Honourable senators, this item stands adjourned in the name of the Honourable Senator Pate, and I ask for leave that it remain adjourned in her name.

Honourable senators, many of you may remember that in the fall of 2018 the Senate passed Bill C-83, which was intended to end solitary confinement in Canada. There were a number of votes, and an amendment was adopted. Ultimately, the amendment was rejected by the government and the bill had support, unamended, by all groups and caucuses in the Senate. The action taken following the passing of that bill was led by the late senator Josée Forest-Niesing, Senator Pate and Senator Klyne, and it was to have senators visit various prisons around the country. This was to gain some understanding about whether this bill was actually going to be implemented and change solitary confinement to structured intervention units — I think that change occurred just in name — and see whether any of the action that was seen to be so important was going to occur.

Many of us made visits; I think about 40 senators made visits to follow up. I went to Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick, Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia and the Nova Institution for Women in Nova Scotia. The memory of the Springhill visit is strong because Senator Forest-Niesing was supposed to be there, but she entered hospital that week and, sadly, never emerged.

This work really is in her memory, and this is a bill that she intended to table in her name — Bill S-230 — which is what I’m speaking to today.

This bill includes recommendations from this chamber that were accepted and sent to the House but rejected by the government, so it’s something that has been studied by this chamber. The work that we 40 senators did as we made these visits included observations. Senator Pate recorded a lot of data, and her team did a lot of work putting together a report of our collective findings called Senators Go to Jail. I think it may have been downloaded many times because people misinterpreted the title, but it really was an important document. I’ll just say that after each visit I wondered why we call our prisons “correctional institutions.” Of the people who go into prison, 99% come back into society. In terms of what we’re doing in our prisons, if you consider putting conditions for success in place, I think we do the opposite.

I think we need to reflect upon that as a society because, my goodness, why would an entrepreneur care about this issue? When you think about the amount of money that we’re spending I think of mental health institutions, and Senator Pate has forgotten more about this issue than I’ll ever learn. In women’s mental health institutions, we’re spending half a million dollars a year per person. Are we getting the results? Maximum-security prisons for men cost over $200,000 a year per person. Are we creating the conditions for success so that when people come out we will not see high recidivism rates? Are we enabling them to reintegrate into society in a way that will be successful?

The pointy end of the stick here is the structured intervention units. Those of us who have been married for a long time know that escalating situations will generally get us in a lot more trouble; we all have experience in that. De-escalation is a learned skill and a cultural skill. If it’s prioritized in an institution, then that is what happens. If we need solitary confinement, if we need structured intervention units, that means that we’re failing at multiple steps along the way; the conditions for success are not in place.

I really respect the continued effort on the part of Senator Pate to see if we can bring about some cultural changes around that pointy end of the stick where we see that we’re getting it wrong and people end up in those structured intervention units. There are missteps we have made along the way. We are spending a lot of money in this business.

We all know about overrepresentation in our correctional institutions in this country and that 50% of incarcerated women are Indigenous. We all know about the overrepresentation of many marginalized groups in our prison system. The oversight body had an Indigenous member and Black member, both of whom are a part of the disbanding of that decision to have oversight.

We need to have a voice here. As senators we’re all allowed to enter a prison and visit — and we get to come out. I have had three experiences of that, and they were incredibly memorable experiences. I would say, as an entrepreneur, we are spending a lot of money in this space. We have a lot of experience around the world with how things could be done differently.

We must remember that 99% of those who go in will come out again. Are we putting conditions in place for success? Will they potentially cause further damage to themselves, those around them and in their communities, or start to create successes? We have created an inflection point in their time in our correctional institutions.

I am far from convinced that that is what we have today. I appreciate the efforts of Senator Pate in seeing if we can bump ourselves onto a parallel path, maybe as experimentation in certain institutions, but something that helps us head down a slightly different road in the future.

We have the resources. We have the problem. We are not achieving success.

Thank you for your work, Senator Pate.