Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to everyone for being here. I know that victims' families are watching at home—Marcia, Laura and Tennille—and I hope we get some resolution today for you, as I know how retraumatized you've been.
I want to read this into the record, because I think it's really important:
Everyone here, everyone in this city, everyone in this province, everyone in this country knows that you are a dangerous offender....
The behavioural restraint that you require is jail. You require it, in my view, for the rest of your natural life.... You are a sexually sadistic psychopath. The likelihood of you being treated is remote in the extreme.
That is from Justice LeSage, who sentenced Paul Bernardo. Those are his words.
When I came into this committee today, a reporter stopped me and asked me if we believe that in our justice system we should be focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment. I asked that reporter to repeat back to me what the sentencing judge said about Bernardo. Can he ever be rehabilitated? The answer is no.
What we're here to do today is discuss what this is. I want to talk about the amendment that Ms. O'Connell has put forward. I think adding more witnesses to the list is a great idea, because the point of the motion put forward by my colleague Mr. Caputo is to figure out how and why this secret transfer of Canada's most sadistic and notorious rapist and killer happened. If we don't understand how and why, we can't fix it.
An article came out March 9 from the CBC: “Corrections chief briefed Mendicino's chief of staff weeks before Bernardo's prison transfer”. In fact, the office was notified seven times.
To Ms. O'Connell's point about how in years gone by never have we seen such gross incompetence, this isn't necessarily always about policy and legislation. This is about incompetent people who didn't do their jobs. That's what we have to delve into here to make sure this never happens again.