As you pointed out, with me today are Fraser Macaulay, the assistant commissioner, correctional operations and programs, and Ms. Lynn Garrow, the chief executive officer for CORCAN, which is an arm of the Correctional Service of Canada.
Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members. I'm pleased to appear before this committee today to assist you in your study of the Correctional Service of Canada's ability to provide employment and skills training to offenders in our custody, be it inside our institutions or in the community.
As you may be aware, CSC operates a special operating agency called CORCAN, which plays a key role in CSC's mandate to enhance public safety by providing offenders with the employment experience and skills they need to become productive law-abiding citizens and skilled workers when they return to the community. Prison industries can be traced back to 1835 in Canada when offenders worked on the construction of Kingston Penitentiary. In 1980 CORCAN was first registered as the trademark for correctional industries in the Correctional Service of Canada and in 1992 CORCAN was made a special operating agency.
CORCAN's mandate is to aid in the safe reintegration of offenders into Canadian society by providing employment and employability skills training to offenders incarcerated in federal penitentiaries and for brief periods of time after they are released into the community. CORCAN operates in over 100 shops in 28 CSC institutions across Canada and three community-based operations covering four business lines, which are manufacturing, textiles, construction, and services. Products and services generated by CORCAN are used internally within CSC and marketed externally, primarily to Canada's public sector. On any given day over 1,250 offenders are working in CORCAN operations across the country. Over the course of a year over 4,000 offenders benefit from the program obtaining over 2.4 million hours of on-the-job skills training. These on-the-job training skills are provided in seven of the top 10 industry sectors by payroll employment.
Additionally, offenders are provided with employment opportunities not only in CORCAN shops but also in an array of institutional jobs where they are able to obtain various skills as, for example, painters, groundskeepers, and tutors. In 2013-14 over 14,000 offenders were involved in an institutional employment assignment and accumulated over 11 million hours of on-the-job training.
As I mentioned, CORCAN is a key rehabilitation program and provides a sense of purpose to offenders while contributing to a safe environment in institutions. Work programs increase institutional self-sufficiency thereby lowering costs of incarceration.
CORCAN strives to provide the most realistic work environment possible given the constraints within institutions, providing goods and services that meet market standards of quality, price, and delivery. In addition, many offenders who earn third party-certified vocational training certificates have the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills while working in CORCAN shops thereby enhancing the training experience.
In 2013-14 CORCAN generated revenues of $68.3 million from operations supplemented with a correctional and training fee of $18.1 million. The correctional and training fee is authorized by Treasury Board ministers to offset the costs incurred by CORCAN that cannot be passed on to clients related to our training mandate and correctional operating environment. CORCAN is required by its charter to be competitive with the private sector on price, quality, and delivery.
Approximately 54% of CORCAN's annual revenue is from CSC, with the Department of National Defence and other federal government departments accounting for most of the balance. CORCAN also sells to other levels of government, not-for-profit organizations, and the private sector. Revenues are reinvested in enhanced training programs, the replacement of equipment, and the development of new business and training opportunities.
CORCAN conducts an ongoing review regarding current labour market trends by providing the monthly labour market bulletins from Statistics Canada to the regional employment and employability managers to ensure that training opportunities align with market trends. It is important to continue efforts in providing community awareness on the barriers offenders face in trying to return to the workforce, by engaging employers and providing them information on the training that is provided to offenders while incarcerated and the benefits of employing them.
CORCAN works closely with external organizations, as all vocational training offered to offenders is third party certified to ensure that all training is recognized in the community and meets private sector standards.
Key vocational training programs are provided in areas such as construction and non-construction trades including, but not limited to, welding, carpentry, the food and service industry, and workplace safety. The CORCAN shops provide offenders with the opportunity to learn technical skills through on-the-job skills training in the four business lines I mentioned. Offenders learn how to use equipment in a setting that supports standards of productivity and quality as reflected in a similar work environment in the private sector, as the majority of CORCAN shops are certified by the international standards organization ISO. This certification demonstrates that CORCAN has the processes, resources, systems, and skills to deliver high-quality services in a timely manner. These standards are maintained through periodic audits to monitor compliance with ISO standards.
