Hon. James McCrae (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, the opposition House leader and I have been having our discussions with the view to having two private members' hours tomorrow morning. I would be asking today that we waive private members' hour for today.
Madam Speaker: Is there leave to waive private members' hour today? [agreed]
Thursday morning's proceedings will involve two separate one-hour private members' hours. Agreed.
Mr. McCrae: Madam Speaker, I would not want there to be any misunderstanding about that. That was indeed what had been worked out between the two House leaders.
Madam Speaker, I wish to obtain the unanimous consent of the House, notwithstanding the sequence for consideration of Estimates as outlined in Sessional Paper 142 tabled on March 24, 1998, and subsequently amended, to consider in Room 255 the Estimates of the Sport Directorate. These changes are to apply until further notice.
Madam Speaker: It has been moved by the honourable government House leader, seconded by the honourable Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson)--no?
Mr. McCrae: Madam Speaker?
Madam Speaker: Yes.
Mr. McCrae: I beg your pardon. I know that everyone understands this, but we need to have it on the record that this would happen on the completion of Industry, Trade and Tourism.
Madam Speaker: Is there unanimous consent of the House to alter the sequence of Estimates for Room 255, to have the Estimates of the Sport Directorate take place on completion of the Estimates of the Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism, these changes to apply until further notice? [agreed]
Mr. McCrae: Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik), that Madam Speaker do now leave the Chair and the House resolve itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty.
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Motion agreed to.
(Concurrent Sections)
Mr. Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 254 will resume the consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Justice. When the committee last sat, unanimous consent had been granted to have all questions and answers considered under line 4.1.(b)(1).
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): I appreciate the patience from the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski). I thought I was going to be done, but I have been provided the opportunity to do a little bit of a follow-up in the sense that, Mr. Chairperson, one of the things that I was able to do was to get some actual numbers since last we met. I made reference to one of the things that I do within the riding is get some sort of feedback from people, constituents as to what they really believe.
To pick up on when the minister made reference to the meeting that he had in Ottawa where you get civil servants--and I think that civil servants do a wonderful job. There is no doubt about that, but I was intrigued when the minister had implied that--or in some of the comments that the minister put on the record yesterday. What I wanted to do is give some sort of an indication of the types of numbers that I have been getting back from this one particular survey that I sent out.
Now, it is not complete in the sense that there are about 80 more than I had given the minister the other day, but I will read verbatim the actual question that I posed to my constituents. These questions are something I do on a regular basis, so these are not individuals who respond; what we are talking about is households. I do not necessarily know them all obviously. I would anticipate that we will probably get a few hundred more in, so it is only partial results, but I would think that this is a fairly strong indication of the general feeling from within the riding.
The one question I posed was: do you support a minimum period of incarceration for someone who is found guilty of breaking into a residential home? Interesting response. I always give yes, no, no opinion for answers. This way there is some statistical benefit for me that can be derived out of it. Obviously, the issue is a lot more complicated than that, but this is a summary of just over 400 people that have returned--330 people said, yes, that there should be some sort of a minimum sentence; on the "no" side, 47; and 13 people had no opinion.
I think that strongly reflects what it is that I was saying just two days ago and one of the reasons that I believe that we are being let down within the system. But always wanting to give the benefit of the doubt, to give the benefit of the doubt here would imply that there has been some miscommunication or we are not getting our message out. That is the reason why I specifically asked the minister: for that individual who gets caught breaking into a house on a Sunday afternoon, what is likely going to happen to that person? Or to get some sort of a summary of what actually takes place, because then this way I am allowed to convey to my constituents, and maybe, like me, my constituents could possibly be wrong. What I can at the very least do, if I am wrong in my assumption, is get the correct message out to my constituents. I think that they would be pleased, for example, to hear about the home invasions, Mr. Chairperson. So information of that nature is most valuable.
The second part to that question--and I do not have a summary of that as of yet, but I will get it to the minister once I do have it--was: if yes, how many months? That really fluctuated. A number of people who put "yes" did not necessarily fill it out, for whatever reasons. It varied from one month to 60 months and beyond. But the purpose of it is just to emphasize that so many people believe in the need to have some sort of a minimum incarceration for people who break into homes because, like me, I believe they believe that it is far worse than any other type of a property crime. It is not a property crime.
Now, the most amazing statistic--and I would ask for special attention, if I could do that, for this particular question because I was really amazed with the response. The question that I posed was: do you feel our courts are too lenient on violent offenders? Really surprised with the response: 388 said yes; 10 said no; six had no opinion. You know, it did surprise me. I did not expect that sort of a response from this question.
One has to ask: who are the people that are taking the time to fill out the questionnaires? These questionnaires that I send out are not just one or two questions. It takes a while to fill them out. A number of them I hand-deliver, just to knock on some doors, and, as I say, we will get some more. If that particular percentage continues, I think it reinforces one of the initiatives that I have taken upon myself to try to put into place and to present to the Chamber.
I know I have had opportunity to touch base with both the Free Press reporter and the Sun reporter, indicated that I would be doing it; I do plan on doing it. Time has not allowed me to get it done as of yet, but my intentions are at some point to do it, and that is, it was going to be a petition. Now, I actually have it worded, and I want just to take the time, just so at the very least it is on the record.
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It is the standard petition addressed to the Legislature: We humbly sweareth that an independent judiciary does not justify a total lack of public accountability; That the lack of public confidence and the level of frustration in our judicial system continues to grow; Wherefore your petitioners humbly pray that the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba may be pleased to advise the minister of the need to consider establishing an independent judicial review committee to report to the Legislature on ways in which our judicial system can better serve the public of Manitoba.
Mr. Chairperson, I started working on this particular petition before I started to get any sort of tabulation of results, and once I have seen the results, I really do not believe I am going to have too much of a problem getting signatures on this particular petition, and if it was within my budget I am sure I could probably mail these petitions out to the individuals who have been replying to me and probably get them returned very quickly. But the purpose is not to get a large number of signatures. More importantly, for this particular issue for me personally, is to make the minister aware, to lobby in the best way that I can, so the first opportunity I get back into knocking on some doors, I will be personally asking individuals to sign this particular petition and whenever the opportunity is there.
It is just to make a statement, so I am not going to say I am going to bring in thousands of signatures, whether it is 10 signatures or it is 100 signatures, I think the significance is very well demonstrated in the numbers that I have presented to this particular committee in terms of the general lack of confidence. I really do believe that is there because of the whole resistance to any sort of change in an area in which it is necessary, and there is a role for us as elected officials to make sure that those that are charged with the responsibilities of the judicial system are being held somewhat accountable to a certain degree, always wanting to watch out for the importance or the need to maintain judicial independence.
I recognize that. I have said that on numerous occasions. I sincerely believe that, but I do not want to use that as an excuse for not addressing what I know my constituents want me to address with the Minister of Justice. There are no doubt many areas that are being talked about or caused the frustration for my constituents. It is not under the jurisdiction of the province of Manitoba and we need to see some changes in Ottawa, but I think we have a responsibility to do what we can internally in order to alleviate some of those frustrations.
I would conclude by asking the one question, at least this portion of my questioning by asking the one question of the minister because I really and truly do want to get some, a better idea of the break-ins, of when could I anticipate receiving information as to the number of successful prosecutions of individuals that have broken into homes in some sort, whether it is percentage or some sort of an idea. For example, how many individuals would have been given a suspended sentence that had been successfully prosecuted? How many did not spend a day in jail, or a percentage? We know that there are hundreds of individuals who are involved.
I would like to think that there has got to be something from within the department or the judicial system that allows us to say here are the number of break-ins that were prosecuted and 10 percent of them had no jail time or incarceration time whatsoever; 20 percent served from this period to this period. I would think that there has got to be something and I would appeal to the minister to expedite this particular issue because it is something that I would include in future correspondence to my constituents. It is either I have to continue to very strongly press for change, or I have to start pressing more for getting the communication better established so that people can start believing or having more belief or stronger beliefs or showing more confidence, I should say, within our judicial system, so I have asked that of the minister.
Hon. Vic Toews (Minister of Justice and Attorney General): I will not go over some of the aspects that I have already addressed. I certainly enjoyed my discussion with the member two days ago in terms of this particular issue. As I have already indicated, the home invasion has been a matter that has been taken very seriously in this province. I believe that we have established a benchmark of about 10 years in terms of sentences for those types of offences. Certainly that is what the Court of Appeal is willing to impose. Indeed, there may be other situations where that may not be sufficient. I believe our department will continue to monitor that situation to ensure that appropriate sentences are imposed.
I think that kind of a sentence sends out a message that people will be very careful before contemplating that type of activity. It is one of the reasons why I am still a firm believer in the constructive murder sections that the Supreme Court of Canada struck down. When people jointly go to commit a dangerous act, and I am thinking especially of armed robberies, under those old constructive murder sections--I believe it was Section 213 of the Criminal Code that the Supreme Court struck down--it used to be that you were a party to the offence when somebody got killed during the course of that robbery. It was not just the main perpetrator that was convicted of murder, but it was all parties were convicted of murder.
I thought that sent out a very, very strong message to anyone participating in any degree in a robbery or some kind of a violent activity or an activity where that kind of risk to any reasonable person, any objective thinking person, that was a consequence. So our Supreme Court of Canada decided that, on the basis of the Charter of Rights, that was unconstitutional, and I disagree with that position. I still disagree with that position. I believe constructive murder was a very, very important tool that the police needed in order to get the job done.
I would indicate that many American states still have constructive murder on the books and still continue to convict individuals on the basis of constructive murder. I think it is not an issue of law as much as it is philosophy. Sometimes we find the Charter being used to advance political rather than legal interests. I say that without hesitation because one cannot divorce political judgments from the Charter, because there is essentially very little guidance given to the courts in trying to determine what in fact should be done with respect to any situation.
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My point of view is that why should these political decisions be made by nine appointed people as opposed to members of Parliament who are elected. A constituent pointed out a very interesting fact to me in asking me whether or not one had to be a citizen of Canada in order to be a provincial judge. I thought about that, and I realized that in order to be a lawyer in Canada it is no longer required to be a Canadian citizen. That was struck down as unconstitutional, that requirement by the Supreme Court of Canada as a result of a case coming out of British Columbia. So one has to be essentially a landed immigrant to be capable of being a lawyer.
Now, if that is the case, then the only qualification to be a judge in this province, a provincial judge, is to be a person at the bar for five years. Well, that leads to the interesting situation where a noncitizen could technically be empowered to strike down laws under our Charter of Rights that citizens who are elected by citizens have passed. I thought that was an interesting situation. So he brought it to my attention, and I thought that was something worth considering, because all of these decisions involve political considerations, yes, in a legal context, but they are policy decisions.
So I am concerned when some of our laws that citizens have passed on the basis of their considered opinion, and then our courts strike that down. Now, I am still very pleased that our courts have gone along with the higher sentences in home invasions. I think they are very, very important. As I indicated to the member, I have a great deal of sympathy for minimum jail sentences in certain cases. Again, we run into the difficulty with the courts striking those down under the Charter of Rights, and, as I have indicated on a prior answer, I think the parliament has been made very wary of implementing minimum sentences.
I think even if one does not implement minimum sentences, I think in order to establish some kind of consistency across Canada and even perhaps Manitoba, minimum sentencing guidelines I think would be of great assistance so that the citizen out there knows that if a certain offence has been committed, the court looks at a certain sentence as being the appropriate one and can lower that or raise that, depending on mitigating or aggravating factors. So, again, I think that would be a positive step.
Now, barring both minimum sentences and sentencing guidelines, are there other options that we can come up with? I think there are, and those discussions are going on presently in my department. The area of break and enter specifically is one that has been the subject of discussions within our department to see what can be done, failing any substantive federal legislative action. So I think the member, in that respect--for me, it is premature to comment on that issue, but I certainly have a great deal of sympathy for his position. In fact, the survey that he has conducted is a very helpful one and instructive one, and I look forward to seeing the full survey so that we can consider that in any policy discussions that we have within the department and indeed within the Legislature and between members.
The issue of the petition is a good one. I am very supportive of petitions. I think petitions, especially when one looks at who is signing these petitions, are very instructive. The more anonymous the names are in the sense that they are not recognizable as being advocates or public figures of one sort or another, the more credibility the petition takes on for me. I am speaking personally. Perhaps members in my caucus do not always agree on that point. I happen to believe that the average citizen taking the time to sign that type of petition, to put his or her name down to it, is a very significant matter.
