In 1951, On February 1, 1956, he was named executive director of the newly formed Canadian Corrections Association, which was the result of a merger of the council's Division on Crime and Delinquency and the Canadian Penal Association; the new association remained a division of the Canadian Welfare Council. McGrath served as secretary and member of the
Special Committee on Corrections (better known as the Ouimet Committee for its chairman, Quebec Superior Court Justice Roger Ouimet), which was appointed in 1964 by then-Canadian Minister of Justice
Guy Favreau "to study the broad field of corrections, in its widest sense and to recommend … what changes, if any, should be made in the law and practice relating to these matters." Among many other findings, the committee's final report in 1969 recommended the complete abolition of
corporal punishment in Canada; the practice was banned by the
Canadian Parliament three years later. While serving on the committee, McGrath produced the
anthology textbook
Crime and Its Treatment in Canada; it was "addressed primarily to university students in the various disciplines involved in the control of illegal behaviour, such as criminology, law, medicine, psychology, social work, sociology, and theology, and to students in the many in-service training-courses offered by the police and correctional services across the country." It was reprinted five times between 1965 and 1980. The book contained a chapter by
Frank P. Miller, who would later serve as president of the Canadian Corrections Association. ==Retirement==