Front Burner - The political fallout from Paul Bernardo’s prison transfer
Episode Date: June 20, 2023To the frustration and hurt of the families of Paul Bernardo’s victims, the notorious rapist and murderer has been moved from a maximum security prison to a medium security one. Conservatives are ...calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to intervene and move Bernardo back to a maximum security facility. They also want Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to resign over how his office handled information about the transfer. Ashley Burke is a senior reporter at the CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau. She’s been looking into how the Liberals handled Bernardo’s move and the controversy that has followed. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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contains descriptions of Paul Bernardo's crimes, including murder and sexual assault.
Hi, I'm Saroja Coelho.
A few weeks ago, the families of Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French had to face another horrible day. An
explosion of outrage met the news of Paul Bernardo's new home, a medium security prison in Quebec.
The news that Paul Bernardo would be moved from a maximum security prison to a medium security one
wasn't shared with the victim's families until the morning it happened. When they heard, their
lawyer said it was extremely upsetting.
Shock and disbelief.
And then when they were able to catch their breath and compose themselves,
they asked the obvious question, why? On what basis? What criteria?
Paul Bernardo, who is 58, is serving a life sentence.
He was convicted in 1995 of the kidnapping,
aggravated sexual assault, and first-degree murder
of teenagers Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French,
and he was declared a dangerous offender.
He had been serving time in Millhaven,
a maximum security prison in Bath, Ontario.
Correctional Service of Canada says it deemed Bernardo
could be safely managed in a medium security prison.
But exactly why he was transferred to La Macasa Institution in the Laurentians' region of Quebec
is a big question the victim's families still have.
And when I told them that they would not answer that question because of his privacy rights,
it was like putting a spike through their chest.
Now, Conservative leader Pierre Pogliere has been calling for Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino
to resign over the transfer and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step in and take action.
Trudeau has the ability to put Bernardo back in a maximum security penitentiary.
He has the power. All he needs is the will. He can do it today. If he doesn't...
But is it the role of politicians to involve themselves in the specifics of individual
criminals' incarceration? Today, Ashley Burke is with me. She is a senior reporter at the
CBC's Parliamentary Bureau, and we're going to talk about this case and the controversy
that it sparked in Ottawa.
Hi, Ashley.
Hi.
What was it about Paul Bernardo's crimes in the late 80s and the early 90s that terrified and raged Canadians so deeply? Well, initially before
police caught him, Paul Bernardo was referred to as the Scarborough Rapist. And many of his victims
were stalked after they got off the bus late at night and raped, some in their backyards,
in front of their home or in the bushes. And people were terrified, especially young girls.
Police didn't get very far at that time until a victim
was able to provide details of his face so they could make a computer composite image, and that's
when others came forward with Bernardo's name. DNA testing at that time, it was new, and police
took samples of Bernardo's DNA, but they were not convinced it was him. Eventually, Bernardo admitted
to the sexual assault of at least 14 women in southern
Ontario. And at one point, he faced 53 charges related to murder and rape. Paul Bernardo meets
Carla Homolka. She would eventually become his wife. She became a partner in his crimes.
And with her involvement, Bernardo raped and killed two teenage girls, 14-year-old Leslie
Mahaffey and 15-year-old Kristen French.
He kept saying, go through what we're going to do.
So I said, well, if we see a girl, we're going to stop.
I'm going to ask for directions. I'm going to try and get her over to the car.
And together, Homolka and Bernardo also raped and drugged Carla Homolka's 15-year-old sister.
She became sick while she was sedated and she died.
And eventually the police matched Bernardo's DNA to the Scarborough rapist.
So this is the moment where prosecutors make the deal with Carla Homolka.
What was so controversial about that to the public at the time?
It was incredibly controversial because they called it the deal with the devil.
I mean, it gained international media attention.
Carla Homolka pled guilty to manslaughter,
and in exchange, she was the main witness against Bernardo.
And her testimony played this instrumental role
in his dangerous offender designation and his life imprisonment.
But there was public outrage that Homolka only served 12 years
for the rape and murder of two teenage girls.
But by the time she testified, it could be argued that the prosecution didn't really need her.
They had video with graphic detail of the crimes.
A lawyer had discovered the incriminating tapes, but here's the catch.
The prosecution didn't know about them till long after they had cut their deal with Carla.
As evidence against Bernardo, they were as good as a smoking gun.
But they also exposed something sinister about Carla Homolka.
In many cases, she appeared to be enjoying herself
as she took her turn sexually assaulting the couple's young victims.
