2024-25 Departmental Plan - Operating Context

From: Parole Board of Canada

The Parole Board of Canada (PBC) is an independent administrative tribunal that works in a challenging environment and constantly evolving and complex legal landscape that demands effective alignment with the Government of Canada’s mandate of a safe and secure Canada, and careful assessment of criminal justice issues and community concerns. Public safety is the paramount consideration in all decisions made by the PBC, which is reflected in its guiding legislation, policy, procedures, and training.

The PBC exercises legislated responsibilities for sharing appropriate information with victims of crime, persons sentenced to imprisonment, applicants seeking a record suspension/pardon/expungement/clemency, other criminal justice partners, and the public. In this environment, strategic information management is crucial, requiring the PBC to have the requisite systems to support effective collection, storage, retrieval and sharing of information.

The PBC proactively works with its criminal justice partners to coordinate, oversee, and analyze legislative amendments and government initiatives, specifically in relation to conditional release and pardon/record suspension programs. In addition to legislative reforms, the PBC’s policies and operations are constantly evolving to respond to case law and emerging research. These factors combined with a more diverse and challenging offender population have an impact on workload, training, and complexity of decision-making. Increased emphasis continues to ensure the PBC’s policies and practices are culturally responsive and inclusive.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the PBC to examine its operations and enhance its technological capacity. To respond to the exceptional circumstances created by the pandemic, the PBC adopted additional digital tools and adapted its policies and processes to ensure victims, assistants, and all other observers could participate in hearings remotely. The pandemic highlighted the importance of a dependable and reliable information technology infrastructure to provide continuing services to Canadians. As such, the PBC continues to update and maintain its Information Management/Information Technology (IM/IT) strategy to ensure it can meet changing requirements as they evolve.

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