Honourable senators, I’m rising to speak briefly on Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I’d like to start by commending Senator Pate for bringing the bill forward but also, more importantly, for everything that she does for the forgotten people, the downtrodden people in our society and, most specifically, prisoners in jail. You’re relentless. I’ve come to recognize you have to be. It’s the only way it gets noticed and talked about. Thank you.

I attended the Legal Committee where we looked at this bill in the last Parliament. It passed committee, it passed here in the Senate and it went over to the House of Commons and died on the Order Paper there. Now it’s back.

I was against the bill in the last Parliament, and it should be no surprise that I’m still against the bill now. I have some concerns. The bill has a laudable goal, which is to provide prisoners with access to mental health services. I’m surprised that doesn’t happen. We heard lots of information and statistics about mental health and its relationship to criminality and incarceration. There was a lot of frustration raised at committee from groups regarding the money that should have been there — and was there somewhere — in Correctional Service Canada, but it was not being applied at all to the purpose that it was intended for. I don’t think we ever really received a straight answer on where the money is and how the services are being provided in any proper way to incarcerated individuals.

The bill, I think, is a product of that frustration, where it gets pretty darn specific about how to deliver mental health services to people who are incarcerated. I guess my first issue, which I raised in the last Parliament, and I’ll raise it again — I don’t intend to make a fuss about it like I did in the last Parliament by asking the Parliamentary Budget Officer to do a study on the cost. But there’s a cost to this. As you know, with Senate public bills, we’re not supposed to be spending government money on what we’re proposing.

The PBO said that the cost of the bill was somewhere between $5 million and $2 billion, depending on how you wanted to look at it. The strict reading of the bill requires prisoners who declare the need for mental health services to be transferred to a mental health facility for treatment, but it doesn’t say that they must receive treatment when they’re transferred there. The PBO said that we don’t necessarily need to cover the cost of treatment; we just have to cover the cost of driving them to the hospital to be refused and sent back.

In my opinion, it was kind of a technical thing that we were leaning on to say, “We can pass this bill because it really only costs $5 million.” The problem with that is that if we want to see the bill do what it’s supposed to do, or if, indeed, in the spirit of the bill, Correctional Service Canada wants to actually do something about this, it’s going to cost hundreds of millions or billions of dollars more. Nobody really knows because it would be up to the federal government to negotiate the services, build hospitals or do whatever they need to do to provide the service. That is clearly not allowed under our system of Senate public bills.

We’re considering a bill that either we think is only giving inmates a round-trip ride to the hospital parking lot once in a while, and then back again with no service, in which case, it’s a proper public bill, or we’re hoping or expecting they will receive the service and the money will be spent, in which case, it is not an appropriate public bill. That’s my first real concern.

Second, I also have a concern that it puts many of the decisions and the call to action in the hands of the individual inmates. While I understand the intention behind that, I also expect that there are many people in prison who don’t want to be in prison and might actually like to be transferred somewhere else. So I think it’s susceptible to abuse if it were ever to be used. I don’t know how to mitigate that while still giving the benefit of the declaration of the need to the inmate. That’s my other issue.

The third issue is a little more thorny for me. I believe the public sentiment around these kinds of issues has changed drastically in the last five years. We’re at a different time in our public discourse, so I question the timing and our sense of public support for sending a bill like this to the House of Commons and the time that we will invest in moving this bill through the process and over to the House of Commons. That’s, I guess, the final thing I wanted to mention.

Debate is the least costly time that we spend on Senate public bills. The expensive time is in committee. That’s when we are taking away from the impactful studies that we used to be known for — and hopefully will be known for again or better known for again. It takes away from other public bills that might have more support or are more urgent, more innovative or less complex.

I want to raise that, colleagues, because I believe that with the plethora of Senate public bills that we had in the last Parliament and that we are clearly going to have in this Parliament, we need to be, in our behaviour and the way we consider these public bills, more thoughtful and more purposeful about second reading.

