Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd also like to thank the committee members.
For the sake of transparency, I want to mention at the outset that I was a Conservative candidate in the 2019 election.
I must say that I'm extremely sad and dismayed by the fate of Marylène Levesque. This woman should never have been stabbed to death by a repeat murderer. The wolf was given sheep's clothing. As a result, the predictable happened. Why? Because the board had been deprived of its ability to carry out its mandate.
This murder is the result of a series of major systemic flaws within the Correctional Service of Canada, or CSC, the Parole Board of Canada, or PBC, and the halfway house.
The Prime Minister's Office also bears a significant amount of responsibility for what led to this sordid murder. Changes to the appointment process for members have had a disastrous impact on the operation of this independent administrative tribunal. Canadians, the family of Marylène Levesque and the daughter of Chantal Deschênes, who was killed by Mr. Gallese in 2004, therefore expect clear answers about the failings of CSC and the PBC, and about what will be done to ensure that women are protected in Canada.
I will now turn to the first point of the motion, the decision by the PBC. Members Lainé and Fortin made the wrong decision on September 19, 2019, to renew Mr. Gallese's day parole. Those two members had little experience in assessing the risk of federal offenders. There were some complexities in this case. They were unable to take appropriate action to protect society from this murderer.
During the hearing, both members were briefed on the strategy of the offender's case management team, which was to allow the offender to meet with women to address his sexual needs, based on his transparency.
Since this was new information, the members should have obtained more details about the strategy in order to properly assess the risk Mr. Gallese posed to the public and to women.
Moreover, the members wrote only a few lines about the inappropriate nature of the strategy, without reviewing the risk or taking proper protective measures. Personally, I do not see how a strategy allowing Mr. Gallese to meet with women to fulfill his sexual needs could have represented a social reintegration perspective. I have never seen a strategy like that used in my entire career, and I'm alarmed at the comments of the Union of Safety and...