Legislative Assembly of Ontario

1995 ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
ONTARIO BOARD OF PAROLE

MINISTRY OF THE SOLICITOR GENERAL AND CORRECTIONAL SERVICES

POLICE ASSOCIATION OF ONTARIO

JOHN HOWARD SOCIETY

CANADIAN RESOURCE CENTRE FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME

CONTENTS

Wednesday 31 January 1996

1995 annual report, Provincial Auditor: Ontario Board of Parole

Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services

Elaine Todres, Deputy Solicitor General and Deputy Minister

Neil McKerrell, assistant deputy minister, Correctional Services

Ken Sandhu, chair, Ontario Board of Parole

Police Association of Ontario

David Griffin, administrator

Terry Ryan, director

John Howard Society

Graham Stewart, executive director

Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime

Steve Sullivan, executive director

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Chair / Président: McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South / -Sud L)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Colle, Mike (Oakwood L)

*Agostino, Dominic (Hamilton East / -Est L)

*Beaubien, Marcel (Lambton PC)

Boushy, Dave (Sarnia PC)

*Carr, Gary (Oakville South / -Sud PC)

*Colle, Mike (Oakwood L)

Crozier, Bruce (Essex South L)

*Fox, Gary (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings / Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud PC)

*Gilchrist, Steve (Scarborough East / -Est PC)

Hastings, John (Etobicoke-Rexdale PC)

Martel, Shelley (Sudbury East / -Est ND)

*McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South / -Sud L)

*Pouliot, Gilles (Lake Nipigon / Lac-Nipigon ND)

*Skarica, Toni (Wentworth North / -Nord PC)

*Vankoughnet, Bill (Frontenac-Addington PC)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:

Doyle, Ed (Wentworth East / -Est PC) for Mr Hastings

Boyd, Marion (London Centre / -Centre ND) for Ms Martel

Sergio, Mario (Yorkview L) for Mr Crozier

Clerk / Greffier: Decker, Todd

Staff / Personnel: Campbell, Elaine, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1100 in room 151.

1995 ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
ONTARIO BOARD OF PAROLE

The Chair (Mr Dalton McGuinty): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today we are dealing with the Provincial Auditor, more specifically the Ontario Board of Parole. This morning we have representation from the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. Welcome to the committee. Before you begin, kindly introduce yourselves. We'll be sitting till about noon and we'd ask that you allow an opportunity for committee members to raise questions with you.

MINISTRY OF THE SOLICITOR GENERAL AND CORRECTIONAL SERVICES

Dr Elaine Todres: Thank you, Mr Chair. We're delighted to be here. I'm the Deputy Minister of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services and it is a pleasure for me to be here with you today. I brought with me Neil McKerrell, the assistant deputy minister of the Correctional Services division -- some of you know him, of course, over the years -- and Ken Sandhu, the chair of the Ontario parole board.

I thought I would break from deputy minister tradition and speak very briefly and just give you a sense of where the ministry is coming from, very, very briefly, and then simply permit you as much time as you need to ask us detailed questions.

The ministry is working very, very closely with the Ministry of the Attorney General, perhaps more so than ever in the past, towards a vision of a modern, smaller and more effective justice system for Ontario, and I want to stress the word "system," because as many of you in the room know, there is in fact a seamless web between the work of what goes on on the correction and policing side through the Ministry of the Attorney General and we're trying very hard at the administrative and bureaucratic level as well as the ministerial level to begin to conceive of the system just as that, certainly on the criminal justice side.

That means focusing our resources on serious crime and making every effort to maintain public safety as the highest priority in all the decisions we make. We're attempting to apply creative alternatives to dealing with less serious offenders. We're working very hard to meet and respect the needs of victims of crime. We're ensuring and continuing to endeavour to ensure that the services we deliver are fair and equitable, and we're trying very hard to strengthen the partnerships that have existed in the past with the community and with what I would call a broad definition of stakeholders across the justice system, meaning more than just our police and traditional stakeholders but all those who help make us feel the community is safe.

It means streamlining the management and the administration of the justice system, including, wherever possible, the appropriate use of technology, and that, many of you will know, means not only investment in technology in the ministry but some substantial amendments in the Criminal Code and in other places to ensure that technology can be used in the transfer of information between one subsection of the system and others.

For the Correctional Services side, a subject the Provincial Auditor and this committee over the years has spent a good amount of time on, and I think committee members have a very good understanding of our plant, the capital plant side, there's no question that we're going to require significant changes to the institutional infrastructure, which in large measure is outdated and highly inefficient. Put another way, of the resources put to us, whether it's capital, labour or land, there's not much more we can do on the capital investment side with very old jails. I'm satisfied that where we're running efficient jails, we run very efficient jails.

At the heart of our efforts to refocus resources on serious offenders, that will mean that there will have to be important changes to the way in which we manage offenders and the risks that they might potentially pose. We've concluded -- and I know others, my predecessors -- this isn't a revelation, but we've come to understand that in order to effect the changes across the criminal system, we have to have a very solid methodological approach to the evaluation of risk, without which you're not going to be comfortable and certainly citizens aren't going to comfortable.

Who poses a risk? What are the criminogenic factors? How do we know who poses a risk? What have we learned from the social sciences over the last number of years to try to create a document that is valid and reliable? We have a new one. It has been tested. The introduction of the advance risk assessment is, at the moment, one of Neil's top priorities. Given our arm's-length relationship with Ken, the chair of the parole board, I don't feel comfortable in putting forward what he's doing in this area. I'm sure he'll cover it in questions with you.

You know, I'm sure, that we're trying very hard to introduce technological solutions in the Correctional Services division, where possible, and at the moment are in the early stages of the application of in-home electronic monitoring for non-violent offenders. The system has just been introduced this month, and I'm sure you may have questions on that. We're finding it a practical, inexpensive alternative to institutional custody, and I want to stress this, for those who pose little or no risk to the community.

This measure has been used successfully with low-risk offenders in other jurisdictions in Canada and elsewhere and we're anticipating saving $9 million per year with the introduction of this measure in relationship to the cost of previous forms of supervision.

All of us know of course that many of our offenders do live in the community and they don't stay with us for very long. We want them to have as smooth a re-entry in non-institutional life, in community life as possible. Locking up all of them can't be our only means of dealing with unlawful behaviour.

That, mercifully, is all I want to say on the subject in my opening remarks. I'm going to stop here and ask you for any questions that we can possibly help you with.

The Vice-Chair (Mr Mike Colle): We'll start with Ms Boyd.

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): I'm delighted to hear you're continuing the work to integrate the justice system. We certainly need to do that. There is a continuum to this, and that's good. I'm glad to hear you're going ahead with some technological changes which will certainly enhance the information exchange that the auditor has pointed out as a problem in terms of parole.

I certainly don't disagree at all that we need to deal with the less serious offences by not jailing those people. I think that's absolutely appropriate. We jail far more people than are jailed in any other province and we need to be looking at that. We need to be looking at effective ways of doing that, and that does involve both the way in which the prosecution proceeds and also the way in which your system proceeds.

My big concern is the serious ones. I mean serious in so far as they are in the provincial system at all. I have expressed to the auditor my deep concern that there does not appear to be an acknowledgement in his report that every one of these people is going to have to be reintegrated into the community and the reintegration of those with less serious offences is much easier than those with more serious offences, yet we're looking at cracking down on the release of the serious offenders when the whole purpose of parole is to reintegrate those people who have, for one reason or another, adopted usually some form of violence. I guess I really have a sense that we're going at this backwards.

1110

The auditor makes it very clear that we need to be using community programs and that things like community resource centres are a way of reintegrating, yet the ministry has made a decision to close all those programs without finding ways to make sure that there are better outcomes as a result of those programs. I'd like you to comment on that.

Mr Neil McKerrell: The reintegration of offenders into the community after incarceration is extremely important and there's a range of ways in which that can be done.

The community resource centres were brought into operation about 20 years ago and they have followed a life of their own over those 20 years. In more recent times, as we looked at the people who were in them and we looked at the utilization rates of the residences, we reached the conclusion that they were, in essence, becoming a form of subsidized housing and that the necessary supports to integrate people into the community effectively, to have the linkages for people in the community, could be done probably in less expensive ways.

The electronic monitoring program which has been introduced and is being developed slowly will enable us to put individuals into their homes and still be connected to the support mechanisms that are necessary in the community.

We haven't totally eliminated residential programs. We have retained a system of residential contracts which are on an ad hoc basis as opposed to a block-funded basis, and the intention is to use the ad hoc services to meet very specialized needs which can't be met in any other way. Spending $1 when $1 needs to be spent appears to us to be more effective than block funding and paying for beds which sometimes sit empty.

Mrs Boyd: I wonder if you would table with the committee an account of what those kinds of ad hoc arrangements would be and with what organizations. Many of the organizations have disappeared, so you have very little choice there.

But I would go back. We've just had an assurance that these electronic monitoring devices will only be used with non-violent offenders, non-serious offenders. You have not answered the question about what the reintegration is of the serious offender. That serious offender is going, I think, under the emphasis of this government, to be denied parole; that seems to be the whole thrust of this. Keep these people in jail until the end of their sentence, then they walk out the door and there is no possibility of monitoring them or hooking them up with services.

I know you have a placement coordinator in many of your facilities, but we also know that once that person walks through the door, you have no control over whether they access those services or not.

Mr McKerrell: Well, there are two parts there, one relating to parole, and perhaps the chair of the board could comment on that. The fact is that the average offender in Ontario serves a total sentence of about 18 months, so we're not dealing with the most --

Mrs Boyd: Sixty-four days, I believe.

Mr McKerrell: Oh, for the average sentence, yes, I'm sorry. The time a person would serve in custody less remission would be a total of 18 months, but the average sentences are much, much shorter than that.

The fact is that the most serious offenders that the public thinks of don't serve their sentences in the Ontario system. The most serious offences go to the federal system. So we're talking about a less serious type of offender who is serving sentence in the Ontario system. For those individuals we have the range of services available, we believe, that best meet the needs.

With respect to the parole piece of it, perhaps the chair of the board can comment on that.

Mr Ken Sandhu: As you know, the parole board deals mostly with people who are sentenced to a sentence of over six months, and if sentence length was considered to be an indicator of seriousness of offence, then yes, we are the ones who often end up looking at the more serious offenders in the system.

While I agree with you completely on the fact that it's better to release people under supervision than to simply let them out, our difficulty is that it's not always possible because, even within our system, there are some high-risk cases whose needs are not and cannot be always fully met out in the community, as we have seen. So what ends up happening is that we are into a parole rate which, if you average out over the past 10 years or so, is about 50% of the people we see.

What is encouraging is that we have, in conjunction with the Correctional Services division, developed a risk assessment instrument which has been implemented as of January 1 or 2. This instrument will put us all on the same page of the same hymn book, so to speak, in that we will all be looking at the same information, information concerning classification decisions, information concerning placement in various programs and then at the time of the parole hearing. Part of our difficulty was that we did not have that consistent instrument. We were doing our own thing; Correctional Services was doing its thing.

I think that the whole issue of higher risk and lower risk is now going to become a little more clear to all of us, because, let's face it, our criteria up to this point have been classification based on sentence length and then based on the charges on which a person was convicted. Those are not always the fairest and the truest indicators.

So that's where we're headed. I don't think that there is any desire to state or to have a policy in place that states that lower-risk offenders shouldn't be considered for release sooner. It's just the higher-risk ones, there are also associated needs, as you know, and if those needs cannot be met adequately in the community, then it's not our intention to put society at risk.

The Vice-Chair: Okay?

Mrs Boyd: Well, no, because it doesn't answer the question. So you recommend against parole for somebody whose needs you don't believe can be met in the community. That person serves out their sentence. You've already deemed them to be high risk. They aren't getting, we know, the help that they need in our correctional system because -- there are all sorts of reasons, partly the length of time that you actually have control of them. They still get out. My whole point is that they get out with no supervision, with no connections. It just seems to me that if we're really concerned about public safety here, what we're doing is creating a situation, which we need to do to assess that risk, but we have to understand that even when that risk is assessed as very high, those people get out. What's the next step?

Mr McKerrell: Perhaps I can add on to that a little bit. While we have the individuals, as was indicated, with our risk assessment instrument -- we've had one for a number of years; we have a revised version of it that we put into effect in January -- with that, it's used to more finely identify the needs of the individual. Then we do have, within our institutions, a range of professional services available, whether it's psychological counselling, psychiatric counselling, cross-addictions, social work. All of these things are available within the institutions for the period of time that the individual is with us. Now, obviously you can't force anyone to partake in treatment, but for those who are willing and motivated and interested, there's the range of treatment programs available.

What we also have is discharge planning, where we try to do what we can. As you have noted, we don't have the people for very long. A lot of the people have very deep-seated problems, they've had them for years and years and years, and for the short time that we have them, it's not a matter of adding water and stirring and you've got a fix. But at least we try to introduce them to the professional elements that we have available and try to make the connections.

Then, with the discharge planning, when the individual is released, whether it's on parole or whether it's on a temporary absence or at the expiry of the warrant, the objective is to put the person into contact with resources in the community. Obviously, we don't have the ability to force that to happen either, but at least if the connection is made the hope is that the individual will follow through in the connections made in the community.

Mrs Boyd: Faint hope.

1120

Mr Toni Skarica (Wentworth North): I prosecuted in our courts for about 12 years. I have some familiarity with what happens on sentence. When you send somebody to a federal term, two years or more, the National Parole Board within about three weeks sends you a letter wanting details -- pre-sentence reports, police occurrence reports, agreed statement of facts and that type of thing.