It used to be that second reading was a prize we afforded every bill. We would say, “Let that go through and senator so-and-so will get it properly considered at the committee.” We only had a few, so it didn’t matter. However, we can swamp our committees with public bills if we’re not careful. It gets back to this dilution of the value of the committee work, which is a huge component of the value that we deliver to Canadians as the Senate.

With complex bills like this, we really need to be purposeful when we consider moving them along in the process past second reading. We know this bill. We’ve seen it before. This is a good one. It’s complex and a little bit controversial. So I think this is a good time for us to be more purposeful and thoughtful about how we approve at second reading.

I’m going to ask that we register ourselves for or against this bill in a standing vote today with the soonest bells that our whips and liaisons feel are appropriate. Thank you, senators.

Will Senator Tannas take a question?

Yes.

Thank you very much. I think the memories are strong. Eighteen years ago, there was the loss of Ashley Smith in one of our prison centres. I was part of the immediate community involved with consultation about what supports would be provided and what supports would not be provided for young prisoners there.

You talked about attending committee. Did you talk at all about services to the prison? We’re talking about the cost of folks going to hospitals and appropriate mental support, but was there also conversation about service on site?

There was a lot of testimony around the lack of service, regulations, legislation, intentions and statements that said one thing while the reality was something completely different. I do not for one minute want to argue that what is being delivered in the prisons today is acceptable. It’s not. But that’s a behavioural issue and a management issue. I don’t believe it’s a legislative issue, especially when we give them the loophole of being able to drive the guy to the parking lot and drive him home without having spent any time, money or effort on actually seeing that that person receives help.

If we really believe, as many of us do, that Correctional Service Canada does what they want, then why would we be shocked if they do what they want with this? We’ve given them this loophole of not actually having to deliver the service. According to everything we heard, on balance, it didn’t appear that what was supposed to be done — even with some money that had been allocated for this — was being done.

I want to start by thanking Senator Tannas for his thoughtfulness in his remarks and presentation in considering the bill.

Like many of us, I struggle with a lot of the things we talk about in this place, with a profound sense of loss about what we know is wrong and what we know is unacceptable behaviour in the 21st century, yet, somehow we can’t find a way in the legislative arena to get ourselves to that place to do what is supposed to be the right thing.

I live in a community where there is a halfway house not too far away. I know many of the people let out from there often never get the services required to rehabilitate when they return to society. Yet we let them out anyway, with some kind of hope or prayer that they have reformed themselves to now be better citizens.

How is it that, in a society that has a Constitution that led to fundamental principles of human rights, we still allow those in prison to be isolated in a way that damages them so much that when they are released, they never have the capacity to move forward?

My question is very direct. Our federal-provincial relationship, in the almost 160 years that we have been struggling with it, has never been a perfect assembly of how we exercise responsibility. But at some point, as legislators, we must force the federal government to perform its role, because it certainly has oversight over the prisons that it has responsibility for.

I don’t know how we accomplish that, but I think this bill shines a light on it. Maybe you can reflect on some things you were thinking about as you heard this in committee.

I agree with you. The last committee hearings — and we spent a fair amount of time at the Legal Committee on this bill — certainly helped to shine a light on the subject. We can also do that here through our ministerial Question Period if we so choose.

The behaviour needs to change. The more we try to legislate something as narrow as this and yet get it wrong — which you can argue we have done here, because the bill doesn’t compel them to do anything other than drive them to the hospital. Of course, morally it does, and now it doesn’t qualify for us to be doing it, so there is that.

We must be careful when using our legislative powers. We should have reasonable assurance that they will be used in the way that we are intending. Then it is up to us to ensure that happens through questions and the way in which we can highlight the subject.

All I wanted to do today was raise my concerns — remind people of what they were — and suggest that sometimes we really need to make hard choices regarding what moves through the process here, given the number of private members’ bills that senators are now inclined to introduce.

Thank you.

