Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue 11 - Evidence - March 8, 2012
OTTAWA, Thursday, March 8, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 10:28 a.m. to study social inclusion and cohesion in Canada.
Senator Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I call this meeting to order. I want to remind everyone that we are here dealing with the continuation of our study on social inclusion and cohesion in Canada. We have a number of witnesses before us today, and I will introduce them as I call upon them to speak.
Before we do that, I want to introduce the members of the committee. I am Senator Ogilvie from Nova Scotia. I am Chair of the Committee.
I will start on my right and ask my colleagues to identify themselves.
Senator Seidman: I am Judith Seidman from Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Demers: Jacques Demers, from Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Dyck: Lillian Dyck, from Saskatchewan.
Senator Merchant: Pana Merchant, from Saskatchewan.
Senator Eggleton: Art Eggleton, from Toronto. I am deputy chair of this committee.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues.
Since there was no plea as to who will go first, I decided that, once again, I will ask the interveners to speak, beginning on my left. That means we will start with Statistics Canada. We have three people from Statistics Canada: Mr. Turner, Ms. Dauvergne, and Ms. McAuley.
I understand, Ms. McAuley, that you will be presenting.
Julie McAuley, Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada: Yes, I will. Thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee. My colleagues will help in answering any questions that you may have.
Please turn to the first slide in the presentation.
Using data received from police services across Canada, we can examine trends in the traditional crime rate as seen on the left, as well as the crime severity index shown on the right.
The traditional police-reported crime rate measures changes in the volume of crime. After peaking in 1991, the police-reported crime rate has been steady decreasing. The crime severity index tracks changes in the severity of police- reported crime. As shown on this slide, both the overall and youth crime severity indices have been steadily decreasing since 1998, the first year for which the data were available.
We know from police-reported data that both the traditional crime rate and the crime severity index tend to be higher in the western provinces and in Northern Canada. Slide 3 indicates that the same general geographic pattern is seen for 13 Census Metropolitan Areas. These CMAs were selected to ensure regional representation in the information presented today.
In 2010, the crime severity index was highest in Regina, followed by Saskatoon and Winnipeg. These same cities were also among those with the highest overall crime rates.
Similar to the trend in overall crime, the youth crime rate has been declining over the past decade. In 2010, the youth crime rate fell 7 per cent from the year before and was 11 per cent lower than a decade ago. As shown on slide 4, when looking at police-reported crime rates by selected Census Metropolitan Areas, we see that while the highest youth crime rates were found in Regina and Saskatoon, some CMAs in Eastern Canada, such as Moncton and Charlottetown, also had higher-than-average youth crime rates.
Police reported 554 homicides in 2010, 56 fewer than the year before, marking the lowest homicide rate in Canada since 1966. The drop in homicide was primarily driven by a decrease in British Columbia where there were 35 fewer homicides. Much of this decrease can be attributed to Vancouver where there were 25 fewer homicides in 2010.
Among Canada's Census Metropolitan Areas, Thunder Bay reported the highest homicide rate in 2010, followed by Saskatoon and Regina.
While the rate of attempted murder has consistently remained higher than the homicide rate, these two offences have continually displayed similar trends over time. In 2010, there were 693 attempted murders in Canada, down 14 per cent from 2009.
Let us turn to slide 6. Looking at the average homicide rates over the last 10 years by selected Census Metropolitan Areas, we see that the highest rates of homicide are generally found in the Western CMAs. Homicide is not only a big city phenomenon. While almost one third of Canada's homicides in 2010 occurred in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, the incidents of homicide in these cities relative to the size of their population — in other words, their rate — was below the national average for 2010. Furthermore, the homicide rate in CMAs was lower than in non-CMAs.
Police reported 170 homicides with a firearm in 2010, down from 180 the year before. This is consistent with the general decline in firearm-related homicides seen over the past three decades, as shown on slide 7. Much of the decline in firearm-related homicides since the early 1980s can be attributed to a decrease in homicides involving rifles or shotguns.
There has also been a general decline in non-firearm-related homicides over the last three decades. While stabbings were nearly as common in 2010 as shootings, the number of police-reported homicides committed by stabbing has been decreasing over the last 30 years.
Firearms are more likely to be used to commit homicide in some areas of the country than in others. While looking at Canada's 10 largest Census Metropolitan Areas, the highest firearm rates in 2010 were found in Winnipeg, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver. Gang-related homicides are more likely to involve the use of firearms. In 2010, Winnipeg and Vancouver reported the highest rates of gang-related homicides among the 10 largest Census Metropolitan Areas, followed by Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton.
As shown on slide 9, Canadian police services reported 1,473 hate crimes in 2009, up 42 per cent from the previous year. Increases in police-reported hate crimes in Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, and Montreal accounted for most of this increase.
Nationally, over half of police-reported hate crimes in 2009 were motivate by race, 29 per cent by religion, and 13 per cent by sexual orientation. There are, however, differences in the distribution of the three primary motivators for hate crimes between CMAs. For example, in Toronto 54 per cent of hate crimes were motivated by race compared to 71 per cent in Calgary and 62 per cent in Ottawa. Winnipeg and Montreal had the highest proportions of hate crimes motivated by religion, while Vancouver and Winnipeg had the highest proportions of all hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation.
The 2009 General Social Survey: Victimization asked Canadians questions about their perceptions of personal safety and crime. Overall, 93 per cent of Canadians said that they felt satisfied with their personal safety from crime, a proportion similar to 2004, the last time this information was collected.
The survey asked Canadians about their feelings and perceptions of safety in their neighbourhoods while performing certain activities, including being home alone at night, walking alone after dark, and waiting for or using public transportation. As shown on slide 11, in 2009, 90 per of those who walked alone in their neighbourhood at night felt safe doing so. This finding holds true across most Census Metropolitan Areas.
Canadians appear to feel less at ease, however, when using or waiting for public transportation at night, as shown on slide 12. Of those Canadians who had access to and used public transportation in their communities, 58 per cent said they did not feel worried when waiting for or using public transportation at night.
When asked about the level of crime in their neighbourhood compared to five years earlier, 62 per cent of Canadians stated that it had remained the same while over one quarter believed that crime had increased, as is seen on slide 13. Less than 1 in 10 believed that crime had decreased in their neighbourhood. Residents of Edmonton, Vancouver and St. John's were among those most likely to perceive an increase in crime in their neighbourhoods, while those living in Regina, Montreal and Ottawa-Gatineau were among those who believed crime had decreased.
Once again, thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee. This ends my presentation.
The Chair: Thank you. I will turn to Mr. Dale McFee to speak.
Chief Dale McFee, President, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police: Members of the Senate, let me begin by thanking you for inviting me here to speak today. As you know, safety is something that is near and dear to all Canadians. I will try to give you a perspective as a chief of police, the President of the CACP, and as a person who has worn many hats within my own community.
I would like to address this subject, the perspective of social inclusion. A barrier to greater community involvement, which is fundamentally what inclusion is about, particularly for groups that are vulnerable to exclusion — seniors, disabled Canadians, immigrants, visible minorities and women — is crime or the fear of crime.
Canadian police services at the municipal level play a key role in making cities safe. We do much more than just keep the peace; we are actively involved in outreach programs designed to foster a greater trust between ourselves and minority communities. Furthermore, the task of keeping Canadian communities safe involves a collaborative effort on the part of police services, communities groups, and individual citizens.
In particular, I would like to focus my comments on the area of promising practices and innovative measures being taken by municipal police services in the area of crime prevention, community outreach and services provided to the victims of crime.
Having travelled across this country and currently sitting on an international board, I would start by saying Canadian policing is high quality and recognized internationally for its professionalism. In fact, so much so that many Canadian police officers are being seconded across the world.
Let me start with the timing of our current economic situation. Academia tells us there is a close relationship with the evolution of policing and the financial markets. The relationship dates back to the original form of policing structure put in place to protect the financial markets. This relationship has existed since inception, and with the current turmoil of the world economy, it puts us in a unique situation. This situation can be good or bad, depending on the lens you want to view it from. I take the positive view in saying that this is the perfect time to innovate as to how community safety is delivered to Canadians.
The CACP has held workshops across our country on this very topic. It has become clear that community safety is much more than policing. This said, policing owns a significant piece, with some exclusivity, relating to enforcement practices that can range from organized crime to traffic safety and everything in between, the areas that we have made significant strides and continue to forge ahead in becoming more effective and efficient.
Let us go further and ask the real question that I believe needs to be better understood. Who is responsible for community safety? My belief is that 90 per cent of the general public would say the police, yet the World Health Report defines violence as the No. 1 world health problem. As I sat on our regional health board on appointment by the Premier of Saskatchewan, violence was not even on the radar screen from a health perspective, nor I believe is it from a Canadian perspective. This is not saying that community safety is the role of health, but in reality it is everyone's role and for different reasons requires common goals and focus.
I am continuously in discussions on how we can effectively deal with crime in our communities. It would appear that most people, politicians included, look at this issue from one of two positions: One side, by their own definition, is hard on crime — enforcement and incarceration; the other side is soft on crime — prevention and intervention. Both views require tough decisions and both are absolutely mandatory to maximize returns. I believe in a balance between the views, or should I say, being "smart on crime" or "smart on community safety."