So eventually they end up in court. And Homolka testified for 17 days in the Bernardo trial.
That was in 1995.
He was found guilty of all the charges against him.
So two counts each of first-degree murder, kidnapping, forced confinement and aggravated sexual assault,
and one count of
committing an indignity to a human body. He was given life in prison. He was declared a dangerous
offender. Where was he then kept? Well, he spent most of his time in prison in the Kingston
Penitentiary up until it shut down in 2013. And I spoke to Mary Campbell. She's a former Director
General of Corrections and Criminal Justice at the Public Safety Canada. She retired in 2013 and she said she's visited a lot of penitentiaries and she saw
Bernardo back when he was there. And she told me that he was in a barred cell and that staff had
to put up a sheet of plexiglass over those bars because inmates were constantly throwing bodily
fluids at him, including feces, and the staff there had to keep cleaning it up.
And after that, almost two decades later,
Bernardo was transferred to another high-security prison,
Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ontario.
And he was called a no-contact offender,
which meant he spent most of his day in his cell.
He had one hour of solitary time in a common area cell,
and his yard time was also spent alone.
And then came this latest controversial move. On May 29th, Bernardo was quietly transferred to a medium security institution
in the Laurentian Mountains in Quebec, and the Correctional Service of Canada told the victim's
families for the first time just the morning it was happening, which their lawyers told me they
found very upsetting. And the department told me
that they were trying to protect the staff that were escorting Bernardo because people knew where
he was detained. But the lawyer representing the victim's families argues that it meant that they
couldn't try and stop the transfer because it was frankly too late at that time.
Well, meanwhile, even though that moment might have been very quiet since then, I feel like the news cycle has been really wrapped around this story.
But let's look for a minute about what this means, the difference between maximum security and medium security.
Can you explain that?
Well, experts that I spoke to said that when it comes to the difference of an offender escaping, of the risk
to the public, that there's virtually no difference. He's still in a prison with a concrete wall and
razor wire and staff watching every move. But the difference between the two is how much time an
offender can move around outside of their cell. And Campbell said that Bernardo might not spend
as much time in a cell alone. He won't be in his cell, you know, 23 hours a day.
He will be out and possibly associating with other inmates, possibly in some group therapy sessions.
But in terms of safety and, you know, comforts of life, believe me, lock yourself in your unrenovated bathroom for, you know, a year or two and you'll get a taste of what it's like.
And Campbell said that the goal of the modern day system is not to punish people more.
That's what used to happen back in the 1800s and Western democracies really moved away from that.
She said that the punishment is supposed to be the sentence itself.
from that, she said that the punishment is supposed to be the sentence itself, and that this facility Bernardo's now at is a place that violent sex offenders are often transferred to because it has
specialized programs for them. Is there any chance that he would get moved again, say sometime in the
future, to minimum security or even get parole? Well, the victim's families don't want to see that
happen, and they have been adamant that Bernardo should never be let out or transferred, even out of maximum security prison.
And since Bernardo is considered a dangerous offender, experts say that it's unlikely that he ever will be released.
But he has been eligible for parole for more than three years.
And when he first attempted to get parole back in 2018, the board rejected it in just 30 minutes.
Both mothers had the same message that Bernardo needs to spend the rest of
his life in jail. One of the women he sexually assaulted as a Scarborough rapist was there too.
She says the attack left her a shell of her former self. Bernardo had nothing to say to any of them.
There's never been an apology. When he was denied parole in 2021, Kristen French's mother, Donna, she testified and she said that time doesn't heal the pain and that the pain itself is a life sentence to her family.
But under the current legislation, Bernardo is eligible for parole every two years and the families can go and give victim impact statements.
Meanwhile, what you've described is that medium security is still very secure and it's extremely unlikely that he will ever get out if I'm understanding what you've described is that medium security is still very secure. And it's extremely unlikely that he will ever get out, if I'm understanding what you just described.
So why then are people still upset about the decision to move him?
Well, they're upset because he's one of the most high-profile serial killers and rapists in Canadian history.
He committed horrendous crimes, and people feel strongly about that.
And many feel he should spend his entire life in maximum security prison
and some people want to see him suffer.
The Minister of Public Safety, Marco Mendicino himself,
called this decision to transfer him,
quote, shocking and incomprehensible.
But we learned that Mendicino shouldn't have been shocked
because his office says it knew about the transfer
three months in advance.
And the Correctional Service of Canada said
it followed the proper protocol in place for
high-profile offenders like him.
And they sent an email on March 2nd to Mendocino's office about that transfer and again in May.
