Luka Magnotta transfer under scrutiny as MPs vote to call officials

The head of Canada’s correctional services will face questions over notorious killer Luka Magnotta’s prison transfer, MPs decided in a testy committee meeting Monday.

The head of Canada’s correctional services will face questions over notorious killer Luka Magnotta’s prison transfer, MPs decided in a testy committee meeting Monday.

MPs on the House of Commons public safety committee debated for two hours whether to study the transfer of Magnotta to medium-security facility La Macaza in August 2022, a move that only recently made headlines.

Global News first reported last week that Correctional Service Canada (CSC) confirmed it informed former public safety minister Marco Mendicino’s office in May 2022 of Magnotta’s impending transfer, and then again when the transfer date was set in August 2022.

It’s not clear when, or if, Mendicino himself was notified about it.

Magnotta – whose birth name is Eric Newman – is serving an indeterminate life sentence after he was found guilty in 2014 of murdering international student Jun Lin. He admitted to killing Lin, dismembering him and mailing his body parts to political parties and schools.

CSC Commissioner Anne Kelly and the warden of La Macaza are among the witnesses who will appear at the committee in the near future to speak on the matter.

Conservatives presented a motion calling on Kelly, the warden and several other officials, including Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, to testify at more than six meetings on the transfer.

However, the Bloc Québécois motion that was eventually adopted by the committee, with Liberal support, reduced the list of witnesses and narrowed the request to one meeting. That came after the Liberals introduced a motion adding more witnesses to the Tories’ list, and everyone but the Bloc supported it.