Luka Magnotta transfer under scrutiny as MPs vote to call officials

The head of Canada’s correctional services will face questions over notorious killer Luka Magnotta’s prison transfer, MPs decided in a testy committee meeting Monday.

MPs on the House of Commons public safety committee debated for two hours whether to study the transfer of Magnotta to medium-security facility La Macaza in August 2022, a move that only recently made headlines.

Global News first reported last week that Correctional Service Canada (CSC) confirmed it informed former public safety minister Marco Mendicino’s office in May 2022 of Magnotta’s impending transfer, and then again when the transfer date was set in August 2022.

It’s not clear when, or if, Mendicino himself was notified about it.

Magnotta – whose birth name is Eric Newman – is serving an indeterminate life sentence after he was found guilty in 2014 of murdering international student Jun Lin. He admitted to killing Lin, dismembering him and mailing his body parts to political parties and schools.

CSC Commissioner Anne Kelly and the warden of La Macaza are among the witnesses who will appear at the committee in the near future to speak on the matter.

Conservatives presented a motion calling on Kelly, the warden and several other officials, including Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, to testify at more than six meetings on the transfer.

However, the Bloc Québécois motion that was eventually adopted by the committee, with Liberal support, reduced the list of witnesses and narrowed the request to one meeting. That came after the Liberals introduced a motion adding more witnesses to the Tories’ list, and everyone but the Bloc supported it.

“It’s ironic the Liberals initially said they wanted to add witnesses, and now they are in support of rejecting the very witnesses they wanted to add,” Conservative MP Frank Caputo said.

“That is utter hypocrisy.”

Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell, who moved the initial motion to add more witnesses, also accused the Tories of “hypocrisy,” bringing up statistics of inmate transfers during their time in government.

“Let’s bring back Correctional Services Canada, who at committee before testified that the minister can not step in, just as Stephen Harper did not step in and change the over 300 reclassifications from maximum to medium,” she said.

“We’re happy to have that conversation again, because Conservatives, they don’t want to be confused by the truth.”

Magnotta’s move to La Macaza near Montreal from a maximum-security prison in eastern Quebec happened a year before the transfer of serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo to the same institution.

Bernardo has been serving a life sentence for the kidnappings, tortures and murders 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.

Bernardo had been living out his sentence in maximum-security prisons until his transfer, which ignited a political firestorm.

CSC revealed it had first notified Mendicino’s office about the possibility of a transfer in early March, and then again in late May after a date for the move had been set.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was briefed on May 29, the day the transfer took place, while Mendicino has said he found out the next day.

Part of the controversy around Bernardo surrounded the notification of the victims’ families; Tim Danson, the lawyer representing the families of French and Mahaffy, previously told Global News he only learned about this transfer after it happened.

When asked by Global News if the Li family was informed of Magnotta’s transfer last Tuesday, CSC said victims “receive timely notification on matters such as transfers.”

Kelly told MPs on the public safety committee last November that the CSC had begun a review of its victim services policies.

The CSC said decisions related to reclassifications are “very thorough” and are only made when an offender “can be safely managed in a medium-security facility.”

The facility where Magnotta and Bernardo are now serving their sentences has a “well-defined perimeter with high fences, is strictly guarded 24/7 and is patrolled by armed officers,” it said.

Shane Martinez, a criminal lawyer and adjunct professor of prison law at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, told Global News March 5 that CSC makes its decisions “carefully” and considers factors such as “escape risk” and danger to public safety.

“Some people might look at this move to medium security and say … ‘The next step is that (Magnotta is) going to be released on parole. He’s going to be back in the community.’ Well, that’s simply not going to happen,” Martinez said.

He added that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to everyone, even the “worst of the worst,” like Magnotta.

“He’s an appropriate recipient of public anger and that’s understandably justified. But what’s difficult here is when politicians seize on this political opportunity to not explain how the system works,” Martinez said.

— with files from Global News’ Touria Izri

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