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Trudeau Says It’s ‘Upsetting’ Conservatives Object To Transfer Of Child Killer to ‘Healing Lodge’

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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OTTAWA — Canada’s Official Opposition Conservatives are demanding that a convicted child killer be taken out of an aboriginal “healing lodge” and put back into prison.

“These were horrific crimes and they deserve to be punished,” Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Wednesday’s Question Period in the House of Commons.”The prime minister has the ability to reverse this decision, will he do so?”

Scheer was referring to Terri-Lynne McClintic, who pleaded guilty to murdering her eight-year-old child in 2010. After serving time in a women’s penitentiary near Kitchener, Ontario, McClintic was moved to a First Nations healing lodge.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would not say whether he planned to intervene in the situation but did call the question from Scheer “truly upsetting.”

“Conservatives are playing politics in an extremely disturbing way,” he said.

The best the Conservatives could get from the Liberal government was an assurance from Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale that he as asked Canada’s prison commissioner to review the decision to move the prisoner.

Deputy Conservative leader Lisa Raitt also grilled Trudeau and Goodale on the issue, saying the government could still rectify the matter because “when confronted with bad decisions, a good government acts,” she said in Question Period.

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