I often state that as police, we will not arrest our way out of our troubles. At the same time, we will not stop arresting. There are people that, quite frankly, need to go to jail. That does not mean we forget about them; there are obviously good programs within the institutions.
When we started the Community Mobilization Project in Prince Albert, I believe we found a game changer, and if developed properly, it demonstrates an innovative approach in dealing with intervention and prevention.
In a perfect world, I ask myself the question, "What would be needed for me not to have a job?" To answer that question, we need to understand what drives the need for a police response.
When I look at the calls received within my own police service in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, we found that 27 per cent of our calls were criminal in nature. Out of these 27 per cent, 5 per cent led to an actual criminal charge. However, this, leaves 73 per cent of all calls to be an area which we define as antisocial behaviour, behaviour that if left unchecked or without accountability often leads to criminal behaviour. Antisocial behaviour is often related to addictions, domestic violence, disturbances, housing, mental health, et cetera. When I think of these issues and look deeper, I have to ask myself, "How many of these issues would police be considered the experts in?" The answer is, most often, none.
As a first response, it is natural for policing to take ownership. This is where the innovative change, however, is occurring: ownership versus leadership. Policing services are taking on a leadership role in terms of getting the right resources to solve the problem and to reduce the chance of these issues recurring or to provide early intervention before serious crime can occur.
The majority of this 73 per cent of calls are predictable; if they are predictable, then most often they are preventable. However, to be preventable, we must move towards a structured approach, an approach that gives all agencies — law enforcement, health, education, social services, et cetera — the ability to see the whole picture and respond at a local or regional level at an early intervention point. Unfortunately, today, we generally wait until people become entrenched in the system and then tell them what they need to fix themselves or their families.
Think of the reality of a multi-agency response when someone is headed into crisis and ask them what we can do to help when you know they are struggling. Most people know what they need; many people with a chance and the right assistance at the right time can make good decisions, yet we wait.
When we took our multi-agency team of 11 to Glasgow, Scotland, with our business plan, we found an area that had 15 key indicators that were the same as ours and at five years of success. We took some of the things they learned, their best practices, and tweaked them to make our model even better. We now have under our belt significant successes, of which I can speak of later.
Our country is diverse. We need the ability to provide a community or regional response and effectively deal with anomalies through innovation. We must change the argument for making expenditures to making investments.
To prepare for retirement, we track our investments and put our money where we will get the best return based on research and evidence. Then we follow our investments to ensure our future is safe. Why do we not use the same philosophy with safety? Determine the stakeholders, make it a priority to determine a funding formula that is cost- effective and that can be replicated and apply it to the areas of need. I have spoken on this across the country over 100 times. It is common sense; unfortunately, not common practice.
I am Metis and have a strong relationship with our Aboriginal community. When I was in Scotland, my light bulb moment was that our issues are not First Nations issues; they are marginalized people issues. If we are to address long- term success, it is back to the same investment principal: The earlier you invest, the better the results will be.
We need to change our way of thinking as to what drives our business. We are not suggesting a new investment; instead, we are suggesting a reinvestment. Non-government and community-based organizations tell us that there are significant opportunities for reinvestment with the existing economy based largely on the duplication of services. There certainly are more cost-effective and efficient ways, but in order to make the right decisions, we must focus on the intellectual piece.
If it is about money, I could present a few ways we could address it. The first would be a 1 per cent tax on alcohol. Alcohol is by far the leading contributor to many of these issues. Alcohol sales in Canada are $20 billion annually. Think about that.
This is all about applying a process to difficult problems within many of our communities and using funding as a seed to ensure we have common goals and priorities as a catalyst for change. Buy-in would drive alignment and changes at the local and regional levels based in evidence, and such change over time will lead to efficiency and significant savings. This is consistent with an investment model versus that of an expenditure modelling.
As the CACP has travelled across the country with our Economics of Community Safety workshops, there are some common themes. In summary, they are: Can we find a better or more effective and efficient way? Community safety is more than policing. What role can the private sector play in the new alignment? We need to better promote what the police role in community safety is and the relevance it plays in maintaining safe communities.
These are the themes of our discussions, especially in light of economic uncertainties.
In closing, I would be pleased to add more detail or answer any questions. I think we are at a good spot at a good time to maintain focus of services, but innovation is the key to offer a better way in delivering services than how we do today. We presently have a great opportunity to remove barriers and generate inter-agency common goals and priorities that are cost effective and a more efficient way of doing business.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. McFee. I will now turn to Heidi Illingworth, Executive Director of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.
Heidi Illingworth, Executive Director, Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime: Good morning. Thank you for inviting us to appear before the Senate committee this morning. We are pleased to offer the views of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, CRCVC, pertaining to urban safety, and our views are directly informed by the crime victims and survivors we serve.
We have submitted a brief to you this morning in which we make several recommendations that we believe will positively impact victims of crime and social justice in Canada.
To improve social inclusion and cohesion in Canada, we believe we must address the safety and security concerns of citizens. We are particularly concerned about those impacted by violence and crime and the fact that they are a vulnerable group as risk of exclusion.
Our centre is a national non-profit, non-government advocacy group for victims, and we provide direct support and assistance to numerous victims across the country. We serve about 1,200 new clients each year who contact our office through our toll-free line and through email.
Our concerns revolve around the fact that despite the decline of crime in Canada, both the severity and the volume of police reported crime as seen in 2009 and 2010, we are very concerned about acts of violence committed in all communities across this country, especially about the lasting impacts on victims.
We want to highlight for you some of the statistics that came from the 2009 General Social Survey on victimization. What was revealed and what is concerning to us is that violent victimization remains stable in Canada and that the reporting of violent crime is declining.
In 2009, close to 1.6 million Canadians, or 6 per cent of the population aged 15 year and older in the 10 provinces, reported having been the victim of a sexual assault, a robbery or a physical assault in the preceding 12 months, a proportion similar to the last time the survey was done in 2004.
As you may know, research has shown that, for various reasons, victims may choose not to report their victimizations to the police. For example, according again to the 2009 GSS, 69 per cent of violent victimizations, 62 per cent of household victimizations and 71 per cent of personal property thefts were not reported to the police.
We are very concerned about the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people as victims, particularly Aboriginal women and children in urban settings due to their increasing population in these areas. We feel this is evidenced by the more than 600 missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. Again, according to Statistics Canada in 2009, the survey of violent victimization of Aboriginal people in the Canadian provinces, sexual assaults accounted for more than one third of violent incidents involving an Aboriginal victim. In fact, sexual assaults were reported at a rate of 70 incidents per 1,000 people versus 23 per 1,000 for non-Aboriginal people.
We want to highlight that the impact of violence is serious. Many of our clients become socially isolated as a result of being victimized. Their friends and family members do not understand the trauma they endured in some cases and expect them to get over it quickly get on with their lives. Many survivors do not access support services in their communities for varying reasons, let alone psychological counselling to assist them in moving forward positively. In many cases, these important services are not known to the victim, are not easily accessible to them, or they cannot afford the high costs associated with ongoing counselling sessions, for example. The social responses we provide to victims and survivors in the immediate aftermath of crime can impact their future healing. It is critical that those who are victimized feel supported and heard.
Many victims of crime cannot return to work following their victimization due to physical consequences of violence or negative mental health impacts such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The economic consequences of victimization are enormous in some cases and often leave survivors in a much lower socio-economic position than they were prior to the crime being committed.
Survivors often feel re-victimized by the police investigation, media coverage of the crime and/or the trial and sentencing of the offender. They feel that balance is lacking in the Canadian justice system and that they have no real rights to participate or be heard. Victims observe the preoccupation with the rights of the accused while those persons who are harmed by the crime are merely bystanders. This leads to further feelings of alienation and exclusion for some victims.
We felt it was important to share with you the cost of crime in Canada. We feel strongly, given the people that we talk to on a daily basis, that we must reduce violent victimization in this country. According to the Department of Justice, the cost of crime in 2008 is estimated to be $99.6 billion, a majority of which, $68.2 billion or 68 per cent, is borne directly by the victims. Victim costs include tangible losses such as damaged or stolen property, loss of income and productivity, and health care services, as well as intangible cost such as pain and suffering and loss of life.
It is important also to talk about the costs of incarcerating offenders in Canada. This is astounding. The Correctional Service of Canada highlights that there are currently about 13,000 offenders incarcerated in institutions across the country and another 8,800 serving sentences in the community. The cost to incarcerate offenders in a institution in 2011, according to CSC's latest annual report, is about $114,000. This is an enormous cost to society. We must ensure that we are incarcerating only the most violent and dangerous individuals until such time that they are rehabilitated and can return to the community as pro-social members.
As most —
The Chair: I will have to interrupt you. You are through your time, and you are only halfway through the document. Since it is a written document, could you highlight the key areas, and then we can follow up with questions?
Ms. Illingworth: I am just about done. I am just about at the recommendations. I am not following this directly.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Illingworth: We would like to ensure that, because most offenders are eventually returning to society, it is critical for them to gain employment and contribute meaningfully to the economy so that they do not reoffend. In our brief, we highlighted for you specifically two areas of crime in urban settings that we are concerned about, which are youth gangs and intimate partner violence and assaults.
Quickly, I would like to share with you our recommendations that have to do with social developments. We believe they will help increase social cohesion and inclusion in Canada and, therefore, lead to violence reduction in the Census Metropolitan Areas.
