Pressure continued to mount on Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino Thursday over what he knew about Paul Bernardo’s prison transfer last month.
Mendicino faced resignation calls from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre Wednesday after the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) revealed it alerted the minister’s office months before the notorious rapist and serial killer was moved to a medium-security prison in May.
“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,” Mendicino told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday.
“As I said yesterday in the House of Commons, I have taken the corrective steps to ensure that that does not happen again.”
CBC News was the first to report that Mendicino’s office knew about Bernardo’s transfer months before the minister did on Wednesday. The minister’s office told the outlet it did not tell Mendicino about Bernardo’s transfer until May 30 – the day after the move happened.
The CSC told Global News Wednesday it contacted Mendicino’s office by email on March 2 to inform them that Bernardo would be transferred from Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security penitentiary near Kingston, Ont. A transfer date hadn’t been determined at that time.
CSC then followed up with the minister’s office on May 25, telling them Bernardo would be transferred on May 29. News of the transfer made headlines on June 2.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office said staff were also alerted in March to the “possibility” that Bernardo would be transferred, and referred that information to Mendicino’s office when it was received.
Trudeau himself was briefed about the transfer on May 29, the day it took place, according to PMO spokesperson Alison Murphy.
“Instead of acting, the Prime Minister did nothing and left it in the hands of his most useless minister,” Poilievre said a tweet in response to the PMO’s statement Wednesday.
“This is a failure of leadership at the very top.”
Mendicino repeated Thursday that he has issued new directives to the CSC, which include factoring in victims’ rights and sensitivities into prison transfers, informing the minister directly of high-profile transfers and notifying families of inmate transfers to medium-security institutions.
“The current lay of the land is that there are protocols in place that do allow the Correctional Service of Canada to navigate around what are legitimate security concerns, what are legitimate privacy concerns where inmates are transferred to minimum security institutions, but not medium security institutions,” he said.
“We have taken the concrete steps to rectify that with this direction, and I will be working very closely with the CSC.”
Bernardo, 58, has been serving a life sentence for the kidnapping, torture and murder of teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy in the early 1990s. He and his then-wife Karla Homolka also killed her younger sister, Tammy Homolka.
News of the transfer caused an uproar.
Tim Danson, a lawyer for the victims’ families, said it was unacceptable that the prison service refused to answer questions about the reason for Bernardo’s move or details of his custody conditions, citing his privacy rights.
Mendicino said on June 5 the CSC would review the transfer. That review should be completed “within a few weeks,” the CSC told Global News on Tuesday.
A government official previously told Global News the CSC provided Mendicino with a heads-up of the transfer, but the decision was independent and since transfers are not typically public information, they were not in a position to comment before June 2.
Poilievre calls for Mendicino’s resignation
Poilievre claimed Wednesday that Mendicino has “lied” to Canadians too many times.
“These are too many lies,” he said. “It’s one lie too many. It is time for Marco Mendicino to resign.”
Poilievre also called for Trudeau to fire Mendicino if the public safety minister didn’t step down himself.
Mendicino told MPs sitting on the procedure and House affairs committee Thursday, where he was testifying on foreign interference, he’s focused on “one thing only, and that is doing my job to protect the safety and security of Canadians.”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters Wednesday that firing or demoting the minister is not the answer, saying he believes this was an example of the Liberal government being lousy when it comes to information-sharing.
He instead laid the blame at the feet of Trudeau and said there are legitimate concerns about how Mendicino has handled his portfolio, which includes the Liberals’ controversial gun legislation.
“It doesn’t look like he’s got his house in order,” Singh said. “I just don’t want to let the prime minister off the hook. I want to make it very clear the prime minister sets the tone.”
Bloc-Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet quipped Wednesday: “This government has a real bad habit of saying, ‘I didn’t know.’ If they know so little, what the hell are they doing there?”
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May told Global News Thursday that she doesn’t believe Mendicino should resign, but news of Bernardo’s transfer “should have rung alarm bells.”
“I don’t think it’s a hanging offense or a firing offense because they’re (politicians) not the decision makers … It does raise a red flag that our system should be much more sensitive to the rights of victims when a killer has committed unspeakable crimes that no Canadian will ever forget,” she said.
“It should not have been a quiet warning. Ministers should have been notified, but they’re not asked for their permission to do it. That’s the key point I want to make.”
— with files from Global News’ Sean Boynton