By Rick Pusiak
The JoeMac committee resolution calling for the return of convicted cop killers Clinton Suzack and Peter Pennett to maximum-security prisons received all party support Wednesday in the Ontario legislature.
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Rick Bartolucci |
The resolution also calls for changes to the Correctional Services Canada policy of cascading prisoners to lower-security settings and ultimately freedom based not on individual risk assessments but on meeting numerical targets.
?I am proud to be a part of a legislature that believes in the importance of public safety,? Bartolucci told the House.
?Mr. Speaker, if Federal Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay won?t listen to the voice of JoeMac, if he won?t listen to the voice of our citizens, the Canadian Police Association, the Police Association of Ontario and the Office for Victims of Crime, hopefully the solicitor general will listen to the united voice of every province and territory in this country.?
Wednesday?s vote launched JoeMac?s ?National Drive for Justice? campaign to secure unanimous all party support for the committee resolution in each provincial and territorial legislature.
Public Safety and Security Minister Bob Runciman thanked Bartolucci for his dedication to the initiative and said the Eves government strongly supports the JoeMac resolution.
Runciman also announced the government has renamed the Public Safety Officer Survivor?s Tuition Fund the Constable Joe MacDonald Scholarship Fund.
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Bob Runciman |
Money in the fund pays for post-secondary education for survivors of public safety officers killed in the line of duty.
NDP Corrections Critic Peter Kormos told the legislature there is a point at which the interests of rehabilitation have to give way to the broader interest of public safety.
?We don?t do it in the interest of obtaining vengeance,? said Kormos.
?We do it in the interest of justice and the safety of the community. There is a point where the conduct of our fellow citizens becomes so indifferent to the safety of others?the perpetrators of this type of crime have to be isolated in the interest of protecting other people from what they might do yet to others.
Bartolucci chairs the Justice Over Everything: Making Appropriate Choices or JoeMac committee.
He said while the national drive is a daunting challenge the encouraging response of the Ontario legislature served as an example to legislatures across the country.
Suzack and Pennett were sentenced back in 1995 to life in prison for killing Sudbury Regional Police Const. Joe MacDonald. The officer was beaten and shot to death while on routine patrol early on the morning of Oct. 7, 1993.
The sentencing judge recommended the prisoners serve their entire sentence in maximum security.
The convicted murderers are both residing in so-called ?Club Fed? medium-security facilities.
