It’s been touted as a life-saving tool for victims of domestic violence but Global News has learned the Conservative government is completely eliminating its electronic monitoring program for convicted offenders.
Over the next few months, the government will phase the system out after saying it’s flawed.
“It’s unreliable and there are some inaccuracies,” Justice Minister Heather Stefanson said in a one-on-one interview with Global News. “We as a government were elected by Manitobans to invest in programs that work in the areas of justice and public safety. This is not one of those programs.”
While the province wouldn’t give a date for the changes it plans to eliminate their use within months.
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It means bracelets will no longer be a tool the court can use to monitor the movements of high risk car thieves, violent domestic offenders, people on bail or parolees as a condition of their release.
“This tool, as it is right now, will be phased out over the course of the next few months,” Stefanson said.
Electronic monitoring was brought in by the NDP government in 2008 as a pilot project to track high-risk car thieves. It was expanded in 2012 to include domestic violence offenders. In 2015 the NDP ordered a review of that program, which the conservatives used in the decision to eliminate the program.
“This is one tool that is used, but it’s a very small tool that’s used and it’s proven to have reliability and accuracy issues,” she repeated.
Before their 2016 election win the Conservatives were relentless in championing and even pushing for the expansion of the program, with statements going back nearly a decade.
In 2015, after the deaths of Camille Runke and Selena Keeper, the Conservatives pushed even harder for the expansion of the program.
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Then Justice Critic Kelvin Goertzen repeatedly hammered the NDP in the legislature:
“In the case of domestic violence, I think (electronic monitoring) is the kind of technology that would be most important,” Goertzen said in 2015. “We simply cannot wait for something to be perfect.”
Stefanson said there are a number of other ways offenders are currently monitored, including through “intense supervision” by police and probation officers.
“This will be no means reduce the safety of (victims) or (a victim’s) family or Manitobans at all,” Stefanson said.
Currently, seven offenders are outfitted with electronic ankle bracelets. Four car thieves and three domestic violence offenders.
The government said those offenders will be looked at on a case-by-case basis and those anklets could be removed before their sentence is up.
Past Cases
In 2015, Camille Runke was shot dead by her ex-husband.
She had a protection order against her estranged husband and had almost regular contact with Winnipeg police.
But when she was shot at close range with a shotgun outside her work on Oct. 30, 2015, her name was added to a long list of women killed every year in Canada by someone they used to love.
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After her death, her sister Maddie Laberge, fought to push for an expansion of the electronic monitoring program, saying it could have saved her sister’s life.
“I don’t want to cry about it anymore,” Maddie Laberge said just days after her Runke’s death. “I want a solution, lets make her death mean something.”
“If the accused is indeed stalking the victim, the ankle bracelet could almost certainly provide evidence if the abuse continues,” said Laberge, “On the other hand, if the accused is innocent, the benefit for them is that they can feel secure in the fact that they may be cleared of such offences.”
WATCH: Camille Runke’s family, friends speak in 2015 after her death
That same year, Selena Keeper was beaten to death.
Keeper had been assaulted multiple times in the moments leading up to her death. Her former boyfriend, Ray William Everett, was charged with second degree murder.
READ MORE: Woman killed in Winnipeg had sought protection order
Five months before the assault that led to Keeper’s death, she was denied a protection order against Everett.
File from the Canadian Press