The first recommendation is to implement and integrate the importance of social inclusion and acceptance into educational curriculum for all ages. This includes things like national anti-bullying, antiviolence, anti-substance abuse messages and campaigns; encouragement of unisex sporting activities, so limiting male and female stereotypes and biases; and educating young children and new immigrant adults about how to recognize the current gender barriers that exist within Canadian society and how they can be deconstructed. We want to ensure literacy and success for all students. Reach Ahead programs and Head Start programs need to be funded better.
Our second recommendation has to do with community centre involvement and installing outreach programs within community centres to raise awareness and educate individuals about victimization and personal safety measures. We want to promote and publicize the importance of reporting criminal activity as well as available community and government resources.
Critical for us is the need to implement programs to help community members locate and access public funding for financial aid if they have been victims of crime and to increase access to funding and services that support and empower crime victims in their healing, including funding for specialized healing centres. We heard some talk around those healing centres a couple of weeks ago when the commission for Aboriginal People made some interim recommendations. We think that job training and skills development programs for young people and after school programs are critical. We would like to see public health nurses working out of community centres to work in at-risk communities.
Lastly, having to do with rehabilitation incentives for offenders as well as increasing supports for offenders when they come back to the community is the need to decrease recidivism and victimization. We believe that we should offer small incentives for offenders to earn GEDs while incarcerated in order to increase employment options upon release into the community. We should offer mandatory alcohol and substance abuse programs while incarcerated and then follow up after the fact in the community with drug enforcement testing during reintegration. There is also a need to facilitate and increase access to mental health counselling and programs to ensure success in the community for offenders coming back. Thank you.
[Translation]
Daniel Sansfaçon, Director, Policy, Research and Evaluation, National Crime Prevention Centre, Public Safety Canada: Thank you for your invitation to come talk about urban security as part of your study on social cohesion and inclusion.
The mission of Public Safety's National Crime Prevention Centre, the NCPC, is to develop and disseminate practical knowledge to help governments, institutions, non-profit organizations and local communities implement effective crime prevention practices.
[English]
Data presented already by colleagues from the CCJS that I do not need to repeat have clearly demonstrated that crime is not randomly distributed across the country. Furthermore, it is important to highlight that crime tends to be concentrated in a limited number of neighbourhoods — in fact, most notably in core neighbourhoods.
Several demographic and socio-economic characteristics differentiate high-crime neighbourhoods from those of lower-crime neighbourhoods, such as higher proportions of single people, people living alone, lone parent families and people who have recently moved, limited access to socio-economic resources, higher economic disadvantage and smaller proportion of highly educated people.
Research indicates that some individuals are disproportionately likely to suffer from social exclusion. I am sure you have heard about some of these risk factors which include low income, family conflict, being in care, school problems, being an ex-prisoner, being from an ethnic minority and so forth. Groups that are most at risk of social exclusion are characterized, among other things, by persistently low income and heavy reliance on social assistance.
These groups are mainly lone parents, older unattached individuals, Aboriginal peoples living off reserve, recent immigrants and persons with employment limiting disabilities, as well as children and youth who live in poverty.
Inequality and social exclusion underpin crime and punishment, and a number of studies show a strong correlation between social and economic disadvantage and higher levels of crime, youth violence and victimization. Furthermore, there is a considerable degree of overlap between the risk factors for social exclusion and youth offending, particularly in the family school and community domains. For example parental and family conflict, parent-child separation and alternative care, poor school engagement and performance and neighbourhood disadvantage also contribute to increased likelihood of juvenile delinquency. A few very important statistics affect our Aboriginal peoples, and particularly here, insisting on the number of Aboriginal children in care.
In a relatively recent study it was demonstrated that approximately 20,000 Aboriginal children under the age of 17 are in government care, three times the number enrolled in residential schools at the height of their operations. Other studies demonstrate that Aboriginal children outnumber non-Aboriginal children by a rate of eight to one in their proportion of being in care. This is particularly relevant because we know that children in care are at a much higher risk of later trajectories in juvenile offending. Social exclusion may also be linked to increased risk of victimization. Studies have argued that street youth, for example, are likely to be victims of crimes due to experiences of social exclusion in terms of restricted access to housing, employment and public spaces.
Given that many of the risk factors that underlie social exclusion are similar to those that contribute to juvenile delinquency, programs that aim to preventing youth crime are likely to impact positively on social exclusion. Attention to these risk factors and programs designed to address them will help reduce the risk of social exclusion and crime in Canadian communities.
[Translation]
This is the context in which the NCPC funds the implementation and evaluation of crime prevention projects in communities across the country.
With an annual envelope of $44 million for project funding, the NCPC currently supports 135 community prevention programs, a significant number of them in the cities. The vast majority of these projects involve interventions that target the most at-risk populations in order to prevent them from following a long-term offending trajectory.
Here I can give you some examples from documentation left with the committee clerk of projects that are currently funded by the NCPC.
[English]
Project Prevention Intervention Toronto, for example, has developed and implemented an integrated, targeted, evidence-based community program to prevent and reduce the proliferation of gangs in certain neighbourhoods in Toronto, particularly vulnerable neighbourhoods. This includes such initiatives as proper risk assessment of these youth, intensive group-based training opportunities that will support the development of pro-social skills, practical supports for the family of participating youth to assist them in reducing risk factors, and building protective factors that will eventually contribute to their positive social inclusion.
[Translation]
In Montreal, the NCPC provides $7.4 million in funding over five years for the Programme de suivi intensif, an intensive monitoring program. This approach calls for multidisciplinary work, and therefore involves a whole series of players. Its objective is to reduce gang delinquency among 15- to 25-year olds and also to work towards the integration of prevention, suppression and intervention so as to coordinate the efforts of the various players in the community, particularly in certain areas of Montreal.
[English]
Finally, NCPC provided $2.5 million over four years for the Halifax Regional Municipality to operate the Youth Advocate Program. It is successful because there was evaluation demonstrating its success and the program has since been picked up by the Halifax Regional Municipality. This program reduced levels of isolation, stresses and negative impulses among the targeted groups, and increased their resiliency and pro-social skills. In addition, NCPC develops and disseminates tools to help local actors in communities across the country implement evidence-based crime prevention programming. These include risk assessment tools, neighbourhood safety diagnostic tools, compendia of promising and model practices, and guides to facilitate the implementation and evaluation of these interventions.
In conclusion, these and many other successful projects supported by the NCPC in communities large and small contribute to preventing long-term offending trajectories among children and youth, reduce victimization, foster the vitality of communities and ultimately enhance social inclusion through improved community safety.
[Translation]
Thank you for your attention. I would be happy to answer your questions.
[English]
Senator Eggleton: Thank you for your presentations. You all brought different perspectives to the issue of social inclusion and have given us a lot of disturbing statistics and information. However, in some cases you have also provided thoughts about how we can rectify some of these problems and make our communities and cities more inclusive of people and specifically address some of the issues of vulnerable groups in that context.
I will take some specific questions. Mr. Sansfaçon, you indicated that your work on different projects that you pointed out was funded through $44 million from an annual funding envelope from the federal government. What is the size of the applications in dollars and in number? You support 135 community projects for $44 million, but what are the applications?
Mr. Sansfaçon: I can provide this information at a later stage. I must confess that I do not have the information with me now on how many applications and how much more they might represent compared to the available envelope. I will make a note and provide that.
Senator Eggleton: I would appreciate that because I want to know if that is the meeting the needs. Some of these projects that you have been working on sound quite promising.
Mr. McFee, you have noted how extensive the social aspect of your work is. You talked about 73 per cent of calls that are outside of what we would consider to be crime occurrence area, and quite a wide range of domestic kind of things. You talk about the expertise you need in dealing with some of these: health, education, social services. I take it in your experience you have been able to get over the silos and coordinate some of this, but in your role as chief for all of Canada would you say that is happening across the board or has it still got a long way to go?
Mr. McFee: It has a long way to go, but it is happening. I have spoken about what we are doing in Prince Albert, in particular, right across the country. You hit the nail on the head when you said silo approach. In Prince Albert, we have health, social services, education, police and the Prince Albert Grand Council now all working under one roof on a governance model, which we picked up in our business plan.
Someone has the information early on, so why are we not using the information to go to families at a time of crisis and ask them what we can do to help? The traditional response right now across this country is that they get in trouble and then we tell them how to fix it. If that is 73 per cent of our business that are headed here, why do we not get in when we can make the most impact, with the easiest way to spend money?
That is a paradigm shift that must happen, and I think it is slowly happening. The ability now, when I say "positive" — when there is a financial crisis or turmoil, let us say — it is the perfect opportunity based on the relationship with the markets to redesign or tweak and innovate those things we can get better at collectively.
To do that, you need common goals and priorities, and the best and brightest people. You need policy that does not prohibit you from doing your job but actually enables you to do the job, which is putting the right people at the table.
As an example, we have a hub. Stuff comes in and it gets a 24- to 48-hour response. These are things that citizens are frustrated by. There is an additional piece to that. There is a core, which is all these agencies under the same roof, to look at systemic issues; if legislative changes are needed, what can we do? Let us not write strategies in isolation. Too often in this country, in my opinion, we write strategies in isolation, which might be effective for that agency but the greater good is lessened. If it was a business decision, it would not be good.
