Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I'm here today to speak to how Bill C-587, the respecting families of murdered and brutalized persons act, would affect the Parole Board of Canada. As you're likely aware, the Parole Board of Canada is an independent administra

Justice committee  No, neither for us.

Justice committee  Generally, again, with respect to my opening comments, for us, the Parole Board doesn't set the eligibility periods. For us, in these circumstances, the board would see these offenders for full parole reviews at a later period of time.

Justice committee  I really can't comment on the origination of the bill because it's really the private member who sponsored it who would be able to provide more of the background. Again, not knowing the specific numbers, because of the large number of lifers we have—and the circumstances in the

Justice committee  We have over 7,800 registered victims who request information, who are registered with the board to receive information, about offenders under sentence.

Justice committee  For the total number of victims...?

Justice committee  I am not able to tell you actually, to be quite honest, because there are victims who are perhaps mentioned in police reports or various court documents who aren't coming forward, so it would be a difficult number to pull out. But we have over 22,000 contacts with victims a year

Justice committee  Yes, we share information with victims right now under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, so there are a number of different types of information, both discretionary and mandatory, that the board is required to share, similar to Correctional Service Canada. We work quit

Justice committee  As I mentioned before, the legislation says that victims can receive specific types of information. The process would be that a victim would register with the board or the Correctional Service of Canada to receive information about the offender's sentence—length of sentence, elig

Justice committee  Typically we look to provide as much notice as possible in advance of the hearing, because there is also the justice fund, which enables victims to be compensated for the travel that's required. In some instances, victims might be in other regions or other provinces, so we try to

Justice committee  We conducted a questionnaire back in 2007 about our services in general. When we looked at the results, we saw it came out fairly positive. Again our RCOs work with the victims one on one, so if there are any questions or issues that they have, they work specifically with our sta

Justice committee  In general, they had some questions about the legislation. There were instances where they weren't sure with regard to providing a statement and some of the limitations of the information sharing. For instance—again, this is part of the principles of natural justice—the legislati

Justice committee  Every case is very different, because there are different types of reviews the board would conduct, and whether or not a hearing is required is another factor that would be taken into consideration. Also, with respect to hearings and/or reviews, in certain circumstances the offen

Justice committee  Our board is an independent administrative tribunal. There's a very rigorous competitive process that prospective board members have to go through, and upon qualifying through that process they're appointed as Governor-in-Council appointees. We're responsible to the Canadian pu

Justice committee  I'm probably not in a position to debate the position of the board with respect to cabinet. It's probably beyond my ability in my role here at the committee.