The member knows that it is very difficult to go out and get memberships in a political party, even if those memberships were free, or to get somebody to sign up on a union card or join any kind of an organization. In my opinion, all things being equal, a citizen thinks very carefully before signing one of those petitions, and, even where a citizen does so very quickly, it is probably as a result of having thought about it for a long time and this is the first opportunity that he or she has in expressing that opinion in a concrete way. So I would encourage the member to continue in that activity of the petition that he has mentioned.
In respect of the specific figures on break and enters, we do not track them in that type of a formal way, nor do we have the technology at this time to be able to track those sentences. We look at what sentences are given in terms of a range, perhaps, that the Court of Appeal has said is acceptable, that benchmark that the Court of Appeal sets, because the Court of Appeal is essentially the court that sets the length of sentences. It is not the Supreme Court of Canada. They have consistently refused to get involved in sentence appeals, where it is just a strict sentence appeal. So it is our Court of Appeal for the Province of Manitoba that essentially sets what a sentence will be.
In one respect that is not good, because we get real discrepancies occurring right across Canada. So for certain offences you may get punished a lot in one jurisdiction and not as much in another, and I think that is not quite right. I would prefer to see more of a standardized approach, and that is why I am a believer in a minimum sentence or at least sentencing guidelines right across Canada at least as something to measure it against.
In Manitoba, we will have, for example, the Court of Appeal saying: this is the acceptable range for a break and enter or a home invasion. We know in Manitoba now what the acceptable sentence is for a home invasion. It is not 14 years. That is too high. Ten years appears to be what the Court of Appeal has said is an acceptable sentence, and there will be mitigating and aggravating factors that will lower that sentence or raise that sentence. So that is how Crown attorneys have traditionally determined whether or not a sentence is appropriate.
It is what I did when I was a Crown attorney and I believe what most Crown attorneys still do. The point that I was leading to is that with the prosecution information system that is being established through technology and computerization, PRISM, that type of information will be available. We will begin to build a database that will give us that type of information. So at this time the only thing that I could do for the member, and I will still have my staff see what kind of information we can give, but I do not think it will be any more specific than the points that I raised last day, where it essentially means that the minimum sentence would be a suspended sentence and a maximum on what one could consider an ordinary break and enter, where perhaps there are multiple break and enters or extensive damage, would be three to four years.
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The problem with break and enters, which is not always evident, is that you will have the offence reading: break and enter with intent to commit an indictable offence, so the intent could technically be murder. So there you have break and enter with intent, but you could have a very severe sentence, but the plea was one to break and enter. So you could get a sentence of seven years and yet it looks like, well, somebody got a conviction of break and enter and got seven years. The other wording could be: break and enter and did therein into a dwelling house and did therein commit the indictable offence of theft, and he could have stolen a few dollars and the person would have got a suspended sentence.
Now, you will always see those kinds of extremes because of the nature of the offence itself. I do not think that prevents us from establishing some kind of a target as to what is acceptable. Then if it is break and enter with intent to commit murder, if that is the appropriate case or if it is the only case that the Crown can make, then perhaps that then becomes an aggravating factor where the bar should be raised rather than lowered or remain at that sort of standard position.
So even when we get that information on computer, that will not necessarily help us determine what an average sentence is. They will still continue to fluctuate quite wildly, just because of the nature of crime and, secondly, because of the particular attitudes of individual judges and the discretion that the Court of Appeal allows them in their sentencing capacity.
The last point in this was the member's reference to the independent judicial review committee. I agree with the member that it is very important that we begin to speak about ideas, that we do not, as I have indicated earlier, just because we have done business one way for the last 125 years does not mean we have to continue in that way.
I noted with interest that a Mr. Robert Desjarlais from Thompson wrote a letter in today's Winnipeg Free Press. Well, I am sure that is Mr. Bob Desjarlais of the United Steel Workers, the husband of the NDP M.P. from Churchill, and basically he says that even the idea of elections is on a slippery slope to mob rule, quoting Frances Russell.
If Bob Desjarlais is in fact that Bob Desjarlais and the authority he is relying on is Frances Russell, then I think that there is lots of room still to debate this issue as to whether or not that is on the slippery slope to mob rule. I do not believe that. I do not think that anybody seriously suggests that just because you elect certain judges you have mob rule.
This is without saying that I agree with elections or not. I think that is a discussion that needs to take place, because I have heard my constituents say it over and over again. What do I tell my constituents? It is not a good idea? It is something we should not do? I know better because I am the Attorney General?
You know, I am only the Attorney General as long as they decide that they will send me to the Legislature. So I have a role to represent their view, separate and apart from my function as Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and I think the discussion has to start with an examination of the idea of: what is judicial independence?
If one goes back in our history, the idea of judicial independence, central to that concept was getting a fair trial, that an accused has a fair trial. I do not think there is anybody in this Legislature that wants to see someone not have a fair trial. Everyone here does. Everyone. No matter what role we played prior to coming to the Legislature, whether we were prosecutors, whether we were police, whether we were formerly with the army, it does not matter. We all believe in that concept.
But what we have seen is an elaboration on that principle of judicial independence by the courts over the last number of years that I think needs examination. Do we, as a society, wish to see judicial independence used, and I do not say that in a negative way when I use the word "used," but used for purposes of essentially collective agreements.
Well, that is a very good question to ask, and when my constituents ask me that question or put that proposition to me, I am not in a position to say: you know, the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada indicated that that is an appropriate role for that section of the Charter and, therefore, it is beyond my ability or competence to question or even to provide you with more of an answer than, say, well, that is what the Supreme Court of Canada decided.
Once we stop questioning our institutions, then the institutions that were designed to serve the people no longer do that. Then we start to lose touch with the reason for these institutions being created. So questioning of authority, questioning of institutions, questioning of established practice is absolutely necessary to the health of our democratic institution. Whether I agree or not that elected judges are a good thing or terms for judges are a good thing, do our citizens not have the right to ask the question without being accused by people like Mr. Desjarlais that this is simply on the slippery slope to mob rule?
I mean, I have to shake my head and say: if freedom of speech in this country, as the Supreme Court of Canada has said, means that a prostitute can stand on a street corner and communicate for the purposes of prostitution and that falls within freedom of speech, certainly an ordinary citizen asking the question of should we have elected judges, how could that be any less deserving of protection under our Charter? If we, as the Supreme Court of Canada has said, cigarette advertising is protected speech, that commercial activity is protected speech, how can we say: if that is protected, why is it not the right of our citizen to say: I am wondering if there is a better way of administering justice in our country. I find that very, very troubling and very strange that someone would suggest that that is on the slippery slope to mob rule. In fact, that is the lifeblood of democracy that we ask those questions.
So I think that we need to examine these issues. We need to talk about these things. The member has suggested an independent judicial review committee. I do not think at this point I am prepared to make any such commitment. I have certainly indicated my willingness to participate in the Alberta proceedings, to participate with ministers there, to initiate initiatives here that I think are responsive to some of the concerns of our citizens. But whether I agree to a formal process or not, one of the things that I will not do is say to our citizens that you are not entitled to speak about a particular issue. Our citizens are entitled to speak about an issue and to question institutions, be they government or other institutions.
So I look forward in the next couple of months to developing some of these ideas further in conjunction with other members in the House, including the member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux), and I do not think I can give you any other information than what I have already said. If my staff, in any way, can provide the member with additional information, Mr. Chair, I will certainly pass that information on to him.
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Chairperson, I recall an article that was in one of our daily papers, and it was a response, I think it was from the Chief Justice, saying that we needed to see more action from politicians, or there was an article saying that they have to take more actions. I look at the results that I got thus far on that one question that I had posed where we had 330 people saying that, for example, there should be a minimum sentence for a break-in.
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The minister indicates that the Court of Appeal is what, in essence, sets the parameters of what the sentence will, in all likelihood, be. I am surprised that we are not able to, for example, get a number of how many people received a suspended sentence for break and enter. Under the PRISM system, we will maybe be able to get that number; hopefully, we will be able to get that kind of a number. Why? Because what do you do if you have, on the one hand, public expectation, and it is clearly demonstrated here that there be some form of a minimum incarceration period, and then you have the Court of Appeal that says that is not going to be the case.
So you have the will of the public, and I am not saying with 100 percent certainty that is going to be the conclusive will of the public, but on first glance from the results that I have been getting, I would think that you would have a good percentage of the population suggesting that that is, in fact, what they would like to see. So the judicial system which is supposed to serve the public, at least in part, I would think, is not necessarily fulfilling what expectations the public has of it. If that same principle, if you like, is applied to the government of the day, the public can then choose to throw that government out of office.
I am not an advocate of electing judges. I do not think that is the direction to go. If people want to talk about it, that is fine. I do not have any problem with people who want to talk about it. I just think it would be a mistake personally. A term position is something, especially at the provincial level, that I think is quite responsible. One-term appointments, they can still receive federal court appointments. I think that that might be something that is worthwhile at least talking about and looking at.
But I think there is something missing, and maybe the minister would be able to tell me what it is that is missing, when you have an overwhelming public opinion saying that this is what we want from our courts, and the Court of Appeal makes the decision that the public is not going to get that.
The specific example I am referring to, again, would be the break-in. Can there be anything done? When it is an issue that is brought up at the door, do you say, well, complain to the courts, complain to the Minister of Justice? How do you ensure that there is some sense of that accountability for the public?
I am very sensitive to the whole issue of mob rule. I know the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) and I differ in some of our opinions at times. I want to be sensitive to that, but I think there are some basics that are there that do need to be addressed, and no one wants to be perceived as being a racist if, in fact, they bring up an issue that is sensitive to ethnic minorities. No one wants to be perceived as being a hangman, if you want to be able to provide what I believe is constructive criticism or a dialogue on what I believe is a valid point.
So can the minister indicate when you have the Court of Appeal that sets the parameters and that those parameters do not come close at all to what the public as a whole, not 51 percent, 52 percent, but 85 precent, want to see, what is the answer?
Mr. Toews: Well, I think it is a good question, but the answer is as basic as our constitutional structure in this country. That is how basic an answer it is. In 1981 or 1982, we went from a parliamentary democracy to a constitutional democracy, and that is a very, very radical change, and people did not realize it.
I mean, the agenda that Prime Minister Trudeau had at that time was--he was not particularly concerned about civil liberties. He never was interested, I believe, in civil liberties. That was not his goal. I mean, we saw how he reacted in 1970 with the War Measures Act. This was a person who was quite willing to abrogate our civil liberties at a moment's notice. One can argue about whether that was an appropriate action or not, but it was an action taken by our democratic leaders, and one has to see it in that context.
The real agenda, it has been argued, that Prime Minister Trudeau had was not one of civil liberties but, indeed, of certain educational and language rights, and he knew he could never pass that in our country as a constitutional amendment by itself, those educational and language rights. But what you do is you stick those rights into the Trojan horse of civil liberties, and that is what he did.
Now, I think very, very shrewd politically that he did it, because how can one argue with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms? To say you are against rights and freedoms is like saying that you are against apple pie and motherhood. I mean, how can you be against that? So when people did question what was going on, people like the former Premier of Manitoba Sterling Lyon, when he said there is something very, very radical going on here, our democracy is being fundamentally changed, power is being taken away from the people who speak through their elected representatives, nobody listened to him.
But that was the problem, and it was not just Sterling Lyon who said that. It was Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan who said that. Ultimately, democratically they voted in the usual--or they agreed, as was their democratic right to do so. So in the normal democratic system these decisions, if they were wrong, they could be changed under our parliamentary democracy. They could be changed. Can they be changed now?
An Honourable Member: A constitutional amendment.
Mr. Toews: The member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) says a constitutional amendment.
An Honourable Member: How many have we seen? It could happen.
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Mr. Toews: And he says it could happen. We have put ourselves into a particular legal straitjacket and not just with respect to things that we like. For example, there are things about the Charter of Rights that I like. I believe Section 15 of the Charter is fundamental to our country--equality. It is the equality section. In our multicultural, multiracial society, I think that is an important section to have.
