Public Safety committee  Thank you very much for the welcome. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to be with you today. My name is Jay Pyke. As noted, I'm the warden of Kingston Penitentiary, or KP, as we refer to it most often down here. Joining me today is Ms. Melinda MacCrimmon. She's an experience

Public Safety committee  I have.

Public Safety committee  I think the principles of the proposed bill are excellent in terms of some of the challenges we face that I've just referred to. I may ask you to repeat the second part of the question, and I'm sorry for that.

Public Safety committee  I think, quite frankly, it will complement. It's not overreaching. I don't see it having a large impact overall. I think it will significantly help us in terms of becoming more efficient with weighing out the true legitimate complaints that are brought forward. Frankly, we're sp

Public Safety committee  I feel that it would reduce the strain on the process. As for reducing their ability to submit vexatious or frivolous complaints, I think it would be a tool for doing that. How would we operationalize it in the bill? What lies at the root of the problem, other than a need to clog

Public Safety committee  I think it would for the majority of offenders. But we're speaking of a small percentage of offenders. For those individuals whose responses have been subject to time delays, hearing something of this nature would be positively interpreted. They would know that the onus would be

Public Safety committee  Thank you. No. Quite frankly, two of them are very litigious individuals. They are not lower functioning; they are of average functioning, and I would argue that one is probably mildly above-average functioning. They are not representing anybody else. They really use this as a m

Public Safety committee  I can't speak exclusively to the process because I don't have an operational process yet. I don't have something from a commissioner's directive to direct me to what the process would look like. I certainly have looked at it from the same proposal as you. It would allow us the m

Public Safety committee  That's correct.

Public Safety committee  I have, on very limited occasions. What I'll say is that there's a lot of work that goes into naming somebody as a vexatious or frivolous complainant. I have to, one, basically answer the complaint or the grievance, and then, two, justify why it is that I am identifying this as a

Public Safety committee  Thank you for recognizing that. I am proud of my staff. I'm very partial to the public service values they demonstrate daily. I guess that would be my first response. As the warden, I like to believe we follow the public service values in essence, in principle, and in practice.

Public Safety committee  I'm actually quite fine with the six-month timeframe. I think it's another check and balance for us as well. It allows us to see whether what we have tried to put in place with these individuals has had any kind of impact, and whether it has worked. It allows us to keep track so

Public Safety committee  Yes, I think we'd definitely have to operationalize at the institutional level. And I'm sorry I keep saying operationalize, but I mean in no uncertain terms, through a commissioner's directive, we would have to know the plan and the parameters around the plan. We use the plan a l

Public Safety committee  Thank you. Again, I'm speaking in hypotheticals somewhat here, because I don't have in front of me what it would actually look like. I do understand the principle, which is that all complaints that would be brought forward would be heard, related to the plan. I'm sorry that I'm

Public Safety committee  It's because, quite frankly, from the warden's perspective, I'm the first-level grievance. So for my office, it does save considerable time, because I'm not reviewing the first-level grievance procedures from there on out. The plan would be a key part of it in terms of how we w