THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, December 11, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs met with videoconference this day at 10:30 a.m. [ET] to examine Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
Senator David M. Arnot (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning. My name is David Arnot. I’m a senator from Saskatchewan and the chair of this committee. I invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
Senator Audette: Kuei. [Innu-aimun spoken] Michèle Audette from Quebec.
Senator Oudar: Manuelle Oudar from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Simons: I’m Paula Simons from Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Prosper: Paul Prosper, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki territory.
Senator K. Wells: Good morning. Kristopher Wells, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator McCallum: Mary Jane McCallum, Treaty 10, Manitoba region. I’m just visiting this committee.
Senator Pate: Welcome to all of our witnesses. My name is Kim Pate. I live here in the unceded, unsurrendered and unreturned territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
Senator Busson: Bev Busson, British Columbia. Welcome.
[Translation]
Senator Surette: Allister Surette from Nova Scotia.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, we’re meeting to continue our study of Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. This is a bill sponsored by Senator Pate.
Our first panel is here: From the Assembly of First Nations, we welcome Savanna McGregor, National Women’s Representative, Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador; Patricia Lazore Bova, Special Advisor, Justice; and William David, Senior Legal Counsel.
By video conference, we also welcome Pamela Palmater, Chair in Indigenous Governance, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Welcome to all the witnesses. Thank you for joining us. We’ll begin with opening remarks. I’ll ask Ms. McGregor to start, followed by Ms. Palmater. These remarks are limited to five minutes or so. Ms. McGregor, please begin. Thank you.
Savanna McGregor, National Women’s Representative, Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, Assembly of First Nations: Kwey. Good morning. Minogizhebaawagad kakina.
I’m Savanna McGregor, National Women’s Representative of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador and former Grand Chief of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council.
I would like to acknowledge that we’re here on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of my beautiful people, and thank you for all the good work you all do, continue to do and will forever do on behalf of all Canadians, First Nations, Inuit and Métis people across our country. I also extend gratitude to you, Senator Pate, for your commitment in advancing this bill and honouring Tona Mills. It’s heavy, and we need your help and support, just like we need all of your support.
Tona’s case reflects a systemic reality: a correctional system that fails our people at every stage. Unfortunately, her story is not an isolated case. It is part of a long-standing pattern of neglect, discrimination and a lack of culturally appropriate support within federal corrections.
Bill S-205 is a chance to address systemic inequities. Indigenous Peoples remain disproportionately incarcerated and overrepresented in federal structured intervention units, or SIUs, making up nearly 50% of SIU placements. Of those, 63% experience long stays of 16 days or more. These numbers reveal a harmful pattern. First Nations inmates face higher SIU placement rates and prolonged isolation, worsening harm instead of promoting rehabilitation.
At the recent Special Chiefs Assembly, First Nations-in-Assembly reaffirmed the urgent need to end isolation practices in federal corrections. The case of Joey Toutsaint, a Dene man from the Black Lake First Nation, illustrates these systemic failures. In over 20 years of being incarcerated, Joey has spent over 3,000 days — eight years — in segregation or SIUs, suffering severe psychological and physical impacts of prolonged isolation.
Despite his eligibility for culturally appropriate support, Correctional Service Canada, or CSC, has not facilitated section 81 transfers to healing lodges or section 84 release planning with his community. As you have heard from previous witnesses, prolonged isolation or segregation through SIUs causes deep psychological, neurological and physical harm, especially for First Nations inmates who are already impacted by the effects of intergenerational trauma that is rooted in colonization.
We support Bill S-205, which creates a cap of 48 hours for confinement without a court order, reducing the risk of the prolonged harms of isolation. We support Bill S-205’s requirement for immediate mental health assessments and the transfer of inmates with severe conditions to hospitals or psychiatric facilities. First Nations inmates must receive culturally and clinically appropriate care, not isolation.
The system must move from punitive practices to healing-based approaches rooted in First Nations perspectives. Tona’s law would strengthen oversight by giving courts more power to review extended confinement and allowing inmates to apply for sentence reductions if decisions by CSC staff were discriminatory or unjust. This supports accountability and will hopefully address the systemic racism that First Nations inmates face within the justice system and Correctional Service Canada.
Sections 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, or CCRA, are crucial but severely underused. They allow partnerships with First Nations to deliver custody programming and reintegration services, yet inmates classified as medium or maximum security are excluded from section 81 agreements, denying access to culturally appropriate programs and supports. This barrier is also compounded by systemic bias and risk assessment tools used by CSC often to overclassify First Nations inmates due to factors such as prior convictions, institutional misconduct and social history without accounting for intergenerational trauma or cultural strengths, which is often highlighted in Gladue reports.
These biased outcomes perpetuate exclusion from section 81 agreements and healing lodges, reinforcing cycles of incarcerations rather than supporting rehabilitation and self‑determination. Expanding and fully implementing these agreements and removing barriers tied to the risk of classification is essential to reducing reincarceration, improving reintegration and upholding self-determination.
Correctional programming often lacks cultural relevance and is undermined by systemic bias. Many First Nations inmates are denied section 84 releases, which enable reintegration planning with their communities. CSC rarely provides adequate support, leaving inmates to reach statutory release without preparation and missing critical opportunities for safe reintegration.
By tightening the rules around the use of SIUs and requiring court oversight for extended confinement, Tona’s law would improve systemic transparency and public trust.
The Chair: You’re at six minutes. We’re very tight for time. Would you like to close?
Ms. McGregor: Thank you for the extra minute.
First Nations continue to have limited authority to design, lead and assert sovereignty over our own justice systems. This must change if Canada is serious about reconciliation and justice reforms.
Chi-meegwetch kakina. Thank you, everybody.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. McGregor.
Ms. Palmater, please proceed for five minutes or so. We are tight for time.
We’re blessed to have 13 senators who want to ask questions. This is a good thing. It demonstrates the importance of this panel. Each senator will have four minutes to ask a question, and that includes the answer. It’s very tight.
I’m going to tell all the witnesses that, quite likely, you will want to amplify some of what you’re saying here today. We would really appreciate it if you would provide written comments in addition to your verbal comments here this morning, and this will be studied by the analysts and distributed to all the senators. That will enhance the ability of the Senate to do its good work with the important information you’re giving us. Thank you very much.
Ms. Palmater, please proceed.
Pamela Palmater, Chair, Indigenous Governance, Toronto Metropolitan University, as an individual: Thank you. Kwey. Hello. [Indigenous language spoken] Pam Palmater. I’m from Eel River Bar First Nation, which is part of the larger Mi’kmaq Nation. Thank you for inviting me to appear and for all the amazing senators on this committee who care about this issue. Thank you to Senator Pate for doing this in Tona’s name.
By way of background, I’ve been a lawyer for about 26 years, and 10 of those were at Justice Canada. My research specializes in things including human rights and public safety, of which this is an issue of major public safety.
I’m speaking in support of Bill S-205, Tona’s law, and I ask this committee to also adopt the bill. As a First Nations woman, I am acutely aware of the gross over-incarceration of Indigenous Peoples: men, women, children, friends and relatives. Their incarceration — despite Supreme Court of Canada cases, despite reports from the UN and despite national reports and inquiries — continues to get worse at alarming levels. Indigenous women are the fastest-growing prison population at all levels, but federal corrections is particularly in a crisis that hasn’t been addressed.
We also know that Indigenous women, as with all Indigenous Peoples, are grossly overrepresented in the use of isolation. You can call it solitary confinement, segregation, administrative segregation, structured intervention units, lockdown or the hole. Whatever term is used, it’s isolation, and anything over 48 hours is considered cruel and unusual punishment and unconstitutional. We know that anything over 15 days is a recognized form of torture under the Mandela Rules.