There are other sections that I happen to agree with as well, but the application of these constitutional principles to the area of criminal law is something that I have grave concerns about. I mean, we have seen parliament move to protect women in a number of cases when the system made them victims, especially when they were victims of sexual assault, and the steps that parliament took to protect those women were struck down by the courts as being unconstitutional. The balance was always tilted in favour of the rights of the accused. I think not enough consideration, if it was my opinion that counted, was given to the rights of these victims.
One of the reasons we see today the whole development of victims' groups is not necessarily because we are more victimized, but because we have fewer avenues to change things. The Constitution prevents parliamentarians in many respects from taking proactive steps that everybody recognizes are necessary. We just look to 1982 and say we did it to ourselves. So this emphasis of frustration on the part of victims is a natural outgrowth of that mistake that was made in 1982, where a Prime Minister with a particular agenda brought a lot of baggage into the area of criminal law that I think has been not healthy for our criminal justice system.
Again, people might criticize me for that point of view. I make no apologies for stating my opinion in that respect. So we have moved from a parliamentary democracy that for hundreds and hundreds of years served Great Britain very well. We adopted an American system, a republican system, that essentially is not as flexible, is not as adaptive and without the safeguards that the Americans have in their Constitution.
In my opinion, in 1982, we adopted the worst of all worlds, and that is what we are living with today. I am not one who is simply going to give up and say there is nothing we can do about it. I think there still are things that we can do about it. There are things that I have mentioned, particular programs that our government can undertake, that we will undertake, that we have undertaken. We will continue to do that, but, again, we will have to recognize that is only in a particular context that we will be able to do that. That context is the Charter of Rights as those rights are defined by the Supreme Court of Canada, not by the politicians and not by the people.
One last point. I have mentioned from time to time here about the Reform Party's proposal in respect of reviewing decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, where those decisions affect laws of parliament. People are dismissive of it because, well, it comes from the Reform Party. I do not care where a good idea comes from. I do not care whether it comes from a Liberal, a New Democrat, a Social Credit. If it is a good idea, it is a good idea. So that kind of proposal, again, is worthy of discussion. In fact, I think, it is one of the few proposals that we will ever successfully be able to bring about in terms of restoring that balance between the power of the elected people and the powers of appointed judges.
I think it is a very important step. We should not lightly dismiss this, because it comes from a political party that we may not happen to agree with.
Mr. Lamoureux: Unfortunately, within the answer the minister gave, it does not necessarily answer the specific question. One would wonder, for example, does the department through the Crown's office not have the opportunity to appeal decisions? If in fact you have in this case break and enters, where individuals are receiving suspended sentences, and the government, if it believes that there is a need for a minimum sentence in this area that it would be an automatic appeal no matter what the circumstances surrounding it might be, much like you have zero tolerance with domestic abuse. No matter what the circumstances, there are some obligations of law enforcement officers.
So, I think, those types of things would have been what I would have suggested to my constituents if they would oppose the question. I was hoping that I would be given maybe another idea or two as opposed to the constitutional debate. If it was the constitutional debate, I have quite a bit of thoughts on the constitutional debate. Actually, having gone through, I can recall our Prime Minister signing with the Queen and others the Charter of Rights back in the early '80s and repatriating the Constitution. I think you have had several Prime Ministers prior to Trudeau that attempted to repatriate the Constitution to bring it home and were not successful. I think that one of the primary things that Mr. Trudeau at the time was trying to accomplish was to bring our Constitution, as we did have--well, it was an act of the British Parliament, the BNA Act, to bring it home and to repatriate the Charter of Rights. From what I had understood, and I would have been relatively young at that time so I am not quite as keen on it, but the Charter of Rights is something that came along on the side.
One of the aspects of that whole constitutional debate that was quite positive, I had thought, was the notwithstanding clause. The current Premier, when it was suggested, in fact, he went beyond the suggestion in which it was incorporated of the doing away of the notwithstanding clause. Given what the minister has just said, and I had no intention of getting into the Constitution, but no doubt after the Quebec election, especially if there is another government outside of the PQ, there will be some sort of constitutional discussions. This minister, if there are no changes whether electoral or within cabinet, could very easily be sitting around a table talking about constitutional change.
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Given the minister's comments--I am personally and at one time a minority opinion from within; we were a large caucus at the Liberal Party--I always maintained that the notwithstanding clause was a positive thing and definitely worthwhile keeping. So I am interested in whether or not this particular minister supports the notwithstanding clause, but I digress considerably from the original line of questioning. I will just let the minister answer that question. It was only because of his answer, Mr. Chairperson, that I went as far on that particular issue as I did before I get right back to what I was wanting to conclude on.
Mr. Toews: Whether I support the notwithstanding clause or not, I believe that it is the notwithstanding clause that acts as a political release valve that allowed Quebec to stay in Confederation despite the fact that many rulings went against certain statutory provisions that government passed. So it performs a very, very important political function which I think is fundamental to a political compact that we have here, this political Confederation, because the change from the parliamentary democracy to a constitutional democracy also went--there was a change from a political compact between provinces to a legal contract and that, again, fundamental difference, fundamental difference. So, I think, given that we have this Charter of Rights and that 1982 Constitution, many would argue that it is that necessary political release valve that allows provinces who cannot tolerate certain decisions from the Supreme Court of Canada in areas of their jurisdiction to express politically what they think. So I want to leave it at that. I am not saying that it is the best solution or it is a good solution; I am just saying that in the past, I believe, it has performed a very valuable function in keeping Canada together.
The issue just on minimum sentence and zero tolerance, very quickly. Zero tolerance is very different than minimum sentences. Zero tolerance relates to the prosecutorial role of the Attorney General and the police forces. That is, they and the Attorney General have the full constitutional authority to lay criminal charges. But once that charge is laid, as zero tolerance authorizes police forces to do, in fact requires police forces to do if there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction--the legal test has not changed in zero tolerance. It is the same. The only difference is that once that reasonable likelihood of conviction is met on the basis of evidence, then there is no discretion on the part of the peace officer as to whether or not he or she should lay that charge. So that is within the prosecutorial role of the Attorney General to set those kinds of policy directives.
Similarly in the area of bail and the granting of bail, the Attorney General could set certain guidelines for the prosectors. In Manitoba, the prosecutors themselves, through discussions, have set a certain policy statement that I as Attorney General happen to agree with. I agree with that position. I assume I could have given direction; constitutionally I could have given direction. That was not necessary because the prosecutors worked out what they considered appropriate. I agree with their position.
Minimum sentences are very different. Once a charge has been laid, then it falls into the bailiwick of the courts to determine how a trial is conducted, what is appropriate, and ultimately what sentence is imposed. One of the things that should be noted even in respect of sentencing--for example, if there is some kind of a plea arrangement where defence counsel says I will have my client plead guilty to such and such a charge if the Crown will recommend a certain sentence, the Crown looks at that case and says is this in the public interest to do this? Crowns, in that kind of situation, should never simply bargain cases away in order to avoid a trial or to avoid work, but sometimes in the public interest it is a very, very important function.
For example, if a Crown attorney truly believes a murder has been committed but the evidence is not there, and indeed if it went to trial, there may not even be sufficient evidence to convict on a manslaughter, what is the public duty of a prosecutor in that circumstance? Is it to go to trial in any event even where there is not sufficient evidence that there will be a conviction, or does the prosecutor say I will accept on behalf of the people and on behalf of the Crown a plea to manslaughter? And that is done, because I believe that is in the best interests of ensuring that within the system there is a measure of accountability, a measure of responsibility by the accused, perhaps not as much as the individual prosecutor would like.
But that is why the Supreme Court of Canada has said in that Power case, 1994, do not try to second-guess the motives of the prosecutor. I think the prosecutor always has to be accountable, always has to be ready to defend their actions, but sometimes a prosecutor cannot do that in a public way.
I think a very good example was an example just raised recently in the House about the idea that a charge had not been proceeded with in 18 months. The fact is a charge was laid about a year ago. The final reports of the RCMP were not prepared until March of 1998, just a few months ago, and the Crown attorney was given 14 volumes of 200 pages each as a result of that continuing investigation. So those documents would then have to be turned over to the defence lawyer. But if you look at it, on the face of it, you say: 18 months, what has been going on here?
Sometimes every aspect of a case cannot be explained satisfactorily in public because there are reasons. For example, I know some members in the House would like to see a greater role of victims in the actual prosecution of a case. Well, we have to remember, a Crown attorney does not simply represent a victim. He or she is not simply a lawyer for the victim. He represents the public interest generally, including the victim and including an accused.
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Now, if a Crown attorney were compelled at every circumstance to explain why they were taking certain actions, think of the scenario, where, living in a small community, as we have many here in Manitoba, where an accused person kills another person in that community. The family members want to see justice, naturally so, and the Crown, looking at the evidence, suddenly realizes that the evidence is all melting away. There is no evidence, for one reason or another, certainly none that would justify a murder conviction.
Now, if we were to keep the victim's family fully informed, do we then say, well, look, the reason we are going to have to take a plea to manslaughter is that, at the end of the day, we might land up with nothing. How can we say that to a member of the public at that sensitive time in the prosecution when a member of the family could then leave the meeting and sit there, let us say, in a bar, unhappy with that kind of state of affairs. Say something like that, that gets back to the accused. The accused then refuses even to plead guilty to manslaughter.
We respect the confidentiality of a police investigation, which is absolutely essential. We also have to remember that we have to respect the confidentiality and the professionalism of these Crown attorneys.
So often I hear in the House people suggesting that the Crown attorneys have been less than frank or less than diligent. Well, it is the same as suggesting that I, as a lay person, can tell my doctor how to perform open heart surgery on myself.
You know, sometimes we have to recognize that there are things that cannot be publicly disclosed, that it is crucial to the administration of justice that they are not publicly disclosed. So we have to establish that balance.
The issue of zero tolerance, there are certain policy guidelines that we can set. Crown attorneys in certain cases will make very hard decisions that may not appear to meet the goals of that policy and yet they do so for very good reasons.
The area of minimum sentences again is an issue for the courts. One last point on that issue, and we have raised this before, it is not always an issue of asking parliament for tougher laws. Sometimes the laws are already there. I think it is a question of ensuring that the right evidence is put before the court to convince them that standard past practices of sentencing are not meeting the needs of our society. That is a challenge that my department is faced with and will continue to address. There are steps that we are taking in a number of areas which I am not prepared to discuss publicly at this time, but I would say that is an issue that we do want to address and at least satisfy myself that we are taking all the appropriate steps in that respect.
Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Chairperson, the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) has been very patient. I do believe that the minister and his office do have constitutional authority that would allow for it to address some of the concerns that the public as a whole has. The greatest one, in all likelihood--and, again, this is not my line of expertise. It is only in the last couple of years where I have really been getting involved in this particular issue, as I was previously concentrating efforts in Health and Education, so I did not designate as much time or resources. Now that I have a good friend who often talks to me about Justice, my interest is somewhat piquing more, and the more I talk about it in the constituency, the more of an issue it becomes. So it is something where I think the public wants to see something. I listen to the minister's responses, and, generally, if I was talking to some civil servants, those are the types of answers I would get, with some exceptions. There are areas in which, as I said in the past, the minister is somewhat bold.
Mr. Chairperson, I am looking, and I use the break-ins because it is what I have on my website. It is the issue which I believe so many people are concerned about, because it could happen to any one of us. Even one of the judges, I believe, had a break-in just recently. In fact, it might have been a home invasion. I think that it is a concern that is out there.
Does the department have the constitutional authority? I believe it does in some areas that can make a difference. I cited one of those areas, and that is in the whole area of appeals. Nothing prevents them, whether it is the government or it is the prosecutors as a whole, to sit down and say: look, we do not feel generally--and I can understand that they do not necessarily have access to the information that would allow them to get a good assessment of the situation. But if generally it is demonstrated that the public is not being well served with a particular crime against not property, but against a person, I would argue, something should be done. That could be appeals.
If you have, and this is why I posed the question, hypothetically, 200 prosecutions of break-ins, residential break-ins, and 50 percent of them you have complete suspended sentences, the minister cannot tell me I am wrong or that I am right when I say 50 percent of those were given suspended sentences. Maybe in the future he might be able to tell me through PRISM, but I think that if the Crowns' office were to start to appeal decisions and it was made known that they were going to be appealing these sentences because the government, based on what the public want to see happen, take stronger actions, I would think that it could have a positive impact. By taking actions of this nature, it restores some faith.
