HANSARD

Re: Correctional Services/Facilities

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)

Mr.Chuck Porter (Vice-Chairman)

Mr. Pat Dunn

Mr. Keith Bain

Mr. Graham Steele

Mr. David Wilson (Sackville-Cobequid)

Mr. Keith Colwell

Ms. Diana Whalen

Mr. Leo Glavine

[Mr. David Wilson replaced by Mr. Bill Estabrooks.]

[Ms. Diana Whalen replaced by Mr. Michel Samson.]

In Attendance:

Ms. Charlene Rice

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Jacques Lapointe

Auditor General

Mr. Terry Spicer

Assistant Auditor General

WITNESSES

Nova Scotia Department of Justice

Ms. Marian Tyson

Deputy Minister

Mr. Fred Honsberger

Executive Director - Correctional Services

Mr. Sean Kelly

Director - Correctional Services

HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2008

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

9:00 A.M.

CHAIR

Ms. Maureen MacDonald

VICE-CHAIRMAN

Mr. Chuck Porter

MADAM CHAIR: Order, please. I'd like to call the committee to order, please. Good morning, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts today has witnesses from the Department of Justice regarding Correctional Services. I'd like to welcome our witnesses. We will proceed in the usual manner with introductions from members and a brief opening statement from the deputy, to be followed by questions.

[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you and good morning. Ms. Tyson, the floor is yours.

MS. MARIAN TYSON: I'm very pleased to be here this morning, Madam Chair, to speak to this committee about the operations of the Correctional Services division and to discuss the recent challenges that we have been facing. As you may be aware, the provision of Correctional Services is divided between the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments in Canada. The federal government is responsible for correctional institutions that house inmates with sentences of two years and longer. The federal government is also responsible for the National Parole Board, which authorizes the release of offenders from custody and supervision of offenders in the community following their release.

1

The provinces and territories on the other hand are responsible for the custody of adult offenders serving less than two years and for youth custody and for community corrections, including probation services for adults and youth, and for individuals who have been remanded by the courts.

The Correctional Services division is divided into two sections: the operation of the correctional facilities and the Community Corrections section. We have five adult institutions in this province: one in Antigonish, one in Amherst, one in Cape Breton - these are the three older facilities that we have - and the two newer facilities, one in Burnside in Dartmouth and one in Yarmouth.

Provincially, if one person is housed per cell in Burnside and Yarmouth, we can house 454 inmates. We are increasing our capacity at both Burnside and Yarmouth by adding up to 112 in Burnside and up to 38 portable beds in Yarmouth. Approximately 35,000 transfers occur per year in Nova Scotia. This includes admissions, releases, transfers between institutions, and medical and other appointments. So there is quite a lot of movement of inmates.

Correctional Services is also responsible for the operation of the Nova Scotia Youth Centre in Waterville, the Cape Breton Youth Detention Facility, Centre 24/7 in the Valley, and the Halifax Youth Attendance Centre. We have a 114-bed capacity within our youth facilities.

Community Corrections is responsible for the supervision of both adult and young offenders serving community-based sentences. The Department of Justice operates 22 full-time community corrections offices across the province, which employ 75 probation officers and 20 senior probation officers. Community Corrections has approximately 5,500 admissions per year, with approximately 3,000 pre-sentence reports.

In total, Correctional Services employs 651 individuals. The most recent statistics that we have, gathered in the 2004-05 year, indicate that Nova Scotia has the highest staff per inmate in the country. The total budget for Correctional Services is $46,790,800, so close to $50 million.

I'm very proud that in our Correctional Services division, we have a staff of hard-working and dedicated individuals. These people work in tremendously demanding environments and they face difficult situations on a daily basis. Although I have great faith in our staff and I believe our policies and procedures are good, events of the past several months have caused me concern. We are taking steps to address these concerns.

We have had a number of incidents over the past year, each one was different. I want to reassure this committee that we are examining each and every incident and we have taken action to reduce the risk of similar incidents in the future. Some actions include a new

checklist for staff use prior to releases, clarification of polices and procedures, and the use of new restraints for high-risk offenders.

We have begun to put a team in place to implement the recommendations of a comprehensive audit conducted over the past year. This is an internal audit which was started last May and this is in the final stages of completion at this time. Because of the number of incidents over the past year, we are taking a somewhat unusual and additional step of an external review.

As part of our mission the Correctional Services division has committed to the delivery of safe, secure correctional facilities and healthy, supportive correctional facilities for staff, inmates and offenders. I can assure you that the department is working hard to address the challenges we have been facing in Correctional Services and to build an even safer, more supportive environment for both staff and inmates.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, along with my staff, we're happy to answer questions.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. The opening round of questions will be 20 minutes in length. We will begin with the NDP caucus, Mr. Estabrooks.

MR. WILLIAM ESTABROOKS: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for being present this morning. I'm pleased to hear in the opening statement from the deputy minister that there is an acknowledgement for the difficult work that these men and women on the front lines go through each and every day. Having had limited experience in a federal penitentiary myself - as a teacher, I should point out; they let me out on weekends, Michel - as my father was a penitentiary guard for 25 years at Dorchester Penitentiary, there is no more stressful job on the face of the earth. However, I'd like to clarify a few things, please, and if you don't mind, deputy, I'd like to ask Mr. Honsberger this question. Could you evaluate the morale of the people who work in Correctional Services in Nova Scotia - assess it for us?

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Honsberger.

MR. FRED HONSBERGER: I would evaluate the morale in our system as good by our staff - our staff in Community Corrections, our staff in our adult correctional facilities, and our staff in our youth facilities - managers, bargaining-unit staff. I know we have a professional staff complement in our system, they are well trained, they're well equipped, they're proud of their uniform, and I think they're proud as professionals. Compared to any other organization, from what I've seen and talking to staff as I travel around the province, I believe that the morale is good.

MR. ESTABROOKS: Is there not a problem with absenteeism among the staff which in my view, based upon another career that I had - to me, as a principal, teachers missing a lot of time sends a message that absenteeism is an indicator that the morale of a particular staff is not that "good" - to use your term. Is absenteeism a problem in Correctional Services of Nova Scotia?

MR. HONSBERGER: Absenteeism is a problem in Nova Scotia as it is in every other correctional jurisdiction in Canada and it's something that we're trying to get under control. It's part of our cultural issue where staff sometimes view sick time as vacation time and it's taken inappropriately. The majority of our staff don't do that but there are a number who do, a small percentage who take more sick time than they should. We have a new attendance policy that we're bringing in to try to address that, consistent with other jurisdictions in Canada and the federal government.

MR. ESTABROOKS: So if I can just put this in capsule form, you have good morale but you have an absenteeism problem?

MR. HONSBERGER: Similar to other correctional jurisdictions in Canada, yes, it's the nature of the business. As you said earlier, sir, it's a very unique business, it's stressful. I could talk about that, if you'd like, in terms of how it does impact an individual. The nature of that work where you don't see green spots during the day, where you have steel and concrete around you all of the time, loud noises - it's a very different work environment than the average person has and it's not a pleasant work environment. For that reason we experience, on the part of some staff, a higher level of absenteeism than others.

Our objective is to try to increase our staff attendance, again, similar to other correctional jurisdictions in Canada. I think that we're putting in place some processes to do that.

MR. ESTABROOKS: On March 27^th, I had the opportunity to meet with a number of correctional officers in an informal session over a couple of hours where there was no agenda - it was my opportunity as the Justice Critic for the Official Opposition to listen to these men and their concerns. It was an eye-opening experience, I want you to know. After a while, I basically put my pen down and began to realize that we have problems in the Correctional Services in Nova Scotia, because these men who were sitting around the table do not believe that they are being listened to. They are the front-line people in delivering services, but they are frustrated with what has been happening when it comes to having their so-called management bosses listening to what they are saying and believing.

During that discussion - remember, again, this was on March 27^th - one of the concerns that was brought up was the problem with escorting inmates to hospital, to court. During that discussion one of the men who was there - and I can't remember exactly what institution he was from - said there's going to be a problem. Lo and behold, that has

happened. The question I have is, when escorts are picked and chosen, who makes the decision of what two men or one man and one woman are going to escort a particular inmate to a destination? What is the decision-making process to decide who is going to do the escort that day to that destination?

MR HONSBERGER: We classify the offenders to be escorted into three categories: medium, minimum and maximum. If it's a medium-classification transfer, basically with the criteria we have to date, the captain on-site makes that determination. If it's a Level 3, a maximum-security transfer, the superintendent or deputy superintendent makes that decision.

[9:15 a.m.]

MR. ESTABROOKS: I've heard this terminology "captains" before and I'll come back to it in a moment. We are saying that when we have a high-risk inmate a decision is made by the captain in charge that day to assign particular correctional officers for that visitation or that escort. So when it came to Mr. Carvery's unfortunate incident, why was the decision made that two part-time jailers were the ones doing the escort? Obviously somebody within the system that day made that decision.

MR. HONSBERGER: One-third of our staff are part time. I want to clarify the term "part time" - the entry system to the Nova Scotia Correctional Services is as a part timer, you can't come in as a full-time employee. You come in as a part timer and roll, based on seniority, into a full-time position. Some of our part timers have many, many hours of experience, but the issue isn't so much the part-time status as it is the number of hours the person has worked and the training that a person has received.

In this case here, the captain made a determination based on our criteria that they had the minimum 500 hours of experience; both are graduates of the correctional worker training programs in Nova Scotia, one year training programs, beyond high school; and both have had the basic orientation and basic security training. We require two mentored escorts prior to each transfer and in each case, between the two of them, I understand they had over 25 escorts between the two of them. The captain in this case, based on the qualifications of the officers, made a correct determination.

MR. ESTABROOKS: I won't question the judgment of the captain, I wasn't there but it would be something that - you know, we're not talking retail here. A part-time correctional officer, it sends all the wrong messages. I know many of these part timers are working 40 hours a week and get no benefits but my concern would be, based upon Carvery's history, I would say that if those were his two best people that day that captain was making a decision, he made this decision, and in my opinion it was the wrong decision. Have there been any repercussions directed to the person who made that decision, in light of Mr. Carvery's escape?

MR. HONSBERGER: We have not received the investigation yet - the incident is fairly recent - we haven't received the investigation yet. When we receive the investigation, we'll be analyzing the findings and looking at a number of things.

Whenever we have an incident of this type and whenever there's an incident of this type it's not right, it's wrong, it shouldn't happen, and there's no excuse for a margin of error in our system. We always take a "lessons learned" approach. We will be taking a "lessons learned" approach to this one and basically looking at our procedures and policies. If something was violated in terms of procedures and disciplinary action is warranted, we'll look at that as well.

MR. ESTABROOKS: Well, Madam Chair, it disappoints me. I think the members present here today would say this incident was a high-profile one and we - you, as the person in charge, sir - still haven't received a report on the incident. Did I understand that correctly?

MR. HONSBERGER: We have some basic information, intermittent information. We haven't got the final report yet, we're expecting that later this week. It takes time to do these reports, sir. We have staff working shift work and there are a lot of statements to be taken and matters to be investigated.

