Add your name below to help deliver historic justice reform.
Canada’s soft-on-crime policies and our country’s revolving-door justice system are failing victims, survivors and their families — even long after violent offenders and murderers are incarcerated.
In early summer 2023, the transfer of serial rapist and murderer Paul Bernardo from a maxiumum to a medium security prison stunned Canadians and heaped fresh trauma upon victims, families and communities.
Murderers and serial killers must remain in a maximum security prison until the end of their sentence — where they belong.
In response to this injustice — and others like it — I tabled Bill C-320, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (disclosure of information to victims).
This package of commons sense justice reforms will ensure that victims, survivors and their families are provided with timely and transparent disclosure regarding an incarcerated individual’s movement within the corrections system and their parole hearings. We'll also crack down on 'hush-hush' prisoner transfers from maximum to minimum security facilities.
On February 28, 2024, this made-in-Oshawa legislation was adopted by Members at Third Reading, earning rare all-party support. It's my hope that the Senate will move quickly to pass this Bill into law.
This legislation is a homegrown Oshawa-based effort supported by Lisa Freeman, our city's well-regarded victims rights advocate. As longtime residents of our city will recall, Lisa's late father, Roland Slingerland, an Oshawa caretaker and Royal Canadian Navy veteran was bludgeoned to death at a downtown Oshawa rooming house in the winter of 1991.
Though handed a life sentence, his axe-murderer Terrence Porter (already on parole at the time of this 1991 crime) was paroled during the COVID-19 pandemic and now enjoys an easy life at a low-security facility in western Canada with chef-catered meals — just a few miles away from the home of Lisa's sister. It's a despicable blow to Lisa's family and survivors like her.
Our work isn't done yet!
Please add your name in support of this made-in-Oshawa bill now.