We talked about zero tolerance. I would argue that a number of years ago, whether it was women's groups collectively or individuals that did not have any sort of real comfort level prior to zero tolerance, but, because the government took a strong action, the reaction from potential victims or victims, I think, has been fairly positive. Again, it reinforced that the government was being sensitive and taking the types of actions which they believe are important.
I think that there are a number of areas within the judicial system, if you start looking at the types of crimes that are committed, in which there might be a need to address what public expectations actually are. It does not mean, as I say, if automatically you do a poll and you have 50 percent plus one and that means that is the direction government has to take. I do not believe that for a moment. I think that it has to be well thought out. That is one of the reasons why I talked about the review, Mr. Chairperson. But to go over in some areas, I believe we put people behind bars that do not necessarily need to go behind bars.
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There might be some alternatives to that. Having said that, I would look to the minister to find ways in which the department can actually deal with the issues that are there and not necessarily get frustrated because of, let us say, the Court of Appeal, who ultimately determines the parameters. If the parameters are not acceptable, it does not mean the minister or the government or the Crowns' office should have to be content with that, because, ultimately, even if they end up losing every case that is brought to the Court of Appeal, if it continues and it continues long enough and hard enough, one would think that it might have a positive impact. So, if governments were to do this, I think that there is a little bit more accountability within the system. This is one idea.
The Minister of Justice and, there is no doubt in my mind, the individuals that work for the Ministry of Justice have many more ideas than I could probably even imagine. It is just a question of whether or not the will is there to make it happen, and I think that maybe there would be some benefit, if there is, let us say, no committee or independent review, to have some sort of a public forum. We have had them in the past on education. I believe there has even been one on health, I am not too sure, but I know the government did sponsor one on education.
Maybe what we should be doing is having a public forum on justice-related issues so that individuals can express their thoughts and we can maybe see if we can get something, or encourage the dialogue through that sort of a mechanism, which, I think, could prove to be very beneficial. I do not believe that you are going to get a bunch of hangmen showing up for a public conference, that you will get some open-minded people and common sense should prevail. I know the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) would definitely be there to provide his input.
Mr. Chairperson, the bottom line is that shortly the Estimates of Justice, in all likelihood, could pass, and then the minister--it will go through a few more days, who knows? Some say it will be longer--the session, and after the session, then we are out of it, and we do not see anyone until we are back in session for a while. It will be interesting to see what happens between now and next year, as long as there is no election; or, if there is an election and my constituents feel it in their hearts to return me, I can assure the minister that there is a very good chance I will be back in the Justice Estimates, and you can rest assured that I will likely be talking about home break-ins again. Hopefully, the PRISM system will be up, and we will actually be able to talk about some numbers. At that time, if the time is there for me, I will likely want to expand it beyond the home break-ins, but that is by far my first priority with respect to the issue of justice today.
So I leave it at that. If the minister wants to comment, he can. I know the member for The Maples has a few words, and I would look forward hopefully to being here next year, when we can have some more dialogue. What would be nice, and I have always thought in the Estimates process, is to allow for dialogue directly between politicians and civil servants. We see it in other standing committees, in particular, Crown corporations and so forth. How wonderful it would be, not to necessarily ask questions--and please do not be offended by it, Mr. Minister--not ask you the questions, but to ask some of the people that are under you some direct questions. But, failing that from happening, because I do not think it will, I do look forward to the next opportunity that I will get to do some follow-up questions on this very important issue. Thank you.
Mr. Toews: Just very briefly then, I say once again in respect to the issue of appeals--a couple of things I should say; we are not hesitant in this province, I think, to appeal cases, and we, by and large, have had a fairly responsive Court of Appeal, that they are responsive to many of the concerns that we have raised in certain areas. In other areas, we have not been as successful. I think, though, that we should not be afraid to lose a few appeals, even though the precedents seem against us. I think we owe it to our people that from time to time we take cases that are not necessarily on solid legal footing, but we believe that it is the right thing to do. So, again, we should not be critical of Crown attorneys who then undertake that task and lose that case. I think that is part of the process that needs to be done. Defence lawyers do it all the time. I think the Crowns have traditionally been a little more reserved in their appeal for a number of reasons because of that broader public interest that a Crown attorney serves.
I will just point out that Manitoba, in respect of transfers of youth to adult court, perhaps does about, I think, 40 percent of all of the transfers in Canada, even though we only have one-thirtieth of the population. This department has been extremely aggressive in ensuring that violent offenders face the full possible consequences for their acts. Again, that is a policy direction that this department has taken and, I think, very, very successfully.
The other thing that we should not forget about is that Manitoba has perhaps one of the lengthiest sentences provided for certain crimes. I think it is Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in third place, and so of the 10 provinces, Manitoba, the sentences rendered here are, in comparison, lengthy to other provinces. So we keep on strengthening aspects of our justice system where we need to be stronger or make stronger statements.
Zero tolerance, again, is a very, very good example. When I was a prosecutor many years ago, truly the position of the department was that if a woman failed or refused to testify during one of these domestic violence trials, they were held in contempt and they were sent to jail for refusing to testify. We have I think, thankfully, moved light years away from that position and now provide some of the best support for partners of domestic abuse. That is certainly a policy that I would like to see continue.
There are other areas, as I have indicated to the member, where we can take action, where we will take action, whether it is through our prosecutorial policy, whether it is through an appeal policy, whether it is lobbying the federal government for certain changes, and I mentioned one of them the other day, that Manitoba wanted a separate offence of home invasions now. That was defeated, but that is something that I do not think is a dead issue. I think provinces like British Columbia, which experience them on a far more regular basis than here in Manitoba, would certainly be looking at that kind of thing. I think, in time, people will come about and realize that it is a good idea, in the same way that Manitoba was instrumental--and they call them the Vodrey amendments on harassment.
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Those were Manitoba-led amendments to the Criminal Code by the former Justice minister, and she did an excellent job in bringing that onto the national agenda. People say that it has not proven to be very effective because only 40 or 50 percent of those matters land in convictions. The point is, those are 40 or 50 percent where there was no offence prior to those amendments being passed. So there is a remedy, even though the remedy may not always be satisfactory. In fact, we have said that it is not always satisfactory. We have said that we need civil legislation to complement that criminal legislation. We have done that in the area of prostitution with our johns legislation, with our johns school. We have done that with our administrative impaired and seizure of motor vehicles laws. We have continually supplemented the federal law where we feel that we have an appropriate area of constitutional jurisdiction and the federal government has not moved to address a particular issue.
The issue that was raised lastly is people behind bars who should not be there. I have my assistant deputy minister of Corrections here, Mr. Greg Graceffo. He is sitting out in the audience, but Mr. Graceffo would be more than happy to sit down with you one day and go through who should be in prisons and who should not be. We have one of the most sophisticated classification systems in Canada in terms of the risk that prisoners pose to the public. We have very stringent policies in terms of the type of people and what type of facility they should be in, and we are looking at ways of improving that. But as time goes on and as a result of certain changes in federal laws--for example, the conditional sentences--we see the type of prisoners becoming more and more deserving of being in jail. There are very, very few people in jail who could, I think, benefit by a different system of correction.
One of the areas where I think we probably do not need people in jail is the intermittents. In my opinion, if a person is safe to be out in the street during the week, he does not pose much of a bigger danger on the weekends. If he is a danger on the weekends, he should also be in jail during the week. That is my position on intermittents. So one of the ways that we have been able to deal with intermittents is by entering into contracts with the Salvation Army to house our intermittents in their facility, and they have been doing a very, very good job of it. So there is an alternative. So we do not need to occupy prison beds with those intermittent people.
So there is an example, perhaps, of people who were in prison, who when they come into the prison cause all kinds of administrative difficulties for the correctional staff, not only administrative difficulties but security difficulties, because they will come in on the weekends and sometimes are forced to bring in contraband for other prisoners who are there on a full-time basis. So intermittent prisoners is not a particularly good way of dealing with people who should be incarcerated. I do not think it is very effective. Maybe that is a use for conditional persons.
Then there are people who should be in jail and are not. I think the greatest issue that has highlighted that concern is that of conditional sentencing. The law is badly drafted. It does not give enough direction as to what kind of people should be in jail or not, what kind of people should receive the benefit of a conditional sentence. In my opinion, if I had the legislative authority, people who commit serious, violent crimes should never be entitled to conditional sentences. Our department has consistently opposed conditional sentences, not because we do not have the resources to monitor these individuals, but because the issue of the danger to the public is simply not worth the risk of letting these people out any sooner than we have to.
Having said that, we have to recognize, in our provincial jail system, nobody is staying in longer than two years less a day. Ultimately these people come out. I think that our Corrections staff is diligently working to determine what kind of people can be released on temporary absences, even before the mandatory release date. There needs to be a way, an interim period of time, in which they can slowly be reintegrated with the rest of society.
I know Corrections staff have discussed that problem with me and said if a person is dangerous, that is an issue; we need to keep them in as long as possible. But if a person simply needs supports, and all the person is doing is serving two years less a day and no probation to follow, how do we provide them with any supports or provide them with any degree of control as they are reintegrated with society? If you serve the full sentence and then are released, they are absolutely free. They owe no explanation to anyone. So the issue of temporary absences, even though the public might sometimes see that that person should not be out, because a judge gave him two years less a day and therefore he or she should serve that full time, sometimes in terms of safety to the public, that is not the best way of handling it.
So Corrections staff have a very, very difficult task in that context, but they are working on that. I think that sometimes people are going to make mistakes. We are dealing with human beings. We are not dealing with robots. Even the best classification system, which we have here in the province of Manitoba, cannot predict with a high degree of certainty what someone is going to do the next day. Perhaps somebody's girlfriend is injured by another person and causes that person difficulty, or some other personal problem. Well, those are all things that affect their degree of risk and what happens. So there needs to be a measure of support, and, yes, even an early release date from time to time to reintegrate that person into society in a structured way.
Are there people behind bars who should not be there? Less and less so. Can we make improvements to ensure that there is an appropriate integration even before, let us say, a mandatory release date? I think we need to work on that issue, and I do not think our Corrections staff should be criticized when they make those hard decisions. It is a very difficult situation.
Mr. Gary Kowalski (The Maples): There are so many things that I would love to respond to that have been talked about, but I would like to take advantage of some of the expertise of the staff here today. One thing I will mention--the rest maybe we can save for concurrence when I can talk to the Minister of Justice about some of the philosophical views about the justice system and that.
One thing I know, Graham Reddoch from the John Howard Society reads every word of Justice Estimates every year. I cannot remember the exact words that the minister used that I think he will take exception to, that there are not other systems that we could make use of that will get people out of jails, because I think the minister funds a program called restorative justice. It has been funded by the province for a number of years. There have been assessments done on it, and it is shown to be cost-effective, maybe not in the way that Allan Fineblit in his paper Criminal Justice Matters: The Re Factor, once they relate to assessment in that he would like to see a cost-benefit factor. I think that is hard to prove over a short period of time. But there are programs out there that can get people out of jails such as restorative justice. I think if you look at the cost of keeping the people in Headingley in comparison to putting someone through restorative justice, it has proved over and over to be a lot cheaper. I think as long as you are picking appropriate cases, it should be continued.
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I think of other systems such as mediation services that I think the Mennonite Central Committee is very involved in. I think other alternative dispute resolution programs are good systems that can keep people out of the jails; furthermore, not just keep them out of jails and the cost benefit of that but have a more far-reaching effect on the chances that they will reoffend and be a danger to society. So before I go to some direct questions that possibly some of the staff will have to answer, I had to make comment to that because I know Graham will be reading these Estimates. He will be concerned about the minister's comments if he wanted to respond.
Mr. Toews: I think it is always important to put my statements into a context. We were talking about a specific problem, and that was the problem of break and enters, and some of the other areas where our citizens have come to realize that these are serious problems and need to be addressed by certain minimums or guidelines that the member for Inkster was talking about.
I have never closed the door to the idea of restorative justice. When I said that most of the people who are in jail probably should be in jail, it is because we have been using matters like restorative justice to get people out of jail or to avoid jail in certain circumstances.
I was attending The Maples Youth Justice Committee annual meeting last night with the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) and what a remarkable group, what good work they have done in the community. The member for The Maples is a chair of that. Not only do we have a system there of these youth justice committees of avoiding people going into some kind of a correctional institute, we have a situation where they are avoiding the court system almost entirely, where police or probation officers or Crown attorneys refer youths to the youth justice committee for what I think are very, very effective dispositions that will prevent these youths from leading a life of crime.
