. Unless there is new investment, and specifically in the types of facilities that inmates can go to — in other words, not replicating a correctional setting in a hospital, but building hospitals that are modern, dignified, respectful and also allow the right people to provide the right care to people is the way to go. It will require new funding, new resources and definitely innovative thinking to provide these services. We have a long way to go, but hopefully days like today are the initiative to move this forward.
The Deputy Chair: Could the other two witnesses each provide answers within 30 seconds to Senator Pate’s questions?
Ms. Rehman: My son’s experience with the forensic hospital was in remand when he was being assessed. He was assessed twice. When the judge ruled that he should stay in the Royal Ottawa Hospital, I saw him thrive. He was allowed to play basketball. He interacted with others, and there was never any danger or threat from him in those periods. But in the prison setting, although Correctional Service Canada tells me that it is a hospital, its atmosphere is just not conducive to treatment or for any kind of rehabilitation. He is watched, and there is a punitive aspect. There is a risk-averse system that we have, and then there is also an overestimate of risks that these mental health patients pose to the correctional officers, because some of them don’t have the training to understand what is going on. In my opinion, that would fare well, although some ideologically different politicians are opposed to providing any kind of therapeutic environment for them to get better. But that is the solution, and that’s how we want to see Canada move forward.
The Deputy Chair: Dr. Dufour?
Dr. Dufour: I will try to be brief. With the history, Senator Pate, I think you are right. It was before my time at Pinel, but now the contract is up for renewal, and we’re quite open to look at options. Is it a unit per diem or not? But we also have to diversify. Yes, we are high-security, but there may be other contracts that we can do with other hospitals as well, not only Pinel. The thing is not to change the environment to another hospital, but we need the interdisciplinary team to provide the treatment.
Many times, when I have patients at the regional treatment centre, they have great care with an interdisciplinary team, but if they were changed to another unit, not Pinel, they would have better care at the RTC because we have a bigger team and so on. So it is not just about changing the environment, but they also need to have the interdisciplinary team.
One last comment: We talked a lot about hospitals. But a big challenge is what happens in the community when the inmates are released. This is a big problem because we have problems finding outpatient services for those individuals, especially when they did time in a federal penitentiary. The stigma of being someone from the federal penitentiary is very bad. We need more resources also for these outpatient settings.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much to all our witnesses today. You provided valuable testimony to help us with our work in considering this study, and we are very grateful for your appearance today.
Senators, before we adjourn, I wanted to let you know that next week our committee will turn its attention to the pre-study of Bill C-15, the government’s Bill C-15, Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1. It will focus in particular with our committee on the measures found in divisions 30 and 31 of part 5. If senators have any witness suggestions, please forward them to the clerk as soon as possible. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)