What does this do? It triggers, creates or exacerbates serious mental health conditions and physical health conditions. It doesn’t accommodate or address those with cognitive challenges. Many Indigenous women who have suffered severe trauma, violence and abuse have already suffered the trauma of institutionalization: Indian residential schools, Indian hospitals and asylums. We know this is a problem and that it does irreparable harm.
Another thing we know is that despite all of this and despite all of the court cases and reports, Correctional Service Canada, Public Safety Canada and Justice Canada have not acted to change this in any substantive way, because the goal from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is all of these reports say to eliminate over-incarceration — not deal with it tiny steps at a time but eliminate it.
What is the solution? The primary solution is community-based. Let First Nations decide. Let people who are incarcerated have the alternative to prison — the very same thing that the Supreme Court of Canada and others have called on us to do. Every single one of these reports has said community-based, community-based, community-based, and the funding for community-based.
Another thing that we have to keep in mind aside from all of these isolation tactics being unconstitutional and a form of torture is that under section 35, First Nations have the inherent right to be self-governing and to make decisions over what does and doesn’t happen to their citizens.
Similarly, with federal legislation — Bill C-15 — under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, we have the right to be self-governing, including being able to enact our laws and legal systems and deciding what happens to our citizens. Right now, that’s not happening. The money that is going to corrections needs to be diverted and added to so that it goes to First Nations, and then First Nations will make the decision in conjunction with individual prisoners — or, hopefully, people who are just convicted and do not go to prison — about what happens and what individualized supports they need. It may be that they decide to partner with non-Native organizations, many of whom are doing good work with insufficient funds, but First Nations under section 84 and even section 81 have not been given the opportunity to exercise their jurisdiction and ensure that the human rights of First Nations prisoners and those who are convicted are respected. We need that.
Currently, we’re acting in an unconstitutional way. I know I only have five minutes, so hopefully there are a lot of questions. I just want everyone to remember that Elders such as Sharon McIvor and Trish Monture envisioned that we would be doing this and that our people would be reunited with their communities, and I think we need to do that.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Palmater. Thank you also to the Assembly of First Nations, or AFN, witnesses.
We have 13 senators. My goal is to ensure that every senator who wants to ask a question will be able to ask a question. It’s a four-minute rule.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you all for being here. Thank you for your testimonies.
I am particularly interested in section 81 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. You say that inmates who are in solitary confinement could return to their communities. That does not happen in medium- or maximum-security institutions, as I understand. Do you have any figures on this? In general, is this allowed in minimum-security institutions? If it is not allowed in medium- or maximum-security institutions, what are the reasons? Would it be necessary to build adequate housing in communities? I would like to understand this. I would also like to have statistics, if you have them, to help us understand when you say that this approach is not used when inmates are in solitary confinement.
Ms. McGregor: Thank you for the question.
We do not have the figures. However, when you count all regions, the numbers are huge. We do not necessarily have everything we need as a community to meet the needs. Nor do we have everything we need to achieve the self-determination necessary to help our people who really need it to rehabilitate themselves and return to the community. You are asking a good question. It is a good point, and it is something Canada needs to work on to help us find the answer to that.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Ms. Palmater, do you have anything to add to that?
Ms. Palmater: Thank you very much for the question.
[English]
I will look and see in my research if, in fact, I have specific numbers. I think one of the most significant parts of your question is this differentiation between minimum, medium and maximum security because one of the problems for Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous women is that they’re overly classified as maximum security for things such as trauma in their past. They’re using these Gladue reports, which are supposed to be beneficial and which are supposed to speak to a history of violence and trauma and those experiences in order to have alternatives to prison, like the Supreme Court of Canada directed us to have. But instead, they’re being used to say, “Oh, they’ve had trauma and issues, so we’re going to note them as maximum security or medium security,” which then reduces their opportunity to use these other things.
As far as I’m concerned, for the Indigenous Peoples who are currently in prison, especially Indigenous women — my focus is Indigenous women — we must actually review these minimum‑security, medium-security and maximum-security designations and not limit these options of community-based justice systems to only minimum security, and we must make sure that for anyone who is convicted from here forward, we stop this over‑designation before it even starts.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Would you say you have the infrastructure to welcome those inmates into communities?
Ms. Palmater: Yes, 634 communities, we know, have different resources and different opportunities, but the gross underfunding of housing, of health care centres and of water and sanitation and all of these things which are the subject of class actions — which have just been certified — needs to be addressed in addition to justice. But we can’t put anything as a precursor. For the significant amount of money that goes into policing and corrections, some of that can be transferred to First Nations to address some of these things at the same time. One doesn’t have to be a condition of the other so that we’re building capacity, but there are many who can take that on now with the sufficient funding that they have because we’re all in different situations.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you very much.
Senator Prosper: Thank you so much to the witnesses here and recognizing the efforts of Senator Pate and her advocacy in this very important area.
Just to follow up a bit on the previous question from Senator Miville-Dechêne about community, Ms. Palmater, you mentioned the term “irreparable harm” and a host of factors that lead to Indigenous Persons being incarcerated. I’m just curious if you could share because there are systemic issues as referenced within corrections itself, and it doesn’t seem to be curing itself. The numbers are getting higher, and the situation is getting somewhat worse for individuals who are there within these institutions.
In addition to appropriate funding to maintain that connection to community, could you please focus, Ms. McGregor and Ms. Palmater, on how that connection, if appropriately funded and resourced, can offer a better alternative to incarceration? We’re talking about significant money in any event with incarceration, but please lend insight into something that truly warrants consideration. Maybe we’ll start with you, Ms. Palmater, and then Ms. McGregor.
Ms. Palmater: Thank you for the question. There are so many ways. I wish I had an hour to talk about this. Think about it just from an Indigenous woman’s perspective: a First Nations woman who, because of a crime of poverty or in defence of domestic violence — trying to protect herself — ends up convicted, goes to prison and now, because of her history of trauma, is designated as medium or max security and has limited opportunities. What does that do? It breaks up the family because we know the majority of households are headed by single First Nations women. What happens to the children? They go into foster care, and more often it’s non-Indigenous foster care. What do we know statistically is likely to happen? The majority of kids languishing in youth corrections come straight from the foster care system, and then they go straight into adult corrections. What we’re doing by specifically incarcerating Indigenous women, the majority of whom do not represent a threat to the Canadian public, is busting up families and creating a pipeline of what’s going to happen to their kids in the future. This is exactly what happened with Indian residential schools, and now federal corrections is the Indian residential school of the modern era, which hurts the kids more. It’s one of the reasons why Nelson Mandela, when he first got into power, said, “Release all the women,” because it’s the women primarily, not exclusively, who are raising these children, and they need to be reunified with their children. That’s just one example.
Think about what happens once you’re convicted and go to prison, and then you come out with no support and no connection with your community. That interferes with all of your life chances: your ability to get a job, your ability to get housing and your ability to get your kids back.
These are just a few examples of the irreparable harm it does to more than just the individual person, and that’s if she survives it.
Ms. McGregor: Senators, I’m half from Treaty 6 territory as well. I’ve had so many family members go to the pen in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. They’ve made it out, even my siblings. How can our lives be so different? It’s just the reality of things. This is so personal. It’s so personal. Thank you so much, Pamela, for being here with me and supporting this big work that we need to do.
We need more funding for sections 81 and 84. If Canada needs to see the checks and balances in regard to human lives, then add more funding and see the success of what can come of it. I wish Privy Council wasn’t so hard to talk to in regard to funding First Nations in Canada, but it’s a reality we face in so many sections, especially when we look at the matrix of funding in this country. We just need more support. We need the housing. We need employment. We need counselling to figure out what the underlying issues are. The connection of family. The connection of culture. The connection to community. We’re all seeking it. We all want it and we’re all trying to do our best to be part of this. This is so innately personal because it could be any of us if we made a bad decision in our lives. That’s why I’m red in the face because we just really need help, and we’re trying to figure it out with your help. Thank you, Senator Pate. We’re all human at the end of the day. We want to do better. We don’t want our people to be isolated and basically dealing with crimes against humanity in a different way, where they’re in institutions of federal penitentiaries.