MR. ESTABROOKS: I'd like to talk about these captains. Based on my experience, limited as it is, I don't know whether I would describe them the same as we did in the federal system, that they were the keepers of that particular shift. That's what they were called, the "keepers". It's old terminology from the 1970s, I understand.

Are these captains officers who have worked their way up through the system, or are they people with other experiences in other jobs, in other careers, who've been hired to be captains? How many of the captains in the system have worked their way through the correctional system to that particular role in the Correctional Services of Nova Scotia?

MR. HONSBERGER: To my knowledge, every captain in our system has worked his or her way up through the system and has worked as a correctional officer, usually as a sergeant and on to a captain, so they have front-line experience. They are mentored when they come into the positions and they have their management training provided to them. To answer your question, they're all veterans of the front line.

MR. ESTABROOKS: Well, we'll have to debate that at a further time, based on some other information that I have received, because I would have to disagree with you on that answer.

The people on the spot are making some tough decisions and the decision makers who are there are under a great deal of stress. Recently there have been some examples, though, of decisions that have been made which are truly embarrassing, to be very, very

forthright with you. Is it true in the Antigonish system that inmates are taken to court or to hospital visits by public taxi?

MR. HONSBERGER: I understand Antigonish, first of all, is a medium-security facility with very low-risk offenders and there are no incidents in Antigonish, based on the classification of inmate we put there. All inmates who go to court are transported by sheriff. I understand that on a couple of occasions when there hasn't been a vehicle there that there has been - recently an inmate with an escort had gone by taxi to a hospital.

We release inmates into the community frequently on their own, with escort, without escort, and the use of a taxi is not inappropriate if the person is classified as low security risk. I suspect if there hasn't been a problem with that practice, based on our classification criteria, again we could release them on their own. That happens, too, on temporary absence. It has worked for us, to date.

MR. ESTABROOKS: So there's no correction vehicle available, there's an escort, and I assume that people know in advance that the escort is going to go to a hospital or to a court, so you call the local cab driver. The cab driver pulls up and in this particular incident which I was told, the man who was driving the cab is serving weekends in the same correctional institution, which he is providing the transportation to the guards and to the inmate to the destination. That sends all the wrong messages to the public on how to safely move inmates around from one destination to another in this province.

I want to go to another example which recently has become public. There has been a problem with staffing when it comes to a particular kitchen facility. Because there was no cook on this particular day, a decision was made on the spot by someone - I assume a captain - that the inmates would be fed that particular meal by takeout and that a $500 order was placed to the local Snow Queen and the inmates that day had hamburgers and fries or their choice of the menu. How can things like that happen when the cook is fired, the cook is not available, so with the public purse we go out and have a takeout order brought in to the inmates at a cost of $500 from the local takeout? Another embarrassing incident, a decision made that obviously does not reflect well on Correctional Services in Nova Scotia.

MR. HONSBERGER: Sir, on the first point about cooks, Antigonish is a very small facility - I would say Cumberland as well, in fact any of the county jails that we used to have before 2000 - and if the cook isn't there, you have to feed the inmates and we have contingency arrangements with restaurants to do that sort of thing. If a cook is scheduled to come on duty, the cook refuses to come in or calls in sick and there is no other cook available, we're going to feed the inmates so we do that through our contingency plans.

I doubt very much that the information is correct, that it was a $500 order, so I would question that information. Our policy about feeding inmates, we're feeding inmates three meals a day - reasonable meals, not lavish meals. If a person is not available to cook, we have

so many part timers available in a small facility. We don't experience that in large facilities. I haven't heard of that recently in the small ones either, because I know the cooks in all of our small institutions. But I have heard of this happen and I'm very pleased to say that our staff have contingency arrangements in place to deal with it.

MR. ESTABROOKS: But you will agree that this is the sort of embarrassing situation that a professional correctional service doesn't need to have happen.

MR. HONSBERGER: No, I don't.

MR. ESTABROOKS: You don't agree?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, I don't agree and I'll explain that.

MR. ESTABROOKS: So it's not an embarrassment to have these inmates served fast food from the local takeout when the cook isn't there?

MR. HONSBERGER: Nova Scotia correctional facilities, until 1986, were a remnant of a county-based system - very small jails with very, very sparse staffing. Antigonish and Cumberland correctional facilities are the remnant of that, they still exist today. They are very old facilities with minimal staffing and on a very rare occasion if your full-time cook is not available, your part-time cook is not available, and all of your back-up cooks aren't available, we have to feed the inmates, we have to employ contingency plans. It's not desirable but it's not embarrassing. It would be embarrassing, in my view, if we didn't feed the inmates.

MR. ESTABROOKS: If we had full-time cooking staff of more than one.

I want to turn to a question that was posed to the minister in the House by my colleague, the member for Halifax Needham, on Thursday, December 6^th, when she said - I was referring to Ms. MacDonald:

"Mr. Speaker, officers working in correctional facilities in some Canadian provinces receive mandatory outside escort training - this is the situation in Manitoba and Ontario. Mandatory training along with specialized equipment like Kevlar vests go a long way to reduce stress relating to the threat of violence, but here in Nova Scotia, correctional officers don't get the same protection as deputy sheriffs."

This is the question that Ms. MacDonald asked that day:

"Will the minister tell us when he's going to ensure the same level of protection for correctional officers as his department provides for deputy sheriffs?"

The question was asked and I'll leave the answer to the fact that this government will handle its responsibilities and we're looking into the problem. I'm not capsulizing - that's basically one of the things that Mr. Clarke said during his answer.

Since that question was asked on December 6^th - a concern that was brought to the floor of this House by the member for Halifax Needham - were there any of these particular issues addressed, particularly when we're looking at the Kevlar vest and the fact, of course, that deputy sheriffs are receiving better protection when they're doing escorts, as opposed to our correctional officers?

MR. HONSBERGER: Two points on that, sir. The deputy sheriff's role is different than a correctional worker's, in a sense that a deputy sheriff has to provide protection in three areas: one is during an escort; secondly is courtroom security - there are not very many sheriffs in the courtroom and they have to be protected and have intermediate weapons available to them if they're needed; and thirdly, they also provide security in holding cells in courthouses. Again, there's not a large density of sheriffs in those facilities, not like in our correctional facilities, so they require the equipment for those purposes.

When it comes to transport, you raise a good question, a good issue. This has been raised by our staff through the occupational health and safety process. When that happens, what we do is we step back and take a look at the need for the equipment. What's the worst that can happen? If the person is in shackles, we have a proper number of officers. We want to make sure that we have the right equipment and that equipment can't be taken from someone, so we'll be responding to that through the OH&S process. We'll be working with staff on that issue.

We're also looking across Canada at what they're doing and the external review that Deputy Minister Tyson had spoken to will also have terms of reference that speak to that, so we're anxious to respond, as every other province has, in that area. We want to make sure that we're doing the right thing.

MR. ESTABROOKS: I'm pleased to hear that but what's taking so long? This is an incident that was brought to the attention of the minister on December 6^th - deputy sheriffs have more protection than our correctional officers. That's December 6^th. Then, in light of that, we've had various incidents take place within the service here in Nova Scotia, the concern remains there. Now we have the external review. To the minister's credit, it is no longer going to be an internal review.

Perhaps you or Ms. Tyson could tell us who is going to be in charge of this external review, is there a person who is going to be the Chair of the review?

MS. TYSON: Since the minister announced the external review, we have attempted to locate appropriate persons to do the review and the minister will be making an announcement, I believe this afternoon, with respect to the terms of reference and the review itself.

MR. ESTABROOKS: Again, that's good news. Madam Chair, could you tell me how much time I have?

MADAM CHAIR: Thirty seconds.

MR. ESTABROOKS: Thirty seconds - time flies when you're having fun. I'd like to wrap up with this particular section before I turn it over to my other colleagues. The people who are in the front line, providing correctional services in this province, have expressed to me privately and personally their frustrations. They do not believe they're receiving the support that they deserve and they're putting themselves in harm's way each and every day. The stress level among those men and women is high and a reflection on that, of course, there is the possibility that there could be further overcrowding, double-bunking. One incident after another, life is not all great within the Correctional Services of Nova Scotia. With those comments I will pass over the floor.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. The time has expired. I recognize Mr. Samson for the Liberal caucus, you have 20 minutes, until 9:48 a.m.

MR. MICHEL SAMSON: Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Honsberger, on April 11, 2008, you sent out a memo which starts with: As all staff are aware, we are experiencing higher than normal custody rates in our adult facilities. It does go on to indicate the changes that are going to take place, basically doubling capacity at both the southwest Nova Scotia facility in Yarmouth and the Burnside facility. Who made the decision to have this doubling of inmates at these two facilities?

MR. HONSBERGER: I did.

MR. SAMSON: Okay. Why did you make the decision on April 11, 2008?

[9:30 a.m.]

MR. HONSBERGER: Nova Scotia is the last province in Canada to experience double-bunking and our population count has been increasing incrementally, to the point that we felt we had to step back and look at a long-term solution in terms of the capacity. We've been experiencing excess capacity. It started about six months ago on weekends,

predominantly on weekends, but it has now gone into the weekdays and given that, we wanted to make sure that we took a responsible, reasonable approach to it.

Like all the provinces in Canada, we determined that we should double-bunk and I could explain it to you, if you wish, how we came to the conclusion as to how we should do it, but it was based on an increasing count in Nova Scotia.

MR. SAMSON: And when did that increase begin?

MR. HONSBERGER: It has been increasing over the past - oh probably over the past eight months. As I said earlier, originally on weekends but then it started to go into the weekdays and then we started to acquire additional cots - the same as every other jurisdiction. They started to come in on a cumulative basis that it's reached the point where we feel that we should - our count could actually, on a weekend, it could probably go about 60 or so over capacity. So what we need to do is change the stated capacity of our facilities and there's a way to do that. We couldn't do it with all the facilities because Antigonish and Cumberland and Cape Breton you simply couldn't do that because the facilities aren't designed appropriately for that purpose. Thankfully, Yarmouth and Burnside are.

MR. SAMSON: When it comes to capacity and maximum capacity and as a percentage, at what level are you comfortable when it comes to the facilities here in Nova Scotia, as far as their capacity rates on a yearly basis?

MR. HONSBERGER: Ideally Nova Scotia has late to operate with single-cell accommodation and we designed our facilities for that but we designed our facilities with large single cells. Standards that are recognized across Canada suggest that you can place two offenders in a cell of 80 square feet and we have that capacity at Yarmouth and Burnside, not at Cumberland and Antigonish and Cape Breton.

The other issue is, the issue with capacity, there are three factors and one is whether you have the proper cell size to accommodate the offenders for double-bunking. Secondly is, do you have the day room size to accommodate them when they're out of the cell area. Thirdly and very important, do you have the right staffing and equipment to staff up, to meet that number based on ratios.

MR. SAMSON: Okay, if I can stop you there, based on single-cell occupancy, what percentage of occupancy are you comfortable at on a yearly basis for your correctional facilities? Is it 70 per cent, 60 per cent, 80 per cent? What number are you comfortable at on the single-cell basis?

MR. HONSBERGER: We feel that we can double-bunk Yarmouth totally, from 38 . . .

