By Ruth Sylvestre
The federal public works department is reviewing the location of a recently relocated parole office across the street from Elgin Street Public School in response to complaints from politicians and angry residents.
Ottawa Centre MP Ed Broadbent and Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes both sent letters to Public Works Minister Scott Brison about the parole office on the corner of Gilmour and Elgin streets.
“It was a terrible mistake,” Broadbent says. “It has to be relocated.”
Holmes is requesting the office be moved further downtown to a business district. She says the zoning for the current location encourages retail stores at ground level, not office space.
“It would have been helpful if there had been more sensitivity about the school so close,” she says.
In a response to Broadbent, Brison was non-committal, saying that he will review the matter and will respond to the concerns shortly.
Some parents are worried the school’s reputation is at stake.
“If parents perceive there is a risk, enrolment will go down,” says Stephen Harper, whose five-year-old son attends Elgin Street Public School. “This school has struggled (in the past) to stay open.”
“In principle, it doesn’t make sense to put criminals near children or other people who can’t defend themselves,” says Colin Rennie, who has a daughter in senior kindergarten.
The school council has drafted a letter urging the parole office be moved “as soon as possible.” About 25 parents attended a meeting earlier this month to discuss the wording and who they will send it to.
Shelley Langois, the school’s principal, refused to comment on concerns about parents withdrawing children or not enrolling them next year.
Worried parents staged a small protest directly across the street from the parole office door during the office’s open house on Oct. 18. Identifying themselves as parents of Elgin Street school children, they collected signatures for a petition to move the office.
“We’re trying to get as many people mobilized as possible,” says Shelley Hartman, chair of Residents Against Government Encroachment (RAGE). She helped organize the group to fight the parole office’s location.
She says they had had no idea the empty space at 191 Gilmour St. was being turned into a parole office.
“For four months we thought a restaurant was going in there,” she says.
Ana Paquete, district director for Corrections Canada, says it took time to find this location. The moving process from their office on Laurier Avenue, between Bank and Kent streets lasted a couple of years.
Relocating was necessary because staff had grown from 17 to 31.
“We were bursting at the seams,” Paquete says. “We had staff working in the kitchen and back rooms.”
Paquete says that 70 per cent of their offenders live in Centretown. “They take the bus with you and sit at the coffee shop with you,” she says. Some go to the Jack Purcell Community Centre behind Elgin Street Public School for their Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Most parole offices are placed in residential areas, says Michelle Pilon-Santilli, spokeswoman for Corrections Canada. She says all parolees are deemed a “manageable risk.”
Offenders go in and out of the courthouse and police station, each located half a kilometre from the school in both directions on Elgin Street anyway, she says.
Not everyone agrees it needs to be moved.
“(The location) is completely irrelevant,” says Bill Owen, who lives on Frank Street and says he spends a lot of time on Elgin Street. Moving it would only create “a false sense of security,” he says. “(The protestors’) efforts might be better spent getting new lights on dangerous intersections.”