But Mendocino maintains that his staff didn't tell him for three months until the day after
the transfer happened.
Look, it is very clear that I should have been briefed at the time.
And that is something that I made abundantly clear to my staff.
And as I said yesterday in the House of Commons, I have taken the corrective steps to ensure that that does not happen again.
And that has created a political firestorm on Parliament Hill that grew when it came out that the Prime Minister's office also confirmed that it knew back in March about the possibility of Bernardo being transferred. And Justin Trudeau's office
said it briefed the Prime Minister the day the transfer happened, which Mendocino says
was before that he knew about it. And he is the minister who is responsible. So if that's true,
and his staff did keep him in the dark for close to nearly 90 days, that raised a lot of questions
about what else he might not know and also how his office is operating.
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So what you're describing is a situation where the families of the victims are saying
that they want the liberals to do whatever it takes to get Bernardo back into maximum security.
Conservative leader Pierre Pallievre is also saying the same thing,
but is that even possible? Well, the Conservatives say that the minister could issue something
called an order in council, which essentially is a government order that a minister can make
who's in charge, and it has to be signed by the governor general. Or the official opposition says
Mendicino could issue something called a ministerial directive that would order all high
profile and dangerous offenders like Bernardo that they must spend their entire sentence in a maximum security prison.
Now Mendicino said that he's waiting for a review into Bernardo's transfer for it to be completed
in the next few weeks or so before deciding if any changes are needed but amid calls for his
resignation Mendicino announced last week that he would order a different ministerial directive
that would make it mandatory that he be notified directly of all high-profile offender transfers
and that victims' families must also be notified in advance.
Right now, victims' families only have to be told if an offender is transferred to a minimum security prison, not a medium one.
We are going to support them. We're going to make sure that victims'
rights are at the center of these decisions and that going forward, victims are notified in a timely manner before those decisions are taken. But there are also questions around
why didn't Mendocino's office do this before the transfer happened in the first place?
Do we really see it as the role of politicians to decide where inmates serve their sentences?
Isn't there a process that is intentionally separate from politics?
Well, Mendicino and those who have come to as a defense from the Liberal Party argue that politicians shouldn't be meddling in decisions like this.
And that they say it would be considered political interference and that it would be inappropriate to intervene
in something like this. Well, your reporting showed that Minister Mendicino's staff knew
about Bernardo's transfer months before, as you described. So why didn't they inform the minister?
And how does this whole thing reflect on his leadership? You know, I've heard a lot of people
ask me and I've heard people speculate on Parliament Hill, perhaps his staff are younger
and they didn't grow up at a time when Paul Bernardo was in the news. Perhaps they didn't know who he was. I've directly asked the
office that. They have assured me they say that they all did know who Bernardo was. And the
explanation that they gave me was that they were internally exploring options to figure out if the
transfer decision could be changed or not. And they said that they learned that the minister did not have the power
over offenders' transfers and couldn't change this decision.
So they say there wasn't anything he could have done anyways
and that they chose to brief him when they did,
which they say was a day after it happened.
What's important is that these issues are identified and they're corrected.
And so that is what I have done with my team
to be sure that there is no further breakdown in information flow. It is important that I get those.
on Wednesday. Then his office called that off. And then the next day, he had to testify at a committee on foreign interference at where he did not escape questions on this. And afterwards,
he said he would take reporters' questions. He then gave a brief statement and tried to
walk away and brush off reporters again.
And I'll be happy to take more questions.
How is it? How is it? And we have questions.
How is it? How is it?
And we have questions.
Come on.
Why didn't your staff tell you what's the explanation?
How is it?
Which led to this really dramatic scene on the Hill as this large group of journalists,
including myself, you know, followed him to try and get some answers because he wasn't
offering any or taking any journalist questions.
Oh, it was quite, it was quite the scene.
He spun on his heel and this, this group of journalists just follow him and surround him again and force the question forward.
But if we come back to the ask here, this returning of a prisoner to maximum security, politicians being involved in where a prisoner spends their time.
Have there been any other cases that provide an example of something like that in the past?
Well, there was one conservative MP in the House last week who suggested that their party was successful in doing that in the past? Well, there was one Conservative MP in the House
last week who suggested that their party was successful in doing that in the past.
In 2013, the Conservative government took responsibility when we were faced with exactly
the same issue. Paul Bernardo was to be transferred to medium security prison and
the Conservative government of the day said no. And they suggested that the public safety minister at that time, Stephen Blaney, that he stopped Bernardo from being transferred to a medium security prison.