I hope that our interventions today can help you in the decisions that you’re going to have to make and can make and are blessed to be able to make. We’re on the sidelines cheering you on. We just need to figure out how to resolve this outstanding issue that affects all of our families across Canada. Meegwetch.
The Chair: Thank you for those poignant comments.
Senator Simons: Tansi and hiy hiy to our witnesses. I come from Edmonton, which is the home of the Edmonton women’s prison. I want to explain to my colleagues who may not know this — I’m sure you do: The Indigenous population of Alberta is 6.8%, and at the women’s prison, between 70% and 75% of the women there are Indigenous. That’s extraordinary.
One of the challenges that Senator Pate’s bill has faced is a concern that it requires people to be sent out for psychiatric care, often to hospitals that don’t have the beds to provide the care, which is the concern. The concern is that the bill may download responsibilities to the provinces for which they don’t have the resources to handle, yet it seems to me that it’s part of the whole problem. Ms. McGregor, you mentioned the need for counselling. I can only presume that one of the reasons that 70% of the prisoners in the Edmonton women’s prison are Indigenous is because they didn’t have mental health care before incarceration.
I wonder if you and Ms. Palmater could speak to the quandary that is, I think, inherent in the bill in terms of how we get people the mental health care they need, not just while they are incarcerated but before they are incarcerated and before they act out, expressing their trauma in ways that lead to their incarceration.
Ms. McGregor: It is really hard to unpack and undo hundreds and hundreds of years of colonization and facing the grim, stark reality that not everyone has access to the services they need. I live an hour and a half north of here, and I do not have access to all of the services either. When you look at that and compound it with the grander scale and the remoteness of all the communities that span across this country, we have to figure that out together.
With the budget and the reality of the economy, as well as the world economy and all of that, we have to bring it back and dial it in to figure out that the local is the global, so let’s make sure we take care of the local of each of our regions as best we can within the limited abilities that everyone has.
I know that not all of our pockets are so deep as to be able to answer all of the questions, and those are questions we pose to ourselves daily. I’m sure leadership, Chiefs and councils and Regional Chiefs are all asking themselves that and trying to figure that out.
In regard to the healing lodges, there is a 65% vacancy despite there being only enough beds to accommodate 9% of the Indigenous prison population.
Senator Simons: Wow. So people can start being referred there?
Ms. McGregor: Yes. Community-led lodges are funded 40% less than CSC-run ones, so it is 62 cents for every dollar. Also, general funding does not typically include infrastructure costs that may occur.
When you look at the infrastructure gap and you think of water, sewers and all of that, it runs deeper. We need that help, support and training to set up our future warriors and guardians of our people so that we can reclaim that jurisdiction over our mental health and our spirituality.
Ms. Palmater: Thank you for the question. There are so many important things to say.
First, the federal government created this mess in federal corrections, so it has a legal obligation to address the mess. We know with Charter violations and breaches, they can never use costs as an excuse not to comply with the Charter.
We cannot create mental health issues from this point forward by stopping the isolation. That would deal with a significant portion. We cannot exacerbate the harm of people currently in prison. Then by diverting to community-based options, there are the healing and health mechanisms that happen in community. Already, you are getting at a significant portion of the people who are going to be impacted.
For those who are not covered under those, by making sure they have to be seen by, say, a psychiatrist or a doctor to determine what kinds of supports they need inside or outside the prison in a healing lodge or in community, that is going to help a great deal. We can’t look at it as all of the people who are incarcerated will need the costs of these things, especially if we adopt this bill and we start using sections 81 and 84, in particular, more often.
Make sure that corrections funds get diverted there, some of the justice funds get diverted there and some of the policing funds get diverted there. Ultimately, we know from social science that the more money that is invested in social programs — whatever they are, and this would be included — will save money down the road, protect Canadians down the road and protect Indigenous Peoples down the road. The irreparable harm cannot be undone. You take one Indigenous woman who does not get community-based support, languishes in isolation and loses her children, and now she has five children who are going into the correctional system, and then they have children and so on.
We can stop this right now. That, in and of itself, would save the money.
We really need to think about diverting so that we are not creating these problems because, right now, we are just a pipeline creating problems that will require treatment.
Senator Simons: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Thank you, Ms. McGregor and Ms. Palmater, for your testimonies, which will certainly help us understand. I would like to continue by going back to sections 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which you mentioned. We understand that the proposed version of these sections will facilitate the use of Indigenous and community organizations to provide services and support release, and enable a more appropriate response to the cultural, social and spiritual needs of incarcerated individuals who have experienced significant trauma.
Do you think that the proposed sections 81 and 84 are sufficient to provide truly suitable environments? Are you satisfied with the agreements or the types of measures that would be provided for in the act? If not, what kind of measures do you think would be necessary for the agreements to truly contribute to recovery?
Ms. McGregor: I could talk about how sections 81 and 84 fail to achieve proper results.
[English]
Section 81 allows CSC to enter into agreements with Indigenous communities or organizations to provide custody and culturally appropriate services, such as placement in healing lodges instead of federal prisons. Section 84 requires CSC to notify Indigenous communities when an Indigenous inmate is approaching parole or statutory release and to support the development of a community-based reintegration plan. This provision is designed to ensure cultural and familial supports for successful reintegration.
There is overclassification bias. Indigenous inmates are often labelled as medium or maximum security, making them ineligible for section 81 agreements and healing lodges.
CSC frequently fails to assist inmates in creating reintegration plans with their communities, leaving many to reach their statutory release date without preparation.
Therefore, these failures contradict the CCRA’s mandate to provide culturally appropriate correctional options, and it disregards Gladue principles, which require the consideration of systemic and historical factors and alternatives to incarceration. From the get-go, Gladue considerations need to be there, and our Indigenous People and First Nations People and family and relatives need that there for them to be able to qualify.
Everything is so strict. Everything is so rigid. We don’t have all of the supports. We are trying to figure this out alongside you and the federal government.
It is difficult. How do we dig ourselves out of this pit that we are in? We do so by planting seeds and creating a rich environment for our people to thrive because they are barely surviving where they are at right now. That is the hardest part about all of this.
Ms. Palmater: Thank you for the question. I have many concerns in this area about how section 81 is being used and what we get as a result.
That links to the reconciliation trend to Indigenize things without making substantive legal and social changes and significant social impacts.
For people who are already in prison, it is important for them to access Elders, culture, ceremony, Sweat Lodges and things like that. But we can’t just Indigenize prisons and not actually work toward preventing people from going into prison, first of all, and then from languishing in isolation.
Healing lodges need to be thought of as more than just Indigenous forms of correctional institutions, right? I have worked with different people who have brought forward that some of the healing lodges are effectively like mini correctional institutions, and that’s not going to lead to healing. That’s not all of them, but that’s some of them.
The other issue is where is the accountability to ensure that actual First Nations Peoples are in these healing lodges versus just those who self-identify?
The other issue is around section 84. In section 84, “into community” means different things to different groups. I’m speaking about First Nations. For First Nations, “into community” can mean on-reserve, but it can also mean off‑reserve but within our traditional territory. For First Nations, their jurisdiction and law-making and justice system should extend both on-reserve and off-reserve at the choice of them and the prisoners themselves.
I don’t see why we can’t have healing lodges in community that are fully funded and are not constrained by what’s in section 81. That’s why section 84 is so valuable.
One of the things we forget, which has come out of every single report on this issue, is there are also non-custodial options. We often focus on where we can house people in a carceral sense, but we’re forgetting about all the non-custodial options. Maybe some individuals don’t need custody, but they need child and family supports or mental health supports or other things.
