Justice committee  We would continue to pursue them. For example, if an individual convicted of murder came in, and just assuming for a moment that the other charges were dropped or bargained away, whatever the case may be, we would still look at the complete history of the individual. If sex offending had been part of it, although the final charge was just murder in the first degree, we would identify that as a need for the offender and encourage him or her to participate in the programs.

Justice committee  What you would see, more than likely, based on the way you described it, is that the Parole Board would probably not grant a release. It may make recommendations for us to do other things to try to show that the offenders are addressing their needs, but more than likely they would not be granted their release.

Justice committee  Just very quickly, when I started 37 years ago you probably saw more of those sex offenders in protective custody kinds of settings. Nowadays that's not so much the case. We've actually worked hard to integrate them in the population. Having those kinds of separate operating systems is very costly and not very efficient in terms of doing programming.

Justice committee  The overall Corrections and Conditional Release Act basically has enshrined the principle that good public safety can and will be achieved through a strong conditional release system. That's why you see that, even with the more serious offences and the life sentences, there is parole eligibility.

Justice committee  Yes. When offenders come into the system, we do a series of assessments and we develop what's called a correctional plan. We ideally develop that plan with the offenders and encourage them to participate in the programs, but we cannot force any offender to take the programs that are identified.

Justice committee  Yes, there's no question, depending on the level of need of the individuals, that it gives us more time to work with them. I don't want to necessarily advocate that you should be always striving for the longest sentence possible, because there's enough research that says that itself can also be detrimental, depending on individuals, but there is no question.

Justice committee  I think one of the opportunities this bill presents is discretion at the judiciary level. In terms of consideration for amending the Criminal Code, the more you keep discretion in the hands of judges...I think it's a good thing. If you were to narrow it down and say it automatically has to be this, that would be even more detrimental from a rehabilitative perspective.

Justice committee  Sure, most definitely. It's a very good question. One challenge we have right now, particularly with any long-term offender, including those serving a life sentence, is that when we have to prioritize the available resources and the programming capacity we have, we're going to invest in those who have shorter sentences and who have parole eligibility dates coming sooner rather than those who have them coming 25 years from now, so that is a bit of a challenge.

Justice committee  With the last of the new units opening up over the next two months, I will be back down to the normal levels of double-bunking that we had in 2010. So that's around 8% to 9%, and that's really not because I'm short of cells. It's that I have to manage a number of individuals who are incompatible with others, and I can't have them in the same range or the same institution.

Justice committee  There's no question, the way you framed the comment, that it is truly traumatizing and upsetting for any family member of the victim. One of the things we try to do regardless, both the Parole Board of Canada and CSC, is to make sure we provide as much support as we can to the family members of victims.

Justice committee  This requires us to go back and do a full file review. The way this legislation is crafted, it's abduction and sexual assault and murder. Those events may have occurred in the cases of some individuals who have been sentenced to life imprisonment, but through the normal court processes, the abductions and sexual assaults may have been dropped, and the trial would have dealt just with the murder.

Justice committee  Yes, for the last three to five years that we looked at. We'd have to do a much more in-depth file review to get you the exact number. We have just over 4,800 individuals serving first- and second-degree life sentences, and to be honest, I just haven't subjected my staff to doing a complete file review.

Justice committee  Yes, as you may be aware, we undertook construction projects over the last number of years and we added 2,752 cells to the overall inventory. When we take into account the closure of Kingston Penitentiary and Leclerc Institution, it actually left us a net of 1,752 cells. Our population, since March of 2010, has gone up by about 800.

Justice committee  It varies. I started my career as a front-line correctional officer, as well. It varies with the individuals. There is some potential concern with certain types of individuals who have a persistent violent nature that this kind of sentence will basically allow them a free pass to do whatever they want in the institution, knowing that their sentence is really not going to be any worse than what it is.

Justice committee  Thanks. It's a really good question. As a result of some of the other recent sentencing under other changes in the Criminal Code—we have an individual right now serving life, 40 years, and another one serving life, 75 years, for some very heinous crimes—we've had to rethink how we deal with those longer-term life sentences.