Ottawa, February 17, 2012 — The Honourable Vic Toews, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, today announced the re-appointment of Mr. Howard Sapers as the Correctional Investigator of Canada.
“I am pleased to re-appoint Mr. Sapers as the federal ombudsman for federally sentenced offenders, and I look forward to continue working with him,” said Minister Toews. “The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring a safe, fair and effective corrections system, and our priority is to ensure the safety of Canadians. Mr. Sapers will continue to bring resolution to individual offender complaints, identify issues of concern within the federal correctional system, and to propose fair and effective advice and solutions, as he has been doing for the past eight years.”
Since his initial appointment in February 2004, Mr. Sapers has shown an objective and attentive approach to responding to complaints and initiating special investigations as Correctional Investigator of Canada. As noted in his 2010-11 annual report, the Ombudsman and his staff responded to over 5,900 complaints from inmates, and spent a cumulative total of 376 days in penitentiaries conducting over 2,100 interviews.
The role of the Correctional Investigator as set out in Part III of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act is to be an ombudsman for federal offenders. The Correctional Investigator contributes to public safety by identifying issues of concern within the federal correctional system and proposing solutions to these issues in a timely, fair, and reasonable fashion. The Correctional Investigator makes recommendations that assist in the development and maintenance of an accountable, federal correctional system that is fair, humane, and effective. In this capacity, Mr. Sapers will continue to report annually to Parliament with recommendations aimed at improving corrections in Canada.
For more information on the Office, including Mr. Sapers’s biography, please visit: http://www.oci-bec.gc.ca.
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