By Tiffany Tambeau
When Correctional Service of Canada opened a parole office on Gilmour Street it disregarded its own policy to keep such offices at least 200 m from any school or day-care centre, show documents obtained by a Centretown resident.
Albert Galpin said he discovered the policy through an access to information request. According to Galpin’s measurements, the parole office is within 80 m of the school.
He argues this goes against the correctional service’s operational rules and that the parole office should be relocated based on those grounds.
“It is not appropriate in a residential area and especially near a school,” Albert Galpin said in an interview. He is a Centretown resident and father of three children who attend the elementary school.
In September 2004, a federal parole office opened across the street from Elgin Street Public School resulting in an outcry from residents and parents in the area. They say they were not consulted about their new neighbour.
The documents include e-mails from correctional service staff working on the relocation of the parole office after the old office’s lease on Laurier Avenue expired.
One email from January 2003 says: “Although not written down anywhere, past policy is to stay at least 200 metres from any school or day care.” The e-mail also says the policy has been used to reject a proposed corrections site.
Galpin said he was enraged when he discovered in another e-mail from a correctional service staff member that they purposely left the policy out of tender ads because it could “scare landlords.”
Ana Paquete, district director for the Ottawa District Parole Office, says she was not aware of any such policy and could not comment on the e-mails.
The documents also reveal the correctional service rejected a building on Carling Avenue because “it has a high traffic volume consisting largely of mothers with their small children and the elderly.”
Galpin said he doesn’t understand why they rejected the Carling Avenue location for that reason, yet chose a building across the street from an elementary school.
Galpin said he wants to know why the correctional service disregarded its policy and he is demanding answers from the federal government, specifically from Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan and Public Works Minister Scott Brison.
“The ministers didn’t seem the least bit interested in moving this office,” says Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes.
For the past year, residents have collaborated with local politicians to move the office closer to the downtown core.
This June, Holmes sent a letter to Brison asking why the correctional service seemed to ignore the federal government’s Good Neighbour Policy. It’s designed to promote good relations between federal government offices and residents of the neighbourhood. Holmes says she has not received any response to the letter.
Residents and some politicians want the office moved because parents are worried about children’s safety, Holmes says.
Keith Fountain, the Conservative candidate for Ottawa Centre, also said in an interview that he wants the office to disappear from the community.
“The parole office is too darn close to the school and people in the neighbourhood don’t feel that comfortable,” he said.
Parents, including Galpin, say they are concerned about the offenders reporting to their parole officers directly across from the school.
Paquete says parents have nothing to worry about because the office deals with five to six parolees in an average day. “We have been here for a year and there haven’t been any incidents.”
Galpin says he and other residents will continue the fight to have the office relocated. “We’ve been here a lot longer than Corrections Canada.”
But Paquete says the office will not give up defending its new location. “We are not moving.”