MR. SAMSON: No, I'm not asking you that - I'm asking you to look back over the last five years. In the last five years, were you comfortable with the capacity rates that were being handled by Nova Scotia correctional facilities, based on the one inmate per cell basis that these facilities were built on?

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes, yes.

MR. SAMSON: So if I were to tell you in November, 2006, the Cape Breton facility was at 90.3 per cent, Burnside male was at 95.9 per cent and Yarmouth was at 93.9 per cent, you're comfortable with those numbers?

MR. HONSBERGER: You mentioned dates? Were those dates, sir, that you mentioned there?

MR. SAMSON: Those are single-cell occupancy - that's basically your vacancy rate. You are in the 90 per cent in all three of those facilities and, in fact, in 2007 you're even higher than that. So my question to you is, why is this decision only being taken now, when you have the evidence showing you that you've had a problem in capacity in Nova Scotia for quite some time.

MR. HONSBERGER: On certain days, on weekends, we would be at capacity or close to capacity in some institutions and not in others. If you go across the entire province, not all of our beds would have been filled on those dates that you mentioned. Burnside could have been, and Cape Breton, but I would suggest that Yarmouth perhaps wasn't. I would want to look at the entire - whether we have all 454 beds occupied on those dates.

There's quite a dip in the custody counts across Canada from 1996 on, when conditional sentences came in and all jurisdictions experienced the same dip. So we felt that the 454 capacity was reasonable, but I would say - I'm going back 18 months, two years now - we started considering additional inventory, additional cell space, on the north shore of the province and the government has responded to that by encouraging plans to be developed and even encouraging site selection considerations.

MR. SAMSON: At what point did you raise with the government the need for an additional facility or facilities?

MR. HONSBERGER: It would have been raised about I guess two years ago now.

MR. SAMSON: Okay, for two years no decision has been made yet on it?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, the government has been supportive. We're allowed to do preliminary designs for facilities on the north shore and also do preliminary site selection as well and we're waiting for further advancement of that. We're encouraged by that.

MR. SAMSON: When did the new Yarmouth facility open?

MR. HONSBERGER: In 2003.

MR. SAMSON: Why at that time did you not just make it a double occupancy facility?

MR. HONSBERGER: We didn't feel it was needed at that time and as it opened, we haven't seen a need until recently.

MR. SAMSON: Okay, so the statistics we've been given by your department, it's a table, the capacity in Nova Scotia correctional facilities and apparently looks at the months of November 2005, November 2006 and November 2007. November 2006, as I pointed out to you, Cape Breton was at 90.3 per cent; Burnside, male division, was at 95.9; and Yarmouth was at 93.9. In November 2007, Cape Breton was at 96.5; Burnside, male, was at 104.5 per cent; and Yarmouth was at 100.4 per cent. This has been a problem for quite some time, hasn't it?

MR. HONSBERGER: It has been a concern. Yarmouth and Burnside can accommodate a high percentage of inmate population, unlike perhaps Antigonish or Cumberland, because of the design of those facilities. These are podular designed facilities with excellent site lands and single-cell accommodation.

Ideally an institution should operate at about 90 per cent capacity, an institution of that type, it's safe at that capacity and the double-bunking of the institution, again as I said earlier, is only a factor of square footage, staffing and equipment in those two facilities.

MR. SAMSON: In 2001, I'm sure you'll recall that the Hamm Government closed correctional facilities in Guysborough, Lunenburg, Truro and Kings County. That was a loss of 138 cells. Can you explain to us, when that decision was made was there any consideration given as to how those beds would be replaced?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, because at that time, you see you have to take it back to 1996. In 1996 when conditional sentence legislation came in, there was a drop, a dramatic drop in the bed capacity across Canada and every jurisdiction experienced the same thing. We felt comfortable at that time that we wouldn't, in the immediate future, require replacement beds.

I should also mention that the "beds" that we had at those facilities before were not secure or proper correctional beds. They were the remnant of the old county jail system. What has happened in Burnside and Yarmouth is we replaced those old county jails with proper, modern, safe and secure correctional facilities.

MR. SAMSON: With all due respect, you've replaced facilities but you haven't increased your bed count. After closing those facilities, that bed count has not been increased because Burnside was already either built or well in the works when that decision was made. You lost that capacity and it was never replaced. Yes, you've built new institutions but that was just the replacement of existing beds that had already been there. There has been no increase in beds since the decision in 2001 to close those jails, has there?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, and again, those projections we had at that time were that we would be all right with the count that we have today but two years ago we started our initiative to do a replacement inventory on the North Shore and to expand our bed capacity.

MR. SAMSON: In 1999 and 2003 and 2006, the Progressive Conservative Party made it a significant part of their election platform - crime issues, getting tough on crime, safer streets and a whole program of new police officers and looking to have more incarcerations and tough on crime. Unfortunately, it appears there was no vision there as to where they were going to put these criminals and we find ourselves in the very unfortunate situation where the message to our justice system is, don't send too many criminals our way because we don't have a place to put them. Now we're left with a situation of having to double-bunk people because of the fact that there has been that lack of vision. I appreciate you saying that there's a plan in the works but it has been two years. Even if they started construction tomorrow, we'd probably wait another two years.

Is it safe to say the proposal - and again I realize you're an employee of the government, this is not yours personally - but we're at least two years away before seeing a new correctional facility in Nova Scotia, your plan for double-bunking is going to at least be in effect for two years if not longer.

MR. HONSBERGER: That's correct. We feel that it's a safe plan as long as we deal with the equipment and the staffing issues. We're working with staff on that now. There are lots of models that we can use in terms of ramping up our equipment and staffing requirements but we feel comfortable that we can deal with this issue for the next couple of years based on our square footage, our equipment and our staff.

MR. SAMSON: How many more staff do you plan on hiring?

MR. HONSBERGER: That's in the works right now, we're working with the union on that. We haven't got the final figures but we'll probably have that in the next short while.

MR. SAMSON: Since you've been at overcapacity, have any additional staff been hired to deal with your overcapacity issue?

MR. HONSBERGER: The superintendents have had authorization when we've exceeded capacity to bring in extra staff as required on weekends or whenever it has peaked. That authorization has been there and my understanding is it has happened.

MR. SAMSON: It has happened?

MR. HONSBERGER: That's my understanding.

MR. SAMSON: How often has it happened?

MR. HONSBERGER: I couldn't tell you the number of times.

MR. SAMSON: Could you provide this committee with that information?

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes.

MR. SAMSON: Moving forward, will they be permitted as well to bring in additional staff whenever - when you say overcapacity let's understand what you mean by that because it was overcapacity when you were one inmate and all of a sudden you're two inmates. Now that you're going with the double-bunking system, at what point is it determined it is overcapacity? Yarmouth used to be overcapacity if there were more than 38 inmates but now it's moving to 76, so does that mean there has to be more than 76 inmates to be overcapacity? What standard are we using now?

MR. HONSBERGER: What we're doing is we're changing the state of capacity of Yarmouth and Burnside - the state of capacity is the term - because again, the factors of overcrowding are square footage, staffing and equipment. If your square footage is all right, the staffing is all right and the equipment is appropriate to the numbers, then your state of capacity can change as long as you make adjustments in those areas. That's what we're doing, so that notice was to indicate that Yarmouth - this is happening over the next few weeks now, obviously we have to get the staff in place. We're working with the union on that, the equipment is ordered and it is coming in quickly, so the state of capacity at Yarmouth will be doubled.

MR. SAMSON: With all due respect, my concern is that you've put the cart in front of the horse here. You've already stated the changes being made yet you haven't made the decision yet on staff and you're still negotiating all that. Is it safe to say that as of today, you're prepared to put 78 inmates in the Yarmouth facility if need be because that's the state of capacity that it can now handle, regardless of the fact that you still haven't dealt with your staff issues yet?

MR. HONSBERGER: What we'll be doing in the interim, we're talking here about a number of weeks, we'll be bringing in extra staff as required, as our populations rise, so

this is all happening over the next few weeks. It's the same with every other jurisdiction in Canada as they adjusted to their excess capacity. We feel fortunate in Nova Scotia though that compared to other provinces we're not triple-bunking as they are elsewhere in Canada and we're not putting inmates in double cells that are very old, these are modern facilities. We're fortunate in our province to be in that situation.

MR. SAMSON: How many incident reports have been provided to your department since you've been double-bunking inmates?

MR. HONSBERGER: In my view, there hasn't been an increase but I would defer to my colleague to the right on that.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Kelly.

MR. SEAN KELLY: We haven't collected the statistics yet that they are in. However, they have noted that there has been a light increase in terms of the numbers of incidents in the facilities but we would have to analyze that information.

MR. SAMSON: So you don't have that today?

MR. KELLY: No, I'm sorry, we don't.

MR. SAMSON: If Cape Breton Correctional Facility is full and any new inmates are brought in, they will be brought either to Burnside or Yarmouth?

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Honsberger.

MR. HONSBERGER: We will maintain the current capacity level at Cape Breton. Now having said that, if there's a drug bust in Sydney this weekend, they may go over by a few inmates and that happens all of the time. We're not going to double-bunk or bring portable beds into Cape Breton - we're going to be using the same arrangement in Cape Breton as we always had or at Antigonish or Cumberland. You can get a weekend blip by - as you mentioned earlier, sir, there is an aggressive pro-charge policy in police activity in the streets right now and that is increasing our remand population dramatically. That is one of the reasons we're in the state we are in right now, it's all a good thing because our streets are being safer. We will maintain the County of Cape Breton to the extent possible, at the current level.

MR. SAMSON: Has the department received any concerns from either Crown Prosecutors or from judges themselves regarding the lack of capacity in Nova Scotia jails?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, we haven't.

MR. SAMSON: You haven't heard anything yet?

MR. HONSBERGER: No.

MR. SAMSON: You haven't heard any incidents where judges are feeling it's better to give house arrest or probation rather than send someone for incarceration?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, we haven't.

MR. SAMSON: There has been no indication of that yet.

MR. HONSBERGER: No, not yet, sir.

MR. SAMSON: On another topic relating to Mr. Carvery - apparently it was indicated that there was faulty leg irons. Was Mr. Carvery the first Nova Scotia inmate ever to be able to escape from leg irons being used by Nova Scotia correctional facilities.

MR. HONSBERGER: He's the first that I've heard of. We've asked our superintendents, one goes back 35 years and no one is aware of a person breaking out of their restraints in the past in this way. I've heard of people snapping cuffs, young offenders, some years ago down in Lunenburg but not in this manner, so that was a mystery to us. The report coming in will help us give clarity to that issue but I have mentioned publicly and I'll repeat it today, it is a mystery as to how that happened. So we're taking measures to prevent that in the future.

MR. SAMSON: After one of the mistaken releases that happened at the Cape Breton facility, it was indicated that an internal review was going to be done to better understand what took place there. Is that review done?

[9:45 a.m.]

MR. HONSBERGER: The Cape Breton . . .

MR. SAMSON: It was after one of the mistaken releases at the Cape Breton facility back in January and it was indicated that a review was going to take place of that and that it will be provided to correctional officials to better understand what took place. Do you have that review?