For First Nations, both on-reserve and off-reserve, it’s important that First Nations get the money and First Nations decide what happens. Maybe they are like, “Okay, no. Off‑reserve, here we go with a healing lodge with this organization.” That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be either-or, but it’s First Nations who have that self-governing right to make that decision in conjunction with individual prisoners because they all have different needs.
For example, it may not be safe for an Indigenous woman to move back to the house she was in if her perpetrator lives near her. Maybe she wants an off-reserve option. But work with the First Nation to make sure it’s still within territory, still close to family and still close to supports.
The Chair: Thank you. Colleagues, I want you to give the chair some indulgence here.
I have a question focused on proposed sections 81 and 84. It’s an important one that needs to be addressed. I have concerns about it, and it is this: If you look at proposed section 81, the words “healing lodge” do not appear there at all. And my concern is around proposed paragraphs (c) and (d):
(c) a community group or organization that serves a disadvantaged or minority population; or
(d) any other entity that provides community-based support services.
My question is this: There should be a fundamental emphasis on healing lodges. We know healing lodges as a term that we all understand. It’s not in the legislation as proposed. If you put in proposed paragraphs (c) and (d), my concern is that there might be some biases which are nefarious — maybe racism and other things — that would move federal inmates into places run by non-Indigenous people.
The whole point of this is to move prisoners out of the traditional correctional system and get them into a healing lodge in its truest sense. I’m worried that there will be an institutional bias which won’t give healing lodges the priority and the fundamental first priority of funding to make them successful and make them work. Because we know, in general, healing lodges produce much better results. That’s my concern.
I don’t know if you share that concern or if you have any comments about how proposed section 81 could be worded in a way to make it refer almost 100% to Indigenous communities with Indigenous resources and healing lodges. If you can’t answer that question now, I would certainly like to see that in writing. Please go ahead, Ms. McGregor.
Ms. McGregor: I can share some words. Thank you for delving deep in that reflection and that question you just posed.
Inherently, all the laws made in Canada that we’re subjected to were not designed by us and are meant to keep us stuck, figuratively, under a big thumb.
My response to you is “Nothing for us without us.” Have some kind of guiding overwatch, oversight committee or ad hoc committee. We will figure it out as we go because we’re all trying to figure this out together. We all have a role to play in trying to navigate ourselves out of this — quite frankly — big mess. That is what I would suggest. Speak to all of the regions. Speak to us.
There is a plethora of huge issues that exists within our First Nations’ reality and realities, because they all differ. It is a big microcosm of trying to figure out how to live and survive and reconcile and heal altogether because we’re all in this together at the end of the day.
I’d rather be a part of the good part of history into a nicer, brighter future where we can say that we didn’t just sweep everything under the rug and we’re actively trying to make things better.
It’s not easy. It’s complicated. It’s relationship-based. It’s keeping open those lines of communication and checking in with each other to make sure everything is moving in a good way, honouring our relatives of the past and those who are yet to come. That’s what I saw when you posed that question, senator.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. McGregor.
Mr. David, do you have any suggested wording that would address the issue that I have raised quite pointedly, before I ask Ms. Palmater to comment?
William David, Senior Legal Counsel, Assembly of First Nations: I don’t have anything offhand. I could commit to return with either language or at least written views on the issue.
The Chair: I would appreciate that, sir, if you could do that. Having it in writing will be very helpful.
Mr. David: Thank you.
The Chair: Ms. Palmater, what are your comments on that issue?
Ms. Palmater: My concern around all terminology is how it’s applied. Gladue said find alternatives to prison. We have Gladue reports, and then corrections says, “Oh, now you will be max because you’ve suffered harm in the past.” Is that the intention? No. It’s like the games around solitary confinement: “Oh, now we’re calling it segregation.” Or “Now we’re calling it structured intervention units.”
By utilizing section 84 and placing the decision making about what happens to these people in the hands of First Nations and First Nations justice initiatives, then they decide. What if they have a family reunification centre? What if it is a restorative justice centre?
It may or may not be a “healing lodge.” It could be named many other things, but that’s why it’s important that First Nations, at least for their citizens, are the ones deciding what it is and what it isn’t that they are doing.
I would never want to limit ourselves to healing lodges because there’s also a certain connotation of healing lodges that’s used in corrections. It is more corrections-based and very limited versus what we would envision as a true healing lodge or family reunification or individual supports or an employment network.
I am less concerned about the terminology and more concerned about who’s making the decision. If it’s corrections, we’re in trouble no matter what terms we use.
Senator Pate: I want to say, Ms. McGregor, my heart goes out to you and your family. It is a challenge to deal with these issues in your family and in your community. And I say that to all of you, actually.
Senator Arnot raised something that I would like Dr. Palmater, Ms. McGregor and possibly others to comment on. The authority to grant section 81 and section 84 agreements is actually a ministerial authority. It was delegated to Correctional Service Canada, and part of the reason the stats look so good in healing lodges is because it is very limited in who gets access — it’s only minimum security and only people on their way out.
The stats look very different from the people who — and thank you for mentioning Sharon McIvor, Trish Monture and Elder Mary Louie, who were part of the folks who envisioned this. When they went and first looked at women in the Prison for Women who were dying by suicide or in segregation or shortly after being released, they said, “It is those women who are being overclassified whom we want to provide resources for.”
The presumption was it would be an approach that would be for the people who are the most in need and that the resources should then flow and, as Dr. Palmater has said, the community should access.
I have recently been made privy to the fact that some lawyers working for Correctional Service Canada have started to say that this bill — by articulating that some other groups like Black prisoners and trans prisoners, who are more likely to be held in higher security, as well as other communities should be able to have access — somehow interferes with the sovereignty of First Nations.
You are a lawyer, Dr. Palmater. You are a lawyer, Mr. David. I am wondering: I don’t see it that way. In fact, the person who shared it with me does not see it that way and is a lawyer who works for the government, but they wanted to alert me to the fact that these kinds of arguments are being made to undermine this bill.
I would love to hear comments from both of you on this issue.
Ms. Palmater: Thank you. That is really important, and it really gets to the heart of the problem. When the minister delegates authority to make these kinds of decisions to Correctional Service Canada, then we see all of these things through, unfortunately, the racist and discriminatory practices of Correctional Service Canada as opposed to the minister delegating authority or working with First Nations, like ministers do in a lot of other federal legislation — like the Indian Act, where you delegate authority. The problem here is with Correctional Service Canada.
However, making sure that we are not committing cruel and unusual punishment, acts of torture and forced isolation on the Black community or any other community is certainly not a threat to First Nations. We would hope that, as a country, we’re doing that for all people, and by locating the decision making for section 81 and section 84 for actual First Nations prisoners, then you can talk about — keeping in mind that this is individualized. Maybe there are Indigenous prisoners who say, “You know, there is a non-Native organization over here that I feel more comfortable with, for whatever reason.”
It is the fact that the decision making is with the prisoner and the First Nation, not Correctional Service Canada. I have not seen anything yet — I’m still studying, but I have not seen anything yet — that threatens the sovereignty of First Nations, so long as First Nations’ decision making and self-governance over these issues are respected.
Mr. David: I agree with Dr. Palmater. This legislation is designed to address the serious and pervasive series of human rights violations in this country that are being faced by persons deprived of liberty. Persons deprived of liberty are overwhelmingly Indigenous, which is the reason why the Assembly of First Nations, or AFN, is here. That does not change the fact that there are massive human rights violations, and nobody should have to face them. For my part, I’m willing to die on the hill that this does not affect First Nations sovereignty in any way.
Linked to Senator Arnot’s question about healing lodges, it’s only because there is the concern that you could see resources being diverted around in a way that would create tension between communities down the line. I don’t see that as a particular problem with the legislation or the legislative proposal. That is just a problem with colonialism and how these things are implemented.
