Correctional Service Canada
Symbol of the Government of Canada

Common menu bar links

Warning This Web page has been archived on the Web.

Let's Talk

VOL. 32, NO. 2

People Who Have Gone Above and Beyond

By Carole Robinson Oliver

The Let’s Talk team met with seven Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) employees who, in their own way, have set a high standard for ethical behaviour in the workplace. In navigating through various ethical dilemmas over the years, each has been guided by an inner sense of what is right a moral compass that goes aboveandbeyond whatisstrictly required by laws and regulations. All have witnessed the transformative power of respect.

Always Take the High Road

Monty Bourke, Warden, Warkworth Institution, Ontario Region
Monty Bourke, Warden, Warkworth Institution, Ontario Region

When he was warden at Kingston Penitentiary, Monty Bourke recalls, he would tell new staff: “Don’t check your values at the front gate. Bring them with you. We need them in here.”

On the eve of retirement, Bourke looks back over a 34-year career with CSC that included postings at Canada’s most challenging prisons, and says he is convinced that CSC has become a more ethical organization in recent years.

The change boils down to showing more respect, says Bourke, who is now warden at Warkworth Institution.

“We're much more conscious now than we were 25 years ago of the need to provide a safe, secure, respectful workplace and a more humane environment for offenders,” he says. “In my opinion, how offenders are treated on the front line is often a reflection of how staff is treated. Management has a special responsibility to act in accordance with, and to demonstrate ethical behaviour in all dealings with staff and offenders.”

Bourke recalls an incident early on in his career in which he witnessed a correctional officer making “an outrageous racial slur” toward a colleague. Bourke could have kept silent, but he felt compelled to send a report to the deputy warden.

“The response was: ‘Why did you put this in writing?’ which implied that I should have looked the other way,” Monty Bourke says.

“I was really rocked by that, but it’s an example of how things were back then.”

For Bourke, the decision to report an incident of racism didn’t even come close to being an ethical dilemma. “If you always take the high road, things become a lot clearer,” he says. “It’s when you’re not sure about your values that you get into trouble.”

The high road has taken Monty Bourke as far as Afghanistan. In 2002 and again in 2007, he carried out assessments of correctional institutions in the war-torn country. Over the past five years, he has also facilitated the three-day ethics course at the Correctional Management Learning Centre in Cornwall, Ontario, and is currently providing full-time support to the values and ethics pilot projects.

“Basically, every opportunity I’ve had, I’ve taken to promote ethical behaviour,” he says. “It’s a hard business we’re in. I’ve seen some pretty terrible things happen, where good staff made poor choices, or committed suicide because things were out of balance. So, there’s a great responsibility for us to encourage a positive, values-based, respectful workplace.”

The Power of Respect Carries Potential for Change

Donna Morrin, Director General, Learning and Development, Human Resource Management Sector
Donna Morrin, Director General, Learning and Development, Human Resource Management Sector
Photo: Bill Rankin

“I always swore I’d never work in a prison, that the community was the best place to be,” says Donna Morrin, former warden at Kingston Penitentiary and Joyceville Institution. But life had other plans.

A 32-year veteran of the Service, Morrin started out as a clerk,then became a community parole officer,making her one of the first women to break the “glass ceiling” at the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). After 28 years of working in an institutional setting, she came to National Headquarters (NHQ) last summer, to take on the job of Director General, Learning and Development.

Like Monty Bourke, Morrin has several years’ experience facilitating ethics courses for CSC managers and continues to be involved in the ethics pilot training projects. She, too, has observed a cultural shift within the organization.

"More and more, in recent years, we've seen that staff are willing to come forward if they've witnessed wrongdoing," says Donna Morrin. Prison life presents a variety of ethical dilemmas.

“My firm belief is that people want to do the right thing,” Morrin adds. “I’d like to think that our ethics program,or just raising awareness of the importance of ethics, is empowering staff to step up,stick their chin out and say‘This is the right thing to do and I’m going to do it.’”

Course facilitators enable participants to discuss values,and provide learning tools to assist in ethical dilemmas. The course also puts great emphasis on people treating each other with respect. Donna Morrin firmly believes that this, alone, can transform the workplace.

“The greatest positive change I have seen is the impact that one person who’s consistently respectful can have on their environment. The power of respect carries so much potential for change,” she says.

“Do What You Believe in Your Heart Is the Right Thing To Do”

Judy Croft, Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Corporate Services, Pacific Region
Judy Croft, Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Corporate Services, Pacific Region

“I love what I do. I wake up in the morning and wonder what exciting things are going to happen today.”

Sounds like someone who just started working for CSC? How about 37 years ago?

Now Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Corporate Services in Pacific Region, Judy Croft has worked her way up through the ranks, starting out as a switchboard operator at Matsqui Institution. Though most of her background has been on the corporate side, she’s also held deputy and acting warden positions, in addition to serving as director of Kwìkwèxwelhp Healing Lodge.