In 2013-14 over 4,000 offenders earned more than 2.4 million hours of on-the-job training. This training provided offenders with the opportunity to learn and develop technical skills as well as develop and practise essential skills in a workplace setting. In order to increase the benefits of CORCAN on-the-job training in the institutions, many regions work with the provincial governing body in charge of apprenticeship training, regulation, and certification to have the hours worked by offenders registered towards a trade.
CORCAN also provides on-the-job skills training in three community sites in the Atlantic, Quebec, and Ontario regions. The majority of the offenders working in these shops are supervised in the community. These three sites provide an opportunity for offenders to complete training they have begun while incarcerated, to obtain employment in the community for the first time, or to transition back into the community when employment opportunities might be limited due to their criminal record. In 2013-14 CORCAN's three community-based shops provided 103 offenders with over 48,000 hours of on-the-job training.
Through community partners such as community colleges and other recognized training providers, CORCAN is able to provide third party certifications in construction and non-construction trades, food services and food safety, and basic safety training that is required in many work sites. In 2013-14 over 5,988 offenders earned 19,438 certificates through vocational training related to many industries and trades, including construction trades such as framing and drywall; non-construction trades such as welding and autobody repair; the food industry, such as culinary arts and food safety; and a variety of safety training such as first aid and WHMIS.
With regard to offender employment opportunities in the community, CSC's community employment services program is intended to provide meaningful employment interventions to conditionally released offenders, increasing the likelihood of safe and successful reintegration. CSC community employment coordinators and contractors work with employers, community partners, and the rest of the case management team to provide offenders with the support, referrals, and job opportunities needed to address their employment needs in the community. CSC has employment coordinators across the country who can help employers find the right employee.
The support an offender receives does not stop when they get the job. CSC continuously works with both the employer and the offender to follow up on his or her progress and compatibility with the organization.
It is important to remember that providing assistance to offenders in finding work is only one aspect of a successful reintegration. Offenders also receive support from professionals in many fields—parole officers, psychologists, social workers, program officers—who all work together to ensure that they experience a smooth and safe transition to the community.
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank you for the invitation to discuss the commendable work that both CSC and CORCAN staff do to support offenders' employment opportunities and skills training. As you're well aware, promoting public safety is of paramount importance to our organization; therefore, providing federal offenders with effective, meaningful, and relevant employment and employability skills helps us to fulfill our mandate and make our streets and communities safer.
I'd now be happy to take any questions the committee may have.
Thank you.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and through you to the witnesses, thank you for attending today.
We had a brief conversation before the meeting, so I'll cut to the chase because, quite frankly, I'm very happy that this committee is looking into this study. I think it's a good-news story, not that there are improvements that couldn't be made to the CORCAN regime. I'm sure we're going to hear from witnesses where we can get those improvements, and I know for a fact that's what you and your very capable staff are hoping for also. Anyway, it's a good-news story in my opinion.
The reason I say that is not that I necessarily listen to the...and I'm one of those talking heads, because I've gone into the prison system and I've seen it in action and spoken to the inmates, as well as the instructors. I came away with the feeling that there's much more we can do in this area, working with you to see that it's done.
I'm going to ask for a couple of things, because the bottom line when we train inmates is that we want those inmates, once they receive a certification or are on the route to certification.... I'd like to talk to some people who are the recipients of the hard work of our correctional system and the employees there, who are also quite motivated. I'm going to ask if you or your staff would be able to provide the committee with an eclectic mix of several private sector enterprises that have used the services and hired that inmate, so we can get a flavour for what they feel are the results of your labours. Perhaps they can give us some improvements we can all work on.
Because, in the end, what we want—and then I'm going to ask for a comment from you—are people who have the knowledge, skills, and ability to be able to earn a good living for themselves and their family so they don't have to resort to a life of crime. That's the aim of every person at this table, whether they be on the other side or this side, that's what we all hope for. We just sometimes have a difference of opinion as to how we can achieve that. That's my first ask of you.
The second one is you mentioned some of the programs. Have you received any feedback from the private sector with regard to some programs that you might want to embark on that you are not already doing, and if so, what are they? What's your experience from your perspective of the product you're putting out there and that is a person who is better able to function in our society?
:
Thank you for allowing that.