So again, restorative justice, which is an alternative approach to the actual correction system, is something that we need to do, and that our government has consistently supported. For example, when we talk about the good work that people like John Howard or Elizabeth Fry have been doing, no one is taking anything away from those organizations. One will even admit, if one looks at the record of John Howard or Elizabeth Fry, over the years certain concerns have developed that while they were very effective in dealing with certain groups of offenders, they were unable to reach other groups.
One of the reasons why we established the financial support, as did the federal government, for the ALSOW program, Aboriginal Legal Services of Winnipeg, was exactly for that reason, that despite the very good work that John Howard is doing in many areas, we felt that it was necessary to focus in on the issue of aboriginal offenders and deal with aboriginal offenders by an aboriginal group who were specifically concerned about that idea. I know one of the radio commentators indicated that was establishing an apartheid system. It is not establishing an apartheid system.
What it is doing is responding with particularity to a particular situation all within our justice system. I mean we create organizations, the citizens I am talking about, not government, such as John Howard, such as Elizabeth Fry, to try and deal with matters in a restorative way, but what if these mechanisms that nongovernment agencies create are not effectively dealing with a certain segment of our population? Is there not some onus on government to work together with other levels of government, or indeed other community organizations to see if we cannot do things better? I say that there is a requirement on the part of government. So if there are individuals who can be streamlined out of the main process, either out of prosecutions, out of courts or even if they have served time in jail, just because you have served time in jail or penitentiary does not mean there are not restorative justice alternatives available to them.
So the member indicates that members of John Howard might be reading these. Well, that is good if they are, but I think that our justice system has to be responsive to many needs and be particular enough in respect of the problems that are there. Some of the answers are incarceration. Some of the answers are restorative justice. Some of the answers are family group conferencing which may well be another part of restorative justice, but I think we are past ideology in the area of criminal law in trying to reduce the amount of crime. I think all parties in this Legislature, it has certainly been my experience, simply want effective solutions so that people can live in peace in their community. People have a right to do that and that involves a multifaceted approach and plan.
Mr. Kowalski: I will go on. We could talk about that for a long time, but I will go on.
I see we have Greg Graceffo at the table, and possibly these questions would be in his sphere of influence and expertise. Probation officers, has the number of probation officers been static for the past year? Have we increased them, decreased them, or is it a static number?
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Mr. Toews: In respect of the answer to that question, as a result of the Lavoie inquiry, there will be additional probation officers being hired, and there is a certain realignment of certain responsibilities and duties for the probation officers. One of the other things that should be noted is the intensified supervision programs for offenders which involve contracting of that, so even though we do not have more probation officers, some of that work is being contracted to other agencies to assist in that supervision.
Similarly in the bail supervision, which is a part of the new budget, there is an additional amount of money, a substantial amount of money, to increase supervision for people out on bail. I mean, our hope is that this will not act as a licence for courts to then release more people on bail because they say, well, you have more resources now; we will just release more people on bail.
Our Crowns' policy in that respect will not change. They will take the same position, but what we will be able to do is provide more intensive supervision to the people who do receive bail. I am advised that, as a result of Lavoie, we will have six additional staff years. Full-time equivalencies is what they call them. I used to call them SYs, so I guess--full-time equivalents, all right. Then, in respect of the intensive bail and the ISSP program, there will be 4.5 full-time equivalents. To the extent that I can give numbers at this time, those are essentially the numbers.
Mr. Kowalski: The other area in staffing is Community and Youth Corrections probation secondments. I know we have Lawrie Barkwell at the Manitoba Metis Federation. I remember Wes Charter used to be at restorative justice. We have a number.
When there are secondments like that out of Community and Youth Corrections, are those people replaced, or what happens to their workload?
Mr. Toews: In respect of that issue, there is, in fact, a review being done of that area, the probation officers. The whole division is being looked at, and part of that will be the issue of people in acting positions. For example, you have indicated the name of one such individual. He is on secondment to the Native Affairs Secretariat. Somebody moves into his position on an acting basis.
So we are filling in for that, but nevertheless there was some approval of money for a consultant to look at the whole issue of how and who is providing these services.
Mr. Kowalski: Okay, I understand for that person on secondment, there is someone who fills in in his position, but if that means everyone moves up, there is a shortage somewhere in the system. If there is a probation officer that is then acting as an area director, then you have one less probation officer. Is that a correct assumption? With these secondments, we have less staff.
Mr. Toews: My understanding is, no, we would not have less staff. We would fill that either with a term position, or we will have a correctional officer moving over from another area and filling in in that area. I think it is good that staff move around to some extent to expose them to new areas, new interests, but, generally speaking, we fill vacant staff years. If what happens is as a result of acting, people moving up the chain, ultimately someone fills in at the lower rung on a term position or otherwise. We do that in any number of areas. Certainly in Prosecutions I know we do that on a regular basis where we hire lawyers on a term basis to fill in, and many of those, in fact, become full-time staff as time goes on. As staff at the top levels or other levels change over, they then move into those positions.
Mr. Kowalski: I do not think I am betraying any confidences or anything. We had a discussion last night about what the qualifications are for a probation officer, because right now we have people moving from Corrections doing work that traditionally was done by a "probation officer," PDR reports. For probation officers at one time, I think the requirement was a Bachelor of Social Work degree. We have corrections officers with no university training moving in, doing work that traditionally was done by people with social work degrees as probation officers.
So I know it is sort of like boxing with shadows because even with the term "probation officers"--who are probation officers, who are corrections officers? It is becoming a gray area. But, for people whom I have known to work in that field doing PDR reports, working with justice committees and that, I have known them as probation officers. What are the qualifications for anyone hired for that position?
Mr. Toews: I think that is a very good point being raised by the member, and, no, I certainly do not think you are betraying any confidences. We had that conversation with, in fact, a probation officer at our meeting last night. I think what we have seen over the last 20 years is a changing role of many people in the corrections system. We do not do things necessarily the way it has been traditionally done. That then involves, on the part of my staff, an examination of what are the necessary qualifications, and I think there is a lot of flexibility in determining who in fact should be performing a certain function.
One of the greatest concerns, I think, that many probation officers have had about youth justice committees doing that type of work is that it was not traditionally the type of work that they did--supervise volunteers. Yes, traditionally, they looked at things like presentence reports and, as officers of the court, prepared these reports for the court essentially. That role is changing. There is still a need for that, but I think as our department--and one of the things that we keep on stressing is the role of partnerships with the general community, with nongovernment organizations and volunteer organizations--we find an increasing need for people who can work with volunteers, who can get the most out of volunteers. I say that again in a positive way, that we recognize that many of these volunteers have skills and attributes that are very important to ensuring safer communities.
The skills that might be required for supervising volunteers in youth justice committees are very different than perhaps relating to a judge in the context of writing a predisposition report or a presentence report for armed robbery, so you will see in the new Corrections Act a term of corrections officer, which, I think, is the term. No one is called a probation officer anymore or a social worker or this. It is more of generic term. Not to say that everyone will have the same degree or same qualifications, but I think it is for the purposes of not just legislative convenience but administrative flexibility that we ensure that the services being provided to the people of Manitoba are done not so much with a view to, well, who has this degree or who has that degree, but are the people appropriately qualified to the job that needs to be done?
It is the same argument I have had with the law reform recommendation that our Small Claims Court hearing officers be lawyers. I disagree with that, and ultimately maybe cabinet will persuade me that I am wrong. I do not know if cabinet has any view on that, but I have a concern about that.
We have very, very good public servants in the Department of Justice who are not legally trained in the formal sense, that is, they did not get a law degree, and they did not get their call to the bar. But, you know, those people have been in court for years and years and years and have valuable experience and knowledge to provide, and to simply say that, well, because you do not have a law degree, you should not be a hearing officer in Small Claims Court.
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There are sometimes advantages to not having a law degree. I know in my own department, when I have hired advisors, I do not always hire lawyers. My special assistant, Mr. Haasbeek, who was the head of the Winnipeg Police Association and who was a patrol sergeant, I believe he spent 25 years with the Winnipeg city police--and RCMP before that. The insight that a peace officer of that calibre provides to me is not necessarily better than a lawyer's opinion, but it is different. It helps give a different view to things, and I appreciate that.
So, similarly, a clerk in a Small Claims Court who may not have a law degree does not necessarily perform worse than a legally trained lawyer. In fact, I would argue that there are benefits to having a skilled public servant who does not have a law degree adjudicate those kinds matters.
If you go through the history of our British Commonwealth or common law, you will see all kind of judges who never had degrees. It was not until very, very recently that many of our magistrates in provinces never had law degrees, were never legally trained, who conducted full-scale criminal trials.
For one reason or another, it has been decided that people conducting criminal trials should have law degrees. Maybe because of the advent of the Charter and other things that has become necessary, but we have to be careful in our search for appropriate people that we do not simply pigeonhole people and say you are qualified and you are not qualified simply on the basis of a degree. Now, I am not putting down degrees in any way. I have two degrees myself. I continue to go to university, I continue to go to classes, and I enjoy learning, but it does not necessarily make me a better lawyer or better able to perform other functions.
I would say that we do have class specifications in the department which identify training and experiential requirements for different levels of probation officers. So certain levels may require certain formal training, and for the purposes, however, of employment, there are other issues such as equivalencies to formal education that are considered, where appropriate, especially, I would say, in many of our experience with our First Nations people. You know, some of the elders, and you know them as well as I do and perhaps even better, they may not have a formal university degree, and yet the wealth of experience that they bring and the insight that they bring could probably not be matched by mere formal university training. So issues of equity and affirmative action--I do not necessarily use those types of terms, but just to speak generically--we sometimes have to consider equivalencies that, in my opinion, do not lessen the professionalism of the profession, but in fact give us added skills and added value into the services that we are performing.
I would also indicate that many correctional officers are, in the jails or otherwise, do have educational backgrounds that do include university credits or degrees. We have seen that occur in the area of policing generally. I imagine when the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) first went into the Winnipeg city police, he may not have had a university degree, and I do not know if he has one now. All right, he indicates he does, but I think he could indicate that it was not unusual to see police officers coming right into the police force, right out of high school, without a university or any other training. Now we see many officers coming into training with years of experience.
I was just, a number of months ago, at an RCMP graduating class, and I would imagine three-quarters of them had some kind of a university or post-secondary education out of a community college or otherwise. The average age was not 18 or 19 as it used to be, but indeed much older. Many of them had spent time in the armed forces. One, and I will just very briefly mention this, had a master's degree in law, as well as a science degree. His area of expertise in law was aboriginal law, so here is an individual, a raw recruit so to speak, graduating from Depot with eight years of university under his belt. So does it mean that every officer should have eight years of university or five years of university? I think not, and I do not think that is what the RCMP is saying either, but they recognize that they have certain needs and certain areas where a university degree is helpful. So I think they have a very flexible educational standard that meets the needs of the organization in delivering the service to the people. I think that we need to do the same thing. We should not let form take precedence over substance, and we have to be mindful of that.
Mr. Kowalski: Community and youth corrections is a branch of justice I have always had an interest in. I have been a volunteer there for over 10 years. Going in there, first as a community police officer, and seeing what goes on, of course, I have got a keen interest, and you see things when you hang around an office.
I think sometimes when we use the term "probation officers," we think of those PDR reports, but I know there are so many different things probation officers are doing, from working with school divisions on nonviolent or crisis intervention, at-risk students, to Art Shofley, I believe it is, doing sweats and working with different groups. You know, working with the justice community, there are so many different things that, yes, I agree totally with the minister that, depending what function they are doing, different qualifications are there.
When the public think of a probation officer, the first thing they think of is that these are the people that offenders who have been put on probation have to report to and supervise. That requires certain skills. I do not know how much time they are doing it, but I see an analogy between here and with some of the issues going on in Family Services about workloads, caseloads, you know, how many files, how many adults or youth does each probation officer have to look after? Do they have the time to supervise a young offender who is put on probation sufficiently other than a 15-minute meeting once a month? Do they have such a case workload? In addition to doing their PDR reports, are they supervising these young offenders, plus attending youth justice committees, plus working with school divisions?