MR. HONSBERGER: In that case there, sir, we didn't have any documentation to receive that person. I believe that there was - I stand to be corrected - a paperwork disconnect between the courts and the Crown in that case. There wasn't a mistaken release, we just didn't have the paper to receive that person.

MR. SAMSON: The heading in the Cape Breton Post on January 17^th said, internal review launched after man released. Provincial Justice and Public Prosecution officials launched an internal review of procedures Wednesday.

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes, that wouldn't be ourselves. Again, we didn't have the paperwork to hold that person.

MR. SAMSON: Would the deputy minister have a copy of that review?

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Tyson.

MS. TYSON: I've asked for copies of reviews but I believe the one you're speaking of is in the hands of the Public Prosecution Service. I have asked for a number of reviews, I have a stack of them sitting on my desk but I haven't yet gone through them all.

MR. SAMSON: Would you undertake to provide this committee with a copy of that review?

MS. TYSON: I don't believe I would have the one that you're speaking of. If I do have a copy of it, I'll speak with Public Prosecution and see that what can be provided, will be provided.

MR. SAMSON: When it comes to the issue of mistaken releases, a determination is made now to advise the public. Someone needs to make the determination whether the public should be concerned about the individual who has been mistakenly released or not. Who makes that determination?

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Honsberger.

MR. HONSBERGER: The police do.

MR. SAMSON: The police make that determination?

MR. HONSBERGER: The police make that determination and the reason for that is some years ago we did that ourselves and it was learned that an offender's behaviour in custody is very different than an offender's behaviour in the community and the police are in the best position to speak to that.

MR. SAMSON: So it's not made by correctional officials at all?

MR. HONSBERGER: It shouldn't be, no.

MR. SAMSON: The audit that is going to be launched, apparently announced this afternoon, is going to determine whether Nova Scotian facilities meet national standards. Are you not in a position to be able to tell Nova Scotians today whether or not our correctional facilities meet national standards?

MR. HONSBERGER: My own personal view is that I believe we are very well positioned in terms of our training, our equipment, our staffing and our facility design. I think we are doing quite well and we have an excellent staff complement in Nova Scotia, but I'm looking forward to that review. You can always learn something from these reviews and the review will look into a number of things that have happened recently. I think that the public were very satisfied with the scope of the review and personally I'm looking forward to it. To answer your question, I believe that we match up very well compared to other jurisdictions in Canada but that's not good enough. I think the public has to be satisfied based on an external review if that's the case.

MR. SAMSON: You're right, the public's confidence in corrections and justice in this province has been shaken since the beginning of this year. We have statistics from Justice, where Justice and the government were well aware that we had a capacity problem with our correctional facilities here in Nova Scotia. You raised it two years ago, yet there still has not been approval for construction of a new facility. We're now left that taxpayers will have to bear the additional cost of moving inmates from Cape Breton to either Burnside or Yarmouth which is going to be an additional cost to the taxpayer and not a wise use of tax dollars, I would submit to you.

Unfortunately, this comes down to more of a political issue than one for yourselves as employees of the government. It is unfortunate that for a government that has made such a big issue of safer streets, it is now leaving us with the potential of having unsafe correctional facilities because there has been a lack of vision and a lack of planning, to make sure that the beds closed back in 2001 were replaced and that we have adequate facilities here in this province. But again, that's an issue for the government not an issue of yourselves, thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time has expired for questioning from the Liberal caucus. I recognize Mr. Porter with the PC caucus, you have 20 minutes until 10:08 a.m.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to you folks for being here with us today. A few questions on a few different areas. I want to go back to the absenteeism issue that you spoke of earlier, Mr. Honsberger. How does the job of a corrections officer differ with regard to high-stress police officers, firefighters, paramedics, et cetera, with regard to absenteeism statistics? Does the department have that kind of stuff or do we look at it?

MR. HONSBERGER: We don't have those statistics but I can probably tell you that our absenteeism is higher and I can probably tell you why it is higher too, but it would be higher for sure.

MR. PORTER: Why is that?

MR. HONSBERGER: The nature of correctional work - I was mentioning when an honourble member was asking a question about the environment, with experience at Dorchester - if you take the five human senses - touch, when you go into a correctional facility you're talking about steel, concrete and hard glass. Sight, you're looking at bland jail colours, you're not looking at any greenery, you're not driving down the street looking at smiling faces, you're looking at usually unhappy faces in terms of the inmate population, you are looking at harsh visions. In terms of smell, until very recently they used to talk about a jail smell being smoke and body odour but we're the first province in Canada to get rid of tobacco in institutions, so that's not a problem, that's good for our staff for occupational health and safety. Sound is clanging metal and loudspeakers and usually people yelling across spaces. The other is taste, of course, and until recently everything in the institutions for staff food was deep fried. That is changed, we have good dietitians now in our facilities.

The sixth sense, instinct, is the most important one and in a correctional facility, a correctional worker on the front line is always attuned to the potential for danger. You could be walking through the blocks and everyone is laughing, or not, but the sense for potential danger is there. Correctional workers who are experienced over time learn how to read offenders very well, learn how to read the climate. There is a cumulative effect on a person over time and so when a gentleman earlier was talking about this being one of the most difficult environments - it is a difficult environment for all of our correctional staff. It is because of those factors and the impact it has on a person's senses. That is why the absenteeism rate would be higher in our correctional facilities perhaps than in some law enforcement position in the community.

MR. PORTER: Unfortunately, I've had the opportunity to be within the system, not as an inmate but as a long-time paramedic doing numerous calls both to Sackville and other institutions around the province and you're right, what you've just described is quite something to work in. I don't know how some of them stand it, I know it wouldn't be a place for me as a worker or an inmate, but it would be enough to discourage you from wanting to be there, so thank you for that description.

How many times in the run of - and I guess annually is probably the easiest maybe to answer - how much movement between inmates, say, from Bedford-Sackville, I guess Burnside now, to Yarmouth or wherever, within the system? How much of that moving would go on within the year?

MR. HONSBERGER: All types of moves. Hospital escorts, where we had the unfortunate thing recently - there's about 1,300 of those a year in our system. But in terms of inmate moves, we classify a move as a person who walks out of or comes back into a facility. Out or back in is a move, each is a move and about 34,000 moves in our system per year. That includes persons admitted to custody, released from custody, intermittent sentences coming in on the weekends, remands coming and going, people coming and going from court, about 34,000 a year in the system.

MR. PORTER: And of those 34,000, what's the number of workers, security with them? How many people? Two, one, or does it vary depending on the level of . . .

MR. HONSBERGER: For escort?

MR. PORTER: Escorts.

MR. HONSBERGER: Well those moves aren't all escorts. The only escorted moves we have are the 1,300 that I mentioned, about 1,400 or so, out to courts. We treat always the offenders based on a classification system which allows for one, two or three escorts with the person and varying levels of restraint on the individual, based on their classification.

MR. PORTER: Of all those moves in the run of a year, how many issues, concerns are raised by way of, I'll just use the word "trouble" during the move itself to and from? How many times are there incidents, I guess for lack of a better word?

MR. HONSBERGER; This is the first occasion that I've heard of but again, with our system, if you have one out of 1,300 that's too many. We always again review it, assess it and take a lessons learned approach to it. This is the only one I'm aware of, this type, where a person - I should mention there was one previously where a person who was taken to a hospital and escaped from the hospital but this is the only one where a person has actually gotten away from the officers, from the van, gotten out of restraints.

MR. PORTER: Are most of these transfers done - just specific to the hospital ones, around 1,400 you said annually - are most of them done via your own vehicles, are there a percentage that would be done by a third party, like EHS, for example?

MR. HONSBERGER: Any court transfers are by sheriffs and sheriffs doing any court transfers - most transfers between correctional facilities are also done by sheriffs staff. The 1,300 transfers or escorts to hospital were done by our staff in institution vehicles but the sheriffs do most of our distance transportation. In emergencies, our staff would transport between facilities, on a weekend, at late hours, some emergency, if we had a woman in custody somewhere and we didn't want to keep her in that facility we would transport.

MR. PORTER: Thank you. How long have you been in the system, Mr. Honsberger?

MR. HONSBERGER: I started work as a correctional officer 39 years ago. I was issued a uniform and some keys, so I guess that was starting as a correctional officer. I have been involved in correctional services facilities initially for the first 10 or so more years in some capacity every year since then, starting permanently in 1973.

MR. PORTER: So you've been around for quite a while. Obviously you've seen numerous things. I would assume you've seen - I shouldn't assume anything. Have things changed by way of policy and procedure, with how inmates are housed, how they're dressed for example, how they're secured on the way out the door? How often does that policy - we talk about reviews when issues seem to arise but how often does that actually happen? Is it annual?

MR. HONSBERGER: Well, there are two things there. The environment in a correctional setting has changed dramatically over those years in so many ways, in terms of the inmate types, the fact that we release on temporary absence, the fact that inmates years ago had no access to telephones. They have PIN numbers now, they can phone from institutions, access the television, various amenities, safety and security processes. Litigation is a huge one that wasn't there years ago.

As the environments become more sophisticated, so also have our procedures and policies. I watched that grow over the years from small manuals to what we have now. We started a - I'll take you back to 2006; correctional services is probably the most prescriptive arm of government, in terms of operations. We brought in a new Correctional Services Act in 2006 and I should mention the union was very supportive of that Act and gave us assistance in the development of it - probably the only jurisdiction in Canada that had that arrangement. It's a good Act, based on best practices across Canada and also a lot of made-in-Nova Scotia things, which other jurisdictions are now looking at.

That Act gave us the linchpin to start to hang our procedures and policies on. The Act enables the policies which enable the procedures, which in our system enable standing orders, which enable post orders in our facilities. So there's a cascading of prescriptive orders that are necessary in our facilities.

In 2006 the Act came in. A little over a year ago, we started revamping our policies and procedures manuals. It's an interesting process we're using here because we're using staff engagement on this. All staff in our system are being asked, as we develop this, to look at our procedures - because they're on the front line - to comment on the adequacy of those. Likewise with our standing orders. Staff engagement - I'm going on and on with this issue, but it's critically important in a correctional environment to have the front-line people engaged as they were in the Act, as they are in procedures and policies and standing orders. So that process is in place now. Generally we're finishing off this - we actually did most of that work at the end of March, but you're never finished the policies and procedures. Doing

policies and procedures is kind of like painting a large bridge - once you get to the end you start over again. You're always revamping it because of changes.

MR. PORTER: In that description you talked about types of inmates, changes. How would the type of inmate - I'm just not clear on what you mean by that.

MR. HONSBERGER: The offender population many years ago used to have the local town drunk in jail. That's where the county jails of Nova Scotia were successful, because they could hold - they're all local inmates, they were known to the local staff. Now the inmate population is much more transient, more mentally - mentally ill is quite a concern. We have some recent information that upwards of 40 per cent of the population has had mental illness in the past. The drugs, alcohol - most of them have had alcohol-abuse problems, but the issue of bringing drugs into a correctional facility was never there when I started. It's a huge issue and we have much more traffic, inmates coming and going from facilities, so the potential to bring drugs into a correctional facility is huge.