I have a couple of quick comments. All the trades activities in the institutions are open to all offenders. We encourage all offenders—aboriginal and non-aboriginal— to participate, and we can share some statistics with you shortly in terms of those participation rates. But in terms of the broader question, looking forward, clearly there are various sectors we want to become more engaged with. Actually, I believe this committee can help us in terms of reaching out to some of them.
You mentioned, for example, the diamond industry. One of the challenges we have there is with someone with a criminal record being able to get into diamond mining businesses. Their security is almost as tight as mine—I won't say it is tighter, but it's almost as tight as mine—and the issue of a criminal record has come up many times.
That being said, there are other areas we've been exploring, particularly with regard to getting aboriginal offenders more involved. For example, in the construction field, we have been engaged with several first nations communities and their economic development groups in terms of building homes for first nations reserves. We've been quite successful at that, and as a matter of fact, we have agreements with the ones who were doing the work such that we have to ensure that a percentage of the offenders involved in that construction training are aboriginal offenders. We see that as very, very positive. We've had arrangements with the Bay of Quinte Mohawks, and with Muskeg Lake and Whitefish Lake. We've built houses for the communities up in Lac La Ronge, and we have other projects under way.
We are also quite interested in reaching out to the oil and gas industry. There's less concern about an individual's criminal history there than there is in the diamond mining area. We're in some very, very early discussions, through networks of our other partners, to start looking at how we can have the oil and gas industry bring its money and training into our institutions. We have the manpower and the woman power. They have the money; they have the training. Match the two up and get individuals trained, so that as they come out there is a ready supply of workers who can go out into the oil and gas industry across the country and become employed and become law-abiding citizens.
This is an area in which we're starting to knock on doors and one we want to pursue further. Again, there's great interest in terms of opportunities for aboriginal offenders.
:
Thanks. It's a really good question.
I think a couple of points are worth noting. There are sort of three types of individuals we need to deal with.
There are those individuals who come into the system and have literally no employment history or employment skills at all. In some cases, it's about giving them an assignment that gets them to get up on time, go to a certain place, stay there for the required number of hours, perform whatever tasks there are, and then repeat that. As you can appreciate, there's a segment of our population that does not have a work ethic, and trying to instill that is part of some of the tasks we have. For example, when we assign somebody to what we call “range cleaners”—cleaning on the ranges in the institutions—it's partly to address that issue.
We also have individuals who come in and have had an off-and-on employment history. It's about trying to find out what it is that's causing them to not keep a job when they've been in the community. Sometimes that's about upping their level of education. Sometimes it's about giving them a different set of skills that are more applicable in the community today. It's about trying to match those kinds of things.
Then we have other individuals who have had good employment histories, and some of those individuals are individuals we use in some of the higher-level shops that we have, for the productivity piece.
There is no question that we do not have exactly the same kinds of opportunities in every institution across the country, but we try to narrow down the needs that we are going to address for the short period of time we have. As you can appreciate, one of the challenges for individuals who have short sentences and are relatively young is that we're not going to change their lives overnight, so it's about trying to get them steered in the right direction.
Thank you, Commissioner, for coming along with your team here.
My background is in human resources. I was quite interested in your comments regarding the oil and gas industry. Alberta has been the economic engine of Canada the last number of years. As a previous human resources manager, I know that there are a lot of potential jobs available. Power engineering, for example, is in high demand, as are millwrights, instrumentation, electricians, welding, pipefitters, machinists, and the list goes on and on. Because Alberta has been the economic engine of Canada for the last little while, obviously partly due to the oil sands, it's also created manufacturing in Ontario, Quebec, and right across Canada. I see that as a really important aspect.
I'm just wondering if you could give us a little more insight into what's going on with your discussions in the oil and gas sector.
:
I'll just add one thing.
Currently in one of our shops in Alberta we already do some of the pipefitting pieces. We do manufacture them, so we are starting there.
When I looked at some of the opportunities in oil and gas—I'll just refer back to what the commissioner said—it is expensive training, it's not cheap training. The course at Portage College, for example, is $10,000 per individual. I've been talking to people, some of them in the aboriginal communities, who are looking at on-the-job training inside, and everything from doing it through video, so you don't have your big machinery inside. At this point I'm still in the very preliminary areas.