Her interest in promoting values and ethics goes way back. “When I did my post-graduate studies, I examined the environment that our correctional officers work in and how institutional culture can shape their decisions,” she says. One outcome of her research project was an attestation that all correctional officers receive upon graduation. “This is something they can hang on the wall to remind them to follow their best instincts,” she adds.

When she won her current position, Croft wanted to ensure that values and ethics were a more visible part of corporate decision-making. She began holding discussions on ethical dilemmas at monthly regional management committee meetings. “We take turns,” she says. “Each warden brings an ethical dilemma to the meeting, something they’ve actually had to face.”

Judy Croft has also extensively researched other government departments, to look for ethical decision-making models that could be adapted to the CSC context, especially in view of current realities.

“Over the years, CSC has become more people-driven,” she says. “We care more now about how our decisions are going to affect everyone. And sometimes that makes the dilemmas more difficult. For example, when I was warden and moved an offender to minimum security, the victims would be very upset. In a case like that, you need to be sure you’re within policy, within the law, but you also need to sit down and talk with the victims.”

Judy Croft has encountered a wide range of ethical dilemmas in her career, “Sometimes there are clear solutions, but other times there’s no right or wrong answer,” she says.

In the end, she maintains, “You do what you believe in your heart is the right thing to do and what lets you sleep at night.”

“Could You Explain Your Actions To the Media?”

Bernard Haché, Senior Parole Officer, Bathurst Parole Office, New Brunswick, Atlantic Region
Bernard Haché, Senior Parole Officer, Bathurst Parole Office, New Brunswick, Atlantic Region

When he walks down the main street of Bathurst, Senior Parole Officer Bernard Haché knows that many eyes are upon him. Residents will stop to chat and often refer to him as “our parole officer.”

A native of this small New Brunswick community, Haché is always conscious of the fact that he and his five parole officers are the visible face of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) in a rural area that covers the northern half of the province.

“The image we project is extremely important,” he says. Building strong relationships with community partners such as the police and social service agencies is also an essential part of the job.

As a manager, Bernard Haché describes himself as “very flexible, but not when it comes to anything involving values and ethics. I remind my staff that the public is our employer and they’re paying us to protect them.”

His commitment to doing the right thing was put to the test early on in his career.

“Everybody knows me, and when I started working, people in the community would ask for favours — either to release a guy on parole or not to return someone back to custody,” he says.

Sometimes the requests came from those close to Haché. It was a major challenge, at first, to make them understand he was bound by a code of ethics.

“I always told them: ‘Conditional release for offenders is not based on friendship. It’s based on risk.’ People understand now and they respect me for it,” he says.

“I have a reputation for being rigid in terms of following the rules, but fair with parolees who are making an effort,” Haché adds. “If we learn that there’s a possible breach of parole conditions, I and my staff will investigate, and it’s happened many times that we felt there was no information supporting a return to custody. But if there’s a risk, and the offender is not cooperating with us, I will not hesitate to take action.”

Discussions on values and ethics are a regular part of team meetings at the Bathurst office.

“Of course you sometimes face those ‘grey areas,’ ” he comments, “so we use a simple test: ‘Could you explain your actions to the media?’ Staff use that often and find that it works. Also, if they believe in and understand our Mission and Core Values, it makes their job much easier.”

“Offering a Small Time of Sanctuary and Peace”

Father Ted Hughes, Regional Chaplain, Prairie Region (right) with Darren Friesen, from Saskatoon Community Chaplaincy
Father Ted Hughes, Regional Chaplain, Prairie Region (right) with Darren Friesen, from Saskatoon Community Chaplaincy
Photo: Jeff Campbell

“You might call me ‘chaplain to the chaplains,’ ” says Father Ted Hughes, in describing his dual role as Regional Chaplain, Prairie Region.

In contrast to his team of 32 institutional and community chaplains, who work on contract, Father Ted, originally from Hamilton, Ontario, is a Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) employee. His job is to work with the chaplains, manage their contracts and see that the spiritual needs of both offenders and staff are met, regardless of religious affiliation. At the same time, he remains active as a Roman Catholic priest.

“Wearing these two hats can be a balancing act,” he says, “but not in any way contradictory to what I was doing before — namely, as our Chaplaincy motto says, ‘Overcoming evil with good.’ That was the motto of my own ministry, so it flowed well into the Correctional Service when I joined in 2003.”

As both Regional Chaplain and priest, Father Ted has to walk a fine line between representing the interests of CSC and holding sacred the seal of confession. A dilemma arose early on when there were proposed revisions to Chaplaincy contracts: How to respect an offender’s confession without compromising institutional security?

“I couldn’t tell the chaplains that they must never hold any privileged information confidential,” he explains. “Fortunately, with Legal Services and Contracting, we agreed on a phrase that says chaplains must report all security threats, ‘while respecting the confidential nature of privileged information received during spiritual counsel’. People have to make a judgment call,” he adds, “to follow their own conscience, but in an informed manner.”