We know what we are good at right throughout these things. I have been on the health board, I have been an entrepreneur, and I have moderated a group of entrepreneurs in Saskatchewan for years — $5 to $250 million in sales. It is to look at it through all the lenses and find an approach that is cost effective but, most importantly, one that is efficient and drives our business to get results. I can say with 95 per cent certainty it can be done, but I would say the other 5 per cent is that we will make mistakes. Yet let us learn from the mistakes and not use the mistakes as reasons not to go there.
Senator Eggleton: This may or may not be related to that issue, but Statistics Canada tells us that crime is going down. We have heard that again today, and heard it many times, yet police budgets seem to be going up. Why is that?
Mr. McFee: We will focus on two parts of that question. Crime is not going down across this country. I am in Saskatchewan and, as you heard, crime has serious issues. There are issues in Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba. I spoke in Iqaluit — I was with the leadership of the Northwest Territories. In the Yukon, Greenland and right throughout the North, there are parts of the country where there is an issue.
When you take the age demographics — Saskatchewan has a reverse age demographic. That is good and bad. However, the approach we are trying to build in Prince Albert is this: Build the structure so you can drive services at the regional or local level. If you think of franchising, consider a McDonald's in Ottawa and one in Singapore. Everything is the same — the "M" is the same, the cooking systems are the same — but the menu is different.
We need to create a structure that can drive to the local and regional level and get it done there because it is the local and regional levels that can get done. Policing is the only one that is region and local. Education is provincial, health is federal or provincial. Social services are provincial.
However, back to your point, the other part of your question is the economics piece with budgets going up. Collective bargaining plays a role in that. There is what we need to send a gun and badge to and other ways to do it. However, if you look at the whole tax dollar, community safety is 20 cents on the dollar. Health is 55 to 60 cents on the dollar, from what I have been told. When you look at the savings and efficiencies inside all of those, with a common goal and focus, I think there is a lot of money in there that we can reinvent or reinvest in what we do without new money. That is all inclusive in the economics as to whether we need to do more private sector things, be more cost effective, right to how we actually deliver our services.
Senator Eggleton: When you say you do not think crime is going down, are you talking crime versus crime rates?
Mr. McFee: I am talking about areas of the country. It is exclusive to that. The blanket statement is not to act locally or regionally because in Saskatchewan we have concerns. When I go on relations in Saskatchewan, there are different concerns than there are in Ontario.
Senator Eggleton: If there is time for a second round, I have questions for Stats Canada, too.
Senator Merchant: Welcome to all you.
From what we have heard this morning, there seems to be a disconnect between the actual rates, crime rates that you reported and the feeling from Canadians that crime is going up. Overall I think your statistics show actually that crime is going down.
What can we do? With health, for instance, we want to use prevention. We just had a study on health, and we put the emphasis on prevention rather than dealing the problems when they arise. Is there something that we, as a government maybe, should be doing to sort of help people understand the situation. Your survey showed that people feel that crime is going up. We hear that all the time. Why is there a disconnect between what is happening on the ground and the way that people are feeling about it, and what can we do about it?
Ms. McAuley: Perhaps I can clear up what was said. If you turn to slide 13 of the presentation, 62 per cent of Canadians, when they were asked in 2009 through the General Social Survey, stated they felt crime in their neighbourhood had remained the same, and only one quarter had actually believed that crime had increased. Approximately 1 in 10 — it was about six per cent, so less than 1 in 10 — believed crime had decreased in their neighbourhood.
That was when they looked at it over the last five years; we had asked that question of the population in 2004. Then we went back in 2009 and asked the same question. Over that five-year period, the bulk of people felt crime had remained the same within their neighbourhood.
Senator Merchant: I thought you gave a higher number earlier in your presentation.
Ms. McAuley: It would depend if you break it down by various activities but even then, if you look at those activities, the majority of Canadians do feel safe in their neighbourhood. The issue was the one of people using public transportation and whether they are concerned about using public transportation.
Senator Merchant: As I come from Saskatchewan, I am very interested in the programs you have. I loved your presentation because I felt you had a rounded approach to the way you handle things.
Do you feel that there is a disconnect between what you wish us to do — because, after all, we make decisions here — and what we are doing? If so, where are we not understanding exactly what is best, and what would you like to see us do differently?
Mr. McFee: I think that is a very good question. I am not so sure I would say it is a disconnect because I appreciate the work you do in trying to hear all sides. However, I think there really is a better way to attack some of the issues we are attacking. Health in isolation, social services in isolation, or police in isolation has to change.
Privacy has become a barrier. We all basically understand privacy and the rates of privacy and we have balance and are all governed by measures. If each agency has vital information that is the whole of the child or the individual who is in trouble, why are we not applying that before they are in the system? The system is extremely costly. Regarding federal offenders in my province, I had 988 missing persons in my smaller city in Saskatchewan, and 60 per cent of those come from group homes. Some of those group homes are $11,500 a kid and a foster parent $650 to $700.
I think a decision to put everybody together and not poke fun at each other — but find a better way — would be better. I do a presentation on this — I have done it over 100 times — of what we found in Scotland. We took a team of 11 people in social services, health and education. We found a bit of game changer and a better way. We have the provincial government and the premier jumped on side, providing funding, and we are looking for a small federal piece.
All the agencies, more importantly, had to rethink what they were doing and stop the bureaucratic process protecting turf — us included — and figure out how we can deal with the 73 per cent cost effectively and more efficiently and try to provide them help, because that is what it is: Help.
I will give you one example of the hub. A 14-year-old girl comes in. Information comes in from education. The girl went from being an A student to failing, falling asleep in class, has been listed as a missing person, and they think there are addictions in the home. What can a teacher do with that? A teacher can really do nothing.
They bring it to the hub. The police query their MDTs. We pick up the same girl, drunk, face down in a snow bank, frozen to death because some citizen did not call it in.
Social Services checked the records, and they were at that home eight times in the last two months. So long story short, the next day a police officer, a mental health addictions worker and a social worker went to the house. We phoned. They did not want the school, because they did not want to be embarrassed. Fair enough. What can we do to help? The girl breaks down crying, and mom breaks down crying. Mom has got into a bad domestic violence situation over the last six months. The night that she was found face down in a snow bank, she had a belt around her neck. The kid left and thought mom was going to be dead when she returned. We pushed that out.
Police can deal with domestic violence because that is what they do. Social Services comes in and does an emergency intervention order. Housing comes in and changes the locks on the doors. Education goes in because mom was taking an upgrade and furthering her education and had not been there much in the last few months. Repair that relationship and get it done. That family has not been in the system for 10 months, and they were in 13 times in two months. Put a dollar value on that. It is millions. There is a better way, I think.
Senator Demers: Chief, I really appreciate your philosophy. Hopefully there are more people who follow that. I have gone to different jails in the province of Quebec in recent years. Talking as a group to provincial and federal, and federal is a different story, but talking as a group, maybe one or two young men, one of the things they complain most about is rehabilitation and to be accountable for some of the things they still do in jail.
I learned at 12 years old — and I am 67 — to respect officers and all that, and I never got myself in trouble. That is not bragging; it is just a fact. I am sure around here we would not be around here if we did not do that. Where do we stand in means of rehabilitation? Maybe you have the percentage of kids who go from provincial to federal, because once you get to federal, it is two years plus, and provincial is two years less one day. What is your thinking on that, chief?
Mr. McFee: You hit on a real key point, which is how you had your beliefs entrenched. It is probably your parents. You have to remember a lot of these kids nowadays do not have that parental role model. Social Services is playing the role. If the parents are not there, how can we basically help with that? How can we help the family? How can we help the family be stronger? There is no question the federal institution does a good job of doing the rehabilitation and reintegrating into the program, but this goes exactly back to that comment that I made. It is not hard on crime, arrest and incarcerate. It is not soft on crime, prevention and intervention. It is balance. It is smart on crime. We have to do both. There are people who need to go to jail, but you do not forget about them. You rehabilitate. There are all these people that are going into this system, and 90 per cent poor souls is how one judge put it to me. How do we take some of these out of the system? These ones need to go to jail, and it does not mean we stop, but how do we take a lot of these people out of the system and give them a better chance, and, while we give them a better chance, be more efficient and money, but more importantly, we get better job satisfaction because now you feel you are making a difference.
We have replication. I had a young fellow that was in court here the other day, and one of my officers brought him to me, with 19 breaches of probation. He went in for the nineteenth time. I am not sure if it is the twenty-first that gets it right, but maybe we have to rethink some of the things we deliver on this side.
I think that stable parenting, focusing at the right time, and not focusing on the end result, which is the incarceration, but realize that that is absolutely necessary.
Senator Seidman: I would like to return with a request for more details about two examples that were presented here, and both of them pointed to the importance of a multisectoral approach.
Chief McFee, you spoke about outreach programs and the importance of innovation, and you referred to a very specific program. I think you started to speak about it. It might be the hub. I am not sure. You referred to it in your presentation to us. You say when you took your multi-agency team of 11 to Glasgow, Scotland, with a business plan, you found an area that had 15 key indicators. You took some of the things you learned, best practices, and tweaked them to make your model even better. You talked about significant successes, of which you can speak later. I would like you to speak more specifically about that, if you might.
