Supervisor demonstrates an enthusiastic attitude

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Ray Cardinal, the correctional supervisor at the Pê Sâkâstêw Centre at Hobbema, Alta. shared some of his experience to illustrate the opportunities, benefits and requirements of employment in the correctional field.

"Corrections is very social-work oriented," he said.

"I can only relate to my own experience: a desire to work in a good environment and an opportunity to succeed. And of course the willingness to become a loyal company person and fall in line with structure, and reporting to work, and doing your job professionally, and so forth," Cardinal added.

"But there isn't any one thing I can say that's good for Aboriginal people to come and work in the criminal justice system. It's good for everybody to work, whether it's here or somewhere else. I have seen quite a number of Aboriginal people succeed in a structured environment, and I've seen lots of others that failed.

"I chose the criminal justice field when I was 20 years old. I joined the RCMP [1966] and became a regular member with them for 17 years, and then I switched over to Revenue Canada Customs [1983] . . . worked with them for eight years and then I switched over to the Correctional Service of Canada [1996] - and I love it!" Cardinal enthused.

He comes from a no longer existing Métis colony in northeastern Alberta called Willow Trail, which was about 40 miles north of Bonneyville. Twenty families. The post office was Garth. Garth doesn't exist anymore either.

Oil was discovered on the colony, Cardinal said. Families were moved to other Métis colonies - his to Fishing Lake, where his father could not find work.

"I went through Grade 12. There used to be a school at Willow Trail, a Métis school, but when the colony shut down - about Grade 6 or 7 - of course the school went with it. We were being bused to Iron River Public School. I finished my Grade 12 there, and I think about Grade 11 there was one of these career days, where different organizations like forestry, and the game wardens, they used to call them, and the RCMP came down to do a presentation on careers. There were two members from the Bonneyville Detachment came down in their dress uniforms to do a presentation on a career in policing, and that day I decided that's what I wanted to be," Cardinal explained.

Cardinal finished high school at age 19, applied to the RCMP at age 20 and was sworn in six months later. He went to training, then was posted to Vancouver. When he left RCMP he was working in their criminal intelligence unit out of Ottawa. Cardinal was promoted to corporal in 1975, nine years after he joined; he left the RCMP as a corporal. Then he went to the newly formed Canada Customs Intelligence Division - the same kind of work as the criminal intelligence field.

"The civilian structure was different than the paramilitary one, but the responsibility and accountability to do the job - that doesn't change any. And that was a refreshing change, I suppose, to work for a civilian head rather than a paramilitary one. There was more opportunity to express yourself as an employee and to put forth thoughts and ideas," Cardinal related.

"I was a senior intelligence officer there eight years, then transferred to Calgary as a regional intelligence officer in '87 and left there in '91."

Cardinal took a year off - "R & R". He coached track and field almost full time. Then he went to work for the Missing Children of Canada Society for one year as an investigator, then worked for the Louis Bull Police Service in Hobbema area for two years in uniform as a police officer.

"Then when the Pê Sâkâstêw Centre was being opened, they were looking for employees in the supervisory area, and I got my present position," Cardinal said. "I love every minute of it," he said again.

Paperwork

"Administration is part of life in any work that you do, especially in the criminal justice system. There's paper, paper, paper. There's no getting around it. Even the entry-level CX-01 is going to have to do some paperwork" Cardinal said.

Typical day

Cardinal said his day now starts with a morning meeting, briefing all the managers and the managers briefing each other of occurrences or things to come. Then signing on to a computer, checking e-mail and seeing if any responses have to be made urgently or immediately. Then dealing with staff situations, inmate problems "and then you might have to get involved in counselling inmates -or staff, for that matter," he confides.

Unique institution

"The inmates are all Aboriginal, but it's not to be confused as an entity unto its own. Because in the corporate terms of the Correctional Service of Canada, it's a minimum security, federal penitentiary," Cardinal wants to remind people.

"But to qualify what it is, it's a very unique institution, the first of its kind, but maybe an unconventional approach to corrections in that it also can be a healing centre. The architecture of the place is totally different from any other institution that anybody's ever seen.

"It doesn't look like an institution. The inmates have all kinds of freedom, in terms of their housing. They have their own bedrooms. We issue them with a key so they can go into their room and lock the door. They go out grocery shopping. We allow them all types of temporary absences with escort. . . . We have 300 temporary absences every month, which totals to over 2,000 per year, which is probably 150 per cent more than other institutions," Cardinal asserts.

"Our reason is that, in order to reintegrate an offender safely back into the community," Cardinal continues, "you can't just release him from behind locked doors and say, 'okay, buddy, you're out in the street again.' Here they have the ability to integrate gradually into the community, to go out to the shopping mall to get a haircut, to go out to the mall to buy a T-shirt, or even to go out to get a coffee at Tim Horton's as personal development temporary absence."

To heal or not

Cardinal agrees when asked if the conditions in jil aren't better than those from which many inmates have come. But he adds that many of the people have been inside for a long time in the big institutions "and they've become institutionalized, and they have this certain inmate attitude, which is 'us and them;' inmates and guards."

What he says next reveals the ultimate professional attitude that Cardinal has cultivated over the years. He'll never be accused of being a bleeding-heart liberal. That would be death - possibly quite literally - in his job, and he knows it.

"They hear about this place and they hear about it as a healing centre, and their version of a healing centre is, I think, totally misconstrued," Cardinal informs us, "because they come here totally expecting something else, when it's not something else.