Senator Tannas, would you take a few more questions from me?

Of course.

I will try to be short and to the point.

You are indicating that you see a point of vulnerability that must be clarified and solidified within the project. Do you not think that is best done by going to committee, hearing from witnesses and proposing amendments?

I think if we propose an amendment that would cure the problem, we will disqualify the bill, because it will require spending an enormous amount of money.

You would think so, but the action of the amendment has not been proposed, so we don’t know.

I’m trying to say that until we, as a collective group of responsible citizens, decide on a different process with regard to private members’ bills that we currently agree upon, I don’t see why we should deprive one private member’s bill from one senator or any other private member’s bill going to committee and going through the process.

If you want to suspend second reading, debate and vote. But the fact is that we have second reading and we all vote. The reason is because we all have that moment to consider the principle of the bill and whether we could ever see ourselves supporting it.

We now have another consideration, which is the allocation of precious time that we don’t have enough of and has many calls on it, and that is committee study.

Thank you.

During its study, was the committee able to demonstrate that mental health problems requiring hospital treatment are more acute among incarcerated individuals than among the non-incarcerated population? Was it able to determine the impact that the implementation of this bill may have on the already glaring lack of services for people who have greater needs and still live in society? In other words, during its study, was the committee able to draw a parallel between preventing criminalization and effectively treating mental health issues in non-incarcerated individuals?

I don’t recall. I don’t want to say one way or another.

However, I think it is clear that addiction, mental health and incarceration are all a circle, and the root cause of addiction and incarceration is in many cases mental health. Until we get those root causes on the table, whether it is addiction or incarceration, I think we will continue to go around and around.

Senator Tannas, Bill S-205 was in the House of Commons, and it died there on the Order Paper because the House of Commons was not working on any of our bills. We agree on that.

I understand the arguments that you are making about private members’ bills. I just don’t understand why you are making them with respect to this one in particular, because this one has gone through the process. It will be the same with the bill that I will be introducing.

I want to understand the rationale, because I think you are trying to get us to understand that we bring a lot of private members’ bills into this chamber and it boggles the work we do in committee. Then we have senators who bring all kinds of issues to this chamber, and because of the legislation and the way Parliament was working, the work we were doing here was stalled. I think we are just picking up where we left off and sending back a lot of things that we worked on, and want the House of Commons to now work on, so that when the work from the House of Commons comes to us, we will be able to concentrate on the government’s bills.

Do you agree?

I’m not sure. All I know is what I have said. I have concerns about time and believe we must be more serious at second reading regarding what we can afford to do.

I proposed a fairly controversial bill during the last Parliament. I intend to propose it again. The principle of it is pretty clear, and I fully expect that at second reading we will hear people express their concerns about the principle and potentially say they cannot support it, no matter if it goes to committee and comes back whole — they will never support it and will therefore vote against it.

That is at the root of feeling I needed to speak today. We are in a new era with the public, but we need to establish a new era here with our thoughtfulness and purposefulness around private members’ bills and that we are prepared to stand up and register our vote on a subject when called at this early stage. We need to do some triage if we are going to be successful and leave enough time for committees to do that important work on subject matter studies.

Thank you.

I’m conscious of the time. I’ll answer other questions, but I would like to see us go to a vote.

On this one, I couldn’t agree more with you, senator. That’s where we are looking at different controversial bills here that should not have been voted on in the last Parliament and probably in this one.

I think we agree on the fact that there is a lot of work that needs to be done, and I think there is a thinking process that needs to come into every private member’s bill that comes into this place. I think it is a conversation that we haven’t had with different senators on private members’ bills.

I think we agree on this, but I would like to know if we are on the same page here.

Yes, I think so.

Thank you, Senator Tannas, for your very kind introduction to your intervention.

For the purposes of the chamber, I want to ask you if you recall that before this was a private member’s bill, it was actually the amendments the Senate made to Bill C-83. It wasn’t a private bill. It was a bill that had a Royal Recommendation.

