Public Safety Committee on Jan. 25th, 2021

[Anne Kelly]

First, the community strategy was completely inappropriate. I've never seen anything like it in 37 years. As soon as I found out about it, we took steps. I ordered a nation-wide review of all the community strategies to ensure that there were no similar cases. The review didn't identify any such cases.

Initially, the parole officer, the clinical worker, the Correctional Service of Canada liaison officer and a parole officer supervisor establish a community strategy. A recommendation is then sent to the Parole Board. The offender was on six months of day parole. After the six months, an assessment must be conducted to determine whether to grant an extension. The Correctional Service of Canada is responsible for this assessment.

I'll ask my colleague Ms. Oades to provide more details regarding the Parole Board.

[Jennifer Oades]

Thank you, Commissioner Kelly.

I'm not sure about the rest of the question, but when it comes to the Parole Board, in this case the March decision was from an in-person hearing. There were two board members, the parole officer from the institution and the offender. For the September one, it was for day parole continued. There were two board members plus the parole officer from, I believe, Maison Painchaud and the offender.

They presented their case. They were very supportive. The offender was apparently doing very well. There were questions raised about the strategy relating to the massage parlours for sexual services. I'm not sure if any of you know this, but all three of us—Ms. Blanchet, Ms. Kelly and I—are former parole officers. We have never ever heard of anything like this ever happening before, certainly not within our careers. There was a pause in the hearing to discuss that. They came back. They wanted to know how this risk was going to be managed. He was told that under no circumstances was this to continue. The parole officer was not concerned and neither was the offender.

Unfortunately, what no one knew at the time was that not only had he been given three approvals to go to a massage parlour for sexual purposes but in fact he had gone many, many times. However, no one was to know that. Certainly the parole officer didn't know. CSC didn't know. The board didn't know. That was information that came out only at the time he was sentenced.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

So, are we to understand that no one was aware, but that everyone was aware of the high risk of recidivism and that it was the Maison Painchaud clinical worker who—

[Jennifer Oades]

He wasn't a high risk to reoffend. I don't know where you're reading that.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

In fact, there is some evidence in the report that Gallese, given his history, was at high risk of recidivism and that he himself had said he was not ready to enter into relationships with women. However, he was still allowed to attend massage parlours for sexual purposes. Consequently, this permission can be questioned regardless of the offender's history. Having said that, I'll save that for another question.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

Mr. Harris, you have six minutes, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Oades, you talk about the meeting on September 16, 2019, dealing with day parole. It was at this meeting that it was made known to the Parole Board members that essentially there were criminal offences—and they identified them as such—that had been committed by the parolee during the period from March until then. Was that made known to you?

[Jennifer Oades]

It certainly wasn't made known to me at the time. I don't have a button on all of—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

When would you have become aware of that? Was it when it became public after the later events and the death of Madame Levesque?

[Jennifer Oades]

Exactly.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Your statement was that you and Ms. Kelly, having been parole officers, hadn't heard about this—and you were chair of the board—and you had never heard of anything like this happening in your career. When you didn't hear about this and you're the chair of the board, maybe there were a lot of things going on over the years that you might not be aware of.

What weight can we give to your statement that this has never happened before in all of your years, in all of your career, and that this wasn't something that happened as a result of permission being granted to use the sexual services of women in that way?

[Jennifer Oades]

I won't speak for Ms. Kelly, but when we said that we had never seen anything like this in our careers, first, Ms. Kelly went across the country right after this to see if this had happened. In terms of our never seeing this happen, in our experiences we have never seen this as a community strategy to supervise offenders.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I can accept that. In fact, before Ms. Kelly spoke, for example, I was reading her words carefully.

She said, “I want to be clear with the committee that the community supervision strategy was completely inappropriate. CSC does not condone offenders seeking sexual services.” Then she said, “In my 37 years with CSC, I can firmly attest to the fact that this is not something that we, as an organization, endorse”. That's the policy, and clearly in this particular case that was not the practice.