We don't get a similar document from the reformatory system, so first of all, to assess risk -- in the investment business, they have a saying that risk varies proportionately with knowledge. In order to assess high risk or low risk, it seems to me you just can't look at the offence. I've known violent offenders who -- it's their first time and they're never coming back, but I also know property offenders, break and enters, who you know virtually for certain are coming back. So my question is, what information is available to the parole board at the present time and what changes are being contemplated, if any, to give the parole board more knowledge? As I indicated, I think knowledge here is power and it would help tremendously in determination of risk.

Mr McKerrell: Again, this is probably part for the Correctional Services division and part for the board. The board is the decision-making body and the Correctional Services division has the responsibility for gathering the information and providing the information to the board on which they can make the decision. Then Correctional Services is responsible for supervising the individual once they're released on parole.

To answer your question on what's available to the board, it's the same information that's available to the Correctional Services people when we're dealing with the individual before they're eligible for parole; namely, when the classification process is undertaken, when an individual comes into the institution, we try to get the occurrence report from the police, we try to get the reasons for sentence, if we can, from the court. If there was a pre-sentence report ordered by the court, we have access to that because of course it was probation officers who did it. If there are any psychiatric/psychological assessments ordered by the court, we try to get access to those as well. So in other words, we try to get as much of the information that was available to the court when the sentence was being handed down. We try to get that information and bring it into our process as well.

Then, when the individual is in the system, be it on probation or in an institution, but particularly an institution, many of them were there before, so there's a bit of a case file, if you like, that's available to the staff in the institutions. That can be added to fingerprint reports from the RCMP, any other information that's on the police information system, CPIC, and together with the intake interview that's done by our institutional staff, we can put together a bit of a composite, if you will, about the individual and what we need to do to contain them from a security point of view and also what we need to direct them to from a program point of view. So all of that information is available to the board plus the report, if you like, on the performance of the individual while they were in custody prior to becoming eligible for parole.

Mr Sandhu: In addition to the information that Correctional Services has, we occasionally do get information from victims. We have a policy that states that the victims are able to access information from us and provide information to us. We might get information from other people in the community who might wish to write to the board and state how they feel about the case and the offender.

I think it might be helpful for the committee to know, and certainly the auditor, this was one of the recommendations. In fact, the first recommendation was that we needed to improve this area. Again, historically, we were lacking in some parts of this information-gathering process, and mainly what it was that we were not getting the details of the offence. As Neil McKerrell mentioned, we're getting mostly CPIC information, but we wanted to know the nature of the offence. So we're now getting in all of our serious offender cases, which are classified as level 1 in our system, the details of the offence and we are also starting to get the judges' reasons for sentencing. So much the same as the federal system asks for that, we are now starting to get that information.

Mr Skarica: What's occurring now -- and I don't know if you're aware of this -- is that with the Martin recommendations, more and more criminal cases are being resolved by the defence lawyer coming in, having an agreement with the crown and then a pre-trial by the judge, then you go into court, and the offender is sentenced. So you don't get the pre-sentence report any longer, you don't get the psychiatric report, you don't get as much detail before the court because, basically, it's an expedited process. But that hurts your information-gathering later on because the court doesn't have the amount of detail before it that it did before. Is there any way you're going to address that problem?

Mr Sandhu: Yes. In fact, as the deputy mentioned, we are working closely with the Attorney General on all of those kinds of issues. The facts of the case are something that often in those instances where there's a joint submission are available to the court, and we've said that in those instances we would like the facts sent to us.

Our feeling is that -- and also the judges are very supportive of all of this -- all of that crucial information will start flowing in the future. There was a tendency in the past on the part of various actors in the system that perhaps the corrections and parole didn't need some of this, but it's been proven now that we do need it. So I'm quite confident that that will all happen.

Mr Skarica: Finally, as I indicated, the National Parole Board, they send you a letter but they have lots of time because they have two years plus where you don't; you may only have six months, three months, nine months. Is it going to be an automatic type of process where immediately when the person is sentenced that material gets forwarded or are you going to have send a letter, because the latter wouldn't work in many cases?

Mr McKerrell: What we're hoping for is that it will basically be an integrated online information system. Really what we'd like to move towards is one information system from point of entry to point of exit, so that at each step a person goes through the justice system the information is put into the same repository; or if not the same repository, if that's too technically complex, at least have the various repositories able to communicate with each other electronically. Each party to the system, whether it's police, courts, corrections or the releasing authority, would have access to the pool or the reservoir of information and would be able to go into it to the depth that they have reason to. Obviously, with some police intelligence issues, there would be limits to how far people could go into the information bank. But absent that, anybody who has a need to know about the individual, the offender, would have access to the common repository of information.

Dr Todres: Just as an add-on to that, this is what we refer to as the Integrated Justice Project, and it requires several things.

First of all, it requires a deep and abiding belief that there is one system and not two ministries and 10 divisions and different players. That's been accomplished. It requires a lot of technical work. It requires buy-in from, as you know, all of the players, judges included, but it also requires, in my mind, a philosophical shift in the mind of the person who is the worker.

I think the technological revolution was slow to come to the justice field, if I'm permitted to say. I can only say this, of course, because I'm not a lawyer. Every person who is involved in the criminal justice system is not just a lawyer, a crown, a parole officer; there are also knowledge workers, including police officers, and their job begins and ends with the transfer of information. It's not a clerk or somebody else who has to do this. It's internalizing the notion that when you're the police officer -- this is assuming we have the data and the information and the laptops for them -- that job incorporates the necessity to transmit information, because otherwise the person in the next chain doesn't get it and you know how many times we repeat getting the same information about the same individual and how shocking it is to find out just how many pieces of paper have been touched and so on.

1130

That's really what we're struggling with, quite apart from the investment dollars and so on and the technical standards, making sure that people understand in our imprisonment system, in our parole system, in our policing system, that everybody has to update. It's their responsibility, once we have the technical standards and so on. I think some of the preconditions for that kind of technological revolution are in place, a lot of work was done over the last three or four years to get that kind of thinking across, and that's the challenge we have over the next little while. I would imagine that's what the young practitioners would have assumed will be the case, given their own background and their own training.

Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): I'm sorry I missed your presentation. I have a couple of questions. What refined instrument would have been introduced in the fall of 1995?

Mr McKerrell: That's a risk assessment instrument, which we call the level of service inventory Ontario revision. It's a tool, if you will, which assists individuals working in the justice system to identify the risk of reoffending on the part of the individual and also the needs of the individual to which the system should try to direct them to correct the aberrant behaviour, whatever it happens to be. It's an instrument which was developed for us by a team of academics and there was a great deal of input from our own staff who use it, staff of the parole board and a range of individuals in various communities, so that we could try to clearly identify the risk factors and the need factors.

This does not function by itself. It requires the judgement of the staff person to be exercised as well, but it's a very useful, objective tool that focuses in on some very clear and specific indicators with respect to risk and needs. Some of these factors are -- and I'll just quickly cite them here for you -- the criminal history, the education and employment, family marital status, the leisure/recreation patterns that the individual has, the companions, what's called pro-criminal attitude or orientation, substance abuse, antisocial patterns. These are factors which, when explored, help to zero in on the level of risk and the kinds of needs the individual has to which the system can address some attention.

Mr Sergio: Do you have a mechanism to assess, to evaluate the performance of that particular function?

Mr McKerrell: I'm sorry, I'm not following you.

Mr Sergio: What do you have at your disposal -- though this is fresh, it has been implemented in the fall of last year -- what mechanism do you have in place to measure the success of that?

Mr McKerrell: Of the instrument itself?

Mr Sergio: Yes.

Mr McKerrell: It's been used extensively in jurisdictions for a number of years and it's found pretty strong favour. There's also research material which indicates, which corresponds to the reliability of the instrument itself. Our research staff have been participating in the development and the refinement of this. They were involved from the outset, they've evaluated it over the last 10 or 15 years and they were involved in the refinement of the most recent version of the instrument.

Mr Sergio: So this would be then, in the long term, something that --

Dr Todres: Yes.

Mr McKerrell: It'll be constantly monitored. That's the purpose.

Mr Sergio: Constantly?

Mr McKerrell: Yes. The idea is that it took us 10, 15 years to come up with the revised version which reflected changes in demographics, among other things, and the intention is that it will be done on a more regular basis, that we won't wait 10 or 15 years before updating the instrument.

Mr Sergio: Is it a particular time that you will be reporting?

Dr Todres: I understand the direction that you're going with the question. First of all I think, just from a research point of view, we'll probably have to have had it operational for at least two years to test its validity and reliability, quite apart from its effectiveness. But that is part of the mission. I just wanted to assure you, although you haven't asked a question on this, we are taking this extremely seriously. I've met with the social scientists who have worked on it. We're working on a video right now where I am communicating my -- it's beyond commitment. To me, this is one of the centres of what we're doing in corrections. If we do not have confidence in the risk tool, we're not going to be able to achieve our policy objectives and so on over the short term. Everyone has been trained, you'll find out from the chair of the parole board. The parole board folk have been trained as well. We will be having continuous training throughout the piece because it's that crucial to our success. We'll be very happy to come back to you in due course and let you know about the validity of the instrument and, more importantly, its effectiveness.

Mr Sergio: Due course -- in a couple of years?

Dr Todres: My experience as a social scientist is that it will take us probably three or four months. As you know, it's a large ministry with a large number of staff. We've got to make sure the training has been done. We will have to probably -- I won't say modify it, but always in experience you find that there are certain words in the document that don't make sense or the parole officer doesn't understand, or the probation officer doesn't understand, so there may have to be minor modifications. You have to know in research what are you testing: the new one, the revised one, the revised of the revised. I think, optimistically and realistically, we should be able in two years to have a very good sense of whether it worked. We're a leader in this field, Ontario, and other jurisdictions look to see what we're going to do with this.

Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): I just want to talk a little bit about the process and I guess the whole function of the parole board and maybe the function of the parole board in isolation of the community often. I first of all think time will tell whether these changes, initial steps, are going to be beneficial because, frankly, up to this point I've had very little confidence in the work of the parole board. I've had very little confidence in risk factors, frankly, coming from a community that has often been a dumping ground for people released on parole because of the fact that we have a number of services: the situation with Mr Suzack a couple of years ago, with the Salvation Army in Hamilton, with Legere, the convicted paedophile who has been out again. Even the judge, who cannot detain him further, has said this guy is going to go out and commit crimes again, but he's out walking the streets of Hamilton. So I don't have a hell of a lot of confidence in the way the system has worked up to now and part of that I think stems from the closeness of the process.

The chair of the board mentioned that often victims are given the opportunity to give statements; often the community is involved. But the way the system's worked, frankly, often victims don't even know that the individual is coming up for parole, that the individual is going to have the possibility of walking the streets again. The community doesn't know, so it goes to the issue, twofold, of the process.

The fact that it has been a closed process up to now, I think the first step in that would be to totally open up the system. If somebody goes to trial, it is a public trial in most cases. It is accessible to the media and to the public. When the opportunity occurs for that individual to be released earlier than the sentence, it has been outlined, it all of a sudden becomes a closed process, a process that is not accessible to the community, that is not accessible to the media, and that often is not accessible to the public. That's the first question I want to ask you.

The second is with regard to the ability of police departments to issue pictures, names, information, on someone they believe to be a high-risk offender who is going to be released without fear of liability. They have done it. Often police forces have taken the responsibility and the liability and the chance of being sued for doing that. One of the requests they have made constantly, from the associations I spoke to and police departments, is that they feel they should have a clear direction from the ministry that they can do that based on their judgement, and protected from basically a liability aspect. Right now, often many police departments do it at their own risk.

1140

I'd like you to comment on those two aspects: the openness of parole hearings, where they should be; and in my view, that police departments should have the right, on their judgement, without fear of repercussion or suit, to release pictures, names or anything else of someone who they feel is a dangerous offender.

Mr Sandhu: If I could respond to the first one, the response is that I share your views. My problem has been that we have been restricted somewhat in the past by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, legislation which states that we cannot allow media or third parties to be present during our hearings, so much so that we couldn't release the reasons for our decisions. As a member of the board for several years, having made decisions, I have no desire to hide what I'm doing, and I speak for other members of the board. It has to do with the laws that have prohibited us from doing it in the past.

We have recently started to work on -- again, it's cross-jurisdictional with the Attorney General and the Solicitor General side of corrections and what have you, and the parole board -- an initiative which will allow more victims to have access to our decisions, to our process. As a result of the Victims' Bill of Rights, I expect that we will be able to do certain things, although there are still some restrictions from the FOI side, and we're working on trying to bring ourselves --

Mr Agostino: But you would favour open hearings for parole cases?

Mr Sandhu: In principle, I'm all for open hearings. How far we get with that, I don't know at this time, because it's still at the developmental stage.

Dr Todres: To answer the first part of your question -- I won't speak to the issue of open hearings, but on the notion of people knowing what's happening. I've been attending a number of meetings with people who call themselves on the leading edge of technology, applications for policing and corrections, and I'm trying to explore whether there's actually a technological response. Are there ways that we can set up telephone systems and databases so that when we know the release date or whatever, we can somehow assure members of the family and so on? Because it's hard to imagine doing it manually -- mistakes happen, pieces of paper don't come in time and so on. So I've actually asked the policing services division under Fred Peters, and Neil and Ken, to see whether or not there's an efficient, hopefully a relatively inexpensive method of addressing your point of information access. I can't go as far as saying what the board will do in terms of FOI and the other matters of an actual open hearing, but your point simply is, people need to know. They need to know what's going on.

On your second point about release of pictures and the police, we're very aware of that. I've asked the ADM of policing services -- we're in active conversations at the moment with people in the police world, mindful of some of the parameters within which we have to work with FOI, so it's very much on my mind. I don't have an immediate answer that I can give you, but we're working actively on that problem.