You also have organized crime. You used to have tough gangs in the neighbourhoods, some in Halifax, some in other places many years ago, but now with organized crime being international, with the communications networks that are out there, there's much more of a need for a place in corrections to link. We have that capacity and we have good staff doing that at Burnside - to link, to be aware on any given day of the organized crime matrix that you would have in a community or an area - who is coming, who is connected with whom - it's all very important stuff. Placing offenders in institutions is sometimes like a chess game, but we have a good network of people working on that. But the sophistication of the offender population has changed dramatically in the last 30 years.

[10:00 a.m.]

MR. PORTER: Very huge changes, I guess, from the drunks, as you call them, or whatever, being thrown in the tank overnight, versus - does that mean the crimes are more severe? I guess that's just been a normal phenomenon over the years that all of that would increase for easier access, I guess, to drugs and things like that into crime.

MR. HONSBERGER: Basically crimes years ago used to be assault offences, thefts and that sort of thing. When the drug business started to emerge, the motivation to commit crimes to get drugs escalated incrementally and the types of crimes committed today, the violence of the crime, the gratuitous violence in some cases, particularly youth violence, in our youth system. Our staff at Waterville do a remarkable job managing a very challenging youth population. The swarmings that we never heard of 25 or 30 years ago and the gang-initiation violence that resulted in some of the most brutal assaults on ladies and others, women, in the last year in Nova Scotia, are factors that we have to deal with. So we have to develop programming for the offenders around these issues so that the program menu at our

facilities, particularly our youth facilities, has changed dramatically in response to this change in values, if you will, change in the offender population.

MR. PORTER: Okay. Just on the transferring of inmates again, I want to go back to that for a moment. Escorts - are they equipped with tasers or weapons of some kind for protection at all, or are they without?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, they're not with tasers. In fact, interesting on tasers - we're the first province in Canada, the first correctional jurisdiction in Canada to bring in tasers, federal or provincial. Other provinces have sought our policies and procedures and training manuals on the tasers. We use them very sparingly, but we have tasers in our facilities, we have pepper spray, we have lots of restraints and good equipment for riot gear and that.

When it comes to escorts, though, we've relied up to this point on a number of staff involved and the fact that the person is in restraints. Presumably the person can't get out of the restraints, so the person is in handcuffs and leg irons and you have two officers. The presumption is that the person - it has been the experience with thousands of transfers we've done in the last number of years, that a person is secure and staff are safe. But having said that, we're open to looking at the need for other forms of control.

MR. PORTER: So is it fair to say, then, that most transfers within that number you gave, around 34,000 annually, are uneventful?

MR. HONSBERGER: The transfers would have been about 1,300. The 34,000 was inmates moving in and out of the facilities, which would not involve our staff . . .

MR. PORTER: That's what I was referring to, overall with those moves.

MR. HONSBERGER: Well, I would say the 1,300 weren't eventful because the staff are trained and know how to follow the procedures and deal with the transfer properly. So we haven't had, in my recollection, a person escape as Mr. Carvery did some time ago and that's because of staff vigilance and the way they apply the restraints. They're all trained to put leg irons on a certain way, your handcuffs, to observe the offender. So this was quite a surprise to us when this happened.

MR. PORTER: Just on that training piece, too - I want to touch on that for a moment. I think you said 500 hours and you talked about a couple of other requirements for training. In comparison to jurisdictions in other provinces, other countries even for that matter, where do we rank in Nova Scotia?

MR. HONSBERGER: Well, the 500 hours would be the number of hours of experience the person would have to have before they could do an escort. They would have

to have been mentored twice on escorts and they would have to have, as these officers did, your basic introductory training and basic security training. So I can't tell you how we would compare to other jurisdictions. My guess is that we would be very similar but again, the review that the minister has ordered will touch on that area and I'd be very interested in the outcome of that.

Nationally, in Correctional Services, we do a lot of comparison with each other and we learn from each other. It's a very collegial sharing of information, best practices, because of the challenges of the environment. This is one area that we haven't exchanged information on, so I think the outcome of the review that Minister Clarke has ordered will be of interest across Canada because it will provide some best practice for all jurisdictions.

MR. PORTER: So we're not sure what other numbers with New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Ontario - the number of transfers. I'm trying to think of provinces similar in size by way of inmate transfers annually, but we don't really have that data.

MR. HONSBERGER: No, we have our own procedures, as they would. I don't know how we would compare to them in that area. Some areas we know how to compare but that one, I'm not sure. But this will come out, though, in the review.

MR. PORTER: Okay. I'm going to move around again, just a little bit, to the double-bunking issue. Is this dangerous for inmates, do you think, in your opinion, as someone who has been around for pretty near 35, 40 years?

MR. HONSBERGER: No, I've seen a fair bit of double-bunking before. Even in Cape Breton, for instance, we have 12 inmates in a dormitory setting, which is a large space there. Double-bunking, as long as you ensure that the offenders are compatible, that's the main thing and the offenders, they're compatible with each other and are screened properly for double-bunking. It's not dangerous, it's safe.

MR. PORTER: What does compatible mean? Can you tell me a little bit about it?

MR. HONSBERGER: Well, you wouldn't want to put two people in the same cell who had animosity or there's a grudge or one is threatening the other and there could be intimidation of some kind. The staff assess that and could even move offenders if they had to. The offenders, if they're placed in a cell together, it's like, I suppose - looking for comparatives here - two university students in the same room sort of thing, in a university, you have to learn how to get along with each other. Typically across Canada, when we talk about double-bunking, offenders tend to do that, they make it work. If they are incompatible and assessed as being incompatible, they wouldn't be put in the same room.

MR. PORTER: Do you think there's been much of a change in the way the environment will work, both for the workers and the inmates, with regard to the double-bunking? Do you see it becoming maybe some increased danger there?

MR. HONSBERGER: I don't see an increased danger, because of the increased staff and equipment that will apply to it. Again, we'll respond incrementally to the increased capacity of the facilities, so I don't see that as being a danger. The inmates will experience less living area, but they are within acceptable standards for sure.

We have very large day rooms in Nova Scotia and the space that we have available will accommodate that population. Obviously, we'll be adding furnishings to it too - tables, chairs and areas for food and that. That's all happening quickly.

MR. PORTER: In most of the institutions in the province, are there levels within for - I don't know how the levels of crimes are broken down. Specifically for low, medium or high-risk offenders, is there a block? I just remember going into Sackville - the door closes and you would go to a certain block but you never really knew where you were unless somebody told you.

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes, on that point, it's interesting. Years ago, we used to always classify remand offenders as maximum security. Remand offenders are people who are in custody awaiting sentence or trial, they're not sentenced yet. The remand offender population in Nova Scotia and across Canada at one time was around 15 per cent and now it's upwards of 60 per cent to 70 per cent of our population. Remands always used to be considered a maximum security.

In more recent years, we've changed our criteria. Now we don't base the classification of the offender on their offence as much as we do their behaviour. It's more of a behaviour-based classification system and if the person's behaviour is appropriate and they act accordingly, then they're placed accordingly within the facility and that seems to work for us. If they don't act properly despite their classification, then they're in a more maximum range.

MR. PORTER: Is that my time, Madam Chair?

MADAM CHAIR: About 15 seconds.

MR. PORTER: I'll wait until the next round. Thanks very much and I'll leave it at that for now.

MADAM CHAIR: Before we proceed to the next round of questions, I would like to draw the members' attention to guests that we have today in our gallery. We have guests today from Correctional Services, correctional workers who are here with representatives of

the Nova Scotia Government & General Employees Union. I'd like to welcome them to the proceedings.

As well, we have Adult English as a Second Language students from the Quinpool Education Centre with the Halifax Regional School Board and their instructors, Judy Terrio and Sandra Dunnet. We'd like to welcome all of the guests in our gallery today to the proceedings.

The next round of questions will be 14 minutes per caucus. I recognize Mr. Steele with the NDP caucus.

MR. STEELE: When we first put Correctional Services on the agenda, it was actually several months ago and all of the attention today has been and will continue to be on events that have happened within the past couple of weeks. As we sit here today, we have our jail guards musing aloud about an illegal strike, we read today's paper about inmates threatening disturbances if the double-bunking plan goes ahead, and we have the high-profile escape. What I want to spend my time on is another recent incident that I don't think got the attention it deserved but is also within the jurisdiction of Correctional Services.

In the early morning hours of April 5^th, a young man was murdered in an apartment building in my constituency. The person who stands accused of that crime is a 17-year-old who will be appearing in court tomorrow. What is significant about that for today's purposes is that the young man, according to the Halifax Police, was on a curfew and should not have been in the place where that young man died. We are not going to comment today, of course, about the guilt or innocence of the accused - that's for the court to decide - but whether he did it or not, he should not have been where he was.

In December, 2006, the Auditor General issued a report in which he reviewed - among other things - compliance with policies and procedures for these kinds of sentences, house arrests and curfews. To remind everybody, this is what the Auditor General said:

"There is inadequate compliance with policies and procedures for monitoring and enforcing community-based sentences. We identified instances of inappropriate offender reporting schedules being used and offender risk assessments not completed as required by the policy. We also identified several instances where breaches of the terms and conditions of a community-based sentence occurred but breach proceedings were not initiated. Support for the decision to exercise discretion in these instances was not included in the case files."

In light of that audit report and the government's overall record of failing to comply with recommendations of the Auditor General's Office, and most particularly in light of the recent murder in my constituency of a young man by another young man who should not

have been there, why should the public, why should Nova Scotians have confidence that when these kinds of sentences are imposed that the public is safe?

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Tyson.

MS. TYSON: I believe steps have been taken since that time. I can't tell you the exact date, but we do have increased steps which have been taken to monitor youth who are in the community. Mr. Honsberger can elaborate on that program which has recently been introduced over the past year. I will say that I'm not aware of the department's failure to comply with recommendations of the Auditor General. We try to comply and make efforts to comply with all of the recommendations of the Auditor General, so I would be interested in subsequently hearing about that and would look into that.

MR. STEELE: What I was referring to was the last Auditor General's Report issued just a few weeks ago in which he pointed out that the government had complied with only 37 per cent of his recommendations over two years, which is of great concern to all of us. Mr. Honsberger, do you know in this particular case whether the youth was being supervised or do you know what steps were being taken to try to ensure that he was obeying his curfew?

MR. HONSBERGER: I can't speak to the specifics of the case, because I don't know if he was on a bail supervision program or whether he was on straight probation or what the order contained. Obviously when this kind of offence occurs, the tragedy is huge. What I will say is that when a person is on house arrest without electronic monitoring, we have a certain frequency of checks, we have staff out in vehicles on evenings and weekends, as the police do, and we partner with the police on that. You could check a person three or four times a day. You could check them at 11:00 p.m. and then they could walk out the door at 11:30 p.m. - you can't guarantee that they're going to stay in their building. We always said that you could put a person at the front door and the back door 24/7, but that would require about nine people on a shift-work basis, and they could all possibly go out the windows in that case so we'd have to cover the sides of the house.