The workload is something that I am concerned about, and I do not know how to get at it. We are seeing in Family Services, through some external reports, some internal reports, a concern about the workload of each social worker, and I am concerned about the workload of each probation officer.
How can the minister give me information that will assure me, as an opposition critic, that the workload for each probation officer is not onerous, that we are giving sufficient funds in these Estimates to have enough probation officers to supervise these young offenders and adults who are put back on the community and they are supposed to be supervising?
We know, looking at the conviction rate, that the charges have not dropped that much. We have probation officers on secondment. We are asking them to do additional duties of supervising youth justice committees and other things. What is the workload of each probation officer?
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Mr. Toews: Well, the issue of resources, of course, is always a difficult one to analyze what is an appropriate level of resources. I think that is something that we continually look at throughout the department and very difficult sometimes when, for example, one is involved in collective bargaining issues and numbers that are being tossed around in that context are provided for very specific reasons, and to simply equate one case with one case is not very accurate.
I had to note the other day when the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) said, well, the ordinary Crown attorney would carry a load of 70 cases a day, and so I thought to myself, well, even if we assume that there are 60,000 cases in Manitoba, and that has been, I think, the outside number--it is probably closer to between 40,000 and 45,000 of actual charges--but if we assume 60,000 and assume 60 Crown attorneys, well, if they are dealing with 70 cases a day, then they are about a thousand cases per Crown attorney a year, but if they are dealing with 70 a day, they should be able to do all their cases in three weeks and have 49 weeks of holidays. Now, that is the ludicrous kind of argument you get into when you start dealing with the kind of nonsense being spouted by some members in the Legislature.
I think what you need to do is look what kind of cases they are, and what additional supports are available. So, for example, one of the reasons I am so keen on youth justice committees, why I think they are such a great idea, is that we are able to shift certain offenders into an area where the community takes responsibility for supervising these individuals, not simply as a cost benefit to government, but because we know this is a better way of dealing with those offenders. We know that it is much more effective, and the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) can probably speak much more eloquently in more detail than I can on that issue, but I can give you a provincial average of cases, and a worker would have on supervised probation about 59 cases; other supervision is at about 14. This includes community service orders, open and secure custody for youth, court reports, conditional sentences and offenders in prison with probation to follow, so for a total on average of 73.
Again, that kind of statistic, what does it really mean? It does not mean that much because if we do not want to get into a war of numbers, which is an easy thing to do, we can say, well, in Alberta, probation officers who supervise adults have a caseload of approximately 100 in Calgary and in Edmonton while those outside of the cities have approximately 75 cases, adult. So I can say the probation officers in British Columbia have average caseloads of 80, which includes people on bail, so we have seen a modest growth in resources, and I think with the ISSP program and the supervised bail program, we will see additional resources. We will see additional resources with Lavoie, but it is not simply that way, the old way of doing business just by hiring more probation officers or correctional officers to serve the same kind of people in the same way.
Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
One of the things that I have been very, very taken with is the proactive way some of our corrections officers are dealing with their caseloads. I was out in western Manitoba last year and spoke to some of the officers out there and the programs that they are involved in. When I think when I was a Crown attorney back in the 1970s and how the probation officer just did the predisposition report, and spent I do not know how many hours on the report, and I, as a Crown attorney, would take the report and flip to the last paragraph and see what the recommendation was. I mean, let us face it, that is what the defence counsel did, that is what the Crown attorney did, because the Crown attorney was not particularly interested where this kid went to school or where he did this or where he did that, he wanted to know what the bottom line was. Is the PO recommending that the kid is going to jail or not? If he is saying that he should not go to jail, well, then, it is a bad report. If he is going to jail, well, this is a very experienced probation officer, and the court should take that into account.
I mean that was basically the way things were handled back then, and I do not think I was an exception when I went to flip to the back of these presentence reports. I think everybody did it, and to some extent it may even go on now. But I think, with credit to the probation officers, they have evolved. They have become very, very sophisticated, much more sophisticated as the system has become more complex, and so they have I think adopted innovative, effective means of discharging their responsibilities to the public. So we say, all right, 75 cases. What does that mean? What supports are there available? What supports can the province provide? What supports can the communities provide? So these are all things that we need to look at.
We need to continue to look at the level of cases, the number of cases, the complexity of the cases, but as I indicated earlier, simply for an opposition person to stand up in the House and say, oh, a Crown attorney deals with 70 cases in a day, is that not a huge load? It may be a huge load if you are talking about 70 impaired driving trials, but if you are talking about 70 charges, and less than that in terms of actual offenders, and you are looking at bail, it may be very straightforward.
I just heard the expression again yesterday that there are--
An Honourable Member: Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Mr. Toews: That is right, lies, damn lies and statistics, and I think sometimes we get into that statistical battle that does not do anybody any good. Unfortunately, sometimes that is all we have to work with, but I think that my staff is constantly aware of the need of providing effective services to these people, and we continue to review it. That is why I was supportive of the supervised bail program, the expansion of that bail program, as well as a continued support for the ISSP program.
Mr. Kowalski: I will just be jumping around to different issues here as they come to mind. This will not make me very popular in some circles, but a few years back a no-smoking policy was put into all government offices. I have seen in some youth corrections offices, you are not allowed to smoke anywhere in that office, in the lunchroom or anywhere else. As a result, smoke breaks are taken. Has there been any study on productivity before that policy and after that policy? In other words, if someone is going out in the middle of winter to sit in their car for half an hour every couple of hours to take a smoke break, the productivity goes down, and the taxpayers are not getting the bang for the buck they should be getting. Is there any policy? I am sure this will involve unions and what the people are entitled to, but I am concerned that productivity may not be there because of the smoking policy.
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Mr. Toews: I can indicate that we do not have a study on that issue, and I think the whole question is a new one. I mean, right here in the Legislative Building now, it is a smoke-free zone--100 percent, is it?--except in the cafeteria. So does that mean that those MLAs who still continue to smoke are less productive? I do not know.
One of the issues I remember when I was working in government, and they still allowed smoking in some of these small offices; they are just basically divisions. Even with the lawyers' offices that were supposed to be soundproof and all that, I think the smoke from the next office would come in, and it would interfere with your ability to work. So it was not the work that was then being done by the lawyer who was smoking that was being interfered with, but it was the lawyer in the next office who did not smoke and who may have found it objectionable that smoking was going on, or the secretary who then found it objectionable that she could not, or he could not, do work because of the smoke. So it is a multifaceted problem. I think both unions and government have to be flexible in the application of these policies. Not to say that we will allow people to smoke, but that sometimes work can get done outside of the strict confines of a collective agreement. I think both managers and employees have to approach these kinds of problems in a flexible way.
The issue of smoking, for example, in the correctional institute itself, I remember back in the 1980s when I was counsel to Workplace Safety and Health, and there was a refusal to work filed by guards in the Brandon Correctional Institute saying that they wanted it to be a smoke-free building. Well, the complication was that these inmates in the prison or in the jail lived there. This was their home. They had no other option. So the suggestion was, well, we have got to put in fans to recycle the air. Well, I looked at the engineering studies, and in order to recycle the air and bring in cold air in the middle of winter and then heat up that air, the costs were just astronomical. Also, the amount of air exchange would mean that you literally could not keep any paper on a desk. You would have to have weights on everything because of the massive change of air in that kind of a facility.
So I do not know eventually what happened. We arrived at some kind of a compromise, but I think that issue keeps on simmering in correctional institutes, in government offices, and I think we simply have to deal with it in a flexible way. So we have not done the study. I do not think at this time it is appropriate to do a study, but I certainly would ask that my staff, whether they are union members or management, work co-operatively with each other to deal with these issues.
It has been pointed out to me that, of course, a study would have to consider the loss of productivity as a result of secondhand smoke through illness. I think I touched on that when I said that when the lawyers in other offices, as I indicated, back in the '80s might have been affected by smoke, and also I might just indicate that there are still issues relating to secondhand smoke that I know my staff are dealing with. So, again, I say: let us try to be flexible in this. I recognize that there are health concerns. Those concerns are paramount, and I would say in some respects, even paramount to productivity.
Mr. Kowalski: I have worked with many probation officers and wonderful probation officers--Alvin Toews the one that is supervising our justice committee, a fantastic effort above and beyond the call of duty. But it concerns me when I drive by a probation office and I see four probation officers sitting in the car smoking in front of the building, and I come by an hour later and they are still there. I am concerned about the productivity. We are paying the bill, and I know that, when you see incidents like that without investigating it, you do not know. Maybe they worked two hours late the night before. Maybe they did not take lunch. Now, I will grant that.
But I am concerned that because of this policy, if in a number of offices--I have seen it in private industry where if people, because they cannot smoke, are allowed by their supervisors to go outside for an extended absence, are they getting any work done? And we are the one paying the bill. Then it can have an effect because we are asking these officers to supervise offenders back in the community, and if they do not have the time because their habit of smoking is interfering, it concerns me. It concerns me as a taxpayer, it concerns me as an opposition member when I see that. I am not making any disparaging comments about the majority of probation officers, the majority of government workers, but I think it is something to be looked at. What impact is allowing staff for extended periods of time to take smoke breaks? If it is a continual habit, are we getting the service we should be?
Mr. Toews: Well, what I can say, and, of course, there will always be exceptions, is that smokers in the department do not get preferential treatment. That is, you do not get extra time off because you are a smoker, so if people are taking advantage of working time to smoke, that is something that is not acceptable.
Having said that, we also have to remember how often police officers are criticized for being in donut shops. It is that kind of myth that sort of gives people a bad name, or the idea that city workers lean on their shovels, or what is orange and sleeps four? A city work truck. Those kind of comments and attitudes, I think, do a grave injustice to many of our public servants. I can tell you I have spent, you know, from 1976 to 1991 in the public service, and certainly in the areas that I was in people worked hard, people cared about their job, there was a sense of professionalism. You know, there were people sometimes who did not pull their load, and one of the things that I found remarkable is how the supervisors, in fact, dealt with that.
People say that you can, you know, get away with a lot in the public service. I did not see that in the Manitoba government, because I believe we had good managers who dealt with those issues on an ongoing basis. That instilled a lot of good will among the people who were working hard when they knew that everybody was treated fairly and everyone was expected to carry their load. That is an incredible boost for moral.
I can look at some of the branches of my department, one of the ones that I came out of, the Constitutional Law branch, I mean probably recognized as the finest Constitutional Law branch in Canada, very, very good, hardworking people, people who could make a lot of money going off into private practice. Indeed, one of them just did, went to Ladner Downs in British Columbia, working for the B.C. government. They do a lot of the B.C. government work relating to constitutional law, but here is a person recognized as an authority right across Canada, so unfortunately we lost him out of Constitutional Law.
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Other areas, for example, Legal Services, when I joined there in 1979, it did not have the high reputation that it has today, and I would attribute that to a number of reasons, not the least of which is the very good management that has been exercised over there in the last 10 or more years. Even before the Conservative government came in, we saw some of those changes occurring, which we, as lawyers back in Legal Services, approved of, and said that is a good step. We would like to see accountability, we would like to see people expected to pull their own weight, and I think public servants generally--when I talk to my colleagues in cabinet or in caucus and they talk about their lawyers, you know, and they refer to their lawyers in the Department of Justice, more and more I think our ministers recognize how good the legal advice that is provided is by departmental lawyers.
I cannot speak the same way about some other areas of my department because I do not have the same amount of familiarity, but when I look at what I saw in Brandon, for example, or off of Notre Dame there, or the Community Release Centre, and see some of the programs being carried out there and the caring, professional workers that we have. Yes, we have problems with smoking sometimes or somebody maybe not pulling their weight. That is a challenge for management to deal with, and there is a measure of responsibility on the part of each individual employee to make the place a better place to work because I know--and I am going back to my own public service experience--it was not simply the management's problem.
When we had somebody in our office that might not have been pulling their weight--not management's problem, it is everybody's problem because somebody not pulling their weight, whether it is because they are away from their desk smoking and that, means that you do more work. It was an interesting philosophy back then, and I can probably say it now because the director who was there is long gone and, in fact, unfortunately, deceased. He was a very good man. I had a lot of respect for him, but sometimes the way he dealt with problems was that lawyers who were not necessarily doing the best job would get the work taken away from them and the work was given to the lawyers who were doing the good job. That seemed to be a little inequitable, but it was sort of the director's way of punishing the lawyers who were not working. I do not know whether he realized that sometimes some of those people did not mind that fact.