This bill is incremental progress to deal with those kinds of problems. It nudges elected and unelected officials to address or at least recognize that those are issues. It is not a panacea.
I see no threat to First Nations coming from the addition of other groups within section 81 and section 84, and I, actually, strongly encourage aggressive action to end this practice for anybody who is facing it.
Thank you.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentations.
Dr. Palmater, it is so good to see you. Thank you for all your advice on Bill S-2 which we worked so hard on.
I want to say that I did go to the Regional Psychiatric Centre, or RPC, in Saskatoon and the — how do you say that?
Senator Pate: Okimaw Ohci.
Senator McCallum: I went to the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge outside of Maple Creek, and I’ve been to Stony Mountain Institution on, probably, four occasions. I have seen minimum, maximum and medium security and the way things are handled within the prison by the warden and by the workers.
I had gone in because workers were not allowed to do the work they wanted to do on healing within the institution, and now they are all gone.
You know, I realized that we are not going to make change within the system. That is when I started looking at children in care and cutting the pipeline there. But then you go back into the trauma.
I wanted to comment about the words “healing lodge.” I agree with Dr. Palmater about defining words because if you don’t, then you leave it up to community. It allows the community to vary the types of care and custody they want to deal with, especially if the community starts using their language to define the site, right?
I support this bill. When you look at the women or the people in the institution — I went to solitary confinement in the two provinces to see how they look, and it is a crime that people are put in those cells.
I wanted to go to prevention. Is there work being done at the community level as a whole that will facilitate the community healing that needs to happen? Because people go, then they come back and they are back in that same system. When you look at the intergenerational trauma, and when you look at domestic violence, intimate partner violence and sexual violence, the healing lodge or the lodge is within the community, and is there a possibility for the community to heal along with their people, right?
The other thing is: What role could customary law play in determining how justice and legal systems can be changed to a restorative model? The reason I bring that up is when I worked at Opaskwayak Cree Nation, a judge came to me and said, “Is it possible for us to set up a system on the reserve to work with the community to look at a restorative model and prevent the prisoners from going into the pen in the first place and you start the healing?”
Then COVID came, and now he is a provincial judge.
I could ask, you know, is there that possibility?
I wanted you to comment on that, please.
The Chair: Witnesses, these are very compelling questions that Senator McCallum is raising, as she always does, because they represent a First Nation’s perspective on these issues in a very strong way. We’re out of time, so I’d really like to ask the witnesses: If there is anything that you have commented on that you would like to amplify, or if there is anything that you have not been able to make a comment on and you think it is important for the committee to consider, it’s really important to please put that in writing so that the committee can study your recommendations on these issues.
This has been a very compelling panel of the three witnesses from the Assembly of First Nations and Dr. Palmater. Thank you very much for your testimony today. It’s been very helpful. If you can help us in any other way with some written advice, that would be well accepted.
For our second panel, from the National Indigenous Healing Lodge Coalition, we welcome Marlene Orr, President; and Annetta Armstrong, Board Member.
As well, we welcome an additional witness: Dr. Maryana Kravtsenyuk, Board Member of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. We welcome all three witnesses with us here today. We thank you for joining us. You will all have five minutes for opening comments.
Ms. Orr, you now have the floor.
Marlene Orr, President, National Indigenous Healing Lodge Coalition: Thank you. My name is Marlene Orr. I’m the President of the National Indigenous Healing Lodge Coalition, and I’m a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 6 territory. I speak not from an academic perspective but from decades of experience working in Indigenous justice and corrections.
The National Indigenous Healing Lodge Coalition is a group of all the Indigenous healing lodges that operate under sections 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, or CCRA. Run by Indigenous People for Indigenous offenders, section 81 healing lodges are responsible for reintegrating Indigenous offenders using Indigenous cultural and spiritual interventions.
The National Indigenous Healing Lodge Coalition applauds Senator Pate for her attempts to end structured intervention units. However, we do not support Bill S-205 because we feel that it combines issues that have a negative impact on section 81 healing lodges and Indigenous offenders.
The overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the federal correctional system continues to grow. We’ve heard from Dr. Ivan Zinger, the Correctional Investigator, continually as well as from the Auditor General regarding the chronic underfunding of section 81 healing lodges and the overrepresentation of Indigenous offenders in federal corrections.
Our coalition advises that changes to sections 81 and 84 of the CCRA will result in further overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the penitentiary system. Chronic underfunding has been noted continually. This is particularly concerning as the overrepresentation of our people continues to grow.
Healing lodges were designed to meet the unique needs of Indigenous offenders and do not exist in all regions, according to the Auditor General. Resources already allocated by Correctional Service Canada will be further stressed if options become available for other groups to open their own healing lodges.
Further, with the chronic underfunding of section 81 healing lodges and only six in Canada, the ability to grow capacity to meet the needs of the high populations of our people in the penitentiary system ensures capacity may never be developed if this bill passes and creates even further scarcity of resources.
Further, the changes proposed allow for non-Indigenous groups to open Indigenous healing lodges. If ownership of Indigenous healing lodges falls to non-Indigenous organizations, the cultural genocide identified in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action will continue with a budgetary policy or other controls of Indigenous culture being exercised by non-Indigenous organizations.
Opening the option for non-Indigenous groups to run Indigenous healing lodges poses a real threat to our language, cultures and ceremonies. This bill provides the opportunity for non-Indigenous organizations to control Indigenous cultural and ceremonial interventions used by section 81 healing lodges.
Indigenous healing lodges focus on the use of cultural programming and spiritual ceremonies to successfully reintegrate Indigenous offenders.
As a coalition, we applaud, as I said, the attempt to end structured intervention units, but opening up the opportunity for other groups to run section 81 healing lodges poses a threat to our very cultural identity and continues to ensure that section 81 healing lodges run by the Indigenous community are not properly funded.
In my opening remarks, I’d also like to correct Senator Pate when she said only minimum-security offenders can go to section 81 healing lodges. That is not the case. The contracts are designed to include medium-security offenders. And the healing lodges across the country have taken on medium-security offenders.
There are many reasons for the overrepresentation. At a time when the healing lodges are not at capacity — because of systemic issues within Correctional Service Canada — and are chronically underfunded, mixing the issue of structured intervention units and opening up sections 81 and 84 for non‑Indigenous groups doesn’t work.
We want to support the end of structured intervention units, but we cannot do it when issues are mixed in this bill that have a real detrimental impact on not just Indigenous offenders and section 81 healing lodges, but also the very care and control of our own identity as Indigenous People by offering for non‑Indigenous groups to be able to provide that spiritual care that is none of their business to provide.
With that, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you and to speak. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Orr.
I’ll ask Dr. Kravtsenyuk to give a five-minute opening statement, please.
Dr. Maryana Kravtsenyuk, Board Member, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, as an individual: Thank you. Honourable senators and members of the public, thank you very much for this invitation to address you on the critical issue of mental health in prisons.
I’m going to speak to you as a clinician. My comments today are informed by my direct clinical work with people living with severe mental illness in correctional facilities and forensic community settings, as well as informed by my experience working with courts, review boards and health systems across several provinces and jurisdictions.
I’m a forensic psychiatrist. I work at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and in several correctional facilities, and I also practise in several jurisdictions across Canada. For years, I have sat across from people with severe mental illness in custody — people whose illnesses have collided with a system that was never designed for them.
I immigrated to Canada from Ukraine. I love this country deeply. I believe we want to take care of people who are sick and vulnerable no matter where they live or the mistakes they have made. I’m not going to overwhelm you with statistics. Most of our statistics have been taken from extensive and numerous reports from the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada. I can tell you honestly that our federal prisons house the largest number of mentally ill individuals — people with psychiatric illness — in units that are meant to be structured or secure.