I'm saying that to say with house arrest, you can't guarantee that they're going to stay there and there's a certain level of compliance that's expected on the part of the offender. If the offender is that dangerous, it's probably most desirable to place them in court, but then again, in fairness to the courts, you can't predict the behaviour of a youth, in particular.

MR. STEELE: I think there's a crisis of public confidence in these kinds of sentences. It seems to me that the offenders know that they are not being watched, that it simply is beyond the capacity of Correctional Services to know whether a person is or is not obeying the terms of their release, unless they are caught committing a crime or unless the police actually see someone, the police officer recognizes someone and says, that person shouldn't be here, they should be at home. I want to underline that - I think there's a crisis

of public confidence in this kind of sentence, and the fact that this murder has been committed merely underlines that even further.

[10:15 a.m.]

In May 2006, a week and a half before an election call, the government announced with great fanfare a GPS monitoring program where offenders would wear ankle bracelets. The idea was that then you could essentially have 24/7 supervision and an idea of where the offender is. It was announced as a one-year pilot project and that was two years ago. We haven't heard a peep since then. What is the status of that GPS monitoring project?

MR. HONSBERGER: That program is evolving very well. We're the first province in Canada to have the GPS electronic monitoring and it has now increased. I believe on any given day there are about 60 people across Nova Scotia who are on electronic monitoring. It's a court order that determines when a person . . .

MR. STEELE: How would we as members of the Legislature know that the so-called pilot project is working? Okay, that's a loaded question - the answer is, we don't know because you don't tell us. I looked at the department's accountability report, which is a waste of everybody's time. It's a waste of your staff's time to compile it, it's a waste of our time to read it, because all that the last accountability report says is that the GPS monitoring contract was awarded. That's all it says.

In the same Auditor General's Report, here is what they say about the Department of Justice's performance reports:

"These reports are required of all government departments by Provincial legislation. We noted weaknesses in information provided, such as inadequate performance measures and indicators, performance measures and indicators without clear linkages to stated outcomes, absence of comparative information from other jurisdictions, and lack of performance information on key activities such as community corrections operations. We concluded that the performance information included in this report is inadequate to enable its users to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of Correctional Services programs and operations."

I have to tell you, that reflects exactly my experience on this committee - we don't get the information that we need.

Two years ago, your department started a so-called one-year pilot project and there hasn't been one word about whether it's working or not. Why are you not informing the public and the Legislature of how these programs are actually working? Is it keeping the public safer? Is the ankle bracelet program working?

MR. HONSBERGER: In terms of whether it's working, I would say it is working, we're quite proud of it actually. In fact, just as an example, the person who is heading it up in Nova Scotia has been sent to Manitoba at their expense to introduce our program in their province. Last week, our minister and their minister signed an arrangement where we would partner with Manitoba on introducing electronic monitoring the way we have it - especially, to get at their auto-theft problem, for youth in Winnipeg.

The federal government is also taking a look at our program. Our program has been presented to the national heads of corrections, it's one of the few presentations where I've seen all of the national heads so impressed with a new concept. It's something we're proud of. It's still a couple of years old, but it's spreading on an incremental measured basis across the province and our hope is to extend it to youth, as well, in the future.

MR. STEELE: The young man who now stands accused of murder, was he ever considered for this ankle bracelet program?

MR. HONSBERGER: I don't believe so because it hasn't been extended to youth at this point.

MR. STEELE: This young man is well-known in the community and he has a proverbial record as long as your arm. It would seem that if there was anybody who was a candidate for this, it would be him. For those people who have had the ankle bracelet, is it cutting down on the percentage of breaches? Is it keeping people at home who are sentenced to be at home?

MR. HONSBERGER: It is because they know they can't leave. Even those who do leave, they wear the bracelet if they go to work. The beauty of the GPS is that it allows you to play back the tape a day later and find out exactly where they walked, so it's an interesting concept. To answer your question, sir, yes.

MR. STEELE One of the other aspects of this that I think is causing public concern is that because the person who is accused now of murder is a youth. Somebody must have signed for him, somebody must have pledged that they would supervise him in order to keep the conditions of his release. Are there going to be any repercussions for the adult or adults who signed for that youth?

MR. HONSBERGER: That wouldn't be something that Corrections could speak to because we wouldn't be aware of who signed the undertaking, who the responsible person was - we wouldn't be aware of that, it's outside the scope of our correctional work. What I don't know is the particular circumstance of this individual, what kind of an order he was under.

MR. STEELE: According to the Halifax Police, he was on probation with one of the terms of his probation being a curfew, that he had to be at a certain home between certain hours - obviously, the nighttime hours.

MR. HONSBERGER: I can speculate here but my experience with the Youth Criminal Justice Act, if a person signs to be the responsible person, I don't believe at this stage under the Youth Criminal Justice Act they can be held responsible for an offence committed by that person, I don't believe that's the case. The Crown could speak better at that than I can, but that's my understanding of it.

MR. STEELE: The case that this reminds me of so much is Archie Billard, the young man who killed Theresa McEvoy. Archie Billard would be released to the custody of his mother, even though his mother would tell anybody who wanted to listen that she was not capable of restraining him. Now we have another young man who has been released to the supervision of some adults - we don't know who - and clearly those adults were not able to supervise this young man. Not only was he out but, as I say, he has now been accused of a crime.

Why should the public have confidence that when somebody signs for the supervision of a youth or that somebody is given a curfew as a condition of their probation, that there is actually a means of making sure that that person is where they're supposed to be. If there are no consequences for the signing adults, if there is no apparent capacity in Correctional Services to keep an eye on these high-risk offenders, why should the public have confidence that these sentences are good, useful sentences that keep the public safe?

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Tyson.

MS TYSON: I can speak to that, Mr. Steele. That is one issue which is under discussion at the federal-provincial-territorial table. Recommendations have been made by that FPT group of deputies to the federal government for legislative change which would help in the matters that you're speaking of - for example, where a mother or father takes responsibility and then subsequently finds that he or she cannot control the youth. Right now, it is my understanding that the youth is not responsible and steps would have to be taken back through the court system. That's one of the issues that is of concern to all jurisdictions and is being reviewed at that level.

MR. STEELE: It seems apparent to me that the offenders treat these sentences as a joke, as unenforceable jokes. It seems to me the supervising adults just throw up their hands and say, there's nothing we can do. Correctional Services say, we don't have the resources. The police say, we do what we can but it's not really our responsibility and meanwhile a young man is dead and another young man is accused of murder.

MS. TYSON: The case that you spoke of earlier, the McEvoy case, was the cause of considerable concern in this province. This Department of Justice, along with all of our counterparts across the country, have recommended legislation to address the situation of a youth who is out of control, who is charged with multiple offences but cannot be confined pending trial. Under certain exceptional circumstances, it is our view that the court should be able to confine that youth who is out of control. That matter is before the federal Legislature - Bill C-25 - and the purpose of Bill C-25 was specifically to address that particular issue. I agree with you, it is a concern, it needs to be addressed.

MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time has expired for the NDP caucus. I recognize Mr. Colwell for the Liberal caucus. You have 14 minutes.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: First of all, I would like to say that I definitely would not want to be a corrections officer - it has to be one of the toughest jobs that has ever existed. You know your clientele are people who are there for no real good reason and they're not there to help anybody or to assist anybody. To have to live through that every day, I really admire the men and women who do that job. I know it must be one terrifically difficult job no matter how you do it, how you train for it and what experience you get with it, so I give them a tremendous amount of credit for providing that service for Nova Scotians. In no way would I ever want to criticize them for the work they do because it has to be very, very difficult.

The thing that really worries and concerns me, we've been incarcerating people ever since people have been responsible for taking - how should I put it - we've taken responsibility to incarcerate people almost forever, ever since humanity started but yet we keep messing up. Paperwork mess-ups, people get out - I mean that has nothing to do with the corrections officers, it has nothing to with the jails. It has to do with the system that is simply broken.

We have Auditor General's Reports that identified problems and continue to identify problems. Is it because some of the people in our system outside the corrections facilities themselves don't have the proper training, we got too lax, we haven't continued with a lot of things? I have an industrial background and I personally believe the training for some industrial trades here in the province have really gotten so lax that in some cases they're almost useless. Is that what is happening? I'm not saying correctional officers are like that, not at all because living there every day you have to learn very fast or else you probably don't survive, either mentally or physically.

The system itself, the fact that someone is let go because the paperwork didn't follow them - how can that happen? How can it happen? Could you explain it to me.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Honsberger.

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes. To answer your question, despite the number of moves we have, there is no scope for error in correctional services and when an error occurs, and especially a cumulative number of errors, then it's completely unacceptable. In terms of responsibility, it's my responsibility as the head of corrections and the buck stops in my office on this case and all cases of that nature.

We have a good training program in Nova Scotia and we have procedures and they're evolving, as I said earlier, all the time. There have been cases - and I am thinking in the last year there were five cases - where there were mistaken releases. In each case, action was taken.

In February we ramped our entire process for sentence calculation, admissions and discharge to lock it tight, to make sure that nothing happens of this type again. This does happen across the country - people are released, it happens in Nova Scotia. It's not something that is unique to our province but it's completely unacceptable when a person is mistakenly released or we don't admit them.

I would make one point and that is that in the past we were - there's a lot of scrutiny on our superintendents to make sure that you don't admit anybody without proper paperwork. If you haven't got the proper paperwork - if it's like an arrest warrant or something, if it's not the right paperwork, the person should not be admitted to custody because we don't want to have a person in our system who shouldn't be there.

Since these releases have occurred, we're saying now that even if the paperwork is not right, for greater scrutiny make sure that you're making contact with a whole range of individuals, the court, our justice information automated system, the police. All the contacts have to be contacted before - even if the paperwork is not right - before we release that person. So there's a much higher level of scrutiny now, in terms of admission, release and sentence calculation, to try to stop that from happening. Again, it was that cluster we had in the last year, that there's no excuse for it, it is my responsibility and it shouldn't have happened and we're taking steps to correct that.

MR. COLWELL: In the field I used to work in before I got involved in politics, it instituted a quality assurance program to do military work and the ramifications were that if we made an error, we lost our contracts. Losing your contracts would mean two years with no work, so it was a very serious financial impact.

[10:30 a.m.]

I personally instituted the quality assurance system and when I first put it in place, I had a lot of objections from the staff. I didn't think it would work, personally, but I had to do it because it was a requirement of doing these contracts. I can tell you, after I put it in place there were no more mistakes, no more parts went out that weren't properly

documented. Even all the errors were recorded and it actually made a lot of sense, and also made the company a lot of money. Even the youngest apprentices that we worked with very quickly got into the system. It was protection for them so that when something did go wrong, they knew they weren't the problem and what it was.

Do you have any kind of a quality assurance system in the system that checks this out? It is so simple to set up - well, it's not simple to set up, I had better back that up a little bit. It's not simple to set up but it would eliminate your problems, period, it's that simple.

MR. HONSBERGER: To answer your question, sir, your point is very well taken and I agree with you entirely on that - it's an obvious point you're making. We had an audit done on one of our correctional facilities last year, a central Nova Scotia correctional facility, and there are a number of - it's a draft audit but there are a number of points that are raised from that which speak to the points that you are making right now. This will be causing us to- we're putting together an audit response team in that facility to work with staff to improve the direction and the prescription that's required and the follow-up, particularly the follow-up on those things on the part of our supervisory staff, be it superintendents, deputies, captains, sergeants, the whole range is being analyzed.

