Public Safety Committee on Jan. 25th, 2021

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay, so I'll take that as a “Yes, I'll look into it.” Thank you.

I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Khera.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you, Pam.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here.

Before I begin, I want to join my colleagues in giving my sincere condolences to the family members of Ms. Levesque.

I want to talk a bit about community supervision for a moment. Ms. Kelly, I know CSC is going to work to ensure that the model that was in place at the time of the murder will be changed so that CSC has complete responsibility for inmates in the community.

In the recent departmental results report for CSC, we saw the breakdown of funds allocated to your agency for community supervision versus for those who are incarcerated. The rate of inmates being released into the community has increased. Has the funding for community supervision kept pace with this increase?

[Anne Kelly]

Yes, the community expenditures have increased, from 10% in 2014-15 to over 11% in 2019-20.

The other thing that's important to know is that in terms of parole officers, we use a formula. I think I spoke about that the last time I appeared before the committee. It's called the community parole officer resource formula, and it determines how many parole officers we require. It takes into account the time they're available for work, the number of case management reports they must complete, and the supervision activities. In there is the frequency of contact. That depends on the type of offender. Some offenders are seen eight times a month; some are seen four times a month. It depends, so that's taken into consideration, as is the travel they need to do to meet with the offenders. This is reviewed each year. The unions are also part of that review—USJE.

The numbers have increased, yes.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have about 20 seconds.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You'll pass, okay.

Ms. Oades, are you reconnected? It looks like the lights went out on you.

[Jennifer Oades]

Yes, I was working in the dark there for a couple of seconds. All is good now.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay. Well, so do the rest of us.

Madame Michaud, you have two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Kelly, I would like to refer to the end of your statement, where you said that you were responsible for following due process and properly reviewing the circumstances specific to the employees directly involved in the supervision and oversight of this case; you added that the disciplinary process would help you determine if any additional accountability measures would be required.

I'm a little confused about the word “additional”. Are we to understand that the removal of supervision at Maison Painchaud is a measure of accountability that has been put in place? If not, I wonder about this disciplinary process. How is it being done? How long will it take? What accountability measures may be required?

[Anne Kelly]

Thank you for the question.

Before launching disciplinary investigations, we waited until the criminal investigation was complete and the board of inquiry had completed its review, to get a complete picture of the circumstances. We assigned the disciplinary investigations to a person external to the Correctional Service of Canada and to a retired person who had been a member of the service's management. Notices have already been given to the employees involved. These individuals will look at the context and chronology of events and then submit a report. It is expected that the report will be submitted in a little over a month.

Various accountability measures can be taken. Of course, there is reprimand and suspension, and this can go as far as dismissal.

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

Thank you for the clarifications.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Michaud.

Mr. Harris, you have two and a half minutes. Before I ask Mr. Harris, I don't know who the next Conservative or the next Liberal is, so if you could, indicate to the clerk who will be asking the next two questions. Then I think we'll bring it to a close at that point.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Of course, my heart pains for Madame Levesque and what happened to her. Her family and friends must be going through an awful lot just hearing about this again today.

Having said that, I'd like to ask Commissioner Kelly.... You were referring to all the documents that are supposed to be in the hands of CSC at the time of obtaining a prisoner, an offender in the federal corrections services. You said that you didn't have access to serious previous crimes that have been committed. Surely something as basic as the criminal record of an offender would be available to CSC. If not, it would be found pretty quickly.

[Anne Kelly]

Absolutely, we do request police reports, Crown documents, judges' comments. In this particular case, my understanding is that it was a historical offence. Although we had the police report, what was missing and what they thought was important was the trial transcript. What they recommended is that we define what a serious offence is in the context of historical serious offences, and then what types of documents are required for those specific cases. This is what we're going to do.

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

That sounds very confusing. A criminal record would list the crimes that a person has committed, and surely would be before the courts and would be available to CSC. If it wasn't there, obviously in considering what you're dealing with, you'd need to know that. I'm at a loss that you're not saying, “Yes, we do need the criminal records, and we get them.” Does that happen or does it not?