Mr. McFee: Our crime rate has been steadily going up. Last year we were down 11.3 per cent. Prosecutions were down 12 per cent. Social Services saved 32 family intakes over the course of 11 months. Forty is equivalent to one year's work. Through this now, we are putting academia in there to have better measure, but I cannot say it is in isolation for this. I think with the closeness of the stats, a reasonable person can make assumptions that there is an overlap. Last quarter I was on the health board. Emergency room visits in the hospital were down 10 per cent. Ten to eleven per cent is consistent across the board. When you have that consistency, I think there is some reasonable assumption. Now we have to put academia in to get that better measurement and drive it out in relation to what we are doing.
It is the same indicators as Scotland. In Scotland, I had what I say is my light bulb moment. Scotland has 15 key indicators. It is why we went there. HIV and everything, it has all been going out of the roof, and it was everything that we had in my community. We came back from Scotland, which is white, homogeneous and with very little movement. We are a high First Nations component. Our issues are not First Nations people, and I think unfairly First Nations people get pegged with that. It is dealing with marginalization, addictions, mental health, et cetera. That is what this whole approach is doing, early intervention at the right time. I can send a video we just did, and we have done quite a bit, if the committee would like that.
Senator Seidman: Do you have a written model, for example, of your program and evidence that it has been successful and is clearly multisectoral?
Mr. McFee: Yes.
Senator Seidman: I would appreciate, and I am sure the committee would appreciate very much, if you could send us that written model, whether it be in a video or written text or whatever it is. That would be terrific. Thank you.
My other question is for Mr. Sansfaçon. I would like to address to you the same question I just put to Chief McFee, because you referred to a program in Montreal that is multidisciplinary and multisectoral. You say it is the first time that representatives from these systems are working together. If you could please tell me something more about this and why it is successful and what exactly it is, I would appreciate that.
Mr. Sansfaçon: In fact, it is the same as I mentioned earlier in the presentation. I left with the clerk some examples of some of the projects that, in a sense, are very much in line with what Chief McFee is saying. It is, first of all, being in a position to identify what is really needed and, if I may use this term, target those who are most vulnerable and in need. Social Services know who they are, police will know who they are, educators will know who they are, but the thing is they do not necessarily speak with one another. For example, when this program in Montreal was elaborated some three years ago now, it was designed in this case for working with a particular clientele of youth who were already in the youth centres in Montreal, youth who had already some experience unfortunately with youth gangs. As I say, it was a situation where youth workers, working with the youth centres, would know who these youth are, the police would know who they are, and street workers in, for example, Montreal North would also know who they are, but they would not speak with one another. There are issues, and indeed some people mentioned it, relating to privacy and the capacity, as it were, to share this information. These can be surmounted, and this is what this experience in Montreal is demonstrating. Through memoranda of understanding and protocols of agreements, these organizations are capable of working together and indeed, because they work together, they are capable of being effective and efficient in delivering the interventions that are needed to the right people and at the right time. This is essentially what we think is part and parcel of the success.
There are other examples, some of which have been evaluated. One is the wrap around, and I dare say that the wrap around model is very similar to what Chief McFee was describing as the hub approach. Again, it is the same principle: You wrap the services around these vulnerable populations and provide the right intervention at the right time. You are indeed increasing the chances of being successful. We will be pleased to provide more examples in writing.
Senator Seidman: I was just about to ask you the same question and make the same request as I did of Chief McFee, and that is, if you have written documentation of these programs and the evidence that they work, we would appreciate receiving them. Thank you.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you for coming today. You have certainly given us some great thoughts and ideas that will help with this study. Ms. McAuley, I know you do not have it here. I come from Prince Edward Island.
I notice that Charlottetown is listed in a lot of your statistics. On page 10, under "Police-reported hate crimes by type of motivation," Charlottetown is not here. Do you have that and can you send it to the committee? I would be interested in seeing that, if it is available.
Ms. McAuley: We handed out a series of publications for you. They are called Juristat. One is called "Police- reported hate crime in Canada," and it breaks it down by census metropolitan area to the number of hate crime. Charlottetown is not a census metropolitan area. We included it today to ensure we had the regional representation. However, we could go back to that police service to see if there were any specific incidences for that area if it would be of benefit to you.
Senator Callbeck: I would appreciate that. Thank you very much.
Mr. McFee, you talked about the multi-agency team you have set up in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Has this required a lot more dollars? Have you been able to do this within existing budgets?
Mr. McFee: That is a great question. It is both. This came about because I had to find a new way to do business. I always say that brains get you here, networking brings you to here, and clout and influence bring about change.
I was on the health board and had to bring everyone to Scotland, and that was a challenge. We might have paid for one of the other services to go, but it was an investment versus an expenditure. The long story short is it is not a lot of dollars. The province is on board for $450,000. They are paying for the executive director, support position and two analysts. One is a tactical analyst and one is trained on social return on investment that can measure what we are investing in our community and report back on it. That is the province.
We are asking the federal government — we are still looking for it — for $250,000 to pay for the one-time cost in relation to vehicles, computers, et cetera. Back to building the franchise; box it up. Our provincial government is taking on the privacy piece. We have all signed an MOU, and the premier has our Attorney General reviewing that legislation to ensure we can. Safety supersedes privacy but the reality is we are still doing it for the right reasons. People have to be comfortable. We have to bridge that gap; we understand that. We are working on that piece.
The last piece was to tell every agency that they had to bring their staff to the table, plus $25,000 of operational dollars. In those budgets, that is nothing. Everyone has some skin on the line, everyone is invested in the program, and everyone has a say in what we are trying to do.
The difference between what Ms. Illingworth is saying and what we are trying to do is we are building a structure that can be replicated, and you can change the priorities and needs in any community. That is the key. What I need is not the same as is Moose Jaw needs. What I need is absolutely not the same as Toronto or Prince Edward Island. However, if you have a structure based on that, you can plop that structure in and work on the needs as required to get local and regional developments. That is the difference.
We looked across Canada and got come great one-off programs that everyone is in, but this organization is not a police plan. It is a community plan run by a governance board that I cannot pull my resources out of if I get busy. In other words, they are dedicated to the needs of our community, set by the structure of that committee.
I think it has real potential. We are only a year into it but we are seeing positive results. The best result is all the agencies now see this must be done together, all the time — not one-offs to fix break and enters or domestic violence. It is what we need to do to fix our communities.
Senator Callbeck: I commend you for it, and it certainly is needed to get rid of all the silos.
Mr. McFee: Thank you.
Senator Callbeck: Ms. Illingworth, I want to ask you about the rehabilitation initiatives. You have a lot of recommendations. One is toward education, which I agree is extremely important so that when the person gets out, they will not reoffend. If they get an education, it will help them tremendously. Literacy and crime are related.
One of the incentives that you have is to offer small incentives for offenders that earn a GED while incarcerated. What type of incentives are you talking about? Are you talking about privileges?
Ms. Illingworth: No. Perhaps it could be within the institutional setting. It could be different access. Perhaps there are restrictions on times they can go to the library or canteen; something positive within the institution to keep them motivated to finish their education. As you said, we know when people come back into the community and cannot find employment it will highly impact recidivism.
Senator Callbeck: I agree with you 100 per cent. It is extremely important because I believe the average education of a person in a federal penitentiary is grade 7. We need to do a lot in this area.
The second one is to offer mandatory alcohol and substance abuse programs while incarcerated, as well as after release.
Right now, do they have the option of taking these anger management and substance abuse programs, et cetera?
Ms. Illingworth: Yes, within the federal system it is not required that they take any programs. When an offender is initially brought into the system, a treatment and correctional plan is developed. It is recommended, depending on their criminogenic factors, which programs they should take while incarcerated. However, at the moment it is not required that you have to complete substance abuse, anger management, or family violence or whatever led you to become incarcerated.
Senator Callbeck: These programs exist in all our federal institutions. What about the provincial institutions?
Ms. Illingworth: No, the provincial systems are much different with the amount of overcrowding at the provincial level. In Ottawa at Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre I believe the capacity is about 250, and there are over 600 people in there currently. It is usually short sentences and little time to do any real programming or treatment before they are back on some form of probation in the community.
Senator Callbeck: You are there if it is up to two years. Let us say you get two years less a day. Will that person get any programming at all?
Ms. Illingworth: I would say very little in our experience and from what we have seen and heard. Again, that is something where you could probably bring in experts from the provincial system to talk more about it.
Senator Callbeck: They have no time to work on their GEDs or their literacy skills?
Ms. Illingworth: I am not as sure about the provincial system as the federal system.
Senator Dyck: Thank you so much to our witnesses this morning. We have a good overview from the statistics to the police work and innovative models in the community to victims and youth. I was very taken by all your presentations. I have some specific questions.
First, because I am from Saskatchewan, I was most taken with Mr. McFee's comments. As you are stationed in Prince Albert, you are in a unique position because it probably has one of the highest percentages of Aboriginal Peoples in the country. However, because it is not a greater census metropolitan area it does not show up in your statistics. In your statistics, you said that the Prairies and the North have the highest homicide rates. In Saskatoon and Regina, we sit at two or three homicides per every 100,000 and we struggle with that.
In addition to having the high Aboriginal population — which we know are incarcerated at an alarming rate — there is a higher representation of young people, and you mentioned this as well, Mr. McFee. About 50 per cent of the Aboriginal population is 25 years old and younger. There must be opportunities for preventive programs dealing with youth and child welfare, though I forget who mentioned the latter if their presentation.