As you rightly pointed out, $74 million has not been accounted for by the government. That included spending they had allocated for external mental health beds, so not just for the drive to the hospital and back, but actually beds that were not contracted.

Part of the evidence we heard was that having these kinds of measures could assist in actually ensuring that those resources are made available and, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed, at a cost that would be a saving of upwards of $100,000 per year per prisoner.

Is my recollection of that correct, from your perspective?

Right. We were the ones, and it may have been your amendment. I don’t know whose amendment it was that was put in this place that ultimately generated this amount of money that was going to go into this that quite clearly hasn’t.

I go to the same question, which is that it doesn’t appear that legislation is working in getting the corrections people to do what the legislation says. It is a management issue.

Thank you very much, Senator Tannas, for your comments. I agree with you strongly that we should be willing to look at private members’ bills or Senate public bills and vote for or against them. I think the way you have laid it out is a respectful way, and we do that in a respectful way.

The point I want to make is in part to your comment, but the comment that is sometimes made is that we in the Senate spend too much time on Senate public bills, that people are following their pet projects. I’m not suggesting that is what you are saying.

I want to make the point that as well as I understand it, we only deal with Senate public bills after we have dealt with government business. Government business is always number one, and these other bills that we are introducing never hold up government bills, and they should not. Sometimes they may, but they should not. I think that’s the general agreement that we have. We have Senate public bills we bring forward, but it never delays the business of the nation, the business of the state. That’s our number one.

Thank you for that. You are right that in terms of legislation, we always deal with government business first, and it’s important the public understand that.

The issue is in committee work, where there is an obligation that committees deal with legislation before studies. We got off track on studies during COVID, frankly, and we are slowly getting our momentum back where we are agreeing to do impactful studies that will create interest and give voice to issues that the government ought to consider, but private members’ bills chew up a lot of committee time that is not now available for committee studies.

I know Senator Tannas wants to move on, but I just want to make a statement and ask a question to ensure we are clear on things.

Senator Pate brought up Bill C-83. I was the sponsor of Bill C-83, and she and I worked on that bill together. For those who weren’t around for Bill C-83, it is about structured intervention units, or SIUs. Specifically, the structured intervention units in Canada are correctional facilities designed to separate inmates from the general population for security or other reasons while providing an environment for targeted interventions and rehabilitation.

I’ll jump ahead. The purpose and goals here were separation: to manage inmates who cannot be safely held in mainstream population; intervention: to provide targeted interventions and programs to address the risks and needs that led to the inmate’s transfer; reintegration: to facilitate a safe and structured return to the mainstream inmate population; rights: to ensure inmates in SIUs retain the same rights as other inmates to the extent possible while acknowledging some limitations due to security — key features in the daily routine, out-of-cell time, human contact, meaningful way of engagement, access to services.

The one thing that you mentioned, and we seem to be swerving around it, is it was a good bill. It had good intent. It had the right things going into it. But the problem was that it seems the Correctional Service Canada will go its own route. I had them promise me that they would operationalize this, and they had a plan to operationalize it and see it through. I think four months later, Senator Pate and I went to check it out — no sign. There was no progressive reintegration programs that were being used to make these inmates feel safe going back into the community and to make the community feel safe they are being reintegrated.

So there is something wrong with all these bills we are talking about, and that is the corrections following through on these things and executing them with precision and conviction, especially the program side for integration and rehabilitation. We need to tackle that. I didn’t follow the last committee meetings and whether they got boiled down in those questions as well.

Would you agree with that?

Thank you for that question and for the history. You brought it back as you went through that.

I think that’s the case. We talk a lot of times about whether it is a legislative issue or a behavioural issue. We have certain elements of the federal government that have developed excellent immune systems for ignoring legislation they don’t like. More legislation probably is not the answer. A tough minister is probably the answer and good investigative journalism and louder voices bringing the public forward.