Mrs Boyd: I think it's fair to say that most of the folks Mr Agostino would be worried about are probably coming out of the federal system. At least one would hope that would be the case, because the decision of the crown in terms of how they proceed with some of these things really depends on the nature of the particular circumstances. That's a really important factor of this working together issue. That decision of the crown whether to go summary or indictment, and then of course everything that follows, is a very crucial decision, as is the police report, which may outline some of the impacts of the crime or may not. Those police reports vary enormously, and I know that one of the issues around the information exchange is trying to get some kind of uniformity to the way in which those police reports come forward and the kind of information they offer the crown in order to make some of those decisions, because there is just a huge variation in that.

In the same way, I'm curious about your risk assessment form. We certainly saw lots of circumstances where the police report would come forward and the actual circumstances of an assault, for example, were not necessarily very clear. It really matters whether somebody is beaten up as a result of a drunken brawl in a bar or whether someone is beaten up in their own home, the age differential, the power differential, the strength differential. All of that matters, and many police reports haven't detailed that.

So when you talk about the criminal history on your risk assessment form, is it going to be available to the parole board who the victim was, exactly what the relationship was, exactly what the circumstances were, and whether the victim reports that this has happened before but the police have not been called? Because I think all of those are factors which crowns have found are important to them in determining where they're going with cases, and I would think it would be equally important for the parole board, particularly if they're going to release somebody who is going to go back, for example, to a domestic situation where those people are vulnerable again. So I'm curious as to how the form goes, and then a little comment perhaps from Ken around how he sees that working.

Mr McKerrell: Our objective is to move as far forward as we can in the sense of getting as much information as is available. Going back to what I said a little while ago, if we can get a common information system from point of entry to point of exit, that's the first thing. But then, as you've touched on, you have to get people using it the right way and have some commonality of reporting and the kinds of information you require and so forth. So it's all linked there. But the objective is to get all that kind of information that you referred to, because our feeling is that the more information we have, the more reliable our risk assessment instrument can become. And then with that coupled to the professional judgement of the staff, at whatever point of the justice system they're involved, they can then make good judgement calls is what it comes down to.

Mr Sandhu: Yes, and let me say we're starting to see some of that information that you are alluding to, because I think police officers are now realizing that the reports are going beyond just the court level, especially in those instances where there may be joint submissions and nobody ever looks at the information. They now know that they are coming to us.

Let me also share something else with you that I've been involved with which I personally find to be quite exciting. The OPP has a behaviour sciences unit, and they're looking at something called threat assessment. That instrument or that process looks at more of the victim's point of view. With those types of offences that you talked about, I think that information is invaluable to us. It goes beyond what LSI will do, because LSI is offender-based and the threat assessment is a victim-based instrument. So we're quite excited about it. That process is not as comprehensive as ours is in terms of a two-page form. Theirs is a little more scattered in the sense that it consists of reports and assessment and what have you. But they're very happy to work with us on it. They've asked us to attend their training sessions, which we will be attending, and the correctional side is also involved in it.

So for those types of offences where there are victims, a lot of family violence, a lot of criminal harassment cases, I think our information base will improve.

Mrs Boyd: That's good, because I think right now we see there's a huge variation in the charge rates of police officers in many of these cases. We see a variation anywhere from about a 35% charge rate to an 80% charge rate, and that's a huge differential just based on police jurisdiction. For example, it's just a truism that "Cause Disturbance" in some police jurisdictions is actually domestic assault. It just gets lowered so that they don't have the paperwork and because there's a lack of commitment, frankly, to the application of the policies, and I guess the need for some understanding about the variation on that, particularly in some of the rather outstanding cases where you're getting through a criminal history that may be quite different from a criminal history done by another jurisdiction that would reflect the same kind of thing. So I'm glad to hear you're moving in that direction.

The threat assessment thing, as I have reason to know, is an interesting kind of instrument because it is flexible, isn't it? It gives you a different set of information than you need.

Mr Sandhu: That's right.

1150

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): A comment first, and it might be one of the few times, but I couldn't agree more with Mr Agostino's comments about certain perhaps high-profile cases that we continue to be beset with in terms of people who have been released and have gone on to repeat the offences for which they were first incarcerated.

As a victim of two armed burglars, one time about a year and a half ago, who had gone through our system, not the federal one, in one case eight times, I have to submit that from my perspective there certainly is a dramatic need for risk assessment to be improved in the Ontario parole system.

There appears to be consensus that a number of decisions, perhaps a majority of the decisions, that were made were based on faulty or inadequate information. In light of certain initiatives the government has already undertaken October 23, and over and above the electronic monitoring -- it's unfortunate Ms Boyd has stepped out, because I think on her focus that there is still a need for community-based programming and there is merit in letting out criminals who clearly are considered too dangerous for electronic monitoring but still are somehow going to benefit from some sort of community involvement in a halfway house context, the auditor was very clear in his report, in his observation that: "During our audit, we noted the ministry had not evaluated the effectiveness of these programs. Hence, it did not know if offenders were receiving the intended benefits and if society was being adequately protected."

Over and above Ms Boyd's request for the information as to which community programs you're still involved with, I'd like to know what has changed since the auditor's report in terms of the mechanisms to assess the performance and the effectiveness of community programs for those individuals who are considered too dangerous for electronic monitoring.

Mr McKerrell: What we have done is to refine a program evaluation process within the Correctional Services division which can be applied to all the programs which we're operating.

We needed something which could be used onsite, something that was simple and straightforward, as opposed to an instrument which required a great deal of, let's say, research orientation. We wanted something that was practical and straightforward and would evaluate whether a program was meeting its objectives, number one, and was cost-effective.

One of the larger issues that the Provincial Auditor has identified, both in terms of community corrections and in another sense in the institutional corrections, is the larger question, does the justice system work? Does community corrections work? Does the jail system work? You have to sort of look at what kind of an answer you expect.

It works in the sense that you have a period of time within which you supervise the individual, so you can try to accomplish certain objectives while you have that individual under your care and supervision. When the warrant expires, all you can do at that point is watch to see whether what you did during the period of the warrant was effective in the sense of the person coming back later on. But once the individual is released from supervision, they're perfectly free to live life according to their own standards. If they run afoul of the law again, then they'll be caught and back into the cycle.

So in terms of, "Does it work? Is it effective?" for the period of time that we have the individuals, we're reasonably sure that we're able to make some impact. In terms of the longer-term impact, the factors that impinge on that are beyond the control of Correctional Services.

One of the things the auditor has highlighted to us is, how do you measure the effectiveness? That's something quite frankly that we within Correctional Services division are trying to identify, something that would be a better measure of our performance so that we can be held accountable: "You spend X number of dollars of the taxpayers' money. Show us that you're deriving some public benefit for the money you're spending." We haven't found that definitive answer yet, but we are working on it.

Mr Gilchrist: I don't mean to appear naïve, but I have a great difficulty looking at the difference between the provincial and the federal parole systems and in fact the justification for the two. Perhaps you can help me out here, because I genuinely have never understood, when the differentiation was made between serious crimes and somewhat less than serious crimes and the decision was made that you either go to a federal institution or reformatory, as it used to be known, why we even have a parole system that second-guesses the judge, who was privy, face to face with the criminal, with the victim, with all the aspects of the crime as they were related by the police officer or whoever else was bringing the charge.

I have a great difficulty understanding why we have a system that, after that judge says, "Okay, it's not serious enough for me to send you to the federal system, where I recognize that there is a mechanism that you could be allowed out after a certain amount of time if you demonstrate you have been rehabilitated. I believe that you should be sent to the reformatory" -- where years ago there was not the option to reduce the sentence and you served your time, normally in some kind of work-related environment. It could be a work farm or something of that nature. I genuinely question, based on the recent history in particular, and just the fact that we continue to have a justice system that makes that differentiation, why we as a government, why we as a society, would want to incur the expense of a parole system which does not have the firsthand access to the victim statements and to the face of the criminal as he was in the dock. I question why we would continue to do that or why we wouldn't, recognizing that the community and halfway programs have by and large failed, and recognizing that the whole point of the justice system, the whole point of the jail system, was to provide that rehabilitation -- I mean, I don't need the John Howard Society or somebody in a halfway house to do it. I thought that's what we we're paying the jails to do. Why do we not have provincial criminals serve out their entire sentence and dispense with the whole idea of a parole board?

Dr Todres: Perhaps I might answer that in this way, Mr Gilchrist. Our minister has, as I'm sure you're aware, commissioned a study on this very issue. As I understand it, Judge Drinkwalter is going about his business. He's begun interviewing key stakeholders and asking some of the profound kinds of questions that you have: "Why? How's it working?" He's quite thorough, as I understand it. He's interviewed a number of people and we're awaiting the results of his work, and the minister and cabinet will have to contemplate what they want to do.

On the second point you raised, although it may have been a supplementary, if I could put it this way, sort of work farms and what people are doing and so on, we are looking very seriously not only at issues of strict discipline facilities for young people, but what works: What can we do to make meaningful the time that is spent, both from society's point of view and from the inmate's point of view?

I had, just as an aside, an interesting conversation with my colleagues in Alberta, who are looking at work camps for very low-risk offenders, and perhaps not exactly the offenders that you might have mentioned. Ms Boyd will know of this of course from another lifetime, but it's fascinating to note that they've taken very low-risk offenders and placed them in essentially low-risk environments, and that the inmates themselves are very happy, or are happier than they were before. They have concrete tasks to do. They have a sense of fulfilment. Society seems to be very pleased. Now in Alberta, they're in bush camps in remote climates. The climate today doesn't seem to be as remote in Ontario.

There are other ways of looking at these things, just veering a little from your question about parole, but it has to do with efficacy: What are we doing to the extent that we're able to do and to the extent that there's a solution? Because weaving back to Ms Boyd's question, we all know there are some boo-boos we can't fix. There are some folks, whether they're in for two years less a day or they're in for life, who have such profound ailments that someone at the end of the system, who is Neil, coming to terms with someone who had an abusive childhood, it's very difficult to contemplate, without becoming theological, how one actually fixes and makes better that person's life for re-entry and to try to reduce risk.

But having said that, we are examining in detail whether there are other methods, and we'll leave it to the cabinet to determine what it is that they want to do ultimately on the side of parole.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr Todres, Mr McKerrell, Mr Sandhu, for being here with us this morning, and thanks as well to your supporting cast. I'm sure that committee members found your presentation and your responses to their questions very helpful.

The committee stands adjourned until 2 o'clock.

The committee recessed from 1202 to 1401.

The Chair: Good afternoon. We're continuing our inquiry into section 3.18 of the 1995 annual report of the Provincial Auditor on the Ontario Parole Board.

Mr Agostino: Mr Chairman, since we have more members of the opposition than the government, would it be in order to move a motion in regard to Bill 26?

Interjections.

Mr Agostino: Wrong committee?

POLICE ASSOCIATION OF ONTARIO

The Chair: We're going to begin this afternoon with a presentation by representatives of the Police Association of Ontario. Good afternoon, gentlemen. We have a half-hour allotted for your presentation, and it would be nice if we had the opportunity to raise some questions with you during that half-hour.

Mr David Griffin: Before we start, are you expecting some of the others to rejoin you? We don't have any problem waiting five minutes if you think people are still going to drift in.

The Chair: The problem is that we have three presentations scheduled for this afternoon, and if we delay with the first, obviously then the delay -- they'll be coming in. I see others walking in as we speak.

Mr Griffin: All right, thank you. Good afternoon. I'm the administrator of the Police Association of Ontario. With me today is Rick Houston, our executive manager. Rick was a police officer in Windsor for 23 years. To my left is Terry Ryan, a director with the Police Association of Ontario. He's been a police officer with the Durham Regional Police force for 23 years and is currently assigned to the bail and parole unit.

Our organization is the umbrella association for Ontario's 23,500 front-line police officers and front-line civilian support staff, and I want to emphasize that at the present time. When we speak about our civilian support staff, we heard some comments this morning in this committee's discussions with members from corrections about police processing of information. I want to reinforce that a lot of our members who don't wear a uniform but do work for police forces are involved in the support of the front-line officers, and their role is no less important in pursuing the administration of justice.

Unfortunately, as we talk today about parole and other corners of this fine institution, the government is looking at making cuts to policing which will affect the very people who are charged with feeding that information to the court services and ultimately to bail and parole. So certainly we want to reinforce that our members are not only involved in police service delivery on the streets, but also in processing the information that's ultimately forwarded to the courts and to the other agencies.

Our members are given the responsibility of keeping our communities safe. Funding cuts and reductions in staff make that job more and more difficult to perform every day.

I'll apologize in advance that we will not have more extensive written submissions to accompany this presentation. Our energies have been, and are going to continue to be, focused on the government cuts to law enforcement and to policing. Despite this government's election promise to guarantee funding for law enforcement, we find ourselves fighting at all levels of government to preserve spending for policing, fighting a broken promise.

For all intents and purposes, the police set the wheels of justice in motion. I guess we could be compared to an intake for the system. It's a complex, unwieldy and archaic system which ultimately exhausts itself through the probation and parole system. These people in probation and parole are the guardians of public safety when it comes to protecting the interests of our communities at the point of release.

It is a system of breaks. Police officers give breaks through warnings. Crown attorneys give breaks -- and there's a typo in the brief -- through plea bargains. Judges give breaks through suspended sentencing and discharges. Parole boards give breaks through incomplete, incompetent decision-making or benefits of the doubt. Probation officers give breaks in part as a result of their increased workload. Offenders that are familiar with this system manipulate these breaks to their advantage, testing the limits of a system of breaks that is fractured beyond repair. It is important that you consider this point when you consider Ontario's system of probation and parole.

This morning, we heard the ministry and the board representatives talking about less serious offences. Less serious offences, in this system, are people who have served two years less a day. We were talking about this during the break, and between the three of us, with well over 60 years of police experience, we can probably count in the low numbers the number of people we have been directly involved with who have been sentenced to more than two years less a day. So when we talk about less serious offenders, don't kid yourself. Lots of people who are in the provincial system have committed serious offences; lots of them have benefited from the very breaks we're talking about.