I will direct the big question to you, Mr. McFee: In your hub model, which is more holistic — and I certainly applaud you for it; it seems like a great model — do you include programs like Mr. Sansfaçon mentioned in Eastern Canada? Are there similar sorts of programs available in Saskatchewan?
Mr. McFee: Yes. I could answer that for half a day here. I will try to shorten it.
We have to change the way we are doing business because we do get our stats and our stats are higher than Saskatoon and Regina. The reality is that 32 to 42 per cent of my arrests in my region are from northern Saskatchewan. Northern Saskatchewan will be 50 per cent under 15 in about 10 years.
I go to my board and I say "If it is one third now, when does it become 50, 60 or 70 per cent? The crisis is now." If you were to take eight years and use a simple doubling formula, as you would use in your investments, and you compared us to Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, and Regina — the four big ones in Saskatchewan — our calls for service per capita will double in eight years, based on eight years of data, if we do not change that. How can you afford to pay for that? You cannot.
There are reasons to rethink the system: Economies of scale are important — what can we do more efficiently? — and we cannot keep up with the math.
If you look at evidence-based practices — back to the alcohol solution — if you really wanted to pay for it, and had strict rules on paying for evidence-based stuff, I could give you three ways to pay for it with new money. One would be alcohol sales — $587 million in Saskatchewan per annum to evidence-based solutions. A case of beer might be $23.23 versus $23. I do not think too many people will take it that seriously. If they do and if they stop drinking, that is probably a good thing.
A long story short in relation to that, it cannot be about money. Money needs to come in but it should not start the discussion. We need to find the things that work, based in evidence, focus on those things, and tie into the population. That is the big difference between Saskatchewan, Iqaluit, Nunavut — all those you go through northern Saskatchewan — as we mentioned here, the differences.
We need the ability to act at a local and regional level. We need to be able to use the black swan approach, which is an anomaly: We can take things that work on a national perspective and we can use those things that work but then we need to have the ability to innovate to work locally, which is the structure and framework that I talk about.
People at the local and regional level can change it if you empower them to do it. However, giving us a national strategy that is good for Toronto, it is a reverse age demographic. There might be pieces we could take but it will not work to the level of effectiveness that we need. The model needs to be something that is consistent but then needs to get to local and regional involvement to get it done.
That is absolutely critical in Saskatchewan. We also have the future workforce if we do it properly. I talked with Cameco here the other day. It is important to bring the private sector on board, too. If you take the dollar value of a family and what we are using in generations and you compare that to the infrastructure cost and the 1 per cent GST that we solved that with — I would think if you measured this cost, it is way more than the other infrastructure.
Senator Dyck: Would you like to make a comment, Mr. Sansfaçon?
Mr. Sansfaçon: If I may, I have a couple of points.
In addition to the structure, we also need the evidence-based interventions which are what the NCPC is trying to develop. If I may say, it is not an Ottawa-centric or, for that matter, an Eastern Canada strategy. We have programs in communities across the country: In the northern territories, in northern Saskatchewan or in Manitoba, as we do in downtown Toronto and Montreal. As I mentioned in my presentation, there are 136 different community-based interventions currently being implemented and tested in this country.
The point is that one must ensure that, within the structure, those who will be working with these children and youth in need will deliver the right types of interventions. You have to ensure that, first, you do no harm; and, second, that you do better good than without this intervention.
Generally speaking, the kinds of preventative interventions we are speak about will cost anywhere between $5,000 to $8,000 on average per year to deliver for these at-risk children and youth. It is a very minimal amount when you consider what would otherwise be the costs of them entering into the justice system, of causing victimization, and ending up eventually in the federal system if nothing is done to prevent that.
In this regard, for example, with Aboriginal youth in provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, there are numerous projects where not only are we attentive to the needs of the communities, but we are also to tell the knowledge base of what would work in a tailored way with these children and youth in these communities, and that would be sustainable over time. Yes, we agree entirely that we cannot live off one-off projects. It must be a more systematic effort so as to ensure that we will continue to reduce the costs of crime and victimization in the country.
[Translation]
Senator Verner: Let me begin by thanking you all very much for being here this morning. My question is for Ms. Illingworth, and perhaps Chief McFee will have some comments to add.
I am from Quebec City. Recently we have heard a lot in the media about certain situations that I would like you to comment on.
Of course we are all in favour of social rehabilitation. A lot of prevention and education are required to avoid a dramatic rise in crime.
I know that there are programs for victims of crime. Recently two crimes occurred in the Quebec City region. In the first one, a policewoman was the victim of an attempted murder by an individual who was fixated on women in uniform. In the second, a young man was the victim of sexual and physical abuse for years, decades even, a horror story worthy of a bad movie. Both have learned that their aggressors opted to go to transition houses to complete their rehabilitation; the problem is that the transition house is a barely a few minutes away from their homes.
In spite of all the efforts made to help victims learn to live again despite the drama they have been through, are we not putting them back in a situation of exclusion? Both these persons, expressing themselves freely in the media, say that they have both started being afraid of going out again to the grocery store or to walk around their neighbourhood at night.
What do you think about the choice given to a criminal coming out of prison to go to a transition house that is scarcely a few steps or a few minutes from their victim's home? Do you have any suggestions to make in this regard?
[English]
Mr. McFee: That is a great point. I think the answers I would give to that are basically what we are talking about in relation to balance.
There needs to be accountability for those people. At the end of the day, the reason we at CACP supported the omnibus bill is that there are some bad people in this country and some of them need to go to jail. That does not mean they stop rehabilitation and we cannot forget about them, because there is probably an underlying reason why they have gotten that way. At the same time, when they are disrupting society and threatening innocent people, there needs to be accountability in that message.
The other area that we need to work on with that smart-on-crime piece is balance. No one should go away from any meeting thinking that we should be doing one or the other. We should totally focus on intervention and prevention or on accountability, arrest and incarcerate. It is balance. Until we do that effectively, we have to get out of this discussion of "hard" and "soft" on crime. That might be a great role for the Senate, which is an ultimate decision body. We have to stop people from discussing this because it forces people to take positions. They take this one or that one, which is counterproductive of what we are trying to do.
To your point, these are atrocities that need to be dealt with. There needs to be accountability and they need to be accountable for their actions just like we police officers are held accountable if we step over the line; there is accountability for that.
On the other side, if we could have seen the timeline of these individuals, we could have asked — that is, in relation to the timeline about where we got in relation to the other side — how did they get there? I would almost guarantee you that, if you were to put that timeline on a chart, numerous interventions could have been done at an earlier time where we might have had a positive impact on those people. However, we waited until they were in and then tried to fix them. Sometimes, it is too late — not that these should be forgotten about. I do not know the specifics about that, but I would focus on balance with accountability.
Ms. Illingworth: At our centre we talk to the victims that you have described on a monthly basis. They are concerned about the offender coming back into the community, where they live very close to them.
At our centre right now, we are working on a document for the national office for victims that will give victims practical advice about what to do when this is happening to them, when they fear for their safety, when the offender approaches release or is coming back on some form of conditional release or, in some cases, when they are at the end of the sentence completely and there is no more supervision by any probation or parole officer.
We are developing a handout that will be given out across the country, both in English and in French, to help victims with what to do. Some of the practical suggestions are safety planning; getting in contact with the police to make them aware that there is potentially a high-risk person coming back; speaking with the parole office; getting support from the police to get a peace bond against the person, and things of that nature; and getting support from local victim services to ensure their safety.
We have the wraparound model that we talked about for young offenders or for people in trouble for offenders coming back into the community. We need the same wraparound model for victims to ensure their safety when offenders are coming back into the community. We would like to see more concern for that.
[Translation]
Senator Verner: You do not feel that, for these victims, this is like going back to square one?
[English]
Ms. Illingworth: Yes, in some cases it is, for sure, back to square one. It is usually them who have to make all the changes to their routines and their personal safety.
In one situation that we helped with, police have put cameras in the woman's home. They have put an emergency ankle bracelet on her so that if she touches it, they will know and SWAT is coming to her house because he is there and is coming to kill her. GPS is on her car now. It seems that all the interventions were focused on her and not on him because he is at the end of sentence now. The police are trying to restrict his movements with a peace bond, but he is fighting that.
Definitely, it is hard for victims to move forward and to have a normal existence when they are very worried about their safety in the community. That is where local victim services and local police can be a big help to families and to individuals who are scared for their safety.
The Chair: Before I continue with my colleagues, statistics are playing a great deal here in terms of the information and the commentary that we are hearing this morning.
I would like to come back to this issue because they have been used to suggest that crime is decreasing in this country, et cetera. I was first attracted to this issue about three years ago after I saw in one of the major reports that crime was decreasing, and so on, arising from Statistics Canada. Based on my experience in Nova Scotia, I did not believe it. I certainly did not believe it in the community around me because the numbers of crimes reported in the local newspaper on a weekly basis, when I took a quick look, had gone up significantly over the previous several years. Those were mostly break-ins and theft related to the drug business, and so on; they are all tied in.
I looked at how Statistics Canada collects its data. I also looked into how the data was gathered from the police forces across the country. I do not have enormous confidence in the total accuracy — trends, perhaps to some degree — but I want to ask you one specific question.