So we have come a long way, both in terms of our management and the calibre of employees, I believe, constantly improving. Not to reflect badly upon me when I was a public servant back then, but I know I had a lot to learn and I did, and we have learned a lot about government in the last 20 years.
Smoking is an issue. It may well be, but the policy is that smokers do not get preferential treatment across the department.
Mr. Kowalski: With a quick question. According to the contract, what are they allowed as far as breaks? An hour for lunch and two 15-minute coffee breaks?
Mr. Toews: I guess that, if we get technical, we can refer to the collective agreement and say: well, they have got a 45-minute lunch and they have got two 15-minute breaks, and they can smoke during that time.
But one of the things that one has to remember about professionals like probation officers, a lot of times they will be working in the evenings, or they will be working odd hours. So it is very difficult to say: are they carrying out the obligations of their collective agreement? I refer to the Crown attorneys' collective agreement. There are no hours of work. You do the hours required in order to meet the demands of the job. So, if a Crown attorney decides one morning when he or she does not have a trial on or is not in court, that they will sit in the cafeteria for an hour and a half, it is basically their business, because we know that that same Crown attorney, come a jury trial, is working weekends and evenings to ensure that he or she does the best job possible. I think we have to recognize that these people are professionals and that whatever the collective agreement says technically, there will always be gray areas..
Mr. Kowalski: I was putting it together with what we were talking about, acting positions, and, of course, the minister often goes to his Crown attorney's experience and I always go back to my police experience. Knowing that when you are a constable on a shift or platoon and you are put in an acting position, sometimes it is hard to take measures against people whom you are going to go back and work with. If we have a large number of people acting, and then eventually they are going to have to go back and work with those people, coworkers, maybe it is things like the smoking policy, the breaks, are not enforced stringently. I want to make sure that I have it on the record here, that the vast majority of probation officers and the government workers--yes, they work very hard, and like anything else, whether it is Crown attorneys, police work, or anything, it is always the few ones that look bad, sometimes reflect on everyone.
So the question to the minister is that this is about assessments. Are there annual assessments done on probation officers by their area directors, or how is their performance gauged? Is it reviewed annually, or is it just as negative or positive incidents come up they are reflected by the area director? Are there annual assessments?
Mr. Toews: Well, yes, annual performance reviews are done in government, and the probation office, unless I am mistaken, is no exception in that respect. They should be done. But one of the things that should be clear, of course, is that problems should never be left for an annual review. That should be done on an ongoing basis. It is something I certainly did as a manager, and as difficult as it was to do from time to time, to actually sit a person down, not just at the annual review, but other times when there were issues that arose and dealt with it.
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I have some familiarity about being in an acting position. I was the acting director of Constitutional Law, I think for about 18 months, I think from November of '87 or so until sometime in 1989. Perhaps, because of the high quality of the people that I was working with, I never really had that problem. I did have to do annual reviews, at least one or two during the time that I was the acting director, and, yes, they were my colleagues, but that was my responsibility and I did that. Ultimately, I was appointed. What would have happened had I gone back and somebody else taken the position? I do not know. Obviously, that creates difficulties.
We need to, in my opinion, create a sense of commitment by workers to their job, and sometimes by leaving people in an acting position too long, that commitment to getting the job done, whether it is management or otherwise, might be lacking. So that is something that needs to be addressed.
But when I have raised that issue with my staff, there are other considerations. One is the issue of flexibility, of moving people from area to area and giving them a wealth of experience. So I am hoping that this review that is being done of the entire division is going to give us some more insight into how to deal with that problem.
Fortunately, in the area of probation, where everyone is, in many respects, independent of each other in terms of their professional opinions that they formulate, I imagine an area director may well review somebody's presentence report. But, ultimately, the disposition recommended or the course of action recommended is that person's own professional opinion. In fact, I recall sometimes what they used to do is that, if they did not agree, if an area supervisor had sort of made them change the recommendation, they would not sign the report. The report that went to the judge was unsigned, so everybody knew whether the person agreed with it or not. Even though the area director might have seen a signed report, the report that went to the judge was not signed. That gave an indication about whether someone felt that their professionalism had been interfered with.
I do not know if that practice still is carried on, but all I am trying to get to the point is that these people are professionals. Through their educational standards I think they have a commitment not simply to putting in hours eight to five, but they have a certain sense of personal pride with the job because they are putting their name to a certain document. That also means that there is less supervision of these people. So the issue of acting and nonacting or employee and employer or union person and management may not be as great a concern. I still think there are issues relating to the stability and commitment to doing a certain job. That needs to be addressed, and I am hoping, as I indicate, that the review will address that issue.
Mr. Kowalski: Again, I will go back to my police experience. In the city of Winnipeg there are six different districts, or there was at least when I left. One thing that the department made a practice of was that no officer would stay longer than four years in one district. Often you would go to a different district and work with different people. One of the reasons was that they find people would get stagnant doing the same job in the same community in the same way.
We have a number of community youth corrections offices throughout the city of Winnipeg. I know some probation officers have been at the same offices for years, decades. Is there any policy as far as movement of probation officers? I am not talking about moving someone from Thompson to Winnipeg or from Morden to Thompson. But within the city of Winnipeg, working with different people in a different environment, sometimes it is an invigorating experience.
Many times, I know I was very happy in the district I was working. I made connections and stuff, and I did not want to move. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I have worked in every district in the city. I have worked as robbery, homicide squad, traffic squad, all different squads. It is probably what kept my interest up in police work. In probation there is not the opportunities for promotion as there is, say, in police work. You can move from constable to sergeant, so on and so forth. So a lot of times people, from when they enter the field to when they retire, they are doing the same job. One way of giving variety is to move people around. Is there any policy? Are there any regulations or any problems with the union contract that would prohibit that? Does the minister see a benefit in moving people around?
Mr. Toews: Do I see a benefit in moving people around? Yes, I do. I mean, if you look at my own career in the public service, I went from a prosecutor to legal services. Even in the area of legal services, I did primarily labour law, but I also did child welfare work at the same time. Then I went into constitutional law from 1986 to '91. Then I went to Great-West Life, doing insurance law for three and a half years. Now I am here. Do I see benefits in moving around? Yes, I do. I think it keeps one interested in what they are doing. Maybe I am just a certain type of a personality type, I do not know. But there are others who will stay in a certain area for years and are very effective at their job.
I can only think of my supervisor in Brandon, a very good Crown attorney. He was there when I came in 1976. He had been there since 1969. He was recently transferred into the city of Winnipeg, about three or four years ago, still doing essentially the same job in Brandon. Now he is doing the same job in Winnipeg, but not doing the same administrative types of work. I do not know if he necessarily was that excited about moving, but all I am trying to say is that there are people who do well in a particular job even though they stay in that job 25, 30 years. There are other people who I do not think would be happy.
I know that one of the things we tried to do in Legal Services was find alternatives or move people from Criminal Justice into Constitutional Law to give them other experience. So while I was the director there, I welcomed people from Criminal Law or people from Legal Services coming in there for brief periods of time.
Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
Similarly in the area of probation, while we want to ensure that people work in the area where they have expertise, I do not think the department is closed to moving people around provided that suitable places can be found for them and, indeed, where there is an agreement, let us say, between the parties to move or to exchange positions. Should we be more proactive in moving people around? Again, we have to be careful. I mean there is a union contract that says that people are entitled to certain rights.
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I will tell you if you go across the street to Great-West Life, they will move vice-presidents from one area to another whether that vice-president has experience in that area or not, and that is not an uncommon thing to see in private industry. In fact, I was reading about a particular company that regularly transferred their vice-presidents. They would never let them stay in an area longer than two years, and put them in totally new areas. They may not have any of the qualifications that one would regularly associate with that, but it gave them incredible strength in terms of their management team by moving people around in that area. I do not know whether I would go that far, but I see benefits.
Once we put people permanently into places--and this is getting back to the acting situation--once you put them in permanently and they do not want to move, then you have a problem. If they are in an acting position, you have much more flexibility. However, as I indicated earlier, the drawback is that you may not have the commitment to any one position or organization, and that causes me some concern. Again, the review that is being done will look at acting positions, and we may be able to find more productive solutions that work to the benefit of not only the employee, but management and indeed the people of Manitoba.
Mr. Kowalski: Just to clarify, so right now there is no policy that they will be in. Unless the probation officer requests the movement, or his area director, more than likely because there is some kind of conflict he is going to request the movement, the department does not as a matter of course move people to different offices just to keep them fresh working with different people. Is that correct?
Mr. Toews: I think that is correct. I know that what the member is referring to or probably referencing in his own mind is a policy with the Winnipeg Police Service where all of a sudden one day an officer is transferred to another division. I think just recently I was speaking to an officer who was transferred out of the homicide division, and I had asked him whether he was happy about moving. He said, no, but he was moved, and that is the policy. Again, I do not question the management decisions there. It is a policy that we have not adopted in government, and frankly, I do not know whether we would on a province-wide basis.
One of the things that I mention, at the risk of incurring the wrath here of my assistant deputy minister, is we have had some issues at Headingley jail in respect of staffing, but it is relevant to the issue, where we have said that certain people, not because they are doing a bad job, but that maybe for the benefit of the entire institution and for themselves, should be transferred. We have transferred 12, redeployed into other areas within the department or government. I might indicate that, you know, and I do not want to go too far into this, but all 12 have filed grievances, so you can see that there is an issue that needs to be resolved between management and the employee.
So if we are going to adopt that kind of a policy that the City of Winnipeg obviously has with its police force, it is going to have to be done through the collective agreement. Of course, the issue at the arbitration of these 12 grievances, the legal issue, will be does management have the right to exercise its management rights in deploying employees. So that is something that, do we have the policy? No. Are we taking steps in that direction? Yes, we are.
Mr. Kowalski: I think we are beating this one to death, but just to clarify, in the police force every year, it is an annual event, anyone who has been in a district for four years knows they are going to be transferred, and they get to request--
Mr. Toews: Knows they will be transferred?
Mr. Kowalski: They will be transferred if they have been in a unit for more than four years, and they know what is coming up. So they are asked, where would you like to go? The majority of times when I was transferred, I did not want to go. People do not like change quite often, but it was probably to my betterment to become a better police officer. Sometimes you would develop good habits working with a certain group of people, sometimes bad habits.
I guess if I were the Minister of Justice, that is what I would be pushing for. I think it would be good for the probation officers to work with different groups of people picking up the good ideas, to move about in the city to different offices. It is history now, but one of the mistakes I think Community and Youth Corrections made years ago was in the reorganization when at one time each office was based in the community and handled all offenders. Now with the reorganization, we have certain offices that just deal with youth. They are not geographically based, and I think it is stretching to call them community corrections, because they are not. What tie do they have to the community? So that was a bad mistake. That is history. It should not have been done.
You see the different dynamic in small towns, in areas where you have a probation officer identifying with the community. You do not see that now after the reorganization with, for example, 77 Redwood Avenue coming into Transcona, the north end downtown for youth. The youth coming all the way to this foreign office there, it is not like that is their probation officer, and what commitment does the staff have based in that community where before it was adult offenders, young offenders. But that is history.
I will not go on and on about this, but I honestly believe that without expenditure of money, by moving probation officers around to work with different people, it reinvigorates them, it causes them to see some good ideas, exchange of ideas. If there are some bad work habits that have developed in certain offices, certain cliches, it breaks them up, and I think it is a very good idea. It is not a forced march type of thing. It is not being done as punitive, it is done for the betterment of probation services. I guess I could even stretch it and say it is for the benefit of taxpayers because they are going to get better performance out of the probation officers when they learn to work with different people. They do not develop cliches, power struggles. Office politics is everywhere, and one way to get around it is by moving people around in a positive way, and as long as it is made clear that it is being done not to be punitive but to keep people fresh.
Winnipeg is not that big of a city. It is not like we live in Toronto. You could drive from one end of the city of Winnipeg to the other in 40 minutes unless you are speeding, which I would never do. I would really encourage the minister to look at that as a proactive measure that does not cost money. I can see an increased performance in probation services.
