Mr. Speaker, like others before me I want to express my personal sympathy to the family of Tori Stafford. It must be very difficult for them to listen to this debate and what has gone on before, because in some respects it is reliving what is every parent's most horrific nightmare.
The government understands the concerns Canadians have with respect to ensuring safety in our communities. We want to assure Canadians on all sides of this debate that the protection of society is the paramount consideration for our government, and that public safety is at the forefront of all decisions regarding the classification and transfer of offenders.
Correctional Service Canada is recognized as a leader in the international corrections community and has a long-standing history of co-operating with national and international partners in the stabilization and reconstruction of foreign criminal justice systems. It is not only a nationally recognized good system, but an internationally recognized good system.
Correctional Service Canada regularly assesses all the risks presented by all offenders, to ensure they are placed in the appropriate location. The various considerations are codified in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act under the criteria for the selection of the penitentiary, as follows:
the Service shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that the penitentiary in which they are confined is one that provides them with an environment that contains only the necessary restrictions, taking into account
(a) the degree and kind of custody and control necessary for
(i) the safety of the public,
(ii) the safety of that person and other persons in the penitentiary, and
(iii) the security of the penitentiary;
It goes on to list several other criteria. Those are the criteria Correctional Service Canada uses for anybody coming into the facility who has to be classified as maximum, medium or minimum, as well as for their ongoing time in the facility, whether for a reclassification or a transfer to another institution.
Canadians need to keep in mind that these are not willy-nilly classifications, and that there are guidelines and policies that go with the consideration when it comes to the transfer or classification of a prisoner.
Immediately after sentencing, CSC officials begin a comprehensive assessment process to identify immediate security needs and critical concerns in accordance with the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. The critical factors taken into consideration determine the security level and placement of an offender, and include institutional adjustment, escape risk and risk to public safety. Furthermore, the custody rating scale, an actuarial tool, is also used to assist in assigning the most appropriate initial security classification for the penitentiary placement of an offender.
The aboriginal social history must also be taken into consideration during all risk assessments. Based upon the entire risk assessment, a placement decision is made by CSC.
At this point, I hope I have conveyed that this is a very rigorous process with respect to both the classification of an individual as maximum, minimum or medium, and also to the facility in which the person will be placed.
Based upon their motion today, Conservatives want to simply have the minister intervene and in effect toss that entire decision. This would put the minister in a position of having to make what is essentially a political decision. The Conservative motion asks the minister to ignore the evidence that supports the transfer to this institution and substitute his own decision based upon a set of facts that everyone in this room agrees are egregious in the extreme.
There is a review process that has been triggered by the collective outrage. I say “collective” because it is on both sides of the aisle. The commissioner came before the public safety committee last week. She was originally scheduled to talk about her mandate. However, this set of facts effectively overwhelmed her appearance there. Under repetitive and I would say occasionally even aggressive questioning by the Conservatives, she said at the end of her testimony, “I just want to be clear. This was a tragedy that changed many lives forever. I have been asked to do a review. I am committed to doing a review of the case.”
That is the proper procedure. If in fact the minister is faced with what we collectively agree is an egregious set of facts that causes questions among parliamentarians and Canadians in general, then he does not simply say that he does not like the decision and that he is going to change it. Rather, he asks the commissioner to review the file and see that proper practices were followed.
He has asked the commissioner to do just that. She repeated that over and over again, yet the members from the Conservative Party were not satisfied with that answer. They simply wanted an arbitrary decision to be made by the minister at that point. In fact, they want the minister to make a decision that is unilateral, fact-free and process-free, because the minister cannot undertake the process that I have outlined here. Therefore, they are asking him to do exactly what they would not do while in government.
The minister cannot tell the commissioner of CSC how to manage individual offenders, just as he cannot tell the commissioner of the RCMP who to arrest. My friend, the member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, said as much when he was the public safety minister. He also said that he did not control the security classification of individual prisoners. In 2014, he was right. Now, in 2018, on the opposite side of the aisle, he wishes for the rest of us to do exactly the opposite of what he was advising four years ago.
Benjamin Perrin, a former staffer in Mr. Harper's office, recently tweeted, “This may be unpopular to voice, but I’m concerned with politicians being the ones who decide how any particular individual offender is treated.”
Not only is it unwise to micromanage offenders, it is also illegal. No minister can tell a commissioner how to manage individual offenders, any more than he or she can tell the RCMP who to arrest. There is a wall between the commissioner and the minister, and it is founded on good logic, good law and common sense. The minister makes the policy, and the commissioner executes the policy.
I could have been more persuaded to support the motion had it not been framed in the lexicon of, “We do not care what the decision is, but make the decision now. Reverse the decision of the commissioner”, but rather, “This is an egregious set of facts. Please have the commissioner review the facts and see that the policies were followed. If these facts and the facts in other cases lead you to make a change in policy, so be it.” That should be the way proper law and policies are followed.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to support this motion. I wish the phrasing of the motion had been a little more thoughtful. However, we have what we have.