New Brunswick’s public safety minister said he was caught off-guard by Ottawa’s decision to transfer some mental health unit inmates, including infamous murderer Gregory Despres, to the province’s care.

The Shepody Healing Centre at Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick is being downsized.

“Inmates deemed Not Criminally Responsible who require hospital-level care will be returned to provincial responsibility,” a Correctional Service Canada spokesperson said.

That means Despres, who has been held at the Shepody Centre since 2008 after being convicted of two gruesome killings, will be among those transferred.

New Brunswick Public Safety Minister Stephen Horsman said Ottawa’s move caught him by surprise.

He said the province is now faced with a major question; whether its facilities can handle these inmates.

“In Mr. Despres' case, it was more to the extreme, but we want to make sure that the people of this province are safe through making sure that they're in the facilities they need to be in, not only for the public's safety, but for their safety as well,” Horsman said.

Doug White, regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, said he feels the move will mean a change in security levels.

“We’re losing the title of psychiatric hospital,” White said.

“I believe there is a difference. I can't really say about the provincial psychiatric hospital … as far as the federal institutions, I can speak to that, they're very secure,” he said.

The correctional officers’ union says the changes at Shepody will be felt at other institutions, like Renous and Springhill.

While the number of mental health issues in the penal system rises, a mental health assessment that could once have been accessed in a matter of days may soon require a trip as far away as Quebec, the union said.

The families of Despres’ victims are troubled by the pending changes.

Just when they fought doctors’ attempts to move him to the provincial hospital in Restigouche two years ago, they vow to fight this change too.

“I just want him in a place where we know that he'll never be able to escape,” said Brenda Case, the murdered couple’s niece.

Horsman, meanwhile, said he’ll speak to his Nova Scotia and P.E.I. counterparts before approaching federal Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Andy Campbell