EXACTLY!
What does it take for a politician elected to public office, a federal cabinet minister no less, to stand up and do the right thing?  And what would we call one who wouldn’t?

How many times has this space featured the revision to Correctional Service of Canada’s Commissioner’s Directive (CD) 022 – Media Relations?  How many letters were posted to how many Ottawa addresses?  Is this a search for a panacea for Canada’s ills?  No, this is an uncomplicated rewrite of a prison agency policy to fully comply with the law and the Charter.

What began as a letter from Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger in December of 2019 prompting CSC Commissioner Anne Kelly to update its policy around inmate contacts with the media became a conundrum demanding the attention of pundits from across a brain-storming spectrum.  Why?  And here in June of 2023, this update is still under study.

A letter arrived recently.  Dated May 4, it was from Kirstan Gagnon, Assistant Commissioner in the Communications and Engagement Sector of Correctional Service of Canada.  Apparently, Public Safety Minister Marc Mendicino and CSC Commissioner Anne Kelly delegated Ms. Gagnon to respond to three of our letters to the Minister and two to the Commissioner, dating from October of last year to mid-March of 2023.

The essence of her message:-
“Important work to update the current CD 022 has been ongoing and many internal and external subject matter experts have been consulted throughout the process, providing valuable feedback, and proposing important changes to the directive.  CSC also worked diligently with stakeholders, such as the Office of Privacy Commissioner of Canada, to ensure that changes and updates to CD 022 respect the privacy and security of offenders, institutions, victims, and the public.  It is important to note that while we await the new version of CD 022, the current directive remains in effect and continues to provide offenders access to media outlets and representatives, as per their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
..and…
“CSC appreciates the essential role performed by journalists and the media, and as such, we remain committed to being open, transparent and respectful of all media.  Since 2020, CSC has approved and facilitated more than 200 request from media outlets across the country to speak with offenders under its care.”
…and…
“We are now doing consultation on the CD with our executive committee, which is one of the last steps in the process.  Once we have incorporated any final input, the new CD will be approved by CSC’s Commissioner and promulgated.”

We responded by writing to the Minister:-

June 6, 2023

The Honourable Marco Mendicino, Minister of Public Safety,
Ottawa, ON  K1A 0A6

Re:      Minister missing in action

Dear Minister Mendicino:

If Correctional Service of Canada had substantively justified the prolonged delays in promulgating the revised Commissioner’s Directive (CD) 022 – Media Relations, I would not have written your office last October 17, and January 30 and March 15 of this year.

There was no need to bring this to your attention if you and your staff were on top of the CSC file.  But rather than question the Agency, you simply consigned my queries to their Communication and Engagement Sector (“control the message office”).  Assistant Commissioner Kirstan Gagnon’s May 4 letter’s core paragraph is an exercise in obfuscation.

The Correctional Investigator prompted the revision to a defective Commissioner’s Directive in December of 2019, a straightforward assignment.  Commissioner Kelly readily agreed.  Since then, CSC has twisted itself into a pretzel as it engineers a rewrite to preserve an unsound status quo, referencing numerous resources as an explanation for the wait.

CSC has good reason.  Canada pays lip service to the Mandela Rules.  Canada ratified the Convention against Torture in 1987.  But Canada won’t sign the UN’s 2006 Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT).  Why?  Canada will talk the talk.  Canada won’t walk the walk.

Correctional Service of Canada wants it that way.

Kirstan Gagnon and Ivan Zinger were copied, as was Senator Kim Pate who asked to be kept informed.

Yes Minister, what does it take to stand up?

….IS OFFENSIVE!

Try this:  Google “prison criticisms of Canada’s