Public Safety committee  The major difference between correctional officers, parole officers, and program officers is that parole offices are the ones who develop what we call the correctional plan. They develop the plan that follows them from the beginning of their sentence to warrant expiry. The intera

Public Safety committee  “Dynamic security” is the information that we receive through various sources. If inmates are aware that something is going on, they may come to us, and then we share that information with the correctional manager or the correctional officers. It's part of trying to keep our inst

Public Safety committee  From a community perspective, through the deficit reduction action plan, another thing we had witnessed within the Correctional Service was a reduction in spending in the community. One of the issues that came up was the increase in workload at the community correctional centres,

Public Safety committee  That would be correct. One of the things we hear consistently from our members in the institutions primarily is about the ratios that were changed under the deficit reduction action plan. In a minimum security institution there's one parole officer for every 25 inmates. In a med

Public Safety committee  One of the things that I think is important for the committee to understand as well, and we were talking about gaps in terms of level of service for federal government employees in these positions, is that if you end up going off on long-term sick—and I'm talking about up to the

Public Safety committee  That is something, again, even within our own world of CSC, we've been saying for many years that people don't understand what we do in corrections, and in particular what parole officers do. As I mentioned earlier, I started off as a community parole officer, and the learning c

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. Again, it's such a unique job in everything that you do whether it's reading the file information, or dealing with offenders who have come from very unique circumstances. In the prairie region, we have a lot of aboriginal offenders in our institutions and in our commu

Public Safety committee  Yes, I certainly would support legislation that would address occupational injuries. I think one of the things that isn't realized by a lot of Canadians is the type of work we do, and the fact that this is a cumulative effect. As I mentioned in the presentation, this isn't just n

Public Safety committee  I would like to thank the members of this committee for allowing us this opportunity to speak with you today on this very important topic. I started my career with the Correctional Service of Canada back in 2001 as a community parole officer. I did not start my career like most