Nunavut “healing” centre underused, lacking vision: Auditor General

A digital architectural rendering of the new territorial jail that opened in Rankin Inlet in 2013. (PHOTO NDL CONSTRUCTION)

When the Rankin Inlet Healing Facility opened in 2013, 48 new beds were added to Nunavut’s chronically overcrowded prison system.

Yet since the $37-million Rankin Inlet jail opened its doors, it has been underused and, without an overriding vision, it has failed to help the territory cope with its obvious correctional needs.

That’s according to a highly critical Auditor General of Canada’s report on the state of Nunavut corrections, tabled in the legislative assembly in Iqaluit March 10.

“According to [Department of Justice] data, the facility housed 19 inmates in July 2013 and 34 inmates in mid-January 2014,” the report says.

The BCC has remained overcrowded since the Rankin Inlet facility opened, the report said. A full year after the new Kivalliq-region facility started accepting inmates, BCC stood at 118 per cent of capacity.

“We found that the [Rankin Inlet] facility has been underutilized since it opened.”

The report found problems with the availability of staff housing for the facility and lack of a “full complement of trained staff on opening.”

“There was no trained staff to carry out inmate assessments,” the report said, leading to inmates being assessed at BCC instead.

But the healing facility refused to take some inmates after staff at the BCC assessed them.

“The [Rankin] facility was not accepting inmates who were difficult to deal with or had high needs,” the report says.

“These issues contributed to the Rankin Inlet Healing Facility being of limited help in reducing overcrowding at the [BCC].”

The justice department, which received the auditor general’s report months ago, agreed with the report’s recommendation to “better address the correctional facility capacity needs of the territory and ensure that facility staff are better trained to do so.”

“The Rankin Inlet Healing Facility now accepts direct admissions from Rankin Inlet and surrounding communities,” said the department’s written response, which is included in the auditor’s report.

Aside from a lack of trained staff, the auditor general’s report found the facility ill-prepared in other areas.

“It’s a healing facility, so presumably that means that it’s going to have a certain philosophy on how it deals with inmates,” said Ronnie Campbell, the assistant auditor general of Canada, at a news conference in Iqaluit March 10.

This was the veteran auditor’s final report. The Scottish-born public servant, and one-time Hudson Bay Co. staffer, is retiring this month.

“But that philosophy has not been laid out, there’s been no vision articulated… In fact they did not have operational guidelines put in place to operationalize whatever that philosophy would be,” Campbell said.

Instead, the Kivalliq prison adopted the operating procedures of the BCC, “which is not considered to be a healing facility,” the report said.

“Since it was not fully prepared when it opened, the facility has had a limited impact on addressing the territory’s correctional facility needs.”

The justice department agreed with the report’s recommendation that a documented vision should guide the facility’s operations.

“A management conference will convene in early 2015 during which the department will develop the Rankin Inlet Healing Facility’s vision and mission,” the justice department wrote in its response.

The auditor general’s report concluded the justice department has not met key responsibilities for inmates throughout its correctional system, creating safety and security issues for inmates and staff alike.

Some of the safety and security issues have were known as early as 1996, the report said.

Campbell told Nunatsiaq News in a March 10 interview that the auditor general of Canada, Michael Ferguson, will appear in Nunavut’s legislative assembly on May 5 during a standing committee session of government operations.

“At that time we’d hope the department [of justice] would have an action plan that would inform MLAs how they intend to implement recommendations, and what their priorities are,” Campbell said.