A lot of the jobs that you also mentioned require a lot of highly skilled individuals, so again it's very expensive training. It's not something that I'm in a position at CORCAN to offer to fund. I would love it, but we don't the money or the resources for that at this point in time.
I think partnerships are the way to go, and yes, anything you can do to help that would be really great.
:
Thank you very much. I'd appreciate it if you could provide that to the committee. We'll have the chair discuss with you the manner in which it can be distributed.
For first nations, of course, we have a special relationship vis-à-vis taxation, where they live, etc. The challenge, I think it was Ms. Garrow or you, Mr. Head, who said that they're going back to reserves where there's virtually no employment.... I was thinking, maybe because of the person I'm married to, that estheticians seem to get a lot of business from the Norlock side of things. I guess I'm saying that those are some of the skills....
I've lived in many areas in the province. If you go to the neighbourhoods that I've lived in, almost every other neighbourhood has someone whose secondary employment is a hairdressing or esthetician salon, and I suspect it's the same around the country. This might be an area that you might want to think of, because it's an area of high employment, and, of course, as a government, in regard to the employment benefits, we're looking at it. We've already looked at it and have made employment benefits in those areas. I see it as an opportunity. I wonder if you could ruminate on that for us.
One of the things I'd like to see done with regard to first nations is that we'll have to work with.... All parliamentarians are going to have to deal with this. We encourage people to return from whence they came. For a first nations territory, for instance, where there's no employment, maybe we need to say the same thing to our first nations communities that we say to other communities, which is that you go where the jobs are. That might be a way to alleviate a return to hopelessness and a life of crime. Once again, it's something that on this side of the fence we're going to have to work on, but work on with you.
I was very interested in what you talked about in regard to the heavy equipment; we wouldn't want a D9 going through a wall somewhere. I'm very much interested in the housing market, because it's a huge area where we can.... I'm wondering if you could suggest to the committee how we can work with Habitat for Humanity, because they have one of the best records. In my particular riding, we've used them, and we've been able to get some federal dollars into the program to help hire the difficult-to-employ people, or, in other words, people with no skills or who perhaps have been not in the federal institutions but the provincial institutions, etc.
Could you suggest to the committee some of the things we can do to help you make that function better with Habitat for Humanity, and then in the construction trades in general, and also how you see public-private partnerships? You have a budget to live by, and you did mention something about the oil and gas industry. Well, the construction industry, I think, can contribute there. As well, I think you have a good working relationship with the trade union movement, which would be of interest to my friends across the way and, quite frankly, to me.
Could you talk about how we as government and as parliamentarians could work with you to make those things happen?
:
I have a couple of quick comments in that regard.
Habitat for Humanity is one of the projects with which we're quite proud of being involved. We're a contributor. Habitat for Humanity guides that.
The challenges they have, though, are related to money and supplies, and having something flowing consistently. I'll use Manitoba as an example because we've worked very closely with Linda Peters there. We have worked out an arrangement now whereby some of the construction is actually being done on our property out at Stony Mountain Institution. That's gone a long way toward helping them out to get some things prefabbed and prepared in order to get houses built quicker, even during the wintertime when, as you can imagine, it's a little more difficult to do some of these activities.
It's really about finding the investment to get the supplies. The Habitat for Humanity exercises we've seen are not an issue of not having available manpower. There are a lot of volunteers and our offenders are involved in that. We've helped to address, in one case, the issue of where they could do some prefab construction ahead of time by using some of our buildings and our minimum security at Stony Mountain. It's the money flow and the actual supplies that are needed.
In terms of aboriginal communities, one of the things that....As I mentioned before, the more we can tap into the economic development activities in first nations communities, the more we are able to assist them with their needs but also provide aboriginal offenders with opportunities.
There are some first nations communities that we continue to watch very closely and talk to, for example Osoyoos in British Columbia. Chief Clarence Louie is a significant leader in this area. He may be somebody you would want to talk to as well, as a committee, about moving forward. He's always been receptive to discussions with us and with provincial corrections about providing opportunities for offenders to become employed and the many different ventures his first nations community is undertaking.
:
Now I understand better.
