(Chair) in the chair.

[English]

Welcome to the committee.

I would like to start by inviting my colleagues to introduce themselves.

[Translation]

Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, Quebec, La Salle division.

Senator Pierre Dalphond, De Lorimier division in Quebec.

Bernadette Clement, Ontario.

[English]

Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.

Kim Pate from here in the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe.

[Translation]

Renée Dupuis, senatorial division of Laurentides, Quebec.

[English]

Mobina Jaffer from British Columbia. Welcome.

I’m Brent Cotter, senator from Saskatchewan and chair of the committee.

We were just doing introductions, Senator Tannas. Jump in.

Senator Batters from Saskatchewan.

Let me begin by welcoming you senators all back after a lengthy recess over the summer. We are returning to business full speed ahead with further consideration of Bill S-212.

I might take at this moment an opportunity to introduce our witnesses. We’re meeting, as I said, to continue our study of Bill S-212, An Act to Amend the Criminal Records Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to repeal a regulation. On our first panel today, I’m pleased to introduce and welcome George Joseph Myette, National Executive Director of the 7th Step Society of Canada; Anita Desai, Executive Director of St. Leonard’s Society of Canada; and as an individual, Rick Sauvé, Peer Mentor for the St. Leonard’s Society of Canada. Welcome to all of you.

We’re going to begin with presentations initially from Mr. Myette, then Ms. Desai and Mr. Sauvé, in that order, if that’s all right.

You’ll have five minutes for your presentation, Mr. Myette, and after the presentations, we will engage you all with questions from senators. The floor is yours.

Thank you, senator. First of all, I would also like to thank the committee for welcoming us here today.

I’d like to speak to you from my background of lived experience as a person who has a pardon. I received a pardon in 1980. I was convicted of three indictable offences as a young person, and I chose to turn my life around and basically tried to move on. A pardon, for me, was a very impactful experience in the sense that it basically gave me a sense of confidence and it helped to reduce the stigma that I felt as someone who had been in the system.

Of course, our justice system, to a large extent for many years, was about shaming and punishing. “Corrections” was a word that was used somewhat loosely, but in a lot of cases — and I think the general view of the public was that — if you committed a crime you deserved to be shunned, shamed or punished.

For me, personally, the impact of a pardon was almost immeasurable in the sense of me being able to move on with my life.

I started off working in the justice system and working with the 7th Step organization 50 years ago, actually; it was in the fall of 1973. At that point, 7th Step was a fledging organization dedicated to peer support and developing people who had lived experience to help others. That’s what I had committed myself to.

After a number of years, though, I decided that for me, personally, my life was going to take a different direction. I went to work in the oil and gas business. The rest of my career was making my living in oil and gas, but my volunteer commitment was to 7th Step until I was in a position later in my life to basically become a volunteer in various levels and on the board of directors. Eventually, I was able to retire at a relatively young age and commit myself to being the national executive director as a volunteer. That was something that I think — again, for me, having a pardon back when I got it originally gave me a certain sense of confidence in terms of being accepted back into society. I think that’s the real impact people feel, aside from the fact that they might have a better opportunity for employment and for all sorts of things that they wouldn’t have otherwise. What it does is really create a state of mind because if you think you can do something, and you have the confidence to do it, then you might just want to try that much harder.

Coming back to the whole intention of Bill S-212 in terms of an automatic pardon system — and I like to use the word “pardon.” Personally, I don’t like the word “record suspension.” To me that doesn’t indicate that the sentence is finished. It just means that it is held in suspension. I think the idea of an automatic pardon — especially back to when I was pardoned when the waiting period was two and five years. In my case, being indictable offences, it was a five-year waiting period. That was changed, obviously, back in — I believe — 2012. In fact, I spoke against the change in 2010 at the Parliamentary subcommittee. I think that change was quite damaging to an awful lot of people who have been through the system.

An automatic pardon system will do a couple of things. One, it takes the onus off individuals who may be struggling to financially secure a pardon and to be able to have the wherewithal to do it. I think it also takes a burden off the system, because the system ties up a lot of resources. I know that as an organization, the 7th Step Society of Canada has been fortunate to receive money through the public safety contributions grant — the grant under the pardon support project. As you probably know, well, the government committed $18.5 million — I think it was — for a four-year period, and that $18.5 million could probably be used a lot better in prevention and rehabilitation programs as opposed to necessarily just helping people process a pardon.

I’m not an academic, and I’m not an expert. There are other people that can represent those points of view. However, I can tell you from personal experience and as being involved in a peer support organization that there’s a huge benefit that can be derived from people being able to have the pardon in place so they can then move on with their lives.

I guess that’s the primary message I wanted delivered today. Thank you.

Thank you very much both for your presentation and also the timeliness of it.

Thank you for the opportunity to bring the perspective of the St. Leonard’s Society of Canada to this committee’s considerations regarding Bill S-212.

The St. Leonard’s Society of Canada, or SLSC, is a national membership-based charitable organization that brings together a network of individuals and ten independent community-based agencies collectively to advance our mission. That mission is to promote humane and informed justice policy and responsible leadership to foster safer communities. We do this by endorsing evidence-based approaches to criminal and social justice, conducting research and developing policy, supporting our member affiliates and advancing collaborative relationships and communication between individuals and organizations dedicated to criminal and social justice.

First, I would like to thank Senator Pate for her extensive work on establishing Bill S-212. For many years, the issue of how we manage criminal records in Canada and work related to record suspensions have been a recurring trend. We are so encouraged to see a bill like this attempt to spark the kind of truly creative change that is so necessary within the existing system.

