Thank you.
On an annual basis, our office receives approximately 6,000 offender complaints. In 2010-2011, the office's 18 investigators spent in excess a 370 days in federal penitentiaries and interviewed more than 2,100 offenders. Last fiscal year, the office received 20,000 contacts on its toll-free number, and conducted over 1,200 uses of force reviews.
The OCI can investigate complaints from federal offenders, independently of whether they have filed similar complaints using the internal complaints and grievance system of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). When appropriate, the office has the discretion to request that offenders exhaust the internal grievance procedure before we examine their complaints. If the subject of the complaint raises important or priority issues, such as involuntary transfer or segregation placement, we will generally investigate even if the offender has an outstanding grievance filed with the CSC on the same subject matter. If the complaint has merit, the office will make the recommendations to the CSC to resolve it in a fair and expeditious manner.
The office deals with the same clientele as the CSC. We also receive a large number of complaints from the same few multiple grievers that this bill would refer to as vexatious. Although the office has more latitude than the CSC to deal with multiple grievers, it is our policy to respond to all complaints regardless of source. This is based on our experience that even multiple grievers file complaints that legitimately require attention. It is also our experience that complaints made in a trivial, frivolous or vexatious manner or in bad faith are relatively easy to determine. Accordingly, these complaints require little in the way of substantive follow-up.
Our experience with multiple grievers suggests many often display symptoms associated with mental health disorders, including paranoia, narcissism or obsessive compulsive behaviours. In fact, their mental health issue may have been responsible in part for their offending pattern. Multiple grievers can be very erratic, difficult to deal with, obsessive or compulsive about details or paranoid vis-à-vis those in authority.
Labelling them vexatious complainants and attempting to stop them from complaining is not likely to work, as it does not address the underlying source of mental health or personality dysfunction. If prevented from using the internal grievance system, these offenders may simply shift their efforts to challenge their vexatious designation by way of judicial review or file their complaints to independent quasi-judicial bodies, such as our office.