Our staff will be involved in this process but it's something that's going to be quite extensive. We have a team coming in that will do that, work very well for us I believe. I'll get at the point you're making but we have to have the right prescription to make sure that there's absolutely no lack of clarity about expectations but then there has to be, as you say, follow-up to make sure that those things happen. So that's the process that will be kicking in, based on the audit, the draft audit that we have in Burnside. We do audits of our facilities annually. They are quite extensive so there's usually one a year. This one was timely, in one sense, because it was initiated before these things happened but the results are - I'm very happy that we had the results we have right now, so we can act on the points you're making.

MR. COLWELL: I'm pleased to hear you're moving in that direction. By the sounds of it, it's not going to be to the level I'm talking about. The way we had to work was, I owned a company, I was president of the company, had a quality assurance manager who had a supervisor but the quality assurance manager reported to me directly, even though they had a supervisor. The supervisor was there to look after were they on time today and vacation and all that sort of stuff. When it came to a quality issue, it was directly to me they reported, no one else, so if there was an issue with quality and the shop supervisor said yes, that's good enough and the inspector said no, it was his responsibility to bring it to my attention and I would resolve it.

Now it's so stringent that if there was a piece of material on the floor that we didn't have tagged and our customer came in and did an audit on us - which they did unannounced, regularly - we would lose our rating, immediately cease all work for them and proceed. If we had two of those violations within two years, all contracts are cancelled. That's how strict

this is, and that's strictly through everybody who contracts for the military, the exact same thing.

Now it takes a while to set this up and your point about having the procedures all in place - that is absolutely part of the system you have to have in place. You would find if you instituted this - and we can go on and on about all the things that happened in the past. I mean, we learn from our mistakes and I think there have been significant mistakes made somewhere down the line and I'm sure that you've identified those and are taking corrective action. The idea is to prevent mistakes happening again, the unknown.

If you put a quality assurance system in place, that will prevent those, I almost guarantee it - well, I guarantee they will. I've seen it actually work and I wasn't a believer when I started. As you go through this process you eliminate all that - you'll have no more paperwork mess-ups and if you do have a paperwork error, it's because someone didn't do their job properly and they should be fired. It's that simple. I mean, this is public safety we're dealing with, it's not cover it up for somebody, let someone walk away from this issue - they should be fired, that should be it. There should be no discussion about it, you just fire them and put somebody there who is competent to do the job. You only have to do that two or three times and the problem is gone.

In the Civil Service we've got a very good group of people working there, as far as I'm concerned, and occasionally people make mistakes, we all do, but if there's an issue of continuous mistakes, then the correction takes place. Do you operate like that or do you just discipline people or how does it work when you find someone who is really negligent - not somebody who just sort of said some strange thing happened that day, I mean those things happen.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms Tyson.

MS. TYSON: In terms of labour relations, we deal with the Labour Relations Branch of the Public Service Commission. They provide advice, as do the legal staff in the department, so we would take their advice and they understand and have the precedents that we would be required to follow, by law.

Can I just say, though, that we do have excellent people in that system and that really is, I believe, demonstrated by the fact that there are 34,000 or 35,000 transactions where people are coming and going every year - 34,000 of them and one mistake is too many. Fortunately, we have very few and I think that's as a result of the training and the quality of the people we have doing that work.

One mistake, we look at that one mistake or that one incident. We attempt to correct that so that won't happen again. I am satisfied that has been done in each one of the cases that Mr. Honsberger has referenced. On top of that, a broad internal audit has been done and

will be implemented and an external review will be done. So I'm confident that we will be doing as much as is humanly possible to deal with the issues that we've seen over the past months.

MR. COLWELL: I concur. I believe you have excellent staff as well, I've got no issues with that at all. Sometimes if the staff don't have the right tools or the right training or whatever the case might be, or the right directives, I mean you can't blame people for making an error if they didn't have everything that they needed to work with, or the right procedure, like you're saying you're writing and rewriting the procedures now and I'm pleased to hear you're doing that.

MS. TYSON: And even with the right training, the right experience, the right tools, we're dealing with people and we're dealing with a difficult and complex environment. So it would not be fair to expect perfection. We aim for perfection and we aim to correct every instance where something has gone wrong, through a lack of clarity of the policy or through human error. We're aiming for perfection but recognizing that human error may occur from time to time.

MR. COLWELL: And the big problem with the business that you're in is that if someone does escape, like it has happened, sometimes they're very dangerous people and someone is going to get hurt outside the system and that's a costly error. We've seen releases where people have died afterwards, because of either the law being not appropriate for that person or the ability of the system to keep that person secure or there have been mistakes that people have been released, and then what about the families that suffer because of this error? These are serious errors. I mean it's not like, you know you make a mistake and didn't pay somebody a refund on something that you should have and you can correct it down the road, these mistakes don't go away.

MS. TYSON: You're absolutely right. There is no room for error and any one mistake or incident could affect people dramatically, so that is the reason that we take each one so seriously and that is the reason that we are taking such additional steps at this time, so I agree with you.

MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time has now expired for the Liberal caucus. I recognize Mr. Dunn from the PC caucus, you have 14 minutes.

MR. PATRICK DUNN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Just two or three questions before I pass it on to my colleague. One is referring to some of the discussions that just occurred. We all realize that it's a very complicated and complex system operating within our province with regard to correctional facilities and occasionally mistakes may occur and are very pleased that they're looked into as quickly as possible and I'm hoping that they don't occur again.

I guess I'll get you to comment a little bit further with regard to - in the run of a year, do you have any stats in a run of a year just how many moves occur from one end of the province to another, or approximate numbers? Just to give us some light on the fact.

MR. HONSBERGER: There are about 2,500 moves per year. These would be largely sheriff transfers, transportation.

MR. DUNN: Okay, thank you. Within the system in the province, is there much transfer or request to transfer from correctional employees from one part of the province to another, or from a smaller, older facility to a newer, larger one?

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes, there is and it is a good thing because it gives staff an opportunity to have a cross-fertilization, if you will, of skill sets. Staff, whenever there's a vacancy in a facility, by contract it's open to the existing staff within the province to access that position or permanent position, so we do see some. I know of one person recently who moved from Burnside to Antigonish, sometimes for family reasons or whatever, but that opportunity is there for staff to do that and it works well. I believe it is seniority-based as well.

MR. DUNN: There's a program I was familiar with actually in Pictou County - the SAPPS program. In this particular program, the probationary officers would team up with local police and make visits to homes where youth had curfews. It was, in my opinion, a very successful program. It seemed to have decreased criminal activity in the area. It also made parents more accountable for their youngsters. I believe the program stopped, for a good reason, the fact that safety issue of the probationary officer - because although the police officers they were travelling with had their vests and other instruments and so on, they did not. Is that the type of program that perhaps could resurface again, in some other way? It seemed to me it was really working.

MR. HONSBERGER: It was an interesting program, you're right. When it first started I was quite excited about it because whenever you have a partnership between police and corrections, it's a good thing. But as you say, what happened was after a while staff said, gosh, we're travelling with police so we need some extra training, so we started getting training on pepper spray and we started putting them into the vest, bulletproof or stab-proof vests.

It started to evolve to the point where there was a suggestion that gun training would be required, too, because if an officer was travelling with a probation officer doing home visits and all of a sudden was called away on an emergency and the officer was overpowered, if that gun fell somewhere, should the probation officer be able to - so it got to a point where we said, what are we doing here? These are probation officers, not police officers, so we stopped the program.

In retrospect, I kind of think we maybe should have morphed it at that time but it has morphed, though, into something else which is equally as good. We brought in a program recently - a partnership between the Public Prosecution Service, the police, RCMP and municipal police - all across the province, to do conditional sentence, house arrest supervision. So we now have staff going out on their own. In metro here in particular, we have staff in vehicles now going out in the evenings, they're doing certain checks, and say there are 20 people on a house arrest, of that number the police are fairly confident that 15 of them are going to be where they're supposed to be, the other 15 perhaps not, so we would partner with police on targeting those other 15.

We do that by telephone, we do it by drive-bys, a person comes to the door. In those cases our staff are now back to wearing the vests again but it's a more measured approach, if you will, to what we had before. They're not actually in the same vehicle, that was dangerous. Now we operate separately. The beauty of the arrangement now is the staff are out there in partnership with the police. We're maximizing the knowledge base and the awareness community by community, so every community is different in Nova Scotia.

MR. DUNN: Is this type of program in any other jurisdiction across the country, or similar to this?

MR. HONSBERGER: My understanding is that it is. Interestingly, when the first one that I mentioned - that partnership with the police - was raised, I went to a national heads of corrections meeting and I was talking about it - we do our round tables. I was saying it to other jurisdictions and one of my colleagues in a larger jurisdiction became quite upset because of what we're doing. Usually they don't do that, it's more collegial, but no province was doing that - this driving with police - and it was actually felt to be wrong. We continued, nonetheless, until it got to a point where we felt we needed to change it.

[10:45 a.m.]

I suspect that most provinces aren't doing what we're doing now but I think it's the way of the future, the idea of partnering with the police - it's working to the best advantage, capitalizing on the strengths of both organizations. The way we're doing that now is safe and I think if it's not going on in all provinces now, I think eventually it will.

MR. DUNN: Besides the partnership with the police and so on, within this little program there's also a partnership with the school system, sort of a three-team approach to it and, again, it seemed to be very successful.

Thank you, and I'm going to pass it over to my colleague.

MADAM CHAIR: I recognize Mr. Porter, you have until 10:52 a.m.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, Madam Chair, I'll get right to the question. I want to pick back up, Mr. Honsberger, with where I left off with you. With regard to staff input, we talked a little bit about how changes, in your few years in the business, you've seen over the course of those years and how often you implement change. Is this done - and I'm assuming that it is - in conjunction with staff who actually work in the system - you know, I don't know what the levels are - the guards, the securities, all different levels of staffing, how much input comes from them? At the same time, I'll throw in there, are you in negotiation right now with collective bargaining, is that going on too?

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes, we're actively in negotiation with collective bargaining now.

MR. PORTER: And during that collective bargaining time, do we seem to have more input or would the input be equal across the board year after year, or only during collective bargaining time?

MR. HONSBERGER: Typically across Canada, whenever there's collective bargaining going on, the tension rises and there's more - this is the way it is in Correctional Services, there's more notoriety about certain situations. It's a common occurrence.

In terms of our communication with staff and input by staff, it happens in several areas. By legislation, we now have occupational health and safety teams and they're very active at our facilities. These teams will speak to safety issues. For instance, the escorts, that's one that they would address.

Also, we have in our Correctional Services contract a process for what we call management-employee relations committees. So there's a management-employee relations committee, which is a union-based structure, at each facility. The union directors and the superintendent and deputy, or whoever, would meet and talk about issues that arise that are labour relations issues.

