I would like to reiterate that the John Howard Society of Canada, on whose behalf I'm pleased to be here today, echoes many of the concerns that Kim has raised about the need to have an effective, timely grievance process.
We also give quite a bit of credit to Correctional Services of Canada for their efforts to try to improve the grievance process, which is to some extent reflected in their contracting or commissioning David Mullan, who is one of Canada's leading authorities on administrative law, to take a look at the review process and how it could be improved. I agree with Kim's assessment that the overall recommendations should be taken into account and implemented, but he does also look specifically at the problem that seems to be being addressed by Bill C-293, which is the problem with multiple grievances.
The recommendations he has made vary with the provisions in Bill C-293 in some fundamental ways. I think if you take a look at the variance there, I hope you would be persuaded that the approach of Professor Mullan is better in a number of ways. I bring to your attention two of those concerns.
One concern is that Professor Mullan focuses on multiple rather than vexatious grievers. He has a clear, quantifiable definition of what's multiple so he doesn't leave it to the discretion of a correctional official--who does have an active stake in this grievance process as well--to determine what's vexatious. Also from a review process, you're going to have much more difficulty finding that something is vexatious because it requires you to look at the motivation of the person who's putting forward the grievance, and that's a much more difficult case to make than simply looking at the quantum.
Also, the clear distinction between his recommendations and those that are in the bill relate to the remedy he's proposing, which is he is suggesting that multiple grievers be limited to a certain number of grievances per year, and that they have a stake in assessing which are the ones they want to proceed with and what priority to give those. That is, which 25 of the 180 that you have put forward do you give most credit to and most reflect your concerns? So the remedy goes to limiting the number and doesn't go to the evidentiary base, which is what you find in this particular bill, which is the griever suddenly has to reach a higher evidentiary standard to make the grievance, which is questionable in terms of duty of fairness that all administrative procedures must follow.
I draw those particular elements to your attention. We would urge you to consider making some significant amendments and proceeding with the overall recommendations in Mullan's paper.