But news stories at that time, we went and dug them up, they suggest that when the Kingston Penitentiary was closing down,
that Blaney asked if Bernardo would be transferred to a medium security prison and received assurances that there were no plans to do so.
medium security prison and received assurances that there were no plans to do so. So that suggests that Bernardo didn't meet the requirements at the time, not that the public safety minister
intervened in some way and blocked that move.
So we have a number of things going on here. One of the big questions at the core of this is what the government actually knows and when they get involved.
So this is not the first time that we have heard that someone from the liberal government is talking about a situation where bureaucrats knew something important, but the political leadership did not.
example that I'm thinking of is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister Mendocino saying that they only learned about allegations about the Chinese government targeting the family members
of a sitting MP from the newspaper. So they open the newspaper, that's the first time they're
reading about it, that they didn't learn about it from CSIS. So are you seeing a pattern there?
Yeah, and that example you provided is just one of those that we've seen in the recent months
that have raised questions around the flow of information and how the government deals with it.
And the opposition parties say that this is part of a larger problem.
The NDP's leader Jagmeet Singh calls this Bernardo case yet another example of a cabinet minister
saying that they failed to receive information on an important file.
There's a serious problem of communication in this Liberal government.
They're not reading emails.
They're not getting briefings properly.
They're not actually acting on information that their ministry has.
And the minister is claiming that he doesn't actually have the information.
This is a serious problem.
In April, International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan said that he missed emails
that may have alerted him that a senator was
distributing unauthorized travel documents. There was also this report that found Menachino's
predecessor, Bill Blair, didn't get a key memo from CSIS on foreign interference. And opposition
parties argue that the Trudeau government does have an issue when it comes to how information
flows. And the Bloc Quebecois leader, Yves-François Blanchet, said that the government has, quote,
I believe that this government has a real, real bad habit of saying,
I didn't know. They know so little. What the hell are they doing there?
I want to look at the way that wider Canada is responding. And I'm wondering then how Conservatives might be tapping into this case to take aim at the Liberal government and their position on crime.
Well, yeah, the Conservatives leader, Pierre Palliev, calls Bernardo, quote, one of the most evil monsters in Canadian history.
And he put out a statement saying that Bernardo should rot in a maximum security prison for the rest of his life.
No killer of this type should ever be released from maximum security.
In fact, he should leave in a coffin.
Now, he's accused Mendicino and the prime minister
of refusing to take any responsibility on this transfer.
And he said that the government's plan on putting forward a bill
to require all mass murderers and dangerous offenders
must remain in maximum security prisons.
We encourage all members of the public, every Canadian who cares about justice,
to call Trudeau's office and urge him to have his caucus unanimously adopt this common-sense conservative bill
to keep mass murderers in maximum security penitentiaries.
This is all part of the Conservatives' efforts to try and show that they're tough on crime versus the Liberals, who they argue are soft on crime. So you're seeing
this latest chapter of that unfold. Well, this seems like a relatively procedural move, the
moving of someone from maximum to medium security facility. Of course, there's a massive history
here and the weight that Paul Bernardo holds in the Canadian mind. But are you seeing
an opportunity or maybe even opportunism on the part of politicians, particularly the Conservative
Party, to be able to score political points with the Canadian public? Well, the government's house
leader, Mark Holland, who calls Bernardo's crimes despicable and unspeakable, he accuses the
Conservatives of unfairly politicizing Canada's correctional services and that it can't be interfered with politically. But the assertion that this is a decision of the government is false
and it in fact is dangerous. The decision to transfer inmates is a decision of Correctional
Services Canada. The independence of our correctional service has been a foundation
of our country for a very long time. Having a mature conversation about how we respect that
and respect victims is what I think Canadians expect.
It feels like we are headed into a conversation
about what our penitentiary or our penal system intends to do.
And that's an interesting piece that seems to be coming up.
I'm wondering if you're hearing that as well.
I think the conversation right now with the government
and what they've said publicly is that there needs to be a more victim-centric approach. And certainly at the heart of this,
you have victims' families who didn't see this coming. They found out the morning that it
happened, and then they got a call after it happened. And they feel that that's not fair,
that they should have known in advance, and that they should have some sort of say in that decision.
And it's something that the Victims' Ombudsman for Crimes has told us that they have been calling for
for more than a decade now and that they want addressed.
Ashley, this is a really difficult story to tell. I'm really grateful for your time today.
Thanks for having me.
And that's it for this edition of Front Burner.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
I'm Saroja Coelho. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.