One example that came to my attention recently was a woman who stabbed a police officer in a bar. It was the officer's bulletproof vest that saved that officer. She was sentenced to six months in custody. So certainly two years less a day does not necessarily represent a less serious offence.

In Ontario, it's a system of progression. Most offenders progress from small-time to bigger things: absolute discharge to suspended sentence to probation, from small-time to heavier sentences. In Ontario, our correction system deals with offenders who are sentenced to a maximum of two years less a day, a deuce less, as it's known in the system. It's one day away from hard time in our federal system, and many a plea bargain for serious crimes hinges at this mark.

The point is that by the time an offender is on parole, and in many cases by the time they're even sentenced to probation, they know the system all too well; they know the breaks. They work the system and they work the breaks and, as recognized in the auditor's report, they know the limits and they test them.

Our members share many concerns with probation officers in this regard. The system isn't working, and sometimes it isn't worth all the effort of process and paperwork to lay a charge and to go to court knowing that the offender is going to walk. So it comes as no surprise to us that one third of all probationers fail to live up to their reporting criteria. Let's face it, one in three can't make it in to report once a month. As Terry Ryan has told me, the reporting system is a joke. He deals with these people every day. People don't show up or they reoffend, sometimes even before their first reporting date. What greater good is being served by placing people in a system that doesn't even promote compliance?

The Police Association of Ontario became involved in the public debate over parole following the murder of Constable Joe MacDonald of the Sudbury Regional Police Force on October 7, 1993. Clinton Suzack and Peter Pennett have since been convicted in the brutal murder of this officer. Clinton Suzack was on parole -- provincial parole -- at the time of the murder. Clinton Suzack was a veteran of the system. Clinton Suzack benefited from a poor plea bargain decision. Clinton Suzack requested a review of a parole board decision that denied him parole, and was successful. Clinton Suzack is not atypical of the level of competence within the parole system. He should not have been released. If the parole board had done its job, Joe MacDonald would still be alive today.

1410

The ministry launched an independent review of this case, conducted by Bonnie Wein, a director and chief counsel of the constitutional law and policy division of the Ministry of the Attorney General. Ms Wein identified failings within the system which are consistent in many instances with the recommendations contained within this auditor's report. If this committee is indeed committed to ensuring that the troubles within the parole board are to be adequately addressed, you will have read Ms Wein's report.

Let me stop here for a moment. A key issue in her report was access to information. We heard that discussed this morning as well. We heard the representatives from the corrections side of the ministry telling us they are trying to get information to assist parole boards. We heard the board representative, the board chair, acknowledging that there's shortcoming and that they're now starting to get information.

I guess the biggest question we have is, why are all of these systems working independently of each other? Why is the police information system independent of the crown's information system, independent of the corrections information system, independent of the parole board's information system? Why aren't the packages used at the time of arrest automatically sent through the system, and if an offender is convicted, why isn't that package sent through automatically to parole and/or corrections? Take out the middleman and standardize the reporting mechanisms. Perhaps Mr Skarica, who's a member of your committee, can assist in this regard.

Following release of the report, the parole board chair, Mr Wadel, a representative from the John Howard Society, was dismissed. Other members have since resigned and new appointments have been made, with a greater balance of experience for those people being appointed. The system, however, does not support the changes being brought forward. Public confidence has yet to be restored.

In our review of activities to date, we find that changes within the parole board itself have been moving in the right direction. Certainly, the political winds of change have brought about new directions in the operations of the parole board. More can still be done.

We applaud the passage of a Victims' Bill of Rights, entitling victims to be informed of release considerations and to be offered the opportunity to make submissions before the parole board. However, it's obvious from the information you heard this morning that this has yet to come to fruition. Victims, police, the parole officer and the crown should also have an ability to initiate a review of a parole board decision where parole has been granted against their objections. Presently, only the inmate can request a review if release is denied.

Clinton Suzack was originally denied his parole and requested a review. On review, the board granted parole despite incomplete information and opposition from both the parole officer and the police. But once his release was granted, there were no further checks and balances. There was no ability for the crown, the police, the parole officer or the victims to appeal.

Steps should be taken to require increased accountability for parole board decisions. Written reasons outlining the criteria assessed should be compelled to ensure the board members perform their dirties -- duties -- in a thorough and prudent manner. Sorry. That was somewhat Freudian, I guess.

I'd just like to pause there. In looking at the auditor's report and the response from the parole board on this very point, it seems the parole board has sidestepped this issue completely and suggested that corrections produce more information, but they have not undertaken to ensure they will document their decision-making criteria.

We're encouraged by efforts within the ministry to review the parole system and look forward to the opportunity to address our observations with respect to Ontario's parole system at that level.

One concern, however, that is worthy of note today relates to the increased use of extended temporary absence passes as a means to "enhance release options for provincial incarcerates." This is nothing but a backdoor approach to managing our corrections system and should be brought to a stop immediately.

Veterans of the system in Ontario's correctional facilities are now forgoing parole application in the hopes that they will subsequently qualify for an extended TAP. Why? Under the TAPs, there's no supervision, no conditions, and as we understand it, offenders will finish their sentence quicker. You see, while on the TAP, they are credited for time served as if incarcerated and qualify for mandatory release with no conditions after completing two thirds of their sentence, as opposed to being paroled earlier, with conditions, for the balance of their sentence. It's a shell game, and the inmates are turning the shells.

Another concern -- and this isn't in the written material but it was raised this morning -- is the issue of releasing pictures of high-risk offenders when they're released. We've heard regularly that freedom of information is standing in the way of community safety. Change the law. You people have the power: Change it. If freedom of information is the only reason you can't alert citizens in our communities that they are at risk from certain offenders, the law is obviously what's standing in the way and needs to be changed.

Turning to the issue of community services or, to be more specific, supervision, we are less than confident that the objectives are being met. Many of the probation and parole officers we have talked to share our disenchantment with the justice system and its effectiveness in deterring and reforming inappropriate behaviour. They too are trying to cope with reductions in staff, budget cuts, decreased supervision and support and increasing workloads. Many are forced to deal with cases on a priority basis, which is demonstrated time and time again in the auditor's report. Let's look at some examples.

First, non-compliance. The auditor has identified that conditions are not being met time and time again, yet there is little enforcement. How does the ministry respond? Management solution: Increase the red tape and paperwork, thus reducing the operational time available to effectively supervise offenders. Fill out more reports.

Second, with respect to reporting, as noted earlier, one third of offenders in the sample missed three or more reports with little or no intervention. Again, the response entails more red tape and paperwork but little constructive change. Alternatives to prosecution have to be established to ensure compliance. Taking offenders to court is not a viable solution in all cases, yet some enforcement powers are obviously needed. Continuing the pattern of breaks is not the answer.

Third, community service orders, treatment and restitution -- again a disturbing recurring theme of non-compliance, lack of intervention and managers responding with red tape and paperwork. A key concern of the parole officers we have spoken with is the struggle with their increasing workload and the resulting inability to properly manage their cases. This is a recurring theme in our justice system and promises to be exacerbated by further spending cuts.

The ministry has indicated that it is developing a workload index. We're concerned that the same people currently responsible for monitoring performance, as identified in the auditor's report, may now be charged with the responsibility of establishing and monitoring workload standards. The track record they have demonstrated for caseload reviews leaves little sense of comfort that the problems with workload will be adequately addressed.

I'm sure you people must have had a similar reaction to us when you read the auditor's report and see the five examples, the five different areas that were shown, and see that in two cases people aren't doing their job, haven't even tried. They've said, "This isn't going to work, so I'm not even going to try." If those are the managers in the system, what can you really expect from the people who are working beneath them? It's one thing to commit to measure workload, but it is a far cry from recognizing that more resources are required to effectively perform the job that needs to be done.

1420

The solution is not to turn to outside sources such as community resources and volunteers to address these failings. Clinton Suzack was sent to a Salvation Army facility in Hamilton as part of his release plan. While there, he was able to obtain drugs and a gun, the gun he used to murder Constable Joe MacDonald. As Ms Wein noted, "The Salvation Army program was not a secure program and in some respects is known as an `easy out' to inmates." Again, they know the system better than us; they know the breaks. Two weeks later, Suzack walked away and a warrant was subsequently issued for his arrest. Four weeks after that, Constable MacDonald was dead, failed by the very system he dedicated his life to defend.

Much has been said and done since that time. However, the system is still flawed, budgets are spread too thin and cases continue to fall through the gaping cracks. Much more still has to be done to ensure that the criminal justice system in Ontario meets the needs and expectations of the citizens it serves.

Cutting budgets of police forces and others in the criminal justice system will only serve one constituency group: the criminal element. We're sure this is not the electorate who believed the Mike Harris government's pledge to guarantee funding for law enforcement. Now it seems we are being betrayed.

Before we wrap up, two or three points. First, we heard the former Attorney General speak this morning about lack of commitment. "Lack of commitment" is a descriptive term, and perhaps in her case a reflective one. Lack of commitment from government to government for proper funding, staffing and technologies in the justice system has led us to where we are today: lack of commitment to the priorities of the citizens of Ontario. This government promised to change that. They, like those before them, are now demonstrating a lack of commitment.

We enjoy coming to this building. We find it very serene in this environment, sitting here, anecdotally looking at incidents --

Mr Gilles Pouliot (Lake Nipigon): Mr Chairman, on a point of order: With the highest of respect -- and I appreciate your dedication -- my distinguished colleague, I think it will be acquiesced by all present, in our system has done the very best, to the very best of her ability. For her commitment to be questioned, I see it as a personal affront, and I want to make this point.

The Chair: That is not a point of order.

Mr Griffin: I offered to wait until she came.

My second point is that this facility has a very serene, inviting atmosphere for contemplation of all the issues that face this government and the citizens of Ontario. Perhaps this committee should hold this meeting in one of your correctional facilities and see first hand some of the people we're talking about reforming, see first hand some of the people who are serving two years less a day. Perhaps we'd have a somewhat different view of our justice system and the product we're dealing with.

I've probably said enough. I'll ask my colleagues if there's anything they'd like to add, and we'd certainly welcome any questions.

Mr Terry Ryan: I have been a working police officer all my life and will continue to do so. I'm very disappointed in the governments in the last 20 years. When you talk about a non-violent crime, talk about a break and enter -- I'm going to relate a true story to you, because the truth always rings much better than some of the flowery statements we had earlier today by the parole board. They made Elvis Stojko look like a half-miler.

I went to a little place called Wilfrid one night with a partner. There was a lady there with a three-year-old baby and a one-year-old baby, and unfortunately a gentleman decided to go in that house while they were still there. I attended at the scene with my partner. We went in and we confronted the gentleman in the basement, and at that time a violent struggle took place. I'm fortunate to say that the victim of that struggle was not me or my partner but the culprit involved.

The point of this is not that he was there; it was the fear of that lady. Her husband happened to be a fireman -- I did not know this at the time -- working in Scarborough, protecting the citizens of Scarborough. She was petrified, so petrified that she sold her house and moved away. That's a non-violent crime that you people see fit -- not you people personally, but the people in government -- to let these people out. What you don't realize -- and you sit here in this nice room and it's nice and safe here -- is that these people are out and about every day, every night, and they report in to me, exactly like Mr Griffin said, once a month. The other 29 days, they don't report in to me. And they report in to probation and parole once a month, and that's all they do, because those people are worked to the nines.

When I hear that we're going to have cutbacks -- I don't see how we can have cutbacks because we haven't got enough people now to deal with the criminal element. In my years of policing and in the last couple of years, we must be doing something right because we certainly have a lot more criminals; so the system is producing a lot of subjects, I must say that, and it is going to continue to do so. Who is going to hire these people? If any of these gentlemen or ladies in this room own a business, you're going to ask for a Criminal Code check when you go to hire somebody -- if you're smart you will -- and if you have 2,000 applying, why would you hire someone who has a criminal record for theft or break and enter when you can hire some young person who has never been in trouble?

In fairness to the system, these people are not incorporated back into the system and never will be, because their life of crime is the only thing they know. I'm going to tell you people, the first thing they ask me when they come in to report in is: "Terry, where's the welfare office? I want to get my $200." They get $200 the first day they get out of jail. Did you know that? We give it to them. It's a great country. I'm really proud of Ontario.

The Chair: Gentlemen, thank you very much. We have an option here and I'll put this to the committee members. The clerk has advised me that our last presenters are scheduled to appear at 3, which would take us to 3:30. If you wish, we could create some time for questioning, if committee members are agreeable.

Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): Our next group is at 3?

The Chair: Sorry. Our next group is at 2:30. Mr Stewart, with your indulgence, if we can delay your presentation we can then have five minutes per caucus, beginning with Mr Colle.

Mr Colle: By the way, Mr Chair, I will recommend to the committee that we do have a session of this committee in a correctional institution. I hope the committee will take that under advisement. I'd like to suggest that we do have one meeting, perhaps not in this time slot but later on, in a correctional institution. I think this is a long-range, very comprehensive issue we're looking at and I think that's a good recommendation. I'd like to pursue that, if the committee would agree to that, later on.

Something that's very real in my community is that an individual right now has been released under provincial parole and he's a convicted paedophile in the United States and in Canada. I've been dealing with the police officers in my area, and they're caught between a rock and a hard place because they can't give out any information about this individual. Part of the conditions for his release have been that he not be in school yards or parks, but the individual has rented an apartment across the street from a school which is about maybe 10 metres from the school yard.

