Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here this afternoon.
These hearings are important as we try to make sense of a horrible decision that I think we can all agree should not have been taken. This committee can come forward with recommendations to see that this type of decision never happens again.
The name “Paul Bernardo” is synonymous with evil in our community, and this decision has had the effect of revictimizing the families, as they've had to relive this horrific memory because of, I would suggest, the uncompassionate and short-sighted process from the Correctional Services of Canada with regard to the transferring of inmates.
The impacts of this decision and these horrific crimes were felt most in our community, and in that of my colleague as well, here in Niagara, and it led to friends of Kristen French contacting my office to see if ways could be found to ensure that this type of decision be reversed and never happen again.
That led to my establishment and creation of a private member's bill, Bill C-342, which would require that all court-ordered dangerous offenders and mass murderers be permanently assigned a maximum-security classification. It would also repeal the Liberals' “least restrictive environment” standard for assigning inmates to prisons and restore the language of “necessary restrictions” that the previous Conservative government put in place.
My Conservative colleague, MP Généreux, also has a private member's bill that is coming forward to be debated quite soon. It's Bill C-351. That will amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to require that inmates who have been found to be dangerous offenders or convicted of more than one first-degree murder be assigned a security classification of “maximum” and confined in a maximum-security penitentiary or area in a penitentiary.
Those are actions that we can take. I hope, with the support of all colleagues in the House, that those types of legislation can come forward and be implemented.
First I'd like to go to Mr. Wilkins, if I could.
Correctional Service of Canada's report on the transfer of Paul Bernardo from maximum security to medium security revealed that he had integrated for just four months before his transfer was approved, after refusing to integrate with the general population for almost 30 years. He was denied a transfer earlier in the year, and one of the explicit reasons for that denial was that he was not fully integrated. In fact, the review committee's main concern about the transfer was that there was no detailed rationale for how the period of four months was sufficient to begin to reassess institutional adjustment.
Mr. Wilkins, in your experience, have you seen this type of transfer occur before, with such a short period of integration of only four months?