I’ve seen people pacing for days, terrified and completely detached from reality, not because they’re dangerous but because they’re simply very sick. I know that every psychiatrist knows that these conditions are treatable conditions. We have ways to treat these conditions.
Psychosis, severe depression and trauma are not moral failings; they’re mental illnesses. When they’re treated early and properly, people stabilize. People recover. Miracles happen when we treat individuals who need treatment. They recover. They are safer for themselves and for all of us.
As a forensic psychiatrist, I support Bill S-205 because this bill speaks directly to the reality that so many people fall through the cracks and they get stuck there.
I’ll make a few brief points. First and foremost, when someone is in custody and has a disabling mental illness, the default should not be to prolong their incarceration. It should be timely access to treatment in hospital or a therapeutic setting. Leaving people in a cell is harmful, costly and unsafe. We would never treat heart failure or cancer that way. We should not treat psychosis and mental illness that way.
Second, long stays in structured intervention units — or any form of segregation or solitary confinement — are dangerous, especially for people with psychiatric illness, cognitive impairment, neurodevelopmental conditions and trauma histories.
Isolation worsens psychosis. It causes profound detrimental psychological and psychiatric consequences. It worsens depression and increases suicide risk. I’ve seen this over and over again over 10 years of my clinical work in various settings, both forensic and mental health settings.
Strict oversight and time limits are safeguards against predictable and preventable deterioration. Judicial authorization beyond 48 hours sends an important message. These conditions should be rare, monitored and brief, with a clear plan for treatment, not containment. Prolonged isolation can cause lasting psychological harm. Recognizing that harm is a way of acknowledging what we already know clinically and ethically: Care — not warehousing — must guide our treatment of mentally ill offenders.
Third, community-based supports, especially for Indigenous, racialized and disadvantaged populations, are essential if we want better outcomes. Many of the people whom I work with from communities marked by poverty, homelessness and intergenerational trauma don’t trust mainstream systems. They feel unseen.
Culturally safe, community-led services, including Indigenous-led healing programs, change that. When correctional services partner meaningfully with these groups, people re-engage. They stay in treatment and are less likely to return to custody. That’s what safety looks like.
Now I want to be very clear. As a clinician, I believe legislation alone will not fix it. Canada must invest in forensic bed capacity, psychiatric hospital bed capacity, timely access to psychiatric expertise in custody and community services, including Indigenous-led organizations. Without real resources, good intentions become just paperwork.
If we do this well, it will make us safer. It will reduce self‑harm, violence and reoffending. It will help people to rebuild their lives. It will move us closer to the kind of country we want to build. Canada can lead, and we should. We can treat mental illness early rather than punishing people for being sick in custodial settings. We can reduce harmful confinement rather than normalizing it, and we can support people when they return home rather than abandoning them to failure, creating a vicious cycle of reincarceration for many people I’ve seen.
These are not radical ideas. They are humane and evidence‑informed, and they align with our values. I have sat in many cells across provinces with people who were terrified, confused, profoundly unwell, psychotic, depressed and suicidal. I have seen how quickly illness can worsen in custody and how quickly it can improve with care. There is nothing inevitable about the suffering we currently tolerate. We can do better and we must.
Thank you all for your time. I am pleased to answer any of your questions.
The Chair: Thank you to the panel. Now we’ll move to questions, which will be limited to five minutes, and that includes the answer.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: My question is for Ms. Orr.
I am looking at the changes to section 81 proposed in the bill, and I am trying to follow your reasoning — I am having trouble understanding exactly what is bothering you. This is not about non-Indigenous people opening wellness centres, as you say. Rather, it is about adding an opportunity to offer disadvantaged or minority groups resources in their communities. It is not either/or, but rather both/and.
In any case, there are no expenditures flowing from this bill. As you know, bills introduced by senators cannot generate expenses, so there is no specific amount allocated to any group that is not Indigenous.
So could you clarify what is bothering you, what is scaring you about the changes to section 81?
[English]
Ms. Orr: Thank you for the question. As I mentioned, I’m not an academic or a lawyer. However, as a coalition for section 81 healing lodges, we did go out and get several legal opinions on the bill and its impact on Indigenous offenders and section 81 healing lodges.
First, what we understand is that while the changes that are being proposed provide opportunity for other marginalized groups to open their own healing lodges, the changes also provide opportunity for non-Indigenous groups to open up Indigenous healing lodges. That’s where we have an issue. That’s our main issue.
Second, you may not be a group that deals with funding, but certainly, every piece of legislation has an impact. At a time when corrections is having to cut their budget, introducing the opportunity for more healing lodges for non-Indigenous groups further marginalizes section 81 healing lodges in that, as you heard from the folks who spoke already, we’re already chronically underfunded, so the bill has a direct impact. Although you may not be a body that identifies dollar amounts, the way that this is worded will have a direct impact on already scarce resources.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for clarifying that.
[English]
Senator Prosper: Thank you to the witnesses for coming here and for helping us understand this complex issue.
I have a question for Ms. Orr. There are two components to it. First, I’m quite curious about the nature of the underfunding. In addition to that, it seems to me there’s an underutilization of the existing services with healing lodges. Second, I would imagine there are a number of collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups where they potentially fill the space of healing lodges. Is there a distinct definition for collaboration between Indigenous People and non-Indigenous people and healing lodges, from your perspective, which is, let’s just say, within the rightful domain of Indigenous groups and organizations?
Ms. Orr: If I understand your question correctly, you’re asking me about the impact of non-Indigenous groups and their relationship with healing lodges with Indigenous offenders.
Section 81 is clear that the care and custody of Indigenous offenders is to be turned over to the Indigenous community, and it speaks clearly to cultural and spiritual practices. My issue with having non-Indigenous groups running healing lodges that have a cultural and spiritual component for Indigenous offenders is that regardless of the intention to our cultural practices, our languages and our ceremonies, they will continue the job of Indian residential schools, which was to wipe that out. No matter how well intentioned, having non-Indigenous groups control our ceremonial practices, our languages and our cultures leaves it open for harm to the preservation and the growth that is needed within our communities around our cultural practices and languages. We see it with federal corrections. They run healing lodges. They hire Indigenous Elders and run cultural programming. However, as well intentioned as that may have been, there have been shortcuts taken with our cultural practices. I’ll give you one example.
Corrections identified years ago that feasts would not be funded, so the Elders in the institutions had to bring in their own food. They did that without understanding that the meal is not just a meal. It’s an integral part and a ceremony unto itself. Just this one policy change where food would no longer be provided had the potential to have and, in some cases, did have an impact on our cultural practices by removing them from what is a ceremony unto itself and for which there is a specific purpose to that ceremony.
As long as you have non-Indigenous groups controlling our cultural practices, no matter how well intentioned, our practices are going to change. Whether that’s by policy control, administrative control, budgetary control or any other control, our practices will change. Our practices have been so fragilely kept. They’ve either been hidden underground in the past when our people took off into the bush or into the mountains to maintain those practices and didn’t emerge until the 1970s, or they were taken to our brothers and sisters in the U.S. to hold for us, as was the case with communities from Treaty 6. Then in the 1970s, the movement to bring back those practices happened.
We’re at a crucial point in time where, in many parts of this country, our languages and our practices are on the verge of being lost forever. If we don’t work to maintain them, we are going to have our practices changed, and that is the cultural genocide identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That is the concern we have around non‑Indigenous groups providing cultural and spiritual programming to Indigenous People.
Senator Prosper: Thank you.
Senator Pate: Thank you, Ms. Orr, for correcting that. I was not aware that now some medium-security folks have been accepted. As you know, when one of your lodges first opened, not one Indigenous woman was eligible to go there, and first you had to take non-Indigenous women. If you could provide us with the number of medium-security folks who have gone into healing lodges, that would be great. Also, could you provide a copy of the resolution? I have heard from other healing lodge organizations that they are supportive of this bill. If you could send that resolution, it would be extremely helpful.