How can a community or elected representatives deal with this type of problem? Is there any way of advising or alerting or keeping an eye on this individual so he doesn't commit another offence or that if he does violate the parole conditions, the authorities are made aware of it? How do we do this? If the person's living across the street from a school, you would think the parole officer would say this guy has violated, if not the letter of the law, the intent of the release conditions. This is the second time this has happened, by the way, in the last year in my community. We had another individual the same way. What suggestions do you have?

Mr Griffin: I guess there are a couple of points. First of all, there are people, and I think this demonstrates it, in our communities who are beyond treatment, are beyond rehabilitation and are going to reoffend. They serve their sentences. The crown, the system deals with them as best we can while they're in the system, but at some point they are going to be released and it's a matter of waiting until they reoffend.

1430

One of the difficulties is that the letter of the law doesn't necessarily reflect the desire of the community, but we seem to be in a system that has gone from concern with the rights of the community versus the rights of the offenders. Let's face it, I think we would all agree -- or most of us anyway -- that it's ludicrous that somebody with that behavioural problem would be living next door to your child's school. If we can't protect our children from those people, then certainly as a system we're not serving our communities properly.

For the police, the response is twofold. One is to alert the community, and we've discussed the problems there and the law that's standing in the way, and the second would be then to put 24-hour surveillance on that person until you can find them in a position where they've breached their parole, hopefully before they actually are in a position to reoffend. That's a pretty expensive proposition. When we talk about the cost of parole and the cost of incarceration, consider the cost of police officers monitoring somebody's behaviour day and night, 24 hours a day.

Mr Pouliot: Welcome, one more time. I have, gentlemen, three brief questions. As you are most aware, Douglas Drinkwalter is presently conducting a review of the workings of the parole board in Ontario. Do you intend or have you been asked to become involved and to make recommendations?

Mr Griffin: We haven't been asked. Granted, our attention has been somewhat focused in other areas in recent weeks, but certainly we intend to seek out the opportunity to make submissions to Mr Drinkwalter.

Mr Pouliot: Being the foot-soldiers, 60 years of expertise, plus the members, of course, who you represent, it's imperative you should have your day and your recommendations.

My second question: We all hear of budget cuts today. In a broadly summarized form, and sometimes our anxiety leads to fear and rumours take on extraordinary proportions, do you feel that you are adequately funded to do the work you are asked to do?

Mr Griffin: No.

Mr Pouliot: My last question: I say this regardless of political philosophy because as you have so well indicated, and you've mentioned 20 years -- no one will take the quote of 20 years to task -- the fact remains that it's been a long time since you've been demanding what the public actually is demanding. Do you have an open-door policy? Do you feel you have ready access to or a relationship with solicitors general, regardless of party affiliation or party stripe? Do you feel it's easy to access people?

Mr Griffin: To be fair, I think we have had the ear of all three governments, the past three governments as we know them, as far as the ability to consult with the Solicitor General and be consulted in decisions that affect police in the community is concerned. To what degree those consultations result in change is another issue, and I would go one step further and say that often the Solicitor General is limited in what they, as a minister, can deliver of behalf of their government. In some cases the bean counters have taken over the asylum and they're ultimately the people who are making the decisions.

Mr Pouliot: Thank you kindly.

Mr Skarica: Actually, I have a partisan question. I was a crown attorney in the last 12 years and I noticed over the last five years when the NDP was in government that there was a total focus away from property type crimes such as break and enters and so on and so forth. I've seen the stats now, and this is true across Ontario, that if you wanted to do a break and enter you had a 1 in 10 chance of getting caught; if you wanted to do an auto theft I think it was even 1 in 12, and that was consistent throughout the province.

What was happening when these guys were released on parole -- they're not stupid. They know that. With these reporting deficiencies and the fact that they would never be arrested if they turned to property crime, if you look at the stats, there's a massive increase, in fact a doubling, of those types of crimes. Arson: There's about a 1% chance of getting caught. What has that focus away from investigating and prosecuting break-and-enters, thefts and arson had? What impact has that had on recidivism?

Mr Griffin: I'll allow my colleagues to jump in, and I know Terry's probably more familiar than I, but I'd also make the observation that it's not just that it's not a priority provincially, but that budget cuts at the local level prevent police forces from even attempting enforcement. In most cases, we don't even send police officers to investigate property crimes. I would hesitate to guess that in most communities in Ontario now, if you were to report a simple property offence such as theft from your vehicle or a mischief to your home or your business, you will be hard pressed to get a police officer to even attend.

This morning we were at the Strict Discipline Task Force meeting, making a presentation there, and we were asked what we thought about community policing. Really, our response was pretty blunt: How do we teach our children the value of our property and the value of respect for the property of others when if somebody takes their property -- I think the most frequent example would be a bicycle -- they won't even see a police officer? If you phone the police station, somebody will invite you to make a report over the telephone and they will invite you to come in, in two weeks' time, to see if anybody's turned your bicycle in. Is that community policing? What does that teach our children about the value of other people's property?

From my perspective the question is quite correct, that the priority has shifted right away, that the resources aren't there for us to deal with that and that we have a rob Peter to pay Paul approach to policing in this province. If the flavour today is going to be impaired driving, we will concentrate efforts on impaired driving but at the sacrifice of something else.

In relation to Ms Boyd's comments this morning, if the enforcement priority of the day is domestic assault -- I would respectfully submit that it was and certainly was carried out as the priority -- we take resources from something else, either impaired driving, drugs or what have you and focus them on that. What we gain in one area, we take from somewhere else. If you want true community policing, then you're going to have to add additional resources to ensure that you're not promoting one concern at the sacrifice of another.

Mr Ryan: Mr Skarica, you're a former crown, for 12 years; you're obviously not practising now. I want to tell you that since you've left it's Monty Hall makes a deal in Ontario. Truth or Consequences is not even close to the courtroom system now, because they come in and what people want to look at here, and I'm very serious when I make these comments, is that if you look at somebody on probation and parole now, somebody who's had a sexual assault and did two years less a day, but the original charges were rape, assault with bodily harm, break and enter --

Interjection: Murder.

Mr Ryan: -- murder, and they make a deal, that person, for the sake of the crown and for the sake of the police and the sake of everyone, gets a deal. But as people who are involved in that, if you know the circumstances, when you go to look at that person's criminal record, you cannot look at what was dealt away. That is gone. That cannot even be looked at. That's not reality, because the only reason that he got that deal was because we saved money and time by making a deal. So the serious offence that he committed -- I had some real problems here today in the back of the room not to come up and speak about the parole system.

I'll give you an example of a guy yesterday who came in on parole -- no names -- and he was impaired, causing some minor damage to people's bodies. Then, when I checked his criminal record, unfortunately, since 1972 the only time he wasn't in trouble was when he was incarcerated in our provincial jails. Every time he got out he did something wrong, from robbery to rape, to B and E, to assaulting police, to assaulting citizens. He's two years less a day, but in reality he's not two years less a day.

1440

We have a system in Durham where we put him on a computer and we pinpoint where our criminals live. We're getting better. What happens is, we may have Joe Smith living here, but all of a sudden there's about 40 little pinpricks around Joe Smith. You know what? Joe Smith may be breaking into your houses when you go to work. "I'm sorry, but he reported in once a month. I'm really pleased about that. And if he had an electrical little thing on him, why can't he go for a walk in his neighbourhood?"

This is ridiculous. You people listen to these people. These people are spinners. As if an electrical appliance is going to stop somebody from doing a crime. It's like giving somebody an order from a judge, a provincial court judge -- you'll appreciate this -- that there's a restraining order. Here's a piece of paper. I mean, it's white, it's got "Official Document" on it. It says you cannot go near that woman. You know what? He pulls an O.J. and he goes over there and kills her. But we had that restraining order in place. Boy, that was important.

Mr Colle: You're not saying O.J. was guilty, are you?

Interjections.

Mr Griffin: I think one of the points that Terry just reminded me of that I missed in the presentation is that they talk about risk assessment and classifying risk. I think it's really important, as Terry points out, that you can't do that on what the offence is. You have to look at the circumstances of the incident. I think Suzack, and if you have the opportunity to read Ms Wein's report, spells that out in great detail. Just because the person was convicted of impaired driving doesn't mean there weren't a whole host of other incidents which may include a police pursuit, may include violent behaviour, that aren't reflected by ticking a charge category on a box.

The Chair: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and for your presentation.

Mr Agostino: On a point of order, Mr Chair: Are we going to somewhere deal with Mr Colle's motion, or what's the process for that?

The Chair: We can do that after the last presenter.

JOHN HOWARD SOCIETY

The Chair: The next presentation is on behalf of the John Howard Society. Good afternoon, sir, and welcome to the committee.

Mr Graham Stewart: Thank you very much. I would like to begin by thanking you for inviting me to come and present my views with respect to parole, and particularly the audit that was conducted on parole.

Mr Stewart: My name is Graham Stewart. I'm the executive director of the John Howard Society of Ontario. Ontario is the provincial umbrella organization for John Howard societies which provide social services to 17 Ontario communities.

Just a bit of background to give some reference: We are sometimes referred to in the media as a prisoners' rights group, and I'd like to make it clear that we're not. We're a citizens' based group; we're a charity; we're represented by some 5,000 or 6,000 donors and members within our communities.

The John Howard Society was begun in Ontario by the chief of police of Toronto, General Draper, in 1929 because he felt that police actions to arrest and detain were undermining the people who were leaving jail under circumstances where they had no assistance or opportunity to become part of mainstream life again. He did not think that rehabilitation and police enforcement were mutually exclusive, and we don't either. We think that the whole nature of the criminal justice system is that people must be held accountable and there is punishment, but we also must be concerned about the conditions of release and the risk that the person presents in the community, and address ways that will actually reduce that risk.

Much of the talk about risk, I would like to begin, is the risk associated with releasing a person earlier than he would otherwise get out of jail. Of course, it's self-apparent that if a person's in jail he is less likely to commit a crime; at least that affects the community. That's self-apparent. At the same time, I think there's a general recognition that a few months in jail is not going to do very much to reduce the risk that the person poses ultimately anyway.

The fundamental question which was asked this morning but not answered, but I think is key, is that unless parole release actually reduces the likelihood of a criminal offence through some kind of rehabilitative effort, then there really is no rationale for parole at all. That is the assumption.

With that in mind, I'd like to read you what the purpose of parole is, because this was missing from the report of the auditor. I think it's very important, if we're going to be talking about how effective parole is, to begin with what its purpose is. According to the act the purpose of conditional release is "to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by means of decisions on the timing and conditions of release that will best facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens."

There are two notions there. One is that it contributes to a safe society, doesn't work alone; there's nothing about a parole decision per se that's either rehabilitative or protective. Second, the mechanism is by facilitating rehabilitation. I would like to say that refusing parole per se does not offer very much in the way of public protection so much as it's an admission that there's absolutely nothing the state can do to reduce the risk this person presents. In other words, refusal of parole at this point is saying, "There's nothing that we can do but simply leave the person till the termination of his sentence." I think that's a fairly serious decision to make and one which should not be taken lightly.

Before talking about the rehabilitative potential of parole, I would like for a moment to think about the degree of protection that extended incarceration provides in Ontario. This has already been mentioned; we're talking about those who are serving less than two years. Some may feel that some of those people should be serving more than two, but the jurisdiction we're talking about is those who are serving less than two years. They're eligible for parole at one third, and they would be released on remission at two thirds, so parole has an opportunity to intervene in that middle third.

The maximum period of time is eight months; the usual period of time is two to three months. Only 11% of those in provincial institutions actually serve more than six months in the first place, so we're talking about a very short window of opportunity for parole to become involved. If they decide to deny, the person, on average, will stay in jail for a couple more months and then be released with no supervision, no resources, no treatment, no rehabilitation, no attempt to reduce the risk he presents.

There's a couple of points I'd like to make. I'd like to go back to the question of, does parole actually reduce reoffending? Does it reduce the risk by its action? First of all, parole in Ontario as it operates today, with the people in our system, has not been evaluated, so we don't know. The research has not been done. One would think that with the public interest and concern we have about crime, the criminal justice system would be a prime area for exhaustive research, but in terms of our operation, it's not there.

It's more, I would submit, than simply having better data on reoffending of those on parole. That data by itself will not allow us to evaluate parole. You have to look at it in terms of control groups if you're trying to see if there's any difference. For instance, you can have a very high success rate if the only people you release on parole are people you know will not commit offences, but that may not demonstrate that parole is worthwhile at all. On the other hand, if you can significantly reduce offending of higher-risk groups, even though you have a failure rate in fact you may be reducing victimizations. That's important.

1450

The second point is the effectiveness of parole. It depends more on what happens during the period a person is under supervision than the decision of the board itself. For the board to be making decisions without being sure that there are the necessary resources to actually effect some kind of rehabilitation will always put the parole board at the point where it appears to fail.

The third thing is, there has been a lot of research generally about programs, services and approaches, strategies to try to reduce reoffending, and there are four points I'd like to make for which I think the literature is compelling, if you read it and look at the analysis that's been done.

The first one is that relying on imprisonment alone, without treatment or services, will increase recidivism. If you only use imprisonment, the chance of a person committing a new crime increases. That shouldn't surprise us.

The second thing is that poorly run rehabilitation services increase recidivism. They're not neutral; poor services increase crime.

The third is that intensive programs, even the proper programs, directed at low-risk offenders increase recidivism.

The fourth point, and there's no doubt in the literature about this: Properly designed and run programs that address moderate- to higher-risk offenders and target the particular factors in their personality that can be modified and which are related to crime can reduce reoffending by as much as 50%.

Much of this research has been done in Ontario. We have some of the best researchers in the world in Ontario, James Bonta, Don Andrews, Paul Gendreau and others, who have done extensive research, including a lot within the Ministry of Correctional Services, and indeed have been key in the development of the LSI, which was referred to this morning. They're in demand in jurisdictions around the world and I think what they're saying is very important, and I would hope that if there's really serious doubts about the potential of programs to reduce recidivism, you will have some of these people appear before you.

