Despite earlier promises that the Gilmour Street parole office would be gone for good, community activists are worried that Corrections Canada is trying to re-establish a presence at the former site through the back door.
Last month, members of the Elgin Street Public School community say they noticed recruitment posters in the window of the Elgin Street side of the former parole office.
Albert Galpin, the community activist who spearheaded the campaign to relocate the parole office, says he is concerned that since Corrections Canada established a parole office without community consultation in 2005, it might be trying to do something similar now.
After a six-year battle with Corrections Canada, the office was finally moved to a downtown office building on Bank Street in August 2011.
The public outcry centred on the location of the office near Elgin Street Public School and Minto Park, site of a memorial to murdered women.
“Six or seven months later (after the parole office moved), without any consultation with the neighbourhood, Corrections Canada looked like they were slinking back into the office,” Galpin says. “Why, again, all the secrecy, and why not tell the neighbourhood who is going in there?”
Recruitment posters don’t necessarily mean that the parole office is re-establishing a presence, but Galpin has tried to get clarification from Corrections Canada, as well as local and federal politicians, with little success.
Galpin says he was told by Corrections Canada that the site was being used for “administrative purposes.”
But he says that is so vague it could mean anything.
In the meantime, Corrections Canada admits that the site is being used for staff recruitment purposes and that no parolees have attended the office since September 2009.
“In order to ensure continued value for taxpayers, the Correctional Service of Canada decided to locate its recruitment team at (the Gilmour Street site) as this represents a cost efficiency for the organization,” media relations officer Christa McGregor told Centretown News in an email.
“Staff from CSC’s Human Resource Management team, which is part of CSC’s National Headquarters, work at the site.”
At Galpin’s request, Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar tried to get in contact with Rona Ambrose, the minister of public works and government services.
Her ministry acts as landlord for 301 Elgin St., but it took more than three weeks to get any sort of response.
In an email to Galpin, Dewar’s office told Galpin that Ambrose’s office said that the former parole office was being used as a home for Correctional Services Administration Services (its human resources department), and it would remain in the building until Sept. 30, 2013, when the current lease expires.
The only remaining question is why it took so much effort to get an explanation about the building's use from Corrections Canada or the ministry of public works and government services.
Galpin says Corrections Canada should have been more up front about their human resources department moving to 301 Elgin Street, which could have avoided this confusion in the first place.