Federal Commissioner's report finds Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge jeopardized kids' safety

A healing lodge for aboriginal women in Maple Creek, Sask., is under fire from the federal Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. A report from his office found that the lodge allowed employees to bring their children to the institution, putting them in the presence of convicted sex offenders and child abusers.

The healing lodge, called the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge, is under the management and control of Correctional Service Canada.

According to a release issued by the Commissioner's office, the lodge is a "multi-level security institution housing female inmates taken from the general inmate population and provides an open, residential style environment."

Commissioner Joe Friday tabled the report in Parliament today.

11 were sentenced or had been previously sentenced for crimes involving children.- Public Sector Integrity Commissioner Joe Friday

The report found that since 2011, approximately one-third, or 21 of the lodge's 65 employees, brought children to the facility at least 73 times. There is no policy or guideline allowing children to be anywhere near the lodge. The report noted that the incidents were not linked to actions of the inmates at the lodge. 

Of the 39 inmates at the lodge, Friday noted that "11 were sentenced or had been previously sentenced for crimes involving children, ranging from sexual abuse to violence and neglect causing harm or death."

The commissioner noted that witness testimony during his office's investigation, which began in March 2015, found that the practice of bringing kids to the lodge was "well-established" and "had been occurring for many years, possibly since the beginning of 2000."

Furthermore, the report found that specific violent incidents had happened at the lodge in 2014 and 2015, including "sexual assault among inmates, contraband of makeshift weapons in an open area, presence of drugs such as cocaine and crystal meth, and segregation placement of an inmate following a 'behavioural event.'"

The lodge's open environment, inmate composition and history of violent incidents all "drastically increases the risk of an incident involving children," Friday said in the report.

Such practices of bringing kids to the lodge constituted wrongdoing by jeopardizing the kids' safety, said the report, and allowing for the practice to continue over several years constituted gross mismanagement, resulting in a systematic problem.

Recommended active monitoring

The commissioner recommended that Correctional Service Canada establish ways to actively monitor "local practices in federal penal institutions under its authority, in order to ensure that they are aligned with applicable national CSC policies and guidelines." 

He noted in his report that corrections has accepted his recommendation, and is "taking corrective action so that practices are aligned with applicable national policies to ensure the safety of all persons in the institution."

Elizabeth Fry Society responds to report

Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, took issue with the report and its findings.

"This seems to be a problem looking for an answer. And I am dumbfounded in fact that these findings have been made," Pate told CBC News.

She noted that she was approached by Friday's colleague, Christian Santaross, who was investigating the reported incidents. "As I indicated to the investigator, I thought that this was clearly a complaint generated by someone who was not happy with the progressive trends trying to be implemented in the prisons for women," Pate said.

This seems to be a problem looking for an answer.- Kim Pate, Elizabeth Fry Societies national director

The press release from Friday's office noted that he first became aware of incidents at the lodge from "a disclosure made by whistleblowers."

Pate said that after reading Friday's report, three things concerned her.

There's "a presumption that women [offenders at the lodge] acted alone and pose an ongoing threat. That's not accurate. And second is the presumption that people can't change," she said.

Third, she said, "there isn't any evidence in this report of any incidents of harm coming to children — not the children of women who have been imprisoned, not the children of the employees or the children of outside people."

Pate, who's also a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said that in her 35 years of working in the justice system, she's never heard of such an incident of harm coming to children.

More pressing, in her mind, is the fact that in December, charges were laid against a male staff member at the lodge for sexual assault.

"Why isn't there concern about real harm that's being caused, and harm that's being caused to the women that are there?" she said.