The problem is that when we focus entirely on the risk of releasing people, we ignore the risk of doing nothing about their problems. What is the risk associated with not attempting to carry out any kind of rehabilitative behaviour change initiative?

Policy directives to the parole board today are driven by sensational incidents; they are not driven by success rates. Approximately 85% of those on Ontario parole complete their paroles, we've found, successfully, and of those who fail, approximately 2% have been convicted of criminal offences.

There's some reason to be optimistic. There are three million people in Canada with criminal records. There are 30,000 in jail. It's absolutely wrong, absolutely misguided to assume that once an offender, always an offender. It's simply not true, and it's very destructive to allow ourselves to fall into that.

Those who work in the system itself become the most jaundiced about it because they often only see the failures. The example another person gave once is that if you work in a bar you begin to come to the conclusion over the years that everyone's an alcoholic. If you're working with offenders and you're working with offenders coming into the system, you only see the failures and it's very hard to remain optimistic. That's why the research is important, that's why we need to do it.

Parole avoids risk rather than reduces risk by only focusing on what's considered the very low-risk people. Those, by definition, are people who really don't need parole. If you're not going to commit an offence, parole will not change behaviour, hopefully, in those circumstances. It has to be focused on something else. Risk avoidance has become, I would suggest, the key word in parole decision-making, rather than risk reduction. Much has been made of collecting information about the person's background; of course it's self-evident that to make informed decisions, you have to have information and it has to be complete and it has to be accurate.

But what seems to be missed with all this is, what do you do with the information once you have it? It seems that all you do is decide that you're going to take the people we're most worried about and forget about them. Well, that may avoid the risk to the establishment of having appeared to have failed, but it doesn't reduce the risk to the community; it doesn't make it safer for you and me when we go home at night.

With that type of logic, the perfect parole board is a parole board that releases no one. There's no other body I can think of that can avoid criticism by conscientiously avoiding accomplishing its purpose.

The Ontario Board of Parole is the most conservative parole board in Canada. Other provincial parole boards grant paroles at a rate that's 50% higher, approximately, than the current granting practices in Ontario. Parole in Ontario accounts for approximately 8.6% of time served in Ontario. It's not a monstrous program; it's, if anything, a pilot. It only considers 11% of the people who go into these institutions and completely ignores those who are serving less than six months, which is the great bulk.

The interesting thing is that although all the evidence suggests that a properly run parole system is far more effective than continued incarceration, it's also far less expensive. Corrections may be the one ministry in the current environment that can actually be much more effective and at the same time much less expensive.

I have a number of recommendations I'd like to make with respect to parole to summarize my perspective.

The first is that I believe appointments to the parole board must be distanced from the political process.

Second, appointments must reflect the knowledge or the willingness to train people to understand what the strategies of risk reduction actually are. It makes no point to have a hospital in which one's diseases are diagnosed but no one has the knowledge or the authority to effect any treatment.

Parole board members, I believe, should be far more accountable to the parole chair, and that's one of the reasons the appointments must be distanced from the political process.

The decisions to deny parole should be justified with exactly the same detailed scrutiny as the decisions to grant parole, because we are talking about trading risks here, not avoiding risks.

Programs and services should be directed primarily towards those who present a moderate to a higher risk. A range of professionally designed and operated programs should be developed in the community which address the particular factors, based on the best research available.

Finally, the temporary absence programs and the parole process in Ontario should be combined and rationalized as a gradual leave process in order to ensure that there's some access to service and ability to reduce the use of incarceration for your short-term offenders. Thank you very much.

Mr Pouliot: Mr Stewart, you have a commitment and a beauty of the soul which is seldom matched. You have a reputation as a good person, and anyone who has been associated with you, knows of you, cannot deny, and you're to be commended.

You may not like me very much at the moment, sir, or in about two minutes from now. I am torn between what seems to be so commonsensical: your philosophy, the way you see things; I'm absorbed by your dedication. But 15 minutes ago I heard from foot soldiers, from people who view the street in a different way than I do working in my office. Suffice it that I'm a citizen, and I am frankly troubled when I feel I cannot reconcile the philosophy with my safety as a citizen.

I too am more than appalled, I'm shocked, if I see someone with a track record, with a likelihood to reoffend, for it is written: You don't have to roll the dice; you can almost guarantee, and it's not stereotyping. I say, what's that person, he or she, doing on the street? What do I pay taxes for? I want protection.

If I were a police officer serving and protecting in this environment and I could see the turnstile kind of operation, and people using and abusing the system and playing games with the system -- the previous presenter made the analogy, and I think with validity, of shell games, but they control the shells -- I would quit my job. If I were a crown attorney, I wouldn't wait until after the election to return to being a crown attorney. I would cease being a crown attorney when I'm faced again with the same clients, because those people are recidivists.

I have to blend this, yet I understand that people must be given a chance to re-enter, to become like the others one more time, that in the majority of cases, and I don't think there is any denying, it has been a success story.

I have one question, sir. What are the benefits of having our own Ontario Board of Parole?

Mr Stewart: I'm sorry that it is so hard to reconcile that, although I understand it. Everyone's anxious about crime and no one's excluded from that. The tragedy is that we have such little belief that anything ever works. But the reality is that we have people who are coming out of jail; we don't sentence everyone to life. Under those conditions we have to say, what are the best circumstances and how do we approach that release most effectively?

1500

The advantage of having a parole board in Ontario I think only exists if the Ontario parole board is somehow unique to Ontario. I think one of the problems we have is that we don't distinguish between the provincial system and the federal system very well.

I think it's a very different matter to assess risk and decide not to release a person who's serving life than it is for someone who's serving another two months. The reality is that risk is imminent: He is coming into the community; what do we want to do? I think one of the advantages of having a parole system is that you have that focus.

The purpose of predicting risk is not just to identify whether an offence will be committed, but presumably it's to tie it to some kind of initiative that will reduce the likelihood of that offence. Otherwise, it has really accomplished very little.

So my argument would be that if you can have a made-in-Ontario parole with a focus on what we're trying to do in Ontario and recognize the differences in terms of the time that we're working with, then I think we could have a better system. But I think having it as sort of an imitation of the federal system, which deals with much more serious offenders, much more serious consequences and generates much more public alarm generally, is a problem for this board.

Mr Skarica: There was a great deal of lamenting by the opposition -- I'm only talking about halfway houses for a moment -- about that when they were closed down. But one of the things I found disturbing was that many of the halfway houses -- for example, there was one on Bold Street in Hamilton. Were you familiar with that one?

Mr Stewart: Yes.

Mr Skarica: Sexual assault offenders would be sent there and given parole. I remember once looking for one and he was in Toronto somewhere, working, but nobody there seemed to know where he was or what he was doing. What was really disturbing about that was that when I looked across the street, there was a school yard. I find it shocking that somebody convicted for sexual assault would be sent to a halfway house that was across the street from this school yard.

We shouldn't send this person who was convicted for sexual assault to this halfway house which is right across from the school yard. My question simply is, were there any types of decisions made along those lines?

Mr Stewart: There's no reason there couldn't be.

Mr Skarica: But were there?

Mr Stewart: I don't know the circumstances. There's nothing in the system that says you can't take that into consideration. Indeed, you should, and if that happened in those circumstances, it sounds on the face of it like it should have. There is all sorts of authority and jurisdiction within parole to make those kinds of determinations and decide that this person will not be permitted to go to this house or that house and for the same reasons you might decide not to accept the person.

Mr Skarica: The other thing I found disturbing with these people there -- and granted, there was only a handful in the halfway house -- they didn't know where this person was or even worked. I found that kind of disturbing. You would think that you'd want to know where the person was during the day and have them check in once in a while, or check up on them once in a while, but that wasn't done either, to my knowledge.

Mr Stewart: Yes, and it should be. You're right. Those are legitimate operational concerns.

Mr Skarica: Another thing I found disturbing was that if you went there and you had to come back at 10 o'clock, then if you came back at 10:30, that was okay and there wasn't a strict time frame. For example, if you had to go to jail and you had to check in at 11 o'clock, if you did weekends, intermittent-type sentences, if you were a half-hour late you were charged with being unlawfully at large. But what I found was that after you were convicted and you were sent to a halfway house and you'd done your time and this is a break that you're getting, if you showed up at 10:30 and you had to be there at 10 or if you were an hour late, nothing happened to you. Perhaps you could comment on that.

Mr Stewart: I think we could go on forever with incidents where systems don't work well, and I don't think it's just corrections that have those particular problems. They were throughout the criminal justice system.

I guess what I would say, though, is that a halfway house is not a jail. A halfway house is a halfway house and by definition is less secure than an institution. If we don't want the person to be in a less secure institution, then we don't put him in a halfway house. So by virtue of that, some of the regulations that might be enforced very rigidly in a jail might be enforced somewhat less rigidly in a halfway house, depending on the circumstances.

But if we want to use a residential facility as a stepping stone between complete security and the community, then I think we always have to recognize that by definition it's going to be less secure. The question is whether it's worthwhile.

The fact is that a halfway house can, with appropriate people in some circumstances, provide a worthwhile service. It can have a positive effect. If people are selected properly for it and if the programs are there and if the houses are run properly, they can contribute positively to the likelihood of the person not reoffending.

Mr Skarica: One other thing about halfway houses that I found disturbing on occasion was that you would often see two people charged with an offence, three people charged with an offence, and often as not they would have met each other in jail or they would have met each other in a halfway house and off they go doing a crime together.

Do you have any statistics on how many people actually went to these halfway houses and were able to complete their -- say they had a six-month and they had to be there for two months, they got out after two months, typically, and then they would be in a halfway house for two months and then they would get their two months for free time. How often would those people commit crimes with other people in that halfway house? Do you have any statistics on that?

Mr Stewart: I can't tell you how many times they committed crimes with other people in the halfway house. I know that in fact the offence rate is very low for all people in halfway houses. Even in the federal system overall, where the paroles are very long compared to the provincial system, we're talking about 12% who commit a crime at all during the period of their parole. For halfway houses it's much lower than that.

The issue of association is important, though, and that's one of the problems with incarceration. If there's anyplace where you're going to associate with other offenders it's in jail, and if there's any indication that there's one way of maintaining a criminal lifestyle, a criminal mentality, it is in fact through association. So one of the most effective ways of trying to change people's behaviour is to make sure they're not in association with other offenders.

Mr Agostino: I just want to ask about that line between having to assess what is in the best interest: either the risk that individual poses to the community or the rehabilitation element of that early release. It's something that obviously you have to come to grips with and the parole board has to come to grips with and the police and the justice system have to come to grips with in reality. It ties into, first of all, which way should we lean towards when we have a case that someone is a potential high risk to the community? You release this individual without any real protection, without any real opportunity for the community to know that this convicted paedophile or convicted child molester is now moving in two doors down from a school.

On one hand you have the system being handcuffed and the police being handcuffed from the point of view that they can't release that information without there being libel on one hand; then you've got a parole system that's saying, "But it's best to integrate this person back into the community, so this is why we released him." So you've got the system slanted away from community safety, and the rehabilitation of the individual takes precedence. I'd like you to comment on that particular aspect.

Secondly, as a tradeoff, for the parole board to continue to do what it's doing in regard to sometimes releasing high-risk individuals, would you support giving the police the authority and the power to make decisions and judgement calls in releasing pictures, information and details about where someone is moving if they believe there's a risk to that community?

Mr Stewart: I'll deal with the latter first. No, I'm opposed to the releasing of names and information by the police. I'll tell you why. We have to ask ourselves, when the name of an offender is released, what is the reaction that we expect, and particularly, what's the reaction we expect to the offender? I don't think it's hard to imagine that it's virtually impossible for offenders to ever break free of criminal activity if they're in an environment of constant harassment and public attention. What will happen and what has happened, what's happened in Canada and what's happened in the United States, is that inevitably the person goes underground. He's not going to stand there in the downtown streets while his name is being put forward. He goes someplace else.

There's not a shred of evidence that says identifying the person reduces his risk. All it's doing is shoving him from one community to the next. So what we might have had in place within one community is that we know who he is; we know where he is. If he's under some form of supervision we probably could require that he be involved in some kind of relapse prevention program. If an offence takes place in the area we have some idea who to look for. We've got a number of mechanisms which could actually reduce the risk. But if you simply open it up for some kind of public harassment, which is really what it amounts to, the person will move someplace else, and that's what's happened. I've never had anybody explain to me how this kind of public identification removes the risk of this individual and I don't understand what interest the police have in shoving a risk from one community to another.

1510

Mr Agostino: Can I just give you one brief example, though. In Hamilton we had a situation where a picture was released. The information was released. The police took the risk of doing it, and that individual was recognized, by parents, hanging around a park. The police were called and this individual was hauled back in. That is exactly what happened in that case as a result of the police risking that and a parent recognizing that individual hanging around a park.

Mr Stewart: I can give you all sorts of examples where people have gone underground, taken off and gone into other communities. The most difficult problem we have in criminal justice is the kind of problem you're talking about, the person people are very frightened of whom they see as high-risk. The limitation we have essentially in a democratic society is detaining people not so much for what they've done, but for what we think they're going to do in the future. That's a serious problem.

I don't think we will ever have, in Canada, a situation where everyone whom anyone is afraid of is in detention, so we're always going to have to be making decisions about the circumstances of their release. There are always the people who are of concern. Under those circumstances we're trading risks, and the decision of the parole board, I would submit, is to decide whether the short-term increased risk of releasing the person before his release is counterbalanced by the potential to reduce his risk in the longer term by changing his behaviour.

