May 27th, 2015To the National Parole Board of Canada and Correctional Services of Canada, Please accept this statement as my strongest opposition to the absence requests by the violent offender George Harding Lovie. I strongly believe that this offender continues to pose a significant risk to the Edwards Family and society and should never be released into the supervision of the community. At the time of the sexual assault and murders I was a young child. Testimony from the offenders sister Carrie showed that he had conspired to kidnap nieces and nephews of Michele Edwards. I am one of her nephews. My earliest childhood memory is of my grandparents funeral. I remember their pale faces, the caskets and the pungent smells of lilies. To this day, their fragrance instantly brings me to that Stoney Creek funeral parlor and I see their faces. The memory today is as fresh, raw and cut as the flowers. It is obvious that the offender continues to cause emotional and financial harm to this family as evident by the other statements presented here today. His crimes were devastatingly grisly in nature and they were provoked in public. He has been a constant antagonist in my childhood nightmares; nightmares that continue today. However, Ive tried very hard to separate my emotional feelings from a rational and analytical assessment of the risk that the offender poses in a community setting. I have educated myself on the 1991 court documents, the dismissal opinion of Justice J.A. Finlayson of the Ontario Court of Appeals, as well as research publications evaluating the effectiveness of correctional programs at predicting recidivism among violent offenders. What I have found not only logically validates my fears, but also strongly compels me to object to any further requests from the offender to be released in a community setting. I feel strongly that he will hurt others. Let me review my rational assessment of the offender:George Lovie represents a significantly small population of long term homicide offenders. He represents the 1% of all homicidal offenders in Canada that have caused multiple homicides. He is further categorized into a very small minority of murderers who was not under the influence of alcohol or illicit substances and was also not suffering from a mental illness at the time of the crimes; less than 8%. Lovie has no history of substance dependency and was sober on February 18th during the sexual assault and on March 21st during the murders. At the criminal trial, Dr. Robert Hill and Dr. Bryan Butler, psychiatrists for the defense, gave no scientific evidence that Lovie had a long term or temporary mental disorder that would have impeded his judgment. Justices Finlayson wrote in his opinion regarding the offenders appeal in 1995:I have reviewed all of the testimony of the psychiatric experts and neither of them thought that the appellant was incapable of the planning and deliberation alleged by the Crown with respect to these offenses [Murders of Donna and Arnold Edwards and attempted murder of Michele].Dr. Hill was of the unwavering opinion that the appellant [George Harding Lovie] was entirely capable of forming the specific intent to kill and was not suffering from any background illness or mental disorder which would have impacted upon his capacity to form the specific intent to kill.Dr. Butler also was of the opinion that the offender was not psychotic, he was not out of touch with reality, he knew that his behavior was both legally and morally wrong.The murders on March 21st were without question, premediated. Only 10% of those accused of murder are convicted of first-degree murder. Offender Lovie was convicted twice. - He purchased a Marlin .30-30 hunting rifle and 15cm knife on March 11th and admitted that this was with the intent to kill Michele. - He practiced loading and unloading the Marlin evident by bullet casings with many groove patterns resembling the lever action of the Marlin. - He waited for approximately 4 hours under the porch of Micheles home in order to ambush her on her way to workThe offender showed strong signs of emotional control and logical thinking during the murders. - He calmly walked after Michele as she ran to my grandparents home, over 110 meters at the beginning of crime. - When the Marlin .30-30 jams outside the house, he found a screw driver on the porch and steadily engaged the safety and half cock before he corrected the issue. - He made a strategic judgment inside the house to release the Marlin .30-30 knowing that it would be difficult to operate without prior knowledge of its safety mechanisms. He testified he consciously decided to abandon the gun to concentrate on stabbing my grandfather, Arnold, to death. The offender exhibited a strong capacity to deceive and to manipulate others. - He proactively engaged with police when he knowingly violated conditions set by the Justice of the Peace to avoid contact with the Edwards family. This provided the offender with credibility that he was attempting to meet conditions while he was deceptively stalking the family. - He attempted create a mistrial, refusing to continue cross examination by feigning mental illness.o Both the trial and appeal justices, Borkovich and Finlayson respectively, admit in their opinions that the offenders conduct was intentionally manipulative. The offender has a documented history of violating conditions by the court and police. - He left notes on Micheles car, at her house, and actively stalked and cased the Edwards family between October 1990 and March 21st, 1991. - After having the custom rifle and knife confiscated from him on February 19th and verbally warned by the police of the grave consequences associated with possessing another firearm; weeks later he purchased the murder weapons.The offender showed no remorse for his victims:- He stepped over the deceased body of my grandmother several times as he moved through her home. He made no mention of her or showed any emotion captured on the 911 tapes. - Shortly after his arrest, he is quoted in relation to the murders that they more than he could have hoped for- During his audio confession to the Hamilton Police, he coolly recounted the events. He accounted for his time, whereabouts and his decision making process.