Helping correctional staff find a balance between the seemingly conflicting values of justice and mercy or control and compassion is another aspect of Father Ted’s work. In his orientation sessions with new correctional officers he challenges them to think beyond the control part of the job and see themselves as “offering a small time of sanctuary and peace” to those who have been entrusted to their care.

“It’s not easy,” he says, “because in the midst of a segregation unit or an assault on staff, you still have to ask yourself ‘How can I do the right thing?’ Which is: to offer respect. Not just following the rule of law, but the underlying respect that each one of us should have for a fellow human being. That may be Chaplaincy talk, but it fits in completely with our Mission and Values.”

“You Have to Wait and Keep on Hoping”

Bernard Émond, Correctional Officer II, Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines Institution
Bernard Émond, Correctional Officer II, Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines Institution
Photo: René Asselin

There are many reasons why a person might decide to work for the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), but carrying on a family tradition is a rather unusual motive. This is what, initially, drew Bernard Émond into the field of corrections.

“My father was a correctional officer, and I wanted to see what it was all about,” says the 31-year veteran of the Service. He began his career in maximum security at Archambault Institution (now medium-security), and was there in 1982 when one of the bloodiest prison riots in Canada’s history broke out.

“I’ve been through some pretty difficult times,” he reflects, “but the worst was when I lost three colleagues at Archambault. You learn to put it behind you and go on, but it’s tough.”

Currently at Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, a minimum-security facility north of Montreal, Émond still has the same passion for his job and looks forward to each day, all the more so because working in minimum brings him closer to the offenders — as their guardian, psychologist, counselor and link with family members.

“There’s less violence and confrontation in minimum,” he says. “It may seem strange, but often, if a guy’s in trouble, he’ll seek us out for advice, not the other offenders. The men here are older and they’ve reached an age where they no longer have to put on a show for their peers. They begin to reflect on what we have to say to them.”

The downside of that is institutionalization. “We try to prepare them for parole, but it doesn’t always work,” Émond observes. “After many years in prison, they lose their self-esteem and become set in their ways. Some find life on the outside too fast-paced and they end up back inside.”

Correctional programs help, but he finds it also takes a great deal of patience to work with long-term offenders. “You have to wait and keep on hoping, sometimes for years,” he says. “There are success stories, but often we don’t hear about these. Nobody sends us a greeting card to say they’re doing well.

“To do this kind of work, it helps to be a bit of a missionary and to hang on to your faith in humanity,” Bernard Émond adds. “That’s the big secret. At the same time, you can’t take events too much to heart, because there will be many disappointments. You have to learn to see things as they really are.”

“Don’t Be Afraid to Display Your Principles and Values”

Me Michel Lafrenière, Legal Instructor, Staff College and Regional Coordinator, Harassment and Mediation, Québec Region
Me Michel Lafrenière, Legal Instructor, Staff College and Regional Coordinator, Harassment and Mediation, Québec Region

Looking back, most of us can remember favourite teachers who were so devoted to their students and so dedicated to their subject that their words continue to echo in our minds.

For hundreds of recruits who have gone through the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) Staff College in Laval, Québec, Michel Lafrenière may very well be that kind of teacher.

As Legal Instructor for the past 10 years, Lafrenière has been training new correctional and parole officers in all federal legislation that governs their work, as well as the Mission Statement, the code of discipline, the standards
of professional conduct and the harassment policy. Topics include appropriate use of force, searches and seizures, investigations and report writing. He also delivers an orientation course to other new staff and teaches on occasion at the Correctional Management Learning Centre in Cornwall, Ontario.

He brings to the job 10 years of private practice as a lawyer, 10 years as a member of the National Parole Board and boundless enthusiasm for his role in shaping new employees’ ethical awareness.

“The law and the regulations are important,” says Lafrenière, “as a base, a foundation. But what counts the most is to go above and beyond what the law demands of us. For that, you need to listen to what I call ‘the small inner voice’ that tells us if what we’re doing conforms to the values of our organization.”

“We all have it,” he adds, “but sometimes it can get drowned out by the everyday reality of working in a correctional setting. I see my job as helping staff develop their ability to tune to that inner voice and let it guide them, as a lighthouse would guide a ship through a storm.”

Lafrenière also tries to impress upon his students the need to be role models themselves in their dealings with colleagues and offenders.

“I tell them: ‘Don’t be afraid to display your principles and values in your day-to-day activities. This is how you can make a difference.’ I also remind them to give the best of themselves, at every moment.”

Giving the best of himself comes naturally to Michel Lafrenière, who is so passionate about his work that he’s looking forward to many more years in the classroom, at a time when some might be dreaming of the golf course.

“It keeps me young and mentally alert,” he states, adding that he has recently taken on another assignment, as regional coordinator for mediation and harassment prevention. His students, however, will be happy to learn that he’s still keeping his hand in at teaching.

TABLE of CONTENTS
NEXT