In order to do that in an informed way, that board needs a considerable body of research. It can't just be done on a whim, it can't be done on a guess, and it shouldn't be criticized on a whim or a guess. What I'm saying is that there's a lot of information now, a lot of research that has been done that gives very good guidance and can reduce reoffending. It just seems so palpably obvious to me that if we're trying to develop policy, we base it on the very best information that we have.

Mr Sergio: I'll try quickly to formulate a question and make some comment as well. It seems that if you are frustrated and we are frustrated and those who have to defend the public are more frustrated, then we have a system that is full of cracks. It's a system where the effectiveness of that system cannot be measured. The report that we have here from the auditor does not speak of effectiveness or quality. It speaks of a process. It does not have a mandate, if I'm correct, to address the effectiveness of the Ontario parole board.

If we're don't have a system that can measure the pluses and minuses, pros and cons, how can we assure -- and don't get me wrong; I'm not totally on the side of the belief that we should keep everybody for 99 years for whatever reason, but how can we assure the public that we have a system that if it's broken is being fixed, and that we can offer protection to children, women and everybody else?

You have mentioned making non-political appointments. There is no such thing. I don't know of anyone who has not been appointed unpolitically. It's all political. Now, who is best? Someone who at least has some experience, connections, knowledge, someone who is appointed at large. How do we get all this information together and deal with the facts which have been brought into a court of law where facts have been exposed, perhaps witnesses, where lawyers have been grilling a particular offender and where a judge, based on that information, on those facts, has given a particular sentence?

Then we have another group, if you will, non-elected -- appointed or whatever -- that according to its way of seeing things says, "Yes, this person can go back into the community, into society." I have a problem with that as well. I have a problem with some of the other views as well, but I think the public is the ultimate person, if you will, as a community, as an entity, that deserves the maximum prevention. The system so far does not give them that. How do you reconcile your views with that of the community at large?

Mr Stewart: I think the court's trying, the criminal justice system in particular, to do two things. One, it's trying to punish, because it wants to see that there's a consequence to a particular behaviour, but at the same time the correctional system is trying not to harm. The problem is that generally the infliction of pain, some kind of deprivation, frequently does harm. We know quite well now that there's very little about sitting in a jail cell that enhances a person's ability to live constructively in the community.

So we're trying to do two things. That involves some kind of balance. It involves some kind of compromise. When a judge sentences, he knows there's parole. He doesn't sentence in the notion that there's no possibility of parole. When the sentencing commission of Canada did its research among judges, it found the judges quite regularly take parole into consideration when they pass sentence. What the sentence is, is not a specification of exactly the circumstances of how you're going to serve your sentence forever, it gives correctional authorities a range. The laws relating to paroles and gradual release and remission are as legitimate as the laws relating to sentencing. A judge knows that if he sentences a person to nine months, he could be out in three on parole, he could be out in six on remission. He knows that. That's part of the equation.

So though it's frustrating, we tend to think we want it to mean exactly what it says. In fact, this is the kind of balance that we've tried to work into a system. The judge sets out some terms, he knows there's a minimal portion of that that's purely punishment, but that also there's some opportunity, providing the person's willing and providing there's resources available and providing there's proper planning, to actually try to change the behaviour. So we try to do both because, in the long run, punishment that doesn't actually bring about any behaviour change is a very expensive indulgence. It may relieve us of certain frustrations, but it's very expensive, both in terms of the cost of incarceration and also in terms of the cost of future victimization.

Mr Sergio: Do you think the system's too harsh the way it is now?

Mr Stewart: I think sometimes it's too harsh and sometimes it isn't. It depends very much on the circumstances. My concern is I think the parole process today has become so intimidated that it's not in fact reducing risk. It's because the only concern is the risk of release; there's no concern about the risk of not doing anything to change behaviour. In the long run, and particularly with short-term offenders, as we're talking about, it's only some behaviour change that gives us any real protection.

If we don't focus on that, if that isn't the priority and if we haven't used all the research, all the knowledge, the very best of our ability to craft the system that we can show reduces reoffending, then I think we've really allowed our own passions to interfere with what I think has to be a very thoughtful and carefully devised process. That's what bothers me, that a lot of the discussion is anecdotal. We hear about crimes, we hear about circumstances, and of course they're offensive and they're frightening, that's what crime is by definition, but it doesn't help us to decide how to analyse a system if all we do is endlessly relate anecdotes of crime.

We cannot get to the position where the only way we will tolerate rehabilitation in the system is when there's no crime. There will be crime; there will be failures. There's always risk. The point is that we have to have some balance. The question is, what are the principles? My argument is not different from the police's in that in the end, the reduction of reoffending is the primary objective. The question is, I doubt that spending two months in jail and then having no supervision, no resources, no accommodation, no treatment, will effectively accomplish that end. That's the system that's being promoted and defended today. It's irrational; it's ineffective.

The Chair: Mr Stewart, I want to thank you very much for your presentation.

Mr Stewart: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate that very much.

CANADIAN RESOURCE CENTRE FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME

The Chair: The next presenter is presenting on behalf of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.

Mr Steve Sullivan: I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me to come today to speak to you about the Ontario parole board. I've asked my friends from the Police Association of Ontario to join me at the end of my presentation in case there are some questions that members didn't have a chance to ask earlier that they could answer at that time. I'll try to keep my comments brief.

I'm Steve Sullivan, executive director of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.

The resource centre is an organization that is dedicated to the rights of victims in justice reform in Canada. It finds us in areas of both provincial and federal concerns and the Ontario parole board is part of that concern.

I'll just start off by stating that although it wasn't in the mandate of the auditor to examine the issue of whether we even need an Ontario parole board, I'd like to suggest that perhaps we don't. We are one of the only three provinces in Canada that has its own parole board and I just wonder if the money that we're spending, the provincial funds we're putting into the Ontario Parole Board, could not be put to better use. We're talking about cutting crowns, we're talking about cutting police officers. I think those are two issues that better serve the interests of justice in Ontario. That's not to say we shouldn't have parole in Ontario. It would simply be picked up by the National Parole Board as is done in almost every other province in Canada.

1520

Having said that, I'll make some general comments with reference to the auditor's report and then answer any questions you may have.

As I read the report by the auditor, it struck me as being all too similar to a report that was referred to earlier by the Police Association of Ontario, the Wein report. You may notice in the brief that I handed out that sometimes it's referred to as the "Weir" report. That's my mistake. There was a Weir report done a couple of years ago at the federal level. A guy who was on a day pass killed two people. So please excuse that error.

If you look at the issues that are identified by the auditor, the recommendations that are made, they are so similar to those that are made by Bonnie Wein who did the report into the murder of Constable Joe MacDonald. I've included in appendices those recommendations and you will see the striking resemblance that they have. Those are the same issues that are raised over and over again at the federal level every time we see an offender who reoffends. They're the same issues, I think, that are probably identified every time there's an examination of the parole system.

It's not a question of what the problems are any more. It's a question of what we're going to do about them. I think we all can agree that parole is something we want to keep in this country, but the secret to a successful parole system is identifying those people who are going to benefit from parole and identifying those who aren't and making a differentiation.

If we simply just let people out on parole despite their risk, I think we're not really focusing on what the whole point of parole is. It should be a benefit that people earn. It shouldn't be a right. It shouldn't be something we give everyone. We should focus on who's really going to benefit from those people, because we have to admit to ourselves that not everyone is going to be rehabilitated. We can't help everyone, so those we can't help we must be protected from.

The main issues I focused on in the auditor's report were issues of training for parole board members, issues of enough information and the correct information being put before those members and the issue of those members being adequately able to decipher the information that's put forth for them.

All of these things went wrong in the Joe MacDonald case. Let me just say that we focus on a case like Joe MacDonald because this is not an academic exercise. What we're talking about here today in this nice room and in our nice suits is reality. Reality is Nancy MacDonald and her two children who no longer have a husband and a father. Reality is the gentlemen you see behind you who no longer have a colleague.

So when we talk about Joe MacDonald and the report that was done, it's not simply to focus on and lay blame on a parole board who went wrong. It's to say that: "Look. the decisions that are being made affect people's lives. Therefore, we need to ensure that those decisions that are being made are the right ones." That means we need to have the information put before the boards. That means those people who are on the boards need to be able to understand and decipher the information and they need to be able to properly examine the issues that are put before them.

In the Joe MacDonald case, just a little bit of background on Clinton Suzack: He was a man who was not unfamiliar to the law. He benefited from a plea bargain which saw him plead guilty to 17 different criminal charges, ranging from aggravated assault, assault causing bodily harm, assault and a number of failure to appear charges. There were 17 different offences. There were nine different victims on five separate occasions. Somehow, Mr Suzack managed to convince the second parole board that he went before -- he was originally denied parole -- he managed to convince at least one of the members that those incidents stemmed from one date. It was all just a big thing. He was drunk, he was at a party, that kind of thing. So he got parole.

I seriously recommend that you examine the Wein report. I don't want to go into too much detail about it because it would take too long. Needless to say, he was out on parole when he and another gentleman, Mr Peter Pennett, shot Joe MacDonald five times.

The report concludes that the essence of what went wrong here lay in the overall lack of precise communication among correctional officials. This included a lack of communication of the full details of the offences, a failure to prevent the inmate from minimizing the facts and thereby affecting decisions that ultimately affected the parole decision, a lack of communication of the real propensities of the offender, a lack of effective communication of the depths of concerns of those who knew the inmate best -- a lot of lack of communication in there, and that was an issue identified very heavily in the auditor's report -- not being taken seriously.

With the Clinton Suzack matter, on both parole hearings, a letter was written by the Sault Ste Marie police force asking that Clinton Suzack not be given parole. There were concerns of the correctional people who worked with him in the prison who echoed those concerns. However, the board did grant parole.

The Wein report is nothing short of a scathing report of a board that really didn't do its job. Some of the recommendations that you will find, as I mentioned, in the auditor's report are in the Wein report. Some of them are also in another report that was released after the inquest into the death of Christopher Stephenson, the young boy who was murdered by a man out on parole. I've included the relevant recommendations as well as the appendices.

I won't go into detail about the comparisons of the recommendations I've done in the brief. I hope you have a chance to review those. But I will say that further to those recommendations made in the auditor's report and further to our recommendation, we really should consider the issue of whether we even need a parole board in Ontario.

I would recommend that we look at the federal system and the National Parole Board. They've recently introduced measures that will allow parole board members to be disciplined if it's found they're not able to do their job. Contrary to what some people may say, that's not an attempt to point fingers or lay blame, it's simply a process of determining that we have the best people available doing the job. It's a tough job. We need to make sure that the people there can do the job. To be honest with you, I wouldn't be a very good parole board member, and I think a lot of the people we have on our parole boards, both at the federal and the provincial levels, aren't very good people to be there. It's not that they don't mean well, they're just not good at it.

The process that's introduced in Bill C-45, which was recently passed by the federal government, allows an examination of those kinds of decisions. If someone has been negligent or it's found that they can't do the job they're supposed to do, they can be removed from that position. That's something the Ontario system may want to look at.

I think I'll cut my remarks short to allow for questions, and if there are any questions of the Police Association of Ontario, please feel free to ask them as well.

Just in closing, once again, I have to strongly urge you to take a look at the report into the case of Clinton Suzack. You would almost think that it was written by the same person as written by the auditor, the recommendations are so similar. It's an indication that while we've identified the problems over and over again, we really haven't addressed them and we haven't fixed them. I think that's the biggest problem we see in both reports.

Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton): Mr Sullivan, I think the previous presenter mentioned that the purpose of the parole board was basically to contribute to a just and peaceful society and, secondly, to facilitate rehabilitation -- more or less. I'm paraphrasing the whole statement.

I think also in your statement, you mention that people we release on parole should only be the ones who can be rehabilitated. I think the police association also alluded to that fact. How would you choose or how would you decide who has the best chance of rehabilitation? How would you implement a system like that?

Mr Sullivan: I think the parole board, having the information about the offender before them and the various assessment tools which have been developed that are used a lot by the National Parole Board -- I don't know how much they're used by the Ontario parole board. All that information, the experiences of people who've dealt with the offender, like the police, the correctional service staff, the victims -- you compile that information, and while I don't think we can ever be 100% correct, hopefully that kind of information will lead us to at least make the best decisions that we can. No parole board is ever going to be 100% correct, and we can't expect them to be, but we can expect them to do the best job they can and in order to do that they need the training, they need to have the information before them that they must have about the offender -- all the information, not just parts of it -- and hopefully with those kinds of initiatives we'll make the best decisions that we can, keeping in mind that we're never going to be right all the time.

1530

Mr Beaubien: Another question: I'll try to make it as brief as I possibly can. As a former police services board chairperson, in my community nine years ago we made major changes with our police department. I remember dealing with the Ontario police association, basically the union part of it. We had an awful lot of difficulties, but we did implement our changes. I see the police association making a presentation today -- a very good presentation -- the John Howard Society making a presentation, and your presentation. The system is broken. There's no doubt about that. There are a lot of problems with the system, not only at the parole board level, with the John Howard Society and maybe with the policing and the way we -- and we can talk about money, not having enough money, and talking about cuts, but is there a common nerve or is there an interest of all the bodies involved to really try to change the system, or are we only here to try to protect our own turfs?

I get a sense that yes, we'll accuse the government, yes, we'll accuse the police, yes, we'll accuse the John Howard Society or we'll accuse the parole board; that's why it's not working. But are we really working together to try to change the system for the best of the community?

Mr Sullivan: I hope we are. I hope that my being here and a representative from the John Howard Society and the Police Association of Ontario -- we're all here to help try and improve the system. Whether you agree with our specific concerns or not, understand that's why we're here. Of course the police are going to be concerned about having enough officers on the street because if affects not only their safety but the safety of the community. The John Howard Society does fulfil an important role in society. Whether we're working together, I think you have to understand that each of us comes from a different place and each of us brings different philosophies and experiences to the table. Hopefully, those different experiences and different philosophies will ultimately lead us to the best solution.

