Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member's statement. Again, I want to question the Minister of Justice today, in this House, regarding the delivery and provision of sex offender programming and family violence programming at North Slave Correctional Centre.
The more I think about this and the more digging around that I'm able to do, it raises a number of concerns for me. I've asked the Minister this question before, about how the qualifications and the delivery of programming at North Slave Correctional Centre could potentially impact the federal inmates that are housed at that centre. Now, the answer I got back from the Minister was that it wouldn’t impact it. But that’s not what I’m hearing today, Mr. Speaker.
I want to ask the Minister of Justice: will the change in personnel and the changes that he’s looking at implementing there impact our ability to house federal inmates at North Slave Correctional Facility?
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Justice, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The North Slave Correctional Facility offers, through Corrections Canada services, an ex-offender relapse program, a family violence program, the national substance abuse program and also the anger emotion program, which the program delivery officers provided for a number of years. We certainly will continue with the program. There’s no such impact to the program itself. We will continue to deliver a program, so there is no impact. Mahsi.
But again, I am having trouble understanding the rationale the Minister uses. I want to ask him: what standards and policies does Corrections in the Department of Justice have when it comes to programming? Do those policies and standards mirror the federal government’s Correctional Service of Canada?
Mr. Speaker, we do follow the Corrections Canada services guidelines and criteria when it comes to program delivery. The three individuals we are talking about — the program delivery officer and two case managers and also the psychologists that deliver this program — were mentored and trained to deliver the offender program and accredited by the Correctional Service of Canada. So it is certified through the Correctional Service of Canada to deliver the program. It is a highly recognized program and a highly recognized accreditation that these individuals receive. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, I am having trouble understanding how…. I don’t see anywhere in what I’ve read — the information that I’ve read from the Correctional Service of Canada — where they say it’s okay to train somebody for a week or ten days and send them into a classroom in group therapy so they can train or program sex offenders so they can be rehabilitated and go back into the community. I am not sure where it says that anywhere.
I want to ask the Minister: does he understand that having a “train the trainer” that he talked about the other day and backfilling positions…? We are talking about rehabilitating sex offenders. I am not sure how the Minister can say that it is okay to train somebody for a week or ten days and send inmates back into our communities. It doesn’t make any sense to me, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important that we recognize the program delivery criteria. It came down from the federal government, federal Corrections. What more can we offer? It is accredited for these individuals to deliver a program — the four key areas for rehabilitation — into the community. So we have trained these individuals for, as the Member states, a couple of weeks, a few weeks. We train these individuals, and they are trained. They are certified by the Correctional Service of Canada because it is their program, as well, so we are meeting the standards of their criteria at North Slave Correctional Facility. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I am going to be interested in seeing what happens here and how long the program at North Slave Correctional Facility continues to be, as the Minister said, certified by the federal government. I think that’s going to change with some of the job cuts out there and the re-profiling of positions. I think that’s going to change.
I want to ask the Minister: can he tell us today what qualifications program-delivery officers or whoever is going to be conducting the programming…? What qualifications do they have — clinical, academic and professional expertise — to deliver those programs, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker, I can’t speak specifically to the position. It is a confidential matter. If we do highlight their credentials and qualifications, we are specifically targeting those individuals, and I certainly cannot speak to that. But I can speak to the criteria that we follow: again, it’s the Correctional Service of Canada. My staff will be meeting with Corrections next week.
Just to move forward on this, we want to train more individuals at Corrections as well. We want the program to be successful. It has been very successful to date. We want to continue the progress. So we are moving in the right direction. We do have trained people, certified and accredited by the Correctional Service of Canada.
The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
