I wonder if Canadians have become so accustomed to horrifying headlines that we have become desensitized. The National Post’s September 26 headline should be shocking, but we have seen dozens like it over the past decade: “Within 10 days, two pedophile child killers were given temporary passes to leave prison.”
“In just a little more than a week, the Parole Board of Canada granted to two B.C. men jailed for murdering children temporary passes to leave prison,” Tristin Hopper writes. “Both men are pedophiles who committed their crimes in the early 2000s, and whose victims would now be in their 30s. Both men are believed to have been freed into the Victoria area, but their releases were not accompanied by public warnings.”
On September 11, Douglas Lambier was granted 60-day “unescorted absences” from jail by the parole board. I didn’t immediately recognize the name, but I did recognize the face of his victim, which covered the front pages for days: 9-year-old Brandon Burchell, whom Lambier strangled to death in 2005. Prosecutors believed that Lambier, who already had two previous convictions for the sexual assault of children, had attempted to assault the boy and killed him when he resisted.
Lambier was initially charged with first-degree murder of Brandon Burchell (the grandson of the woman he was dating) and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2006, for which he received the mandatory life sentence, with no eligibility for parole for 15 years. Lambier is now on his tenth release from prison, despite Burchell’s family attending the parole hearing to beg that he be kept in jail. “I don’t think this man should be out of prison at all,” said Brandon’s mother Tina Gervais. “It’s not safe for any community.”
I suspect you would be hard pressed to find any Canadian who disagrees with her. Multiple convictions for sexually assaulting children, culminating in an attempted sexual assault and a violent murder? And yet, Lambier is out in public, unsupervised.
The other case cited by Hopper is even worse, if cases like this can be compared. In October 2000, 10-year-old Heather Thomas was playing outdoors near her father’s townhouse in Cloverdale, B.C. Shane Ertmoed, who lived nearby, lured her into his house on the pretense of looking at photos of birds, attempted to sexually assault her, and strangled her to death while suppressing her screams. He then stuffed her body and clothes into a sports bag and dumped it first in the forest, and then into Alouette Lake, where it was found three weeks later.
“Despite receiving a 25-year prison sentence, Ertmoed has been receiving temporary releases since 2021, and his most recent Parole Board decision made reference to his eventual plan to become a plumber,” Hopper reported. “‘At sentencing, the judge described your offence as the most horrific crime known to our law, ‘the killing of a defenceless young girl. The judge noted also that you had no remorse,’ read the decision, which also noted Ertmoed’s history of ‘deviant sexual behaviour’ leading up to Thomas’s murder.” Heather Thomas’s family came to the parole hearing to ask that he not be released.
“They do not believe you should have this opportunity and that you should remain in prison until you die,” the parole board stated in their summary of the family’s request. “They are fearful that you will re-offend and harm another child.” The parole board decided instead that the killer’s “risk to re-offend will not be undue,” and noted that he now takes “arousal reducing medication.” On September 2, he was granted 60-day unescorted absences from prison. Hopper notes that this is standard practice in Canada.
Earlier this year, in fact, Darren Scott Ray was also granted unescorted temporary absences from prison, triggering this public warning from the Durham Regional Police Service on March 2: “Durham Regional Police Service is warning the public about a high-risk offender who has been released into the community. This individual has a history of serious criminal convictions including first degree murder.” Ray is serving time for the 1986 murder of 14-year-old Darren Pepin, whom he sodomized, tortured, and strangled.
In May, Marie Mangoon – one of two people convicted of the first-degree violent murder of 6-year-old Meika Jordan after days of prolonged abuse – was also granted supervised absences from jail in May. Brian Boucher, convicted of sexually abusing two boys, was granted statutory release but had it revoked this month after new alleged incidents and child porn charges. Serial sexual offender Allen Chow, released in March 2025 after serving two-thirds of his sentence, also had his statutory release revoked after new alleged offences.