When it was identified by the Parole Board members, again it was said that, no, this is not our policy, yet the Parole Board members, in writing their report, said something to the parolee and to the parole officer, but they didn't put it in the report. I don't know what's in the report because it's all blacked out of the internal inquiry. There were some special conditions, but they didn't mention that.

This seems to me to be a pretty special condition that it was not the policy of the Parole Board to do, yet the BOI said that it's not relevant to what happened afterwards. Wouldn't the actual caseworker be relying on the report in following up with this case?

[Jennifer Oades]

Yes. The caseworker, the parole officer—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

No, there are two different things now. The parole officer is a sort of liaison person, but there's a caseworker instead.... The parole officer doesn't actually supervise the individual. In my understanding, the parole officer works for CSC. The caseworker is the contracted-out person. Am I wrong or am I right?

[Jennifer Oades]

I think you might have to get.... The person who was with the offender at the hearing was the person who supervised the offender. That person—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

No. You said it was the parole officer.

[Jennifer Oades]

I would call it a parole officer. That's why there is confusion with this whole.... Maybe the commissioner can come in and help me with this direct supervision model and who's doing what and who's who. The caseworker who came to the parole hearing with the offender was the person who was actively supervising that person. They worked for Maison Painchaud. It wasn't a CSC person or employee who was at that parole hearing.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

That's another issue, because of course the BOI did find that there was much confusion regarding the caseworkers' roles and responsibilities on the file at both CSC and Maison Painchaud, the CRF. Yes, there was a lot of confusion there, but part of the confusion would be that the report itself did not contain this prohibition of using sexual services at what was called, euphemistically, a massage parlour.

[Jennifer Oades]

Yes, and I would counter that with.... The board investigation did say that, in the hearing itself, it was very explicit that it wasn't in the written report but that it was covered through the additional conditions the Parole Board attached to his condition of release.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

We didn't see those. They were blacked out in the report, so what confidence can we have that this is all okay? It's not an independent investigation by someone with no connection to this whole organization.

I'm struggling here with the fact that this is raised. This is not in the report. It's not something that.... They didn't identify it as something that contributed to the result, but that's a factual finding that may or may not be in keeping with all of the facts that we know of, and we don't know very many—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Harris, we have to leave it there, unfortunately.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

We'll get back to it later. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

The second round is a five-minute round. I believe Ms. Stubbs has five minutes and Mr. Iacono, Madam Michaud and Mr. Harris.

I believe Mr. Motz is next and then Madam Lambropoulos.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Our colleague Shannon is having some connectivity issues.

I first of all want to say that my thoughts are with the family and friends of Ms. Levesque. We know that this horrible tragedy is yet another example and a sad reality of a soft-on-crime approach. We all know that this tragedy was preventable. Witnesses, your agencies, granted this offender day parole and even allowed him to be alone with women while released on that parole, despite his significant violent history against women and continued concerns from CSC.

You note that the report was to be transparent, accountable and responsible in your duty to Canadians in keeping people safe from offenders. To do this, you held a closed-door internal review of the case and placed the blame on an outside organization in Quebec and select front-line workers. It appears that senior management from both of your agencies, CSC and the Parole Board, and the Minister of Public Safety, quite honestly, are somewhat absolved from any responsibility.

Ms. Oades, you tell Canadians that they can trust the decisions of the Parole Board despite a series of failures and poor decisions, in this case leading to the death of a young woman. Your agency contributes to a report that fails to hold itself, the Parole Board, accountable for this decision. We all know that Canadians distrust the Parole Board, and this report does nothing to restore that trust. When you don't take ownership of your decisions, it certainly doesn't help.

Ms. Oades, you know this, but just so that we're all clear, the Parole Board is exclusively responsible for the decisions of parole. Section 107 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act states that the board has “exclusive jurisdiction and absolute discretion” to grant parole to an offender, terminate or revoke the parole or statutory release of an offender, and cancel a decision to grant parole to an offender or cancel the suspension of that parole. Given that fact, can you explain how the Parole Board can be solely responsible for the release of offenders and the conditions of their release, yet not be responsible for your decisions, as in this case?