All I want, colleagues — and we can get to hearing from others on debate — is we should not let controversial bills get a free pass to committee. It is easy for us to, on a voice vote, let it go. We should be prepared to make a stand one way or another. We can justify it however we all individually want to justify our vote, but we should vote.

I agree with you. One piece that has been left out, in addition to what Senator Marty Klyne introduced, is that one of the amendments was judicial oversight. In the amendments that we made to Bill C-83, as Senator Klyne indicated, was a promise by the government that another form of oversight would be put in place. That oversight was put in place, and then it expired, and nothing was done.

Judicial oversight provides a different opportunity, I would suggest. I’m asking whether you agree that if, in fact, courts have to review this, it would mean that that documentation has to be produced, which would allow it then to be public in a way now that what you’re describing — the behavioural issues — could happen without the eyes of the public seeing it.

That would have been an excellent bill to bring forward. It would have highlighted that we were dealt with in bad faith, as were the sponsor, others here and Parliament. So to simply have a bill that reintroduced judicial oversight would have been an interesting way for us to proceed, as opposed to trying to come up with something else. But just simply to reintroduce judicial oversight where it belonged would have been something that many people could have supported, including me.

Thank you, Your Honour. I didn’t intend to speak to this, but I will be brief. I thank Senator Tannas for some of his good points.

From what I have seen, the debate has gone down two different paths. We are talking about Bill S-205, but we’re also talking in general about private members’ bills in this house. They both warrant some time and discussion.

First, I will say this about private members’ bills. They are an essential part of the work we do here in this institution, but we also have to be very cognizant that this institution’s primary goal is to review government legislation. The good news is that, as we’ve seen so far in this Parliament, there is none. So, we need to find things to preoccupy ourselves with, so far. However, we also have to be equally careful that when we do engage in private members’ bills, we understand that, as the upper chamber in the Parliament of Canada and as an appointed body, we have a very narrow path to follow when we use legislation.

Our most important privilege in this institution is our ability to advocate, to lobby, especially for those of us who sit in a national caucus, we lobby our counterparts on the other side. Those of you who don’t, still have other avenues that you can use. Of course, you can advocate via written form, you can articulate here through reports, and so on and so forth. But we have to be very careful when we use the ultimate tool that we have constitutionally, which is the tool of legislating, that we respect our role.

Number one, our legislation should never incorporate expenditures. That is a principle that this upper chamber has respected now for a very long time. When we cross that line, we have to be disciplined to bring ourselves back. Before we actually engage in private members’ bills, we must ask whether we are respecting our constitutional role. That is something that must be evaluated.

Second and equally important, does it have broad potential consensus in the chamber? Is there enough support in the five groups in order for a senator to initiate a private member’s bill? After that, if you want to take it to the next level, ask yourself this: If it does go to the other house, will there be a significant group championing that particular piece of legislation? If any one of these elements has no tick mark beside it, colleagues — I think the point that Senator Tannas is trying to make is this: Let’s not create a bottleneck and actually become an obstacle to private members’ bills that are truly in the public interest, which could be appropriately addressed by committees and could be voted on.

All of you know this: My view is that every parliamentarian here has the right to be heard, every bill has the right to be debated, and every bill needs to be voted on. However, if we don’t respect the criteria I just outlined, we are actually defeating the purpose of this institution, but we’re also hurting our legitimacy. The reason is because in the other house, they look at the work we do. They look at it when the legislation crosses over to their place. When they see legislation that raises red flags, they just toss it to the side, and we become a caricature of Parliament rather than a significant contributor to the legislative process.

Those are my thoughts on private members’ bills in general. It is a subject worthy of discussion and coming to a consensus on, but I hope we all respect those broad guidelines that have been respected in this chamber for decades.

Vis-à-vis this particular bill, I believe it’s a bill that doesn’t warrant support for the simple reason that it doesn’t respect one of those principles, which is that it will incur financial expenditures, which we don’t have the right to vote on as a body. That has been a clear principle which we have respected for a long time. That is why I will be voting against this bill. Thank you very much.