On side 6 you show "Average homicide rate, by selected census metropolitan areas 2000-10," and Halifax is under 2 per 100,000 in population. The population given for Greater Metropolitan Halifax is roughly 350,000. That would mean approximately seven homicides per year over that time. I realize that it is averaged over that period. Let me give you two specific numbers.
In 2009, the number of homicides in Halifax was 13. In 2011, before the year was complete, it was 15. These would suggest significant differences from both the trend suggested by StatsCan information and the actual accuracy of the information. Could you comment on that?
Ms. McAuley: I would refer the committee to the Juristat article that we provided called Homicide in Canada, 2010. In the back of the, table 2 breaks down the homicides for 2010 and 2009, as well as the 10-year average from 2000 up to 2009. In there you will see that for Halifax in 2009, there were 12 homicides; in 2010 there were 11.
We can go back for all the CMAs and look at what the trends are to see. We show the 10-year average because there is a fair amount of fluctuation that happens. It is to try to avoid one year of data where there may have been a number of homicides in one CMA versus what the 10-year trend is. If it is of interest to the committee, we can provide that. Those data are readily available through Statistics Canada; we do not hide them in any way. They are collaborated with the police services from who we receive this information. We do have these data that go back to 1981 as well. For any of the CMAs, we can look at those specific numbers as well, if that is of interest to the committee.
The Chair: One more question, before we move on, with regard to statistics.
Senator Dyck: May I have a supplementary question?
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Dyck: In Saskatoon, the chief of police was often saying that the homicide rates that are reported are affected by the date that it is actually reported. The person could have actually been murdered five years ago, but it is not reported until they find the body. That affects it as well. In one year you might find two cases that were cold cases in one year. The statistics, then, do not necessarily reflect the actual number that year because they could be cold cases or it could depend on the month that your statistics start.
The Chair: I will move on. That issue would not affect my overall question in terms of its direction.
The second question for clarification that I had is if there are a series of crimes committed in one set of events with the same individual or individuals, are each of those crimes reported — that is, break and enter leading to a car theft, leading to a drug issue that ultimately lead to a murder — or is it the most significant crime that is reported? Is each of the stages of the criminal event reported as a crime or only the major incident?
Ms. McAuley: The data that we show are based on the most serious offence. However, we do collect up to four incidents in each of the cases. We do have that information as well.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Sansfaçon, I was dismayed to read the statistic about the number of Aboriginal children in care. You told us there are approximately 27,000 Aboriginal children younger than 17 in care, and that is three times the number who were enrolled in residential schools at the height of its operations and more than at any time in Canadian history.
We had an apology to the Aboriginal First Nations peoples about what happened during the residential schools — and a well-deserved apology I might add and long overdue — but when I look at 27,000 Aboriginal children currently in government care, it makes me wonder what the long-term effects will be and the long-term costs both financially and socially.
Will we need to have another apology? How many years did the last one take? It was a long time coming. It is astounding that we are not investing money now to help the young Aboriginal children in care or at risk, rather than spending $113,000 a year on keeping them in a long-term jail. It causes me great concern. Could you expand on that statistic?
Mr. Sansfaçon: Obviously not being an expert in the domain of crime prevention I am not necessarily the best person to speak about why there would be that many young Aboriginal children in the care of the state. Neither am I in a position really to comment on the level of investment made in providing assistance to these families and the children. I suppose colleagues from departments such as Aboriginal Affairs or Health Canada might be in a better position to provide more detailed information.
This was relevant for our purposes in crime prevention. The numerous risk factors known to be related to offending trajectories are well established, and particularly those that will lead youth into committing more than just a few offences. Most youth desist from offending. The vast majority, fortunately, do not end up being adult offenders. However, there is this small proportion of young offenders who do offend and will continue on with chronic, long-term offending trajectories. The research has established that a number of risk factors are identifiable, one of which is having been in care of the state. They have a much higher likelihood of entering into these trajectories.
Again, there are two cautions here: One, it is not one single risk factor but a combination of risk factors that will increase the likelihood of later offending trajectories — five, six or more risk factors being present in the life of the same person; and second, these can be used to predict individual trajectories.
These are group trajectories, but we cannot say at this time that little Joe will become a young offender. However, we can at least say yes, and to the extent where, in certain communities and in certain groups these factors accumulate and there is a higher likelihood. In this regard, being in the care of the state certainly is one of these indicators which should resonate for governments to dedicate programming to these children and their families in particular.
Senator Cordy: We talk about children in care as being a risk factor for going on to serious crime or whatever, but often the reason for their being in care is a number of other risk factors present within the family. It is a very disturbing statistic for me to see.
Ms. Illingworth, in dealing with victim services you gave examples about people at risk for social exclusion. Are there best practices happening? You gave some recommendations, but are there best practices happening for victims of crime or even potential victims of crime? You actually gave us some criteria for people who may be more likely to be victims of crime. Are there some best practices programs that are working across the country?
Ms. Illingworth: It is very individual from province to province and territory to territory. We have programs, for example, in British Columbia which are all police-based victim service programs. All the services victims can access immediately in the aftermath are primarily provided by police, and they do not have court-based services anymore out there. There are also community associations like the Ending Violence Association of BC, which does a lot of work at the community level with violence against women and different groups there.
Within communities across Canada it varies greatly as to what is available for victims in the aftermath of crime. There certainly are best practices happening. For example, here in Ottawa Algonquin College is now delivering a victimology program, which is a graduate certificate program for people who intend to work with victims of crime. It is a one-year certificate program that teaches about trauma, what people go through and how they should be best dealt with in the community setting.
There is a lot of information being gathered from other communities around the world too. In Scotland, for example, they have a different system. In Canada, victims have to choose to access services by contacting an agency themselves. In Scotland, when police arrive at a scene, it is automatic. Victim services arrive with them and then victims choose to opt out if that is not something they desire.
There are many different ways of offering victim services around the world and certainly there is the World Society of Victimology and other such groups that are recommending how to best serve victims constantly.
Senator Cordy: You are the front line workers and this committee did a study on mental health and mental illness. We met with a number of police chiefs who were in fact starting to implement programs because they are the front line people on how to de-escalate a situation that may involve someone with a mental illness.
Chief McFee, you talked about early intervention as the key and bringing staff on board. I would say that many, if not most, police chiefs are in line with what you are saying. How do you make it filter down to the person who will be on the front line when they get into that kind of situation?
I said specifically mental health but there could be any number of situations.
Mr. McFee: You are bang on. Mental health and the changes in mental health, without getting into that, in this country over the last number of years certainly impact policing. A better system is to try to get those people out of the system and deal with them in the environment where the expertise can be provided.
Policing is a 24/7 response and it is dealing with people who are generally not at their best behaviour. We are on the front line in relation to that and there are some things we do collectively across this country to provide training and a better awareness. Obviously there is some cultural awareness that goes along with it. It is not any one magic brush that paints all or fixes it. There has to be an understanding, but the key is the follow-up piece in relation to making sure the people in those conditions are getting the right help at the right time. Just to throw them into the system and forget them and wait for them to go through the system and all of a sudden, in eight or ten months or two years, they are convicted and incarcerated or are perhaps on remand, we have lost the time element in relation to that.
The better part about the mental health aspect is that the majority of those people are known to have issues long before we deal with them, so why are we not going back to the idea of using your investment portfolio? When we know we want to retire we have X amount and we track it and we know what it is doing. Why are we not using the similar approach in relation to mental health? I generally think we can improve. I am not saying it is a health responsibility. Our system can improve drastically and we are part of that.
Senator Seth: Thank you to all of you. It is really wonderful that you have given us all this information. It is really about the solution for all these disturbing situations and I think we are looking for prevention. My small suggestion is to think about the cost. Everything costs so much money — provincially, federally or whatever. Is there any way to minimize the expenditure and get better help?
Have you ever thought about having an integrated type of program where the families are involved? The parents, youth, schoolteachers, and social workers are involved in combination with the psychologists or a group of physicians. I am a physician, so I sometimes see these kinds of situations. I think integrated help where all of them get together is not very expensive, and could be done easily at the office. Again the word is engagement; children in volunteer programs and projects. I think long term it is quite a great help. I see that if kids are picked up in the early stages before they go into all kinds of drugs and criminal behaviour.
In your opinion do you think that because we are so focused on Canada's aging population and the baby boom generation, it has distracted attention away from the Canadian youth?
Mr. McFee: Those are some very good points. The thing that helped me understand this best is that like you, being a physician, I sat on a health board. I was a business person, an entrepreneur, a police chief and have had training on this. It is the multiple lens approach of dealing with that. Three and half years ago we were told we would lose two thirds of our workforce. At the end of day there might be people dying and you might not be able to get home because H1N1 was coming. We all remember what happened. All the agencies got together, used an evidence-based model and told us what to do and guess what? Minimal impact.
If you looking for basis in evidence and use that concept, apply it to violence, put violence in take out H1N1 do you think you would have to the same impact? You absolutely would, 95 per cent. As Mr. Sansfaçon said, use the evidence- based stuff that was based in research. Fund those things and get the common goals and focus, and at the end of day you get things done. There needs to be a paradigm shift in thinking. You cannot use 19th century ways of responding in a 20th century culture. You can celebrate the things you do well. We are doing phenomenal things and that is good. However, to use innovation on the other percentage and look at the tax dollar, there is a lot of money to reinvest in ourselves to make ourselves better.
