Public Safety committee  We had 20,000 contacts. I suppose there might have been one, but it wouldn't have been certainly our normal practice, and it wouldn't have been the standard response. Your suggestion that my staff are not front line and don't have that experience or that accountability I think is a wrongly made suggestion.

Public Safety committee  I don't know which cases he was referring to. There are probably about three dozen people in the system who might fit the profile of multiple and vexatious in terms of the number of complaints and the substance of their complaints. The Correctional Service has not produced any kind of a psychological profile of those offenders, so I'm not sure on what basis anybody would conclude about the mental health of those three dozen individuals.

Public Safety committee  The simple answer is no. There are 65 recommendations. There are implications in terms of implementing all of them, and there are some timing issues, but there's no particular obstacle that's stopping movement.

Public Safety committee  The only real legislative issue is the issue around the multiple levels and the recommendation to eliminate the second level, or the regional level, which I frankly don't have any issue with.

Public Safety committee  Frankly, we would have to deal with that on a case-by-case basis. When we have a multiple griever we may get to the point where.... I've done this twice, actually. I have written to an offender and put them on notice that we will only accept complaints from them in writing, or we've negotiated with them.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  I wouldn't mind making a comment or two. We also recognize that there are multiple grievers who take up a lot of time. There are also frivolous grievers. We get them, as I've mentioned. My contention is, and my experience demonstrates, that CSC has the tools they need to deal with them.

Public Safety committee  It doesn't take us a year. That's one way it differs.

Public Safety committee  The legislation that establishes my office, the CCRA, the same legislation that establishes the Correctional Service of Canada, gives me full discretion in how I deal with complaints. So I do have more flexibility, as we mentioned in our comments. The Correctional Service of Canada has established, in fact, a four-level system.

Public Safety committee  Well, if you take a look at any of the reports from my office, from 1973 forward, you'll see that we've passed comment on the ability or the inability of CSC to meet its legal requirement to have a fair and expeditious grievance process. That system is dysfunctional, and it's dysfunctional for many reasons.

Public Safety committee  You know, there's a problem with taking examples like, “My ice cream is too cold”, and “My light bulb is too hot”, because I can tell you that we deal with some cold ice cream and hot light bulb complaints as well. If you've been given your meal through a slot in the door of your cell, and you have a wooden popsicle stick, in effect, to eat your ice cream, which is a treat inside the institution—

Public Safety committee  —and you can't eat it because you can't get into it, it can generate a complaint, just like it can generate a complaint if you're sitting on the top bunk of a cell designed for one, and your head is mere inches away from a light bulb that you can't control, and can't turn on and off.

Public Safety committee  Yes. Last year we had about 27,000 or 28,000 complaints.

Public Safety committee  We received, as I said, 20,000 contacts through our 1-800 number. We did hundreds of days worth of interviews. We conducted probably about 1,300 full investigations last year, and another 900 on the use of force.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Dr. Zinger. I've long been concerned about CSC's ability to provide a fair, accessible, and expeditious grievance system, as required by the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. In fact, my office was established in 1973 and has commented on the dysfunction of the internal grievance process every year since.