My question is for Dr. Kravtsenyuk. I apologize; I always mispronounce your name. Are you aware of the recommendations that Dr. Zinger made with respect to transferring resources that are currently being spent in corrections to health-based services and to basically — it was probably me who asked. In the case of Mr. Patrick Warren — I do not know if you are aware of his case — he is a man who was sentenced to hospital but still remains in Millhaven. When I asked Dr. Zinger about that, his response was that if in fact we were offering resources as well as requesting the transfer of prisoners, we would likely see hospitals wanting to provide those services. He pointed to the fact that Shepody is going to be, at Dorchester, opening a new mental health unit at the cost of $1.3 billion. If that were divided up by region, what kind of resources could be provided in the community? In line with this bill, it’s about providing other options — Indigenous options, options for Black prisoners, options for trans prisoners and options for those with mental health issues — with a direct avenue to go into the community.
Do you have any comment on that or any of Dr. Zinger’s other recommendations in his most recent report?
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: Thank you, Senator Pate, for your question and for all the advocacy work that you are doing in this field.
As a clinician, I certainly have seen and have dealt with overrepresentation of mentally ill offenders in correctional settings. What is clear to me is that what corrections has to offer at this time to the individuals who are the most in need of care and treatment is either insufficient, ineffective, not available or inaccessible to them to really address the growing burden of mental illness in correctional settings.
I absolutely applaud Dr. Zinger’s tremendous work over the years to really investigate and educate all the professionals working in justice health care in corrections about things we can do better. Certainly, equipping communities and equipping hospitals with adequate resources to treat, stabilize, reintegrate and heal individuals who are the most in need would be a very important and powerful next step to really address the growing burden of mental illness in correctional settings, which we know is not being adequately addressed at this time.
I can provide additional information in a written format as well.
Senator Pate: I understand that you provide assessments in a number of provinces, both for Crown counsel and defence counsel. Can you talk about the sorts of assessments you do and what kinds of responses you get from psychiatrists and psychologists on contract with correctional authorities across the country?
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: I am a forensic psychiatrist. I frequently get approached by either the Crown or defence to provide psychiatric medico-legal evaluation with respect to different issues. Very often, those are risk assessments and pre-sentence evaluations.
I also sit as a board member on the Alberta Criminal Code Review Board and the Ontario Review Board. I do assess individuals in Alberta, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and Ontario. I work across various jurisdictions.
What is important to say is: Certainly through the evaluation of voluminous amounts of information on any case that I receive from the Crown or defence, I could appreciate the services that have been utilized in those cases to really address the burden of mental illness that is present in the case.
Also, from speaking and as a part of my portfolio, I have been employed by multiple stakeholders across these jurisdictions. I can say that when an individual works in a system that has a number of systemic issues highlighted by multiple stakeholders and organizations, sometimes it creates barriers and difficulties for some of the clinicians to speak to some of the challenges. Again, sometimes it is a limitation of certain contracts or the assignment of their position. So it does create challenges.
As a clinician, I can speak for myself. Working in various settings, certainly those challenges remain unaddressed. People continue to suffer, especially people who have very treatable conditions. We know how to treat them. We just need to direct them to the correct resources and to the resources that are designed not to contain these individuals but to treat them.
I wholeheartedly support Bill S-205, especially when it comes to providing our citizens with appropriate resources.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Kravtsenyuk.
Senator McCallum: I wanted to ask Ms. Orr if there were any evaluations done on the facilities that healing centres provide and which Indigenous leaders were involved and also the success rate of rehabilitation. It would help, especially with one of the first questions I asked during the panel before you.
I wanted to return to Senator Miville-Dechêne’s question about other disadvantaged groups. The one I am thinking of is the Black community because they have a high rate of incarceration as well, and to not include them under section 81, it will leave them at a further disadvantage. How would you see that being addressed?
Ms. Orr: There are a few questions in there.
When we look at section 81 healing lodges, unless you get the issue of why they are not full — right — you can bring on other healing lodges, but you are going to have the same problem. Those are systemic issues that start with whose lens are Indigenous offenders, and potentially Black offenders, being assessed through?
The systemic issues start at intake. We know our people are being held at higher security levels. We understand that. That’s what prohibits their ability to move into section 81 healing lodges. If we don’t get this —
Senator McCallum: If you could provide the evaluation that I asked for as well as which leaders were involved and the success rate, it could be done in writing. We have such limited time here. If you could, please also include in there a response to the question of what we should do with other groups that need this as well.
Ms. Orr: Sure.
Senator McCallum: Okay, thank you.
Ms. Orr: If I may give a brief verbal response to this —
The Chair: Please go ahead.
Ms. Orr: Ultimately, the systemic issues exist and it does not matter what group it is — if you do not get those systemic issues addressed, you can build all the healing lodges you want and they are not going to be full. I would be happy to provide information on the work of the healing lodges and the impact we have had.
I also want to stress that there are systemic issues within corrections, and unless we address those, section 81 healing lodges are always going to be underutilized.
Senator Clement: I want to thank both witnesses for your testimony and your work.
Ms. Orr, it is good to testify as a non-lawyer. It is important that we hear from all different folks. So I thank you.
I want to engage with the clinician. I worry in these conversations, not just at this committee but also in other committees, about lateral violence where you have marginalized groups pitted against one another on the basis of scarcity — scarcity put forward by government announcements and caution and fear of what is going on to the south of us. There’s scarcity and all of these groups are pitted against each other.
I’m building a relationship with Collins Bay Institution in Kingston in particular because there is a large population of Black prisoners. When I sit down with them, they say to me:
You know what, senator? We’re good with our Indigenous brothers getting things and getting services and having things better for them. We want the same.
They understand what is going on, and they are looking to us legislators to try to figure this out.
When you gave your opening statement, you were talking about evidence-driven arguments about treatment. How do we, as legislators, bring this forward and justify this type of legislation and explain to people why we need to be moving forward with this type of legislation? What do we say?
Then there is the tough-on-crime context, right? And people are afraid. How do you, as a clinician, answer those questions?
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: Thank you very much for a very important question.
As a clinician, I see individuals, regardless of their background or race or ethnicity, with one thing in common: Their lives have been affected profoundly by mental illness. Their life journey has been destroyed by some sort of interaction with the criminal justice system.
Current evidence in forensic psychiatry indicates that those who come into contact with the criminal justice system and, in fact, individuals with mental illness very often remain unseen until either tragedy happens or incarceration starts. Then things become clear.
When we actually look at which population was served in forensic settings, a lot of those groups come from marginalized groups or racial minorities.
We are building evidence-based services to address everyone regardless of their background because the need is very much to get humane, inclusive treatment that we have for mental conditions.
In my view of the legislation as I have read everything, it is very inclusive legislation that will give the opportunity and allow individuals who struggle with mental illness to get the services and treatments they need, rather than being warehoused in correctional facilities and continuing to suffer with mental illness that can be addressed much more timely and fulsomely in treatment facilities.
Senator Clement: Thank you.
Senator Greenwood: Some of my questions have been asked. First, thank you to the witnesses for being here and thank you for the work that you do every day.
I am very interested in a couple of things because this is fairly new to me. I work in the health field but not in this particular area.
I am interested in practical questions. You do not have to answer right now. You might want to add them to what you are already writing, Ms. Orr. I am interested as well in how many medium-security individuals are accessing services and how many minimum-security individuals are accessing services so that I can get my head around that. Are there any non-Indigenous folks accessing services? I think that is important too.
As I said, I come from a health background. I have worked in Indigenous health, where choice is a really important thing.