Mr. Sansfaçon: You are absolutely right: Integrated teams of people who are capable of delivering the right types of interventions to the right persons at the right moment are really needed. We have important, we hope, evidence-based practices from other countries. We are trying to adapt them to the Canadian context, and test them in communities across the country. One of them, imported from England, is the Youth Inclusion Program which I think is very significant to the very theme of this committee's research.
The program is an empty shell in a sense. It is a tool to bring people together around the table who will try to make sure that no kid in need falls between the cracks of the system, which is unfortunately what happens through no fault of anyone in particular. Simply, there is no person designated to ensure that the children and the family will receive the right types of interventions. Through the youth inclusion programs you deliver interventions that are adapted to the needs of these persons, kids, and families. There are no cookie cutter approaches. They are targeted at their needs, but you try to ensure they will be followed through until there are good indications that they do not need you anymore and may be out of that risky situation they were in. Through these types of wrap around interventions and integrated teams we can make a significant difference.
Senator Martin: Apologies — I was late due to a meeting.
I agree that an integrated approach and integrated teams are very important, and perhaps a very important solution to what we were discussing. As a former educator, if we were to look at student files there were many indicators leading to that first incident. That leads me back to the classroom, as a parent too, and the kids are so smart. The first time they understand how the system works they bank it, and then they know where the holes may be. There is this perception of a revolving door.
I go to Mr. McFee regarding the youth criminal justice system and students in that. We say early intervention, but maybe that very first time the consequence or the law needs to be in some ways black and white. I talk about this because the infamous Bacon brothers were in the school I taught in. I taught the older one who was killed last year and there were suggestions. Was he a sociopath? I can tell you in grade 11 he was a student; impressionable but hard- working. When I heard when was happening it was very shocking to me, yet I know the role the parents played. Within that youth criminal justice system I wonder what we should be doing for the early interventions to ensure the message is clear that the law is the law. That is where I struggle with the hard line and the soft line because I am coming from that perspective. However, I see what is happening because the kids know. My husband works with youth at risk and they know the system inside out.
Mr. McFee: That is a great point. I will give you an example about that. When we went to this program trying to get in early, figure out kids and offer the olive branch to families, the elderly, and across the gamut. I brought my best major crimes investigator into my office. He investigated most of the murders we had and was one of our go-to people. He had been well trained. I told him, "I know you can solve murders, now stop them." I put him into family safety unit and he looked at me sideways.
People with knowledge and expertise know how to step on toes in a respectful manner. He sits down with parents and tells them your kid is headed here based on this. You might want to play a role in this kid's life. They have had numerous interventions in year one. He speaks with fact. He does it in a respectful manner. Most parents truly care, but we are all working and a lot of times we are blinded by our own children and what they are doing. When you use key indicators and build a system that will identify those key indicators, it is absolutely critical that we hit them with all the resources and reality check sometimes, which is exactly what you refer to.
Senator Martin: I think the programs you are talking about for inclusion to get to the youth, before others get to them, is key. I go back to the attachment theory. I have seen kids without fathers for instance, whether they are international students or single parent homes. The kids who end up doing air cadets or scouts have male role models that could then take the place of that father. Anecdotally, I have seen their attachment to the male role model, and that impacts what they will choose to do. The programs you are funding, as well as what we could all be doing at very early stages, are absolutely critical. I do not know if you have a comment regarding that.
Mr. Sansfaçon: I could speak about this for hours like Mr. McFee said earlier. I will give you three examples and will be pleased to share more documentation if you are into reading.
Alternative suspension: You may have been tempted to do this yourself as a teacher. You may even have done it. It is known that kids who are suspended systematically are also at high risk. This probably happens because there are other things happening in their lives. What are teachers to do? You are not social workers or psychologists. You have to manage a class and it is difficult already. We have a program currently in testing in communities across the country where there is work being done with these kids who are systematically suspended by specialists, trying to divert them and identify where the problems are. They are also trying to give them the right types of interventions by the right specialists.
I could also talk about SNAP, Stop Now And Plan, created by the Toronto-based Child Development Institute, which is trying to test kids ages 7 to 10 — young kids in school — who show early aggressive behaviour and have already had contact with the police. These are signs that tell you something is happening. It is not normal for an eight- year-old kid to have preliminary contact with the police. You deliver a specific targeted intervention that also addresses the family-related problems, because you involve the family.
These are some of the examples that develop the tool box for Canadian practitioners in school systems and social service systems to ensure that gradually we use the tools in this tool box.
Senator Martin: With regard to foster parents and kids in care, just as with international students, in the home stay families there are two broad categories: One category does it for the money because it is income for them and the other does it for the experience. With foster parents, the selection process and the monitoring of the families who take these children into care need to be well managed. Again, there are two broad types of families: Those who want the revenue for themselves because they need it for their own family household and those who are really look at the whole child and the system and want to be part of the solution. That is an area that we need to examine as well because I have seen different types of families that take these kids into care.
The Chair: That was an observation, I believe; thank you.
A final question from Senator Eggleton, and then I will summarize what I think has been an excellent session.
Senator Eggleton: It has been an excellent session. I like many of the ideas that have come out, such as integrated teams and integrated approaches. That seems to be a common theme. At the same time, the old phrase "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is relevant as well. That does not necessarily cost more money; in fact I do not think it does. It is a matter of spending money smarter.
My final question goes to Statistics Canada. I want to pick up on something you talked about earlier. I want to ask you about this study done out of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute by Scot Newark, a former Alberta Crown attorney and executive officer of the Canadian Police Association. He questioned the statistics that you accumulate and said that some of them were inappropriately minimizing the volume of crime and that the volume of crime had inexplicably been altered retroactively. He questioned your conclusion that crime rates in Canada are low and falling. Could you respond to that?
Ms. McAuley: We have been talking with Mr. Newark at length about his report. I will ask Mr. Turner to comment on this. We retroactively go back and amend any of the statistics we have because the police are providing us with new information. That means that from time to time our statistics that have been published the year previous do need to change. That was one the criticisms that Mr. Newark had presented in his report. I will ask Mr. Turner to talk more to that.
John Turner, Chief of Analysis, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada: Yes, in reference to what Ms. McAuley is speaking to, police forces send us updates the year after we freeze the data and release crime statistics. The average update is 0.5 per cent every year, so it is not a large effect on the trend that we have released in that current year. When we put out 2010 crime statistics, by 2011 when we release the new crime statistics, the 2010 will have been slightly revised. The average revision is about one-half of 1 per cent.
Senator Eggleton: Do you think that what you published is a fairly accurate reflection of what is really happening in spite of what Mr. Newark says?
Ms. McAuley: The information we provide is vetted by all of the police services before it is put into the public domain through our publications. If any errors are found during that vetting process by the police services, they come to our attention, and we work with the police service directly. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Police Information and Statistics Committee, or POLIS, which is a subcommittee of that group, and police across the country support the information we provide through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, which is where we produce the crime rate and the crime severity index.
Mr. McFee: I was going to mention that we have the POLIS Committee that sits and works closely in line. Going forward one thing I am hearing across the country is that the ability to look at the statistics nationally is a bit restricted in relation to what the agent demographics for the region are. If you overlap the map of the age demographics, and Statistics Canada has a good indicator that crime is generally committed 15 to 24, you will probably have a clearer picture of what is happening across the country; and then you can relate it to offending rates, et cetera.
We have to have data, and I think Statistics Canada does a great job; but we always look at ways to tweak it to get a more accurate reflection.
Senator Eggleton: Do we have the 15 to 24 stats?
Ms. McAuley: There is some information in the presentation but we can provide more detail to the clerk, if you would like.
The Chair: I thank all of you here this morning for your contribution to the study. This is a very important area in terms of getting a sense of the global nature of the issue and the potential ways of dealing with it.
We have been hearing this morning, as you relate to examples of bringing in various resources in a timely manner to identify the underlying causes or perhaps causes of long-term potential issues and attempt to deal with them early on and your references to how things operate in many ways within our major cities and our communities, that it is not dissimilar to what we have been hearing in the two studies we completed most recently on post-secondary education and the health accord, which we are completing. We have been hearing about how the major resources of society operate in silos. We heard that very clearly with regard to how we deal with health overall and that the major components are silos and there is very little communication across. We certainly saw that in the broad spectrum issues of social determinants that have a huge impact on education and whether young people will be motivated to even pursue educational opportunities that are available and to move on. Of course, education becomes a very important part of the issue we are dealing with here today in terms of affecting the probability of youth unfortunately encountering the police services in our country.
The thing that I would like to ask on behalf of the committee is this: If you have additional specific examples of where a number of community services are moving forward to break down the barriers in their respective mandates and working together as a community to focus on the issues in the way that Mr. McFee, Ms. Illingworth and Mr. Sansfaçon referred to in different ways this morning, if you can identify additional specific examples, they would be enormously helpful to the committee in crafting recommendations based on examples.
Obviously, I would appeal to all who have additional information as a result of what you have heard this morning, and if you think the committee would benefit from it, I would invite you to provide that as well.
On behalf of colleagues I express our deep appreciation for appearance today and for answering our questions so directly.
I declare the meeting adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)