- On the recording he admitted to no responsibility for the crimes and blamed his actions on Michele and the Edwards Family. - He exhibited no emotion or empathy for his victims during cross examination on May 4th, 1992.- And to this day he has never shown remorse, or accepted any responsibility for his actions. I have listed all of the evidence above because it gives a profile of an offender that is likely to commit another homicide or violent crime following community integration. George Harding Lovie meets 10 out of 15 high risk indicators listed in a Correction Services research brief from 2011 tasked with compiling common attributes from convicted murders that reoffend with a similar crime. This research brief was commissioned by the National Parole Board following an investigation into the release and supervision of an offender on full parole charged with 1st degree murder in Durham, Ontario (2006). The offenders profile makes him a statistical outlier in terms of criminal offenses and raises the principle question whether correctional programs designed for the general population would provide rehabilitation value. A significant portion of the Correction services programming budget is focused towards substance abuse rehabilitation, mental health, aboriginal and community living skills programs. Even the programs specifically designed for violent offenders, family violence prevention programs, (HIFVPP, MIFVPP) have a significant component of their curriculum dedicated towards managing substance addiction. None of these factors influenced Lovies actions.Despite being incarcerated for 24 years, no meaningful effort has been made on the offenders behalf to seek out and enroll in programs. Offender Lovie has completed only three violence management programs. He has never enrolled in a sexual offender program despite a clearly unhealthy and sinister view of women (trial evidence substantiates this claim). Public Safety Canada statistics state there is a one in four likelihood of recidivism for sexual offenders.George Harding Lovie has completed the moderate intensity family violence prevention program. He will use this as evidence today that he is fit to enter society, but successful completion of this program does not make him less likely to reoffend. Only one study in Canada has looked at the efficacy of family violence prevention programs for murderers. This study compared recidivism rates of those who completed the program and a control group and found no significance difference in their rates of re-offense when released. Both groups were statistically equal in terms of their non-violent or violent recidivism rates. Parole officers surveyed (n> 2,000) were also mixed whether violence prevention programs were useful or even relevant for life sentence offenders, only 45% agreed that they had any value. Despite this, the National Parole board favorably grants discretionary release to homicide offenders who complete these FVPPs over those who do not. The probability for discretionary release increases by 300% for offenders who complete violence prevent programs. It is far more conclusive that the low recidivism rates for homicide offenders are due to successful drug and alcohol rehabilitation, not due to efficacious violent behavior modification programs. The low recidivism may also be attributed to the penalties of additional sentencing; this consequence never inhibited offender Lovie from killing when he was facing a sexual assault felony charge with a maximum penalty of 15 years prior to the murders. I truly worry that the prediction models and research being used to assess the recidivism risk of offender Lovie are improperly assuming that he fits a normal regression. The fears of the Edwards family are shared by community leaders and by police. The Hamilton Regional Police is being represented by a detachment from the department. The Chief of Police has submitted a statement to the National Parole Board and to the Greater Sudbury Police alerting of the danger. The Hamilton police were devastated when offender Lovie managed to commit the murders despite being under light surveillance and after the Family had created a security plan with the department. I will read their statement now: In closing, I would like to mention one final statistic. Since 1998, there have been 163 victims murdered by murderers who had been federally paroled by this board. Every one of those murders was preventable. The 163 signify hundreds of board hearings where an offender, who fit a profile no different than George Harding Lovies, succeeded in convincing this board that they posed little or no risk to society. Please do not make the regrettable decision to add to that statistic. Thank you for your considerationChad Edwards