I have a question for Senator Housakos.

Senator Housakos, I am just reflecting on your good words around private members’ bills. I do agree with some of what you say, but this is my concern, and I’m not hearing it from you. This bill was actually passed by the Senate and went to the other place. It has been tested to the degree that we test our bills. Would you agree with that? What makes this bill different, and why would we try to stop it now?

As I clearly highlighted, obviously, it was a mistake by this chamber to do that and support a bill that would invoke expenditures, which we don’t have the constitutional right to do, any more than we have the right to amend a budget bill that comes over to this place.

With all due respect, I don’t think I supported it the first time around. So, for the same reasons, I’m not supporting it the second time around. However, I’m also pleading to colleagues to take under consideration our constitutional rights regarding what we can and cannot do and to respect that. We can correct the mistake that we made in the previous Parliament.

Yes.

Yes. Agreed.

Thank you, Senator Housakos, for your intervention. Didn’t we request a ruling on whether this bill required a Royal Recommendation? And wasn’t the Speaker’s ruling clear in the last Parliament that it did not?

That’s an entirely different subject, but I will broach it briefly. As we all know, this is one of the chambers in the Westminster system where the Speaker has a very unique role. The Speaker in this chamber is a barometer for consensus; he or she is not an arbitrator. That is unlike the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Speaker of Westminster or any other Speaker in a Westminster-style parliament.

As we all know very well — and it has been exercised on a number of occasions — the chamber decides. The majority rules, but the majority can be wrong from time to time, as we can appreciate, even though I did not agree with the Speaker’s ruling itself at that particular time. As we all know, in this system, we have the right to challenge the Speaker.

It is not unusual in a chamber like ours, where the majority makes the wrong decision, that the Speaker can acquiesce to it. That is his or her right. If the Speaker does not acquiesce to it, he or she can also be voted down by the majority. A Speaker’s ruling, to be frank with you, in this upper chamber, doesn’t have the same level of strength as the Speaker’s rulings on the other side.

I have a question, if Senator Housakos would take it.

With pleasure.

When a bill passes and becomes law, can you think of any bill with significance that actually makes changes in our society that doesn’t have some cost associated with it?

There are many such bills. Some bills amend the Criminal Code. We had a bill creating Lebanese National Heritage Month. We pass motions and bills here on a regular basis that don’t have any monetary element attached to them. We, as a result, can pass those bills. We can initiate them. We can amend them. We can do whatever we wish. There are tons of bills in this place that we pass that don’t have money attached to it.

Thank you very much. Just to clarify my question, it was about bills that actually make a significant change in society, as this bill would. Any kind of change in a governmental system — and laws affect governmental systems — is going to incur some kind of cost. The threshold, as I understand it, is much higher than that. This appears to be a discussion about creating another threshold, which is a lower threshold than we have typically been guided to follow.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has clearly stated that this could cost Canadian taxpayers up to $2 billion. That is ludicrous. Senator, you will agree with me on the fundamental principle that in the Westminster model, there is no taxation without representation. It’s clear: We have lived by that principle in the lower and upper chambers of this democracy for a long time. You will agree with me that just on that principle alone, we don’t even have any reason to be debating this form of a private member’s bill.

Are honourable senators ready for the question?

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

All those in favour of the motion will please say “yea.”

Some Hon. Senators: Yea.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: All those opposed to the motion will please say “nay.”

Some Hon. Senators: Nay.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: In my opinion, the “yeas” have it.

And two honourable senators having risen:

I see two senators rising. Is there agreement on the length of the bell?

Do we agree to a 15‑minute bell?

The vote will take place at 3:47 p.m. Call in the senators.

Motion agreed to and bill read second time on the following division:

YEAS

The Honourable Senators

NAYS

The Honourable Senators

ABSTENTIONS

The Honourable Senators