We’ve learned staff in Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s office knew for three months that serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo would be transferred from a maximum security facility to a medium security prison, but they did not inform the minister until after it happened.

A statement from the Correctional Service of Canada says Mendicino’s office was first emailed March 2nd to inform them Bernardo would be moved to a medium security institution.

That email, according to CSC, was followed by a second email May 25th to Mendicino’s office saying Bernardo would be transferred four days later.

A statement from the minister’s office now confirms the public safety minister was not told about Bernardo’s transfer until May 30th, the day after the transfer took place.

A 3-person committee at Correctional Service of Canada is now said to be reviewing the decision to transfer Bernardo, a process that will be completed in the next few weeks.

The lawyer representing the families of two teenage girls murdered by Bernardo says it’s alarming that the minister and the victims’ families were kept in the dark for nearly 90 days.

“If that is true, that staff truly kept this a secret from their boss, then that is an egregious abdication of responsibility and is profoundly unfair to the minister,” said Tim Danson, counsel for the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.

“This is precisely the kind of information that must be communicated to the minister because the buck stops with the minister.”