Mr. Toews: Again, all I can say is that is I think exactly the rationale that we used in the Headingley jail situation. That is exactly the rationale. Now, for those 12 people, the member indicates that these things can be achieved without cost. Well, the cost for implementing that type of philosophy at Headingley in respect of 15, three of whom went voluntarily, was $1.2 million. That is for retraining and replacement costs and other costs, so it is a substantial cost. But I think it is a substantial cost because we do not have that service-wide policy to enable other people to fill in here or move there, so it is a tremendous cost. But I am not disagreeing that it is not a good thing because I would not have agreed to it unless it was a good thing.
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Mr. Kowalski: I was not going to go on, but now you are mixing apples with oranges, not changing people's job functions. They are going to be doing the same job function as a probation officer whether they are at 77 Redwood, or they are at Doncaster, or they are at some other office. They are going to be working with different people under different bosses with different ideas. I think it is very positive. It is not changing their job function.
So I understand there is some acceptance that possibly there is some merit to this, but please do not say that is going to cost us millions of dollars to move someone from doing a PDR report on Redwood Avenue to doing a PDR report on Gateway Avenue. It will not cost us millions of dollars to retrain people to sit in a different desk and work with a different boss and a different community. I do not think that should be put on the record.
Mr. Toews: Let me just say, it is probably something we should not discuss in too great a detail at this point. It is the subject of a grievance. I think that we should probably move on to another point. I certainly have the member's point. My staff has been here. They have heard what he has said, and I think that generally speaking, the issue of movement, as I prefaced my comments, is not something that I am opposed to. I have done it in my own public service career, and I anticipate that in due course I will be making another move.
Mr. Kowalski: We will move on. One of the things that our justice committee in The Maples did for two years in a row is, we received a grant from the federal government for a hundred thousand dollars to run a Youth Service Canada project.
An Honourable Member: You got a hundred grand?
Mr. Kowalski: Yes.
An Honourable Member: You never told me that--[interjection]
Mr. Kowalski: Well, to clarify, we were sponsors of a Youth Service Canada program two summers in a row in The Maples where we hired 14 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 to work in the community on crime prevention. I see now that yesterday--I am just reading the headlines, I guess I was not on the federal Liberal government's mailing list--there is a $27-million program released by the federal Justice minister which allows up to $50,000 in funding to any town, neighbourhood, association, or school to buy items, staff, and equipment required for crime prevention ideas. I am sure our committee will be looking at applying for such a thing. At the same time, the provincial government has the Justice Initiatives Fund. I am wondering if we can have an indication from the minister: if our justice committee was able to be successful in getting such a program, would there be any hesitation or detriment for matching funds from the provincial government for crime prevention programs?
Mr. Toews: I think what you are referring to is The Globe and Mail article of June 2 for the $32 million.
An Honourable Member: No, today's Free Press.
Mr. Toews: Oh, yes, I am familiar with that article as well.
An Honourable Member: You are quoted.
Mr. Toews: Yes, I am quoted.
I think it was an article written by Paul Samyn in which he says I gave qualified support to the federal program. I think it is part of that entire $32 million. It was just that the $27 million that the member quoted threw me off. I thought maybe they are talking about another $27 million. That would be just wonderful, although sometimes I am a little skeptical, and I say, well, the $120 million that they took for off-reserve First Nations people here in Manitoba, that the federal government took over the last five years, and the $200 million annually that they have taken out of health care, now they are simply putting it back to the community after decimating the community--[interjection] It is so hard for me to be very thankful.
I think it is a step in the right direction, if one looks at it in isolation in terms of crime prevention. Whether I would be prepared to match funds is quite another thing. I want to make the member clear that the $32 million is not coming to Manitoba. We are guaranteed, I think, under the contract about $800,000 annually until the year 2003.
An Honourable Member: $800,000 a year?
Mr. Toews: A year. That is right, $800,000 a year until the year 2003. Now we are already putting 1.5 into community programming through our Justice Initiatives Fund. I am saying we are already doubling that on an annual basis, and that is aside from all our other community initiatives that we are putting in.
The other point that I would make on that is that the federal government, and the concern I have expressed is that here the federal government is busy going off into community funding and stripping funding out of core programs like our youth institutions. I mean when I became Minister of Justice, my assistant deputy minister said to me, well, you know, we are going to have real trouble in making this budget because our funds are being reduced from 33 percent to 30 percent federal funding, and not only that, they are stripping every last dime out of youth institutions and putting it into community funding. What kind of funding they were talking about, nobody had any idea. When you do that kind of community funding without criteria, you are usually talking about pork barrelling. That was my concern that that is, in fact, what the government was doing.
So, matching funding, yes. All the provinces have said the federal government has to match funding in the core programs. The youth programs and the Young Offenders Act that we are already running on behalf of the federal government in 1984 started out 50-50. It is down to about 33 to 30 percent, depending on what province you are in. Well, let us talk about the feds honouring their commitments first, because every time the federal government has withdrawn or reduced their funding, who has picked it up? We have picked up the 17 percent that the feds should be funding, and that is millions of dollars every year.
That is why I find it so hard to be enthusiastic, because on the one hand, the Lord giveth, and on the other--
An Honourable Member: Lloyd.
Mr. Toews: --she may well take away. Well, there was a reference here made to a name, but we will leave that name alone.
You know, one of the things that I have been saying over and over again is that we want to work co-operatively with the federal government. We want to work together. One of the things I have said, and my staff is probably way ahead of me on this, is that here is the federal government setting up a National Crime Prevention Centre in Ottawa. Like, they need another government building in Ottawa, right? I mean, if they really want to set up another layer of bureaucracy, at least give it to Brandon or Winnipeg or Thompson or Swan River. You know, there is lots of room for expansion of federal programs in other areas in downtown Ottawa.
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So the other concern is not just the $2.2 million, but what administrative mechanism are they going to adopt to implement that. What I said to the reporter in that article, and I do not know if he used that, is that I want to co-operate with the federal government. Can we work together in the administration? I spoke to one of my members of my department earlier today who was in fact here, the director of public safety, Mr. Wyman Sangster. He indicated that he already has a proposal that the federal co-ordinator should share office space with the provincial people so that our crime prevention programs could be administered jointly so that we are not duplicating administration but that the money is actually getting into the communities.
One of the concerns--you know, you mentioned a name there earlier, just a first name. Well, there was a bit of a disagreement about a year ago with that individual between me and that individual.
An Honourable Member: That does not narrow it down.
Mr. Toews: No, there are lots of people I have had disagreements with, but this particular person is a politician. In any event, we said that--well, they started up a program, a gang prevention program, separate and apart from the provincial government, with basically no input from the provincial government in that. I thought, well, since we are the ones who are administering the Criminal Code and the municipality is enforcing it in terms of their policing, should there not be a better co-ordinated effort. I think as a result of that experience we have learned a lot of things. I think that the federal government will be much more amenable to working jointly with the provincial government, because we can see the absolute disasters that occur when levels of government or different governments refuse to work with each other because of one reason or another. That needs to be avoided.
I think the best example of that is Bill C-68. I mean, talk about a way of not working co-operatively with other governments. Talk about a way of trying to satisfy a political agenda in one end of the country without considering the legitimate requirements of people in other areas of the country. In Manitoba, for example, look at our First Nations communities and the issues that they face in respect of the registration of guns and hunting and other rights.
So I want to avoid those kinds of mistakes. The more we are open right at the ground level for co-operation between the federal government and the province, I think, the better the chance of this kind of program succeeding.
I hope that we can develop criteria, not just an administration model about how we work together, but, in fact, what kind of grants is this going to be used for. I remember during the Portage la Prairie by-election. At the same time, the federal government was stripping $150,000 out of Agassiz Youth Centre because of this policy of reducing 33 percent to 30 percent.
A minister of the Crown, the federal minister was handing out a cheque for $15,000, and so it is very hard to sound grateful for getting $15,000 when somebody is going through your pocket and taking out $150,000. Again, my big concern here is, is this a smoke screen for taking money out of another pocket, and the federal government has been great for taking money out of somebody else's pocket as opposed to their own. Our government consistently has backfilled for programs that the federal government has withdrawn from.
So the member asks am I committed to matching dollars? I am saying I am committed to working with the federal government. I am committed to working co-operatively with the federal government, but I think that it is now incumbent upon the federal government to show a measure of good faith, that, in fact, these $32 million are new dollars. I mean, we can sort of forgive the--well, I will not say that too quickly, but the fact that $120 million has been taken in respect to First Nations people out of Manitoba over the last five years, and a billion dollars in terms of health care has been taken out of here. Now, this $32 million, where does it come from? Does it come from the money that they have already taken from us? We want to work co-operatively.
Mr. Kowalski: I know if I want to get the minister's blood going, I just have to mention federal policy here. But my question was more on the micro level, and I think the minister was answering on the macro level. I was asking in a very small way, if our little justice committee gets $5,000 from this for maybe a stop lift program--the minister saw statistics from our justice committee yesterday that three-quarters of the shoplifters that we are dealing with are females. Maybe we need a female stop lift program. I am just trying to determine if that would have any effect on any application under the Justice Initiatives Fund for provincial money. I was not looking for a total matching fund. I will just leave it at that.
Mr. Toews: I cannot give you a commitment for those $5,000, but if you want to draw up a proposal for that kind of money, that is considered on a very regular basis, those kinds of funds, in our department.
Now, I want to say that when the Legislature authorized $1.5 million in that Justice Initiatives Fund, one of the concerns that was raised was, so is this simply a slush fund for the government, and that has to be something that we have to be concerned about.
Mr. Kowalski: You can prove it by giving some to The Maples.
Mr. Toews: We can prove it not simply by giving it to The Maples but for any legitimate request that we consider.
So what I had my staff do is, in fact, set up some criteria, that I would know they would address these criteria in evaluating any application that came in with respect to the $1.5 million. I might just indicate that the Justice Initiatives Fund is intended to support initiatives designed to prevent crime and improve the justice system in Manitoba, and I am reading from the statement. This is a departmental statement that my staff worked out. It continues: It will be used primarily for initiating, piloting, evaluating and implementing new initiatives. Each proposal will be considered on its individual merits and on its relationship to other justice initiatives as well as stated government priorities and commitments.
The criteria, and this might be helpful to the member or any other member who might consider similar programs: No 1: Does the initiative have the potential to enhance public safety by deterring or preventing crime? No. 2: Does the initiative have the potential to enhance public safety by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the criminal justice system's treatment of offenders and of their victims? No. 3: Does this initiative address aboriginal justice issues? No. 4: Will the initiative build on existing community organizations or mechanisms, and will it be responsive to community input and direction? No. 5: Does the initiative respond to the recommendations of a public inquiry into the justice system or an external review of the Department of Justice operations? No. 6: Does the initiative have the potential to improve the effectiveness or enhance the efficiency of the Department of Justice's noncriminal services area? No. 7: Will the initiative be cost-shared with other levels of government, community organizations and/or private-sector partners? No. 8: Can the initiative be maintained in the long run without significantly increasing government expenditures?
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So is there a potential for our department to consider that kind of thing? Absolutely, and so all I would say is develop the proposal; we will consider that. It is a limited budget, and some of that is committed on a yearly basis already. I know we did not expend the entire amount last year, but that was only because we only received the funding part way through the year. But there may well be some room even at this time.
Mr. Kowalski: One other area, one problem--I do not know if it is universal, but I know our justice committee and I know someone from the St. John's Justice Committee has, and I believe other ones in the city of Winnipeg have, is about finding work placements for community service work.
It is getting more and more difficult. The person from the St. John's Justice Committee phoned me up and said should I write a letter to the minister and ask about using their community resource centres, and I hope I did not misdirect the person. I said, well, right now those people are using all the resources they can for people with court-appointed community service hours, and also some of the benefit of having youth justice committees, because we are unpaid volunteers. If all of a sudden all our community service hours have to go to the resource centres, I do not know if it would discount the value of the justice committees. But what can community youth corrections do to help our justice committees with finding placements for community service hours? Maybe it is the criteria.
I know for a while one justice committee was putting people to work in autobody shops and that, totally against the rules, because no one is supposed to profit from them, but the ironic part is that it worked beautifully. Many of the young offenders ended up getting jobs afterwards. It was very positive. There is that, but is there anything that can be done by community youth corrections to help justice committees find placements for community service orders? Right now, our only place is the community clubs. When we had nursing homes, they are reluctant to take them now. We have had hospitals, they are reluctant. Any suggestions from community youth corrections what we could do?
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The hour being 6 p.m., committee rise.