QUESTION PERIOD — Public Safety
Costs of Legal Proceedings
June 21, 2023
Senator Gold, I will put on the record part of a Montreal Gazette article dated August 13, 2021. It concerns the court case brought by the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy to obtain information from the Parole Board of Canada and Correctional Service Canada as they prepared for Paul Bernardo’s parole hearings. It states:
As legal victor, the government wanted the families to pay its legal costs for fighting for the killer’s privacy — in a lump sum of $19,142.27.
Lawyers for the government argued the families weren’t pursuing public interest litigation but a personal pursuit: “Their personal motivation is to use the information sought to make statements to the parole board,” the government agreed.
I have a hard time even talking about this, leader. It is so shameful and so horrific that these families have been tortured by this government.
Leader, your government wanted these families to pay the government’s legal bills because it was personal to them. It was personal to them that their daughters had been tortured, raped and murdered.
The judge later reduced the amount. Seeking the amount of costs in the first place, leader, was wrong, was it not?
Thank you for raising this again, Senator Plett. It is difficult to understand the pain that the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy must have felt. We continue to suffer with them as they are reliving the tragedy that befell them.
Positions that the government may have taken in the past in the face of litigation are not something that I’m in a position to comment upon. However, as the Representative of the Government of Canada in the Senate, I understand the preoccupation of those and I certainly will make inquiries to better understand the circumstances.