One of the challenges that we have, given the CORCAN structure, is the issue of funding. In order for us to expand or sustain less viable activities, we have to generate enough revenue through CORCAN, through the sales of the goods that we're producing. That has become more challenging and more difficult in the last number of years, given the fact that one of the places that we sell to is other governments, so their reduction in budgets means they buy less, which means we generate less revenues, which means we have to make some decisions about what kinds of activities we're able to sustain going forward to make sure that they're viable. One of the things that we've looked at, and one of the things that this committee may want to consider discussing, is whether CORCAN is given the first right of refusal for any purchases by government of the kinds of things that we produce. Right now, government departments are not obligated to come to us, for example, to buy office furniture. Our office furniture is of high quality; it meets all the standards and lasts a long time—I can do a sales pitch here if you want...a 10-year warranty. Right now, federal government departments—I'll just talk about federal government departments—are not obligated to come to us first before they buy any furniture or any other goods.
If we are able to get that kind of sustainability and a better guarantee in terms of the kinds of revenues going forward in future years, then we're able to look at other kinds of programs—expand them and sustain some of the smaller ones. Otherwise, unfortunately, we have to now make business decisions within a correctional environment.
:
Again, starting with the issue of partnerships, I think that the committee could be helpful in engaging some of those partners that we've talked about. We've mentioned the oil and gas industry and we've mentioned construction. Food processing was just recently mentioned as well. This committee has an opportunity to engage leaders in those fields and to ask them to seriously consider turning to Corrections for creating opportunities and hiring offenders with the skills when they come out.
I also believe that the committee can be extremely helpful in the point that I just raised around giving consideration for the first right of refusal for the purchasing by federal government departments of items that we have a track record in, such as the production of furniture. We're now producing various uniforms for a couple of different government departments. Federal government departments having to look to CORCAN before they purchase outside, I think, would go a long way to supporting us.
I also believe that the committee can be helpful in terms of advancing discussions with first nations communities, issues related to economic development and the monies that they receive, and looking at forging relationships with Corrections in areas where we can provide the kind of people who are needed to produce goods. For example, in this case, it's housing. I think there's an excellent opportunity there. I also think that this committee can be extremely helpful in advancing the work that organizations such as Habitat for Humanity do. The more they're able to get projects going, the more I'm able to get offenders engaged in those kinds of projects.
Just a quick aside, we've seen several of the Habitat for Humanity projects where offenders have gone out and started to assist in putting together homes. Other volunteers from the community, including people from various construction companies, have seen the skills and the abilities of offenders. They have actually hired them right there and given them jobs for when they get released. Helping to advance those kinds of activities is good.
The other issue this committee can help advance is some discussions around the issue of a criminal record. A criminal record does not exclude you from being somebody who can become a law-abiding citizen or somebody employed in some workplace. I think this committee can be very helpful in advancing those kinds of discussions. Like you'll see when we send you this video, all those employers know who they hired, they know they have criminal records, but what they're interested in is what those offenders are bringing to that workplace. I think that you can help in advancing this discussion across the country as well.
If you have inventory around, Mr. Head, March 31 is coming up, so you had better get advertising. You know how government operates; on March 31, you may be able to sell some of that inventory.
You made a statement earlier, Mr. Head, that surprised me. You said that you don't actually track training and the alignment with the jobs. I think you should. I think Correctional Services Canada and CORCAN should, since “training and alignment with jobs” was one of the key reasons stated by the then parliamentary secretary to this committee when prison farms were cancelled. If you go back and look at the record, you'll see that's true. I really think that was one of the big mistakes of CORCAN and Correctional Services Canada. I was there, at the committee. I think in order to see if the systems and the training are working, there should be at least some tracking of the jobs in the field so we're dealing with real evidence.
Coming back to some of the comments Randall made earlier around funding, some of the discussion seemed to be that you had to sell a certain amount of your product. That's understandable and that makes good economic sense, but there do seem to be some concerns over funding, whether it's the correctional investigator who is explaining it or based on some of the comments you had today. Are funding levels for CORCAN and for training within Correctional Services Canada that relate to that—as I said earlier, literacy, computers, etc.—remaining the same? Can you provide those figures to us for the last five years? We do have the estimates, but they're just so-so. Can you provide those figures to the committee? Are they going up or down or staying the same?