[Anne Kelly]

Yes, we had the criminal record and we had the police report, but what they found we didn't have was the trial transcript. It would have helped to have that. That's why they made the recommendation. That's why we're going to define “serious”, as well as have a list of documents that are required, and then establish a formal BF mechanism so that there's follow-up until the information is obtained or until it's in writing that it's unavailable.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Madame Stubbs, you have five minutes, please.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thanks, Chair. I have just a couple of questions. Then I think I'll turn it over to one of my colleagues.

I want to start by following up on the end of the questioning from my colleague Pierre Paul-Hus.

There are concerns about independence from the Correctional Service of Canada in terms of the board members who were involved in constructing the report because of the evidence, of course, that one of the co-chairs did contract work—and we're assuming not volunteer and unpaid contract work—for the Correctional Service of Canada in 2013. That was for “professional services”, in contract number 2024594, to be specific. I'd certainly welcome any follow-up information with regard to this, but that would be why these questions about independence, and therefore public confidence in the results, are being asked.

What seems really obvious to me is that there is a lack of information getting from one side to another for people to be able to make the best possible decisions with the best possible information. If either one of our witnesses would be game to give us a solution in terms of whether there is any legal remedy.... I'm assuming it's the case that we all agree this was a high-risk offender and this situation was unacceptable and resulted in a woman's death. We all, I'm assuming, share the same objective, which is that we want to stop that from happening. It's probably the case that if everybody had had all the information available to them, they may have made a different decision. Are there any legal remedies that could be proposed or implemented to fix that gap? Or, if there are resource issues, what can be done to fix them?

Also, on the issue of public notification, I wonder if there was any public notification about this release or if there was any legislation or regulations relative to public notification that either were or weren't followed. If that's totally irrelevant, do the witnesses have any suggestions for what could be a federal law to mandate public notification in this sort of situation?

[Jennifer Oades]

I don't mind starting with that. These are some good questions.

I think the last thing people want to see—and it happens very often in the world of criminal justice—is that we're going to change the law because of one person or one incident. It's not a good way to make policy, and it's not a good way to make law, but you certainly need to look at whether there are in fact underlying issues that then would make a case.

I can't think of anything at this point. I think that if this were happening a lot we'd have to give ourselves some serious thought about what we're doing and how we're doing it, but given our success rates and given the professionalism of parole officers, who for the most part do excellent supervision of offenders, I think this was just one of those really, really bad, sad, tragic cases where so much fell through the cracks on the supervision side.

We administer the law. We don't make the law. I can't think of anything that would have helped this case from a legal perspective, at least for the Parole Board. I'm not sure about the commissioner, but from my perspective, you need to think about these cases. You need to really look into them. I think they've done that, but I can't imagine coming up with some kind of law where I don't see anything systemic.

[Anne Kelly]

For me, I would say again that this was an absolutely tragic incident. It's not something you ever want to see, but I believe that our action plan and the measures we're going to put into place are actually going to lead to strengthened community supervision. The fact that we're going to one single model of community supervision for federal offenders in Canada is also going to be an important change.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mrs. Stubbs.

I believe it's Ms. Damoff for five minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Someone who did contract work seven years ago I would hardly qualify as an employee of the Correctional Service of Canada. I'm wondering if either of you, or both, could perhaps comment on the qualifications of the folks who did this investigation.

[Anne Kelly]

I can say that both individuals, who were external to CSC, are criminologists. They had support from a national investigator from CSC who is a former area director, as well as another person from CSC who was an assistant warden in operations. The board did look at the case preparation leading to the offender's release into the community. There was also one person from the Parole Board. The chairperson can speak to that.

[Jennifer Oades]

Yes, I did receive their CVs. Obviously, they're very distinguished in terms of their education. They're both criminologists. They're teachers, professors in criminology. They had a good understanding, I think, of our business, although you don't want anyone who's overly immersed in our work, and they weren't. One Parole Board employee was part of that team.