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Member of Parliament

Rhéal Éloi Fortin

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Bloc Québécois
  • Rivière-du-Nord
  • Quebec
  • Voting Attendance: 68%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $105,330.31

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 117 - Oct/25/22
Mr. Rhéal Fortin (Rivière-du-Nord, BQ)
Madam Speaker, I am glad that we are here to discuss Bill C‑283 today. This bill reminds me of Bill C‑216, which was introduced by our colleague from Courtenay—Alberni not so long ago. We supported that bill, but unfortunately it was not supported by the majority of the House. I hope this bill will go a little further this time around. Bill C‑283 makes certain amendments to the Criminal Code, including, for example, a provision that would allow a federal inmate to be sent to an addiction treatment facility if the court finds the inmate eligible. The bill also amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to allow a penitentiary to be designated as an addiction treatment facility. When a court recommends that a person serve his or her sentence there, Correctional Service Canada will be required to ensure that the inmate is placed there as soon as possible. In Quebec, we have long decided to favour rehabilitation. However, in 2014, 50% of prisoners in federal penitentiaries had a drug addiction problem. According to experts, drug addiction is what drives most of those people into committing a crime, which brings them back to prison, where drugs are very easy to get, despite what people might think. In 2021, Frédérick Lebeau, president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers for the Quebec region, said, “There's a major issue, a problem of delivery [of drugs and other prohibited items] inside the penitentiaries. It's too easy. It's got to get harder.” With the advent of drones, it will be easier than ever to deliver drugs into prisons. By 2020, officers at Donnacona's 451-inmate maximum-security penitentiary had detected 60 drones, but they estimated that was just the tip of the iceberg. penitentiaries will have to implement new drone detection technology in November, but the union is under no illusions. Drugs will continue to come into prisons. In short, incarceration does not solve drug abuse problems, quite the opposite. We must also take into consideration that recidivism rates among drug addicts is very high. When they get out of prison, many immediately try to obtain drugs and often turn to crime to finance their purchases. Federal penitentiaries do a poor job of rehabilitating inmates, so this bill could be the step in the right direction that we have been waiting for. According to a study by the Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of Organizations published in 2019, Quebec is an example to the world when it comes to rehabilitating inmates. According to the study, Quebec's reintegration programs for inmates in Quebec-run prisons reduce the risk of recidivism and perform significantly better than elsewhere in the world. These reintegration programs, which are not only aimed at drug addicts, reduce the recidivism rate from 50% to 10% among participating prisoners. Quebec's drug treatment courts have existed since 2012 and have been so successful that they served as a model for a pilot project to address recidivism among drug addicts in France. By comparison, federal penitentiaries are failing miserably at the rehabilitation of inmates. According to the 2020 annual report of the Correctional Investigator of Canada, inmates in federal institutions do not receive useful training or work experience during their incarceration and do not have access to necessary care. In short, they are very poorly equipped to reintegrate into civil society. Another fact to note is that indigenous people are overrepresented in federal penitentiaries. They represent less than 5% of Canada's population, but 32% of the prison population. Worse still, according to the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada, women represent 50% of this prison population. Addiction issues and the absence of effective programs to treat them probably go a long way to explaining why indigenous peoples are overrepresented in our prisons. In committee, during the study of the various bills that were passed previously, including on the issue of mandatory minimums, we saw that the need to curb the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples among inmates is a major concern for the government. We did not agree that abolishing mandatory minimums would help reduce the percentage of indigenous people in prison populations. In my view, there is no logical corollary. The existence of mandatory minimums does not lead to more indigenous inmates. The problem lies elsewhere, and this may be our chance to correct it. Bill C-283 would allow for an addict to be placed in custody and receive follow-up care in a place that specializes in treating addictions, which could reduce the risk of recidivism for the inmate and improve their chances of successfully reintegrating society. Under this legislation, the onus would be on inmates to ask the court to put them in an addiction treatment facility. Inmates would thereby acknowledge their addiction, which we all agree is the first step toward healing. The court would then determine whether the inmates could serve part or all of their sentence in such a facility. The Bloc Québécois sees only benefits to this. The Bloc will therefore vote in favour of Bill C‑283, just as we did last spring for Bill C‑216, which was introduced by the member for Courtenay—Alberni. The bill, as it is worded, is not perfect, of course, so it needs amending. I am sure that the members of the committee tasked with studying it will be very eager to improve it.
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