I think this is a process that allows that to happen, that allows people who would normally never talk or normally never exchange experiences to come before a group that's going to hear from everyone. Hopefully, that will ultimately lead to the change that best serves everyone.

Mr Sergio: Evidently, when the parole board makes a decision on a particular person it would have a lot of information at its disposal. Do you believe that information -- sometimes it's sufficient, it's correct, or do you think there should be other resources where more information should be coming forward before the board makes a decision?

Mr Sullivan: I think we should be getting information from as many places as we can. That would include sentencing transcripts, reasons for the sentence, police reports, reports of behaviour within the correctional system, input from victims. Especially dealing with the more high-risk offenders, I think every area we can get information from should be developed and a process to streamline that kind of stuff should be introduced or improved.

I guess the key, once you have the information, is making sure the members first of all read it, and second of all can comprehend what's in there; that they have the expertise or training to decipher the information they need to have. Part of the information will also be any psychological reports that have been done, assessment tools, risk assessment tools. So I think the more information we have, the better. We need to develop the methods to make sure the information is there. Both the Wein report and the auditor's report express concerns that the necessary information hasn't always been there. But once you have the information, you also need to ensure that members are going to read it and understand it, which was one of the problems in the Joe MacDonald case.

Mr Sergio: Even for the low-risk cases, do you believe there is a place, there is a scope, there is a purpose for the board to continue to be in existence?

Mr Sullivan: I think the offenders we would deem low risk would probably be the six-month mark of sentences. In a perfect world we'd have a system which could deal with those offenders as well, but I think we have to give priority to the ones who are the most dangerous; the board must devote most of their time to those people. The six-month sentence in a lot of cases is a sharp, short sentence, hopefully for first-time offenders. I think the intent there is to wake that person up and say: "This is what you're going to get. It's a short sentence, but you could get much more." Again, if we had all the money in the world, the board would have the resources to deal with those kinds of offenders. But I think, given the limits that we're on, we need to deal with the high-risk offender first.

Mr Sergio: To do some justice to the system and to the people, how would you deal with the high-risk cases?

Mr Sullivan: You're going to have to recognize the limits in that as well. We have a system where at one third you have a chance for parole; you can be turned down. At two thirds you're automatically released with no conditions, no reporting requirements. I have to question the wisdom of that. What we're saying there is that, "Okay, you're too high a risk to release at one third, where we can put some conditions on you, but at two thirds we'll let you out and do nothing."

A better system would be that at one third you have that chance, but at two thirds, when you also have that statutory release, there are conditions on you. But again, you're going to come to the place where the offender is going to be released eventually anyway. At the federal system they're looking at the question of keeping people in past their sentence or expiry. With the provincial system as it is now, with the provincial board, I don't know that that's legally possible; you have to examine the issue. But if it was under one federal system, the answer may be a little clearer.

Mr Sergio: Would you like to see more decisions coming from the court judges with no parole for whatever period of time?

Mr Sullivan: Under the federal system a judge can order that an offender can't get parole until serving half the sentence. I don't think that applies to provincial sentences; I'm not sure. So that would be a major --

Mr Sergio: Neither am I.

Mr Sullivan: But it's something that you may want to consider. I think the secret here is, if we're going to have the automatic release at two thirds, that we have some kind of conditions placed on that person. Basically, what you're doing is you're giving the person a third off for breathing. There's really no rationale there.

Mr Sergio: I may not suggest that it's automatic after one third or whatever; there still would be a system in place where you have to go through the motions, if you will. But what I'm saying is perhaps we should have more decisions from the courts saying, "No parole or even going to a parole board until you have served three quarters of your sentence."

Mr Sullivan: I wouldn't object to anything like that, but it will require a pretty fundamental shift in provincial sentencing to allow for that.

Mr Pouliot: The job of Mr Erik Peters is one of a watchdog to ensure that the public are getting value for money. It's strictly a value-for-money added audit, not a financial audit in the traditional sense, if you wish. His findings state under six recommendations not that the taxpayers are being hosed, but that there are some deficiencies. His job is not to question the philosophy but to suggest through mandate, through curriculum, if you wish, that we taxpayers get more or a better bang for our hard-earned dollars.

We have very good research people and we're most appreciative and we thank them, and they indicate through their science, through their research, or one has the impression sitting on this committee that certainly in the past five or six years, with the exception perhaps of 1993-94, the number of people being granted parole under our provincial system, grosso modo, is fairly consistent: so many people coming in, so many people coming out.

We listened intently to our distinguished colleagues, their contribution, and we seem to focus on the high-risk offender. It's not that people don't give a darn about the run-of-the-mill, if you wish, but the ones who are more likely to be recidivists, those who are of a violent inclination, their track record -- and you come up with the case of the late constable to attest to that. I think better than anyone it tells the story of what can go wrong with the system.

When I look at the resources, that too has been fairly consistent, about $4 million. Of course, if you go back to 1917, it would still be reflective. One would have to adjust for the time. Personally, I think it's money, but attitude also. The Provincial Auditor cannot go too far. He can go and suggest that we get better value for money, and when he does that, he will discover he has to analyse the system, but he cannot go to the heart of the system. It is not his mandate, it is not his forte, his expertise. That's not our role here; that's not our job.

1540

Sometimes I'm torn between, "Sure, you have the resources," but on the other hand it's an attitude matter, that if you don't have the resolve to keep the high risk away from society, you haven't solved anything. It's not strictly a matter of budget. It's a matter of budget to monitor, a matter of budget to apprehend, to protect, but it's not a matter of budget when it comes to people, the system of parole.

If I would have one question, if we had the time to develop a theme, I would ask the following, and I know we have to nuance because there is the two years-plus, the federal system and the provincial system: To read all the findings of the federal awards, the way they operate, and then of the provincial awards, and I would like to see some discrepancies, if there are any, what would I be likely to find if I have 70 people sitting on the federal parole board and 70 people sitting on the provincial parole board? Are they the same people? Is their mentality the same? Are they addressing the same?

You read the six recommendations from the Provincial Auditor. You read what the ministry says in defending their position as civil servants. We know that. I had four ministries with the other administration. We know the way we answer the findings and the recommendations of the Provincial Auditor. That's why we keep coming back year after year.

What needs to be done, in simple terms, so when I go back to the people of Lake Nipigon, who pay my wages to sit here, I could tell them that they will feel more secure today because Harry Smith is no longer among us and yet Harry Smith, the other person, has been given the chance because he got a six-month straight sentence and he needs and deserves to be rehabilitated so he has a chance to reintegrate? What do you think is wrong with the system?

Mr Sullivan: That's a big question. I think the system basically works very well. If you look at the numbers of the National Parole Board, at least, most people who are released on parole don't go on to commit the kind of heinous crime that you see Clinton Suzack do.

The problem where the system breaks down is with those types of offenders. It's with the offender who isn't going to benefit from parole, isn't going to benefit from a second chance, perhaps. He's not made the decision to change his behaviour, either because he doesn't want to or because he can't.

You also have to understand the kind of philosophy that the parole board members are working under. They come to the one-third mark. They know that if they let someone out then, they can impose these certain conditions, but they also know that if they wait till the two thirds, this person's going to be out with no conditions. It's almost a subtle form of blackmail that you may find that some of them are adopting that measure where they in other cases would rather not do that.

I don't think that answers your question completely. It's a very open-ended question.

Mr Pouliot: Unless you get the judicial in there, and I don't want to have to listen to Toni for two hours. But I understand what you're saying.

Mr Bill Vankoughnet (Frontenac-Addington): We had to listen to you.

Mr Gilchrist: I don't have time for a long preamble, so I'll keep my question very brief.

Mr Sullivan, we heard the two presentations that preceded yours, both certainly well considered. There was the one from the police association which put down in great terms how the whole justice system is a series of breaks, but by the time we get to the parole board you've gone through a number of opportunities for people to give you the benefit of the doubt, and if there is any reason to ameliorate the sentence or even the fact that you go through the process, you've probably gotten that break.

I'll repeat a question that I asked to the deputy minister this morning. In light of what we see as the realities today, never mind the philosophy, that one third of all the parolees fail to honour the terms of their parole, that we have the auditor reporting that there has never been a measure done of the efficacy or efficiency of community service programs -- and I think one can find adequate anecdotal evidence that they are not overwhelmingly successful -- and the fact that the automatic nature of parole right now, the fact that you know you will get out at the two-thirds point, absolutely must mitigate against being a model citizen, because everybody gets out -- if it was the reverse, that only those who had done an extraordinary job of proving they'd been rehabilitated had even the opportunity to be heard, I think we wouldn't be sitting here having this discussion today. In light of all of those things and in light of the fact that there is a clear difference between federal incarceration -- two years and up -- and provincial, which I have to assume was divided on the basis of crimes considered to be serious and those considered to be minor, and the fact that the judge and all the other participants are the ones who on a firsthand basis saw the criminal, can you really suggest or is it your position that we even need a provincial parole board or that entire process at all? Or should the judges be directed that if this is something serious, you send them in that stream, and if they prove themselves, they have the option to get out earlier; if it's a less than serious crime, we put you in another stream, but it's a short enough time period that if you do the crime, you do the time?

Mr Sullivan: I think the problem with that is you have to look at the judge. The members from the Police Association of Ontario identified the fact that Clinton Suzack benefited from a plea-bargaining system, a system which helps the whole justice system work. It sometimes breaks down. In the case of Clinton Suzack, it did just that. Talk about less serious crimes; this guy was convicted of aggravated assault, assault causing bodily harm, a number of other just plain assaults, all very, very violent offences which I think could carry a maximum of at least 15 years, but because there was a bargain with the crown, and that's another whole issue --

Mr Gilchrist: No doubt we'll have an opportunity to address that, but let's go on the assumption that they were appropriately sentenced.

Mr Sullivan: So what you're suggesting is that for sentences under two years, there be no parole whatsoever.

Mr Gilchrist: That's right.

Mr Sullivan: No major problems with myself; however, I think we should still recognize that there are some people who are going to be convicted of offences even of a serious nature like assault, aggravated assault, who may benefit from a program run through parole.

Mr Gilchrist: Not to cut you off, but just because we only have a couple of seconds left, in the alternative, if you're not totally comfortable with scrapping parole, would you agree that in the minimum we move to a system that nobody gets out before two thirds, and at two thirds you have to have proven yourself? It's not a right; it's the option of the parole board, in its sole determination, to decide whether or not you've proved yourself worthy in those first two thirds of your sentence to be eligible for parole.

Mr Sullivan: I don't know if I'd even go that far. I would say that the system we have now is that at the one-third mark you go through a process like that, and if you don't succeed, then you go through that same process at the two-thirds mark where the conditions are being set. I think that gives the person the opportunity if after one third they realize: "Look, I'm not doing myself any good. Two thirds is coming up; I can get out a little early." That's probably a better system, I think, than just saying you've got to wait the two thirds and that's your only shot.

The Chair: Mr Sullivan, thank you very much for your presentation.

Committee members, there were a couple of matters I want to bring to your attention. First of all, the Management Board Secretariat staff have confirmed that they're going to be available to the committee tomorrow afternoon following the auditor's presentation on possible amendments to the Audit Act. This will allow us to put over the committee's discussion on this issue to Friday morning, following the benefit of Management Board's input on transfer and accountability issues.

One of the things we're going to be considering is this business of value-for-money audits, and rather than have all of the separate ministries who might be affected by this come in and present individually, Management Board is suggesting that they come in and do it within an umbrella framework at the outset and we'll see how that goes. I just wanted to let you know that was happening.

With respect to the matter raised by Mr Colle, maybe, Mr Agostino, you could speak to that further, but I just wanted to let committee members know that the clerk has advised me that this committee's predecessor visited the Don Jail here in Toronto in 1993, I believe, at the time the committee was looking into young offender and institutional services. So there is some corporate memory here, but obviously we did not participate in that.

Mr Agostino: If it's in order and acceptable to the committee, it was an excellent suggestion by the police association. It would be beneficial to all of us to have an opportunity to visit a facility from that perspective and to actually hold one of our meetings there, and as part of the meeting, obviously, include a tour and, if possible, an opportunity to speak to some of the inmates as part of that process, if that could be arranged.

Mr Pouliot: They know Toni on a first-name basis.

Mr Agostino: I'd be happy to move that if that's acceptable to the committee.

Mr Gilchrist: I would certainly concur. I think there would be tremendous merit in doing that. We have the opportunity either for the Don or for something like the Metro East facility, which might be -- I see some nodding heads in the background there -- more appropriate in terms of the kind of people we're talking about who are likely to be coming up for provincial parole, and an interesting collection it will be. But I would certainly concur and I think all of our members agree that it would be a worthwhile experience.

The Chair: I would want an undertaking on behalf of the custodian so that we would be released after our visit.

Mr Ed Doyle (Wentworth East): That will be easy: We just apply for parole.

The Chair: The clerk advises me that it's not necessary to move a motion. The committee is generally in agreement with that. I'll leave it in the clerk's hands to contact the necessary parties and to get back to us.

Mr Gilchrist: Am I led to understand that our proposed agenda has been altered, or is Mr Peters going to be speaking in a preliminary sense before we hear from Management Board?

The Chair: Yes, Mr Peters will be presenting tomorrow morning, Management Board Secretariat tomorrow afternoon, discussion Friday morning.

Mr Gilchrist: As opposed to condensing the discussion so that we hear from Management Board and continue the discussion on Thursday afternoon?

The Chair: We can see how it proceeds tomorrow in terms of how much time Management Board's going to take, but that's the proposal for the time being.

Mr Gilchrist: Fair enough.

The Chair: Thank you. The committee stands adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

The committee adjourned at 1553.