This is going to lead me to: Dr. Kravtsenyuk, in your experience, do the Indigenous women who are overrepresented have a choice in going to a healing lodge or choosing a different kind of healing support? Are there choices given to the women? I am trying to get my head around what this actually looks like on the ground. Can you speak to that at all?
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: Thank you. I can’t speak for the operational aspects of how care gets navigated through the correctional system because in my capacity as a forensic psychiatrist, I provide recommendations that are grounded in my clinical knowledge, my understanding of mental illness and my understanding of what would be effective treatment.
I provide those recommendations either in court or to the stakeholders to correctional institutions — and how to implement and navigate that is certainly within the capacity of that institution and left to their discretion. I understand there are multiple policies that navigate triaging systems there.
Certainly, I can say that from working with people who go through the journey in the legal system, their needs remain unmet and their illnesses continue to be untreated. It is not an uncommon situation that I face as a clinician.
I provide recommendations based on, again, clinical understanding of the condition, but we have to recognize that resources are limited. They are limited within the correctional system. They are limited in the community.
Certainly, even with the recommendations, I think the number of choices or number of alternatives, specifically for female offenders, would be largely driven by what resources are available within that system or constrained environment where they are. So it is limiting.
That is the best that I can comment in my capacity as a clinician.
Senator Greenwood: That is very helpful. If I am understanding this correctly, you will make a recommendation: If the resource is there, they might access this or that.
Thank you for that because it helps me to understand much better.
I am trying to get at the individual choice. When we go for medical care, we always have choices: Do we want to go there or there? But scarcity always limits all of that as well. I know some people might choose this over that, even though you might think that they choose this but they are going to go there. Thank you for that.
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: If you will allow me to add —
Senator Greenwood: Please.
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: All I can say is that in my capacity as a forensic psychiatrist, I work as an expert for the courts but also as a treatment provider in correctional facilities.
Very often, I hear from my patients, “Doctor, I want to do this. I want to practise my culture. I want to have access to therapists, but there are none.”
The Chair: Did you want Ms. Orr to make any comments on your first question?
Senator Greenwood: If you would like, Ms. Orr, please do so. If not, that is okay too.
Ms. Orr: I can get you information on the medium-security and minimum-security numbers. If you don’t mind, I would also like to weigh in because I have a tremendous amount of experience in the operations of CSC.
Do people have choices? Yes, they do. However, if the person providing you those choices is not educated on the choices that people have, they won’t be able to convey that. There is no training in federal corrections for section 81 and section 84, so I would assume that this exists for very similar facilities.
If people doing intake and institutional parole officers don’t understand what options exist out there for people with mental health issues or Indigenous offenders, they can’t provide that information. It is a huge issue and one of the systemic issues I referred to that I believe is part of the underutilization of section 81 healing lodges.
Senator Greenwood: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Thank you so much to all three of you for being here and helping us understand.
I had some questions earlier regarding proposed sections 81 and 84 in the bill, and the previous group answered them. I will now go back up a bit in the bill, which brings me to questions around section 29. I will start with you, Dr. Kravtsenyuk.
Proposed section 29.02 in Bill S-205 refers to disabling mental health issues as evidenced by criteria already used to determine whether a person’s health is deteriorating in a structured intervention unit, or SIU. These criteria are medical and behavioural, but nothing in the act explicitly says that these criteria can be used to determine mental health issues. Furthermore, it does not refer to the cultural, historical, or social realities that are unique to Indigenous peoples.
I have not heard any explanation on this today or in previous testimonies. In your opinion, should the bill and section 29.02 have gone beyond what is currently determined in terms of health?
Let me explain. Should we have taken into account distress, intergenerational trauma and everything that was recognized, particularly in case law and investigation reports, as historical trauma? Should we have gone further in setting out this definition in section 29.02? Is the bill mistaken in this regard by not taking into account everything that has been written about historical trauma in investigation reports and case law? Thank you.
[English]
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: Thank you very much for your question.
Clinically speaking, when answering any legal question from the perspective of forensic psychiatry, I think we always try to derive a fulsome appraisal of all the clinical information.
My understanding, certainly legally, is when we speak about a disabling mental condition, it is something that is left at the discretion of the clinician to really ensure there is a fulsome evaluation to include all of the aspects. That would include intergenerational trauma and all of the psychosocial aspects of development because frequently, we are not dealing with just one diagnosis. We are dealing with a complex interplay of conditions that are grounded in trauma, upbringing and intergenerational traumas through generations.
Even with the wording as is, I believe clinically, as physicians, we take into consideration all the aspects you listed.
Certainly, to be inclusive and to be thorough in terms of direction and sometimes legal oversight, in my clinical opinion, it is always helpful to have more clarity in terms of aspects that would go into it, if I understood your question correctly.
Does that answer your question? I can provide additional information.
The Chair: Ms. Orr, would you like to answer the question?
Ms. Orr: If I may, I would like to check with my colleague Annetta Armstrong, who is there with you now, to see if she wishes to weigh in on this. She has extensive experience working with Indigenous women in federal corrections and with women who have significant mental health challenges and carry trauma. I would like to defer to her to see if she would like to weigh in on this.
Annetta Armstrong, Board Member, National Indigenous Healing Lodge Coalition: Thank you. I work for an organization that provides housing for women and kids and does a lot of trauma work: addictions-based trauma and violence‑based trauma.
We have, with our healing lodge especially, been able to provide a lot of support for the women who are residents. We are successful at helping our residents heal. We are successful at repatriating our Prairie women back to Manitoba, and we are successful at reunifying our moms with their families and their children.
I know that it has been difficult as a section 81 healing lodge to be everything to all of the women. Our women have many needs. We try and recognize that there absolutely needs to be more mental health supports within CSC and within the healing lodges.
I do not know what more to say.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Pate, we are right at about two minutes left. Do you wish to ask your question? Please do so. The witnesses would then provide written answers.
Senator Pate: That is great. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Armstrong. Yes, I know many of the folks who have gone through yours and many of the others’ healing lodges, as well as Ms. Orr’s healing lodge. Thank you for the support that you provide.
Dr. Kravtsenyuk, I would be interested in your response, either in writing or if there is time now. Would it surprise you to hear that a number of the psychiatrists in charge of the regional treatment centres have frequently asked people such as me in my former life, as well as currently, to assist them in getting advocates and psychiatrists from outside their jurisdiction, because there is a perception that if they work within corrections and if they go against the security issues being raised by corrections, they will, if not be sanctioned, face difficulties working in those environments?
Would it surprise you that, in fact, some of those psychiatrists have encouraged us to go further afield and to seek legal advice and legal supports to help challenge this and support the rights of prisoners?
Dr. Kravtsenyuk: Thank you, Senator Pate. I understand there are time constraints, so I will provide my response in writing, but I can briefly indicate it does not surprise me. We are very privileged to have voices like yours, all of you honourable senators, to advocate for people who really need that help and for clinicians who see how services should be navigated and how to get their patients to the correct services, regardless of all the operational constraints within which we work. It’s not surprising, and I will provide a fulsome answer in a written format.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Once again, I thank our witnesses for taking the time to be with us here today and for answering our questions. Your testimony is very valuable to the committee’s work. We’re grateful for your appearance today. We look forward to any written answers you may have, which would augment your testimony here today.
Honourable senators, before we adjourn, I thank the members of the committee for your collaboration throughout the session, making my job easy as the chair of this committee.
I also thank our staff and the services who assist us in our meetings and our work. I thank Vincent Labrosse, our clerk, as well as Michaela Keenan-Pelletier and Dana Phillips, our analysts, and also our pages who aren’t here because they’re writing final exams today.
I wish you all a merry Christmas, happy holidays and a happy new year. Safe travels during the course of the break. I look forward to seeing you all in 2026 so that we can come back and continue our work.
(The committee adjourned.)