Public Safety committee  Thank you very much.

Public Safety committee  Again, it's one of those jobs that is the exact opposite of the rest of the public service. Our stress increases with years of service. This is one of the reasons why we push very hard on a pension to allow us to retire early, because these daily stressors that we have, they just

Public Safety committee  An average day for a correctional officer can be lots of things, and I think that's the part the Canadian public doesn't understand. At one moment during the day I could be stepping into a cell playing the police officer confiscating drugs from an inmate. At the next moment, the

Public Safety committee  That's right.

Public Safety committee  The statistics are pretty interesting. At 17%, in the study done in 1992, we were just behind post-war Vietnam veterans. There was a recent CBC report that put us actually higher, and I don't mean to disrespect my police colleagues and firefighters, but they said we were around 2

Public Safety committee  Just to add to what Gord is saying, we have been ignored for years. We just recently embarked on trying to break that stigma. In fact, Gord was a participant. We participated in a video encouraging our members to come forward and get on board with the R2MR program. This is reall

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the invitation to speak to this committee on this very important subject. Our unique workplace exacts an exceptionally heavy toll on front-line correctional officers, and we are pleased to finally have a forum to discuss measures to address the urgent issue of our m