As I know you have heard from many others before today — and in SLSC’s written submission to the committee — the consequences of having a criminal record can often be some of the most punitive elements resulting from a criminal conviction. Criminal records significantly hinder people’s access to employment, housing, education, volunteering and travel. However, access to these basic needs is essential for successful community integration, and limiting them minimizes opportunities for a safe, successful return.

These limitations are counterproductive to the overall aims of the criminal justice system, including those which strive to contribute to public safety by returning people to the community as law-abiding, active members of society. Individuals face consequences for their criminal convictions over and beyond the sentence handed to them by a judge and deemed by the court to be proportionate to the offence. The consequences of bearing a criminal record continues long after an individual has completed the sentence. Fair access to life essentials and opportunities for self-sustainment are vital to the people who regularly access supports from SLSC’s network of affiliated members as well as the community corrections sector at large.

These vital opportunities have also recently been recognized and reinforced by the Government of Canada’s Federal Framework to Reduce Recidivism and its five pillars: housing, education, employment, health and positive support networks.

The framework notes that these priority areas each fulfill important needs in successful reintegration, yet they are all areas that can be roadblocked by the persistent presence of a criminal record. Furthermore, there is no official stated purpose for why we administer criminal records in the first place. What we can reasonably presume is that creating and retaining criminal records most likely stemmed from the need for a risk assessment tool when sentencing those who reoffend and making parole decisions. But criminal records are used for much more than that today.

While record suspensions exist as a means to address the consequences that come with bearing a criminal record, there are many barriers to obtaining one — which I trust the honourable committee members have become quite familiar with by now — such as prohibitive fees and a complicated application processes. The automatic expiration of criminal records after a certain number of years remove the onerous burden on individuals and the associated barriers within the existing record-suspension system.

I trust that you have heard from many others who have noted that this bill provides the framework for truly meaningful reform to the administration of criminal records. We do not disagree, and we consider Bill S-212 to align with the principles of our justice system as they relate to successful community integration. In our view, it presents an excellent opportunity for Canada to establish a more humane, fair and effective justice system.

As I understand, today is your last public hearing with witnesses, and so, in conclusion, I would like to use my final minute to acknowledge many of the unsung heroes within the criminal justice system: frontline workers, clinical directors and housing managers, such as those within the St. Leonard’s network, who are working tirelessly within the community correction sector to support the safe, effective and humane integration of the people they support. This bill also reinforces their efforts toward improved public safety outcomes by supporting people when they are initially released to the community and getting back up on their feet. That work is undermined when we actively prevent people who have remained crime-free for years from moving on and moving forward with their lives.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak here with you today, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Ms. Desai, and again, thank you for the timeliness of your presentation.

Thank you. I’m very pleased to be here today. It’s an honour to be able to be here today.

For the past 43 years, I’ve been involved in the criminal justice system in one form or another. The first 17 years I spent in prison, serving a life sentence. When I got released, I got a job in Toronto with the Toronto Boys’ Home. We had five houses, mostly with inner-city youth. Many of them had some gang ties. They were all young offenders. I considered myself a peer support worker doing modelling behaviour for them, and after three years, I went back inside prisons to work with men — and women at times — serving life sentences and long sentences.

I’m happy to say that I never ran into any of the youth that I worked with in the prisons, although I did receive a letter from one young man who said that I made an impact on his life, and he became a better parent and better person for that.

The majority of the prisoners I work with are serving life sentences. Over the years, I’ve assisted at several hundred parole hearings as an assistant. Most of them were serving life sentences, so the pardons would not apply to them. Some were not serving life sentences, and I maintain contact with several of them.

Over the years, going into the prisons, I’ve run into men who ask me about the pardon system. When are they eligible to apply? How do they go about that process? It is a very cumbersome process. Just recently, in the last two or three weeks, I’ve had two phone calls. One was from a gentleman who’s serving a life sentence but is on full parole. He started a new job. His parole officer started asking him about his co-workers. She misinterpreted the condition that he’s to have no association with anyone who’s criminally active. She interpreted as no association with anybody with a criminal record, and so she wanted a list of his co-workers to see if any of them had a criminal record. And I said, “No. That’s outrageous. That should not happen.” But what it would do is criminalize those people all over again.

The other phone call I got was from a man. I didn’t know him. Somebody had provided my phone number and name to him, and he was wanting to take his kids down to Disneyland. He’s never been in prison before, but he had a criminal record for drug possession, and so he asked if he needed a pardon to get into the States, and I said, “Well, you’re going to need to get a waiver.” I started explaining that process to him, and I said, “You’ve never put in for a pardon,” and he said, “No, I never realized that this could have an impact on me.”

There are millions of Canadians who have criminal records. Millions of Canadians have criminal records. I heard recently that the European Union is bringing in the waiver system, so Canadians will have to apply for that waiver system. When I think of all the Canadian citizens that haven’t had a pardon, this will be another hurdle that they will have to deal with.

Anyway, I’m going to be brief with my comments, and I welcome your questions.

Thank you, Mr. Sauvé, and again, a thanks for the timeliness with which you delivered them.

[Translation]

I’d like to welcome our witnesses. My questions are for Ms. Desai.

Do you have any data on the number of people who have been incarcerated in Canada and the percentage of people who cannot find work or housing?

[English]

I’m sorry. I don’t have the number of employment in particular. My best estimate, based on research that I’ve done and that I think is consistent with other research conducted by others, is that roughly 30% of people who are exiting prison face challenges in finding appropriate housing after release.

[Translation]