Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. I'm pleased to appear before you today. I'm joined by Sylvie Blanchet, our executive vice-chairperson.
I'd like to start by extending my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Marylène Lévesque. I recognize how devastating this incident has been for them. My heart goes out to every one of them. What happened in Quebec City on January 22, 2020, is an absolute tragedy, and something that should never happen. For those of us who have devoted our professional careers to the field of parole, this is an outcome that we never wanted to see.
However, when an incident like this does happen, we take it very seriously.
The purpose of conditional release as per the law is to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by means of a decision on the timing and conditions of release that will best facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens.
The board is an independent decision-making body. We conduct approximately 16,000 reviews each year, which translates into about 23,000 decisions. In accordance with the law, board members may grant parole to an offender if, in their opinion, the offender will not, by reoffending, present an undue risk to society before the end of their sentence and—that's “and”, not “or”—the release of the offender will contribute to the protection of society by facilitating the offender's return to the community as a law-abiding citizen.
The law and Parole Board decisions are based on research that clearly shows that the gradual, managed and supervised release of offenders provides the best protection of society. The board's risk assessment framework is evidence-based and has been adopted in a number of other jurisdictions. In their decision-making, board members consider all relevant information from a wide range of sources from the police, victims, the courts, crown attorneys, mental health professionals, correctional authorities and private agencies. All of that information is used in assessing an offender's risk of reoffending and whether that risk can be safety managed in the community. Board members also refer to actuarial assessments and risk assessment tools in determining an offender's risk of reoffending. In all cases, the protection of the public is the paramount consideration.
Over the last three decades there has been continuous improvement in the public safety results that the board has achieved, reflecting the research that has continued to progress on risk assessment and the management of risk. In 1990 the success rate of offenders released by the board who had completed their sentence hovered around 70%. Today it's over 98%. Additionally, violent reoffending by offenders whom the board releases is extremely rare in that 99.9% of all offenders on day parole have not reoffended violently.
As much as we strive for excellence in our decision-making, unfortunately, predicting human behaviour is not, and likely never will be, an exact science. We recognize that when a serious incident occurs, we must seek answers and examine what happened so that we may identify necessary actions to prevent such incidents from reoccurring.
That is why, on February 3 of last year, the Parole Board and the Correctional Service of Canada convened a national joint board of investigation. It was chaired by two community members independent of the CSC and the Parole Board of Canada, both of whom are distinguished criminologists. The purpose of this investigation was to analyze the various aspects of the offender's release and supervision in the community and to make recommendations to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.
As Commissioner Kelly has already outlined, the board of investigation made five recommendations to the Correctional Service of Canada. The board of investigation had no recommendations for the Parole Board of Canada; however, I would like to speak to some of their findings.
They include the following: that the board members who made these decisions had the level of knowledge necessary to perform their tasks and met all of the board's training requirements; that our training plan for new board members is well structured and complete; that the board members correctly applied the law and clearly set out the reasons for the additional conditions they imposed in keeping with board policy; that the board members fully applied the risk assessment framework in accordance with policy in both the March and September decisions; that the board had at its disposal all the relevant and available information for sound decision-making; that board members were in compliance with the law and policy related to the decision-making; and that the September 2019 written decision did not fully reflect what occurred at the hearing, although this discrepancy was not identified as a factor in Ms. Levesque's death.
Importantly, the report acknowledges that the board members in this case explicitly prohibited the offender from visiting massage parlours for sexual purposes. While there are no recommendations for the board, as part of our ongoing commitment to continuous improvement and quality decision-making, the board has initiated refresher training sessions on decision writing.
In closing, I want to once again extend my sympathies to the family and friends of Marylène Levesque. I would like to say to them, to members of this committee and to the Canadian public that we take these incidents very seriously and that we are committed to the highest quality decision-making.
Thank you.