Provincially we have what we call the executive MER - which is my chair, myself, Director Kelly is on that, the superintendents, plus all the union directors from facilities - and we meet a number of times a year and talk about any range of issues. Usually we have a set agenda that usually things are added to the agenda probably as many as are on the agenda. At each meeting, typically they go from the better part of a day and they're very, very fruitful discussions.

They're always in my experience congenial, collegial discussions that we have. The most important area of communication is the area that is the engagement piece - I just touched on the area there. That's where we're not just talking about union and management, we're talking about staff and you have staff - of course, the union represents a certain number of staff. So we have staff communication with their managers. That's something I was speaking

to Mr. Colwell quite earlier there that we really want to make that crisper than it is in terms of expectations. We have musters now in our facilities before shift change which isn't the way it was years ago, just communication between superintendent, deputy, captain to sergeant to officer. When we have new procedures and standing orders coming in, the idea is to engage staff and get their thoughts on those procedures, just to make sure that the front line and the head office are connected to the extent possible.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, that's just kind of what I was wanting to make sure we're clear on - that there's a great line of communication there. Those people on the front lines are certainly the experts in the field and would know and would see those ongoing changes that you referred to earlier and would continue to see all of those different things.

Just moving on, I had a question I forgot to ask you earlier, about the difference between probation and house arrest. Are there different measures in place for enforcement on the two of them?

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes, probation is typically reporting to a probation officer at certain frequencies - once a month, once every two weeks, once every two months, depending on the classification the person is on. House arrest usually accompanies a conditional sentence order by the court. We have, say, 500 people on conditional sentence in Nova Scotia on a given day and maybe 400 of those would be on house arrest and those orders require, again, the person to be on a curfew. Typically, however, there's a very prescriptive number of hours they're allowed to be out during the day for various things. Our staff employ - we do home checks, phone checks on those people to the best that we can, to ensure they're going to be there.

Again, we can't position a person in front of a house or behind it all the time, so there is a trust element there. Interestingly, it works best in a small community because if you're in a small community, say Liverpool, and you are under house arrest, the whole community knows it, and if you go out usually the neighbours or someone will squeal on them. Halifax is much more difficult because . . .

MR. PORTER: It's bigger landscape.

Just going forward, I know we've talked about quite a bit here - we've seen a lot of media on the recent events that have unfolded, unfortunately. We've had a few incidents over the years and so on, but going forward, when we think about - we've heard a lot today about staff, staff training, capabilities, professional manner, so on and so forth, is there any reason that Nova Scotia should be fearful that they are not getting adequate services by way of Correctional Services?

MR. HONSBERGER: My belief is that we have a strong staff team and a strong organization right now but we have had a raft of mistakes in the last year, so the lack of public

confidence in our system and my administration of that system is understandable. So I think the review that Minister Clarke has ordered is excellent, because it will help to measure what we're doing against other jurisdictions, and I believe that because of the way that staff operate now, things are fairly good. It will validate a number of things we're doing, but I have no question that we're going to learn from that too.

I also think it's going to be an interesting review for other provinces to look at. To answer your question, there is a concern right now, an understandable concern that needs to be addressed. I think Minister Clarke's approach to the external review will deal with that.

MR. PORTER: Thank you very much, that's all I have. Thank you, Madam Chair.

MADAM CHAIR: The time has now expired for the questioning portion. Mr. Steele.

MR. STEELE: Madam Chair, thank you. I'd like to raise a point of order. During my questioning I asked the witnesses about the GPS monitoring system and after my questioning was finished, some information came to my attention which I think is very significant. I feel like I have been misled as to the true state of the GPS monitoring system, misled more by omission than anything. That there are some very significant events going on with the GPS monitoring system that I would have thought would have been brought to this committee's attention in the course of my questioning.

What I would like to do, one possible remedy for what I feel that situation is, if I could be accorded a few extra minutes to question the witnesses about the information that I have quite literally just received.

MADAM CHAIR: I think we could do that with the agreement of the other caucuses and an opportunity for questions from the other caucuses on the points that you're raising. That would be my sense of this. So everybody, two minutes. I'm hearing from Mr. Colwell from the Liberal caucus, that we would allocate an additional two minutes to each caucus for some clarification, if that's what you're looking for, or new information.

MR. STEELE: Thank you. Deputy minister, will you confirm that the company that was originally given the GPS monitoring contract gave up the contract? Can you confirm that they were told that the Department of Justice would not accept any complaints in writing? Can you confirm that the contract has been re-awarded to a different Ontario company, without a proper tender? Can you confirm that the main reason why the original company gave up the GPS monitoring program was because of the low number of offenders that were being assigned to the program by the Department of Justice.

MS. TYSON: I can confirm that the contract is changing from one company to another. I have been told that there were issues with respect to the original company but Mr. Honsberger has detail and he can speak to this.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Honsberger.

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes, there were issues related to response from the original company that we had contracted with. They had expectations about, I think there were two parties involved in that contract and there were equipment issues that caused us a fair bit of concern. Like anything else starting out, you're growing into it and there were equipment issues that we had, performance issues and there were financial issues that were of concern to one of the groups that we contracted with, they expected a higher volume than we had and we weren't concerned about that because we were growing into it.

Again, it started off slow because you want to get your feet wet and make sure you're doing the right thing, so it got to a point where we had to part ways. Now I don't know the exact wording of the separation but I do know that the merits of it were clear, that it wasn't a good thing for Nova Scotia to be within that contractual arrangement with that group and the group that we now are partnered with, the new group, is a far superior group and we're getting good results from that contract.

MR. STEELE: The information I have is that the company gave up the contract because of the low number of offenders being assigned to the program, that they were told it would be a certain number and they quoted accordingly and the number actually turned out to be as low as 20.

MR. HONSBERGER: At that time of the program, it may have gone to 30 or 40 but this program has gone from an initial five or six up to, I'm guessing, around 60 or so today. It's going to go on to 80 or more in the future. I suppose we'll cap it off about 100 at some point in the future.

That company was aware that we were growing at that level. Quite frankly, my guess is that if we contracted with the company that we're with right now, that wouldn't have been an issue. We're into numbers, we're into a product.

MR. STEELE: Can you confirm that the new company that has the contract, that the monitoring project was actually buried within a different contract that they have and the purpose of that was in order to disguise what was really happening?

MR. HONSBERGER: I'm not aware of that, sir. We can provide, I would think, any contracts that you require. I'm not aware of the issue you are raising.

MR. STEELE: If I may, Madam Chair, I'm deeply concerned that none of this information was available to the Legislature, that it's not reported in the Accountability Report which was published only a few months ago. I think that something is going on here that ought to have been reported publicly.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Mr. Colwell, would you like to ask a question?

MR. COLWELL: How much time do we have?

MADAM CHAIR: Two minutes.

MR. COLWELL: It seemed like a long two minutes there. My colleague indicated that the second contract was let without tender, is that correct?

MS. TYSON: We'll confirm that, we'll get that information to you.

MR. HONSBERGER: We don't know that, we're contracted right now with Jemtech which is a national organization out of B.C.. We have to get the information for you, sir.

MR. COLWELL: That would be quite interesting information because it should be tendered, even if there's only one company that's obvious, but there might be others.

On this original system, did the system work or were there problems with the issue with the system working? You indicated there were supply issues.

MR. HONSBERGER: There were two groups involved in it - there was the monitoring agency and there was the equipment agency from down in the United States, Georgia; I'm not quite sure of the location. The equipment, in our view, was faulty and we weren't getting as timely a response as we needed on the equipment. There were problems with it but also there were issues, other issues in terms of the other side of the contract. There wasn't, I guess, a mutual satisfaction if you will, in terms of the monitoring piece.

Mr. Steele mentioned it was a volume issue. It could have been but in my view, there wasn't an expectation that there would be a volume at the get-go. You have to grow into a process. We can provide material on that.

The whole process of changing over from what we were doing to what we are doing now, my understanding was it was appropriate and it was the right thing to do. Now if there's anything untoward, that would have to provide you with information on our tendering processes or whatever happened there.

MR. COLWELL: Yes, I'd like if you could supply the tendering process information to the committee on both tenders - the first one and the second one. Is the cost significantly higher on the new ones?

MR. HONSBERGER: I think it's about the same, I can't say for sure, we could find that out for you and get back to you, I wouldn't want to say for sure. It's a better quality, I know, a better arrangement for Nova Scotia but we can get the information for you, too.

MR. COLWELL: And have there been any situations where the new equipment hasn't worked as it is supposed to work?

MR. HONSBERGER: I'm aware of this peripherally, but there's always issues with it. With GPS, it's a new system so there are always issues but we're working through those fairly comfortably and we're satisfied with the product. So it's nothing that - we're quite proud of what we have, we're very proud of it. Again, as I said earlier, Manitoba is piggy-backing onto our contract so they're bringing it in and it's a good arrangement for Manitoba. I suspect other provinces will be using the same thing.

[11:00 a.m.]

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you, Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, Madam Chair, and just one question, I guess, and Mr. Honsberger or the deputy, either one can answer, is the GPS system that's currently in place today working the way that we want and expect it to work in Nova Scotia?

MR. HONSBERGER: Yes.

MR. PORTER: Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. The time for questions has now expired. I would invite the deputy to make some concluding comments, please.

MS. TYSON: Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a couple of points that I'd like to pick up. Thank you very much, firstly, for the opportunity to clarify and provide some information to this committee. There was reference to leg irons, defective leg irons. I just want to clarify that we have no information that the leg irons that were used were defective. We've been using leg irons and handcuffs that are commonly used throughout the country and through the U.S. We are now acquiring special restraints with double locks for high-risk individuals and that will enhance our ability to do the job.

There was also reference to communication with staff. I want to assure this committee that staff will have opportunities to provide input through this new, external review process and on an ongoing basis.

Finally, there was reference and some talk about double-bunking. I just want to clarify that we in Nova Scotia are in a very fortunate position - we have the capacity in our two new institutions. The ideal is one person per cell, that's the ideal. That is not the case across the country; the norm is two or more people per cell.

In speaking with my colleague in Ontario last night, Ontario is triple-bunking now. Even in our own province, as Mr. Honsberger pointed out, we have 12 people in a ward in Cape Breton. So the norm across the country is two or more people per cell, the ideal is one person per cell. Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here today. We have one or two other items of business on our agenda and our time pretty much has expired. We have the option of carrying this over until Wednesday, if that's agreeable to the members.

You have an agenda in front of you and attached to that is committee business, I believe. It is the re-introduction of a motion that passed in camera, which we wanted to do in the full session on the record here, regarding following up on the Auditor General's recommendations.

Also, the clerk had circulated a letter from Mr. Rafuse over in the Department of Finance, with respect to Supplements to the Public Accounts. I wanted to have that discussed at some point in time so we can respond to him.

I also would like to table a letter that I have received from Mr. Lapointe in response to questions that were raised at a previous Public Accounts Committee meeting which I will do right now, I will just table that correspondence. These items of business I would like to postpone to our next meeting, is that agreed? Yes, thank you.

At this point we stand adjourned. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, April23^rd. We will have the Department of Health Promotion and Protection with respect to that chapter of the Auditor General's Report from 2008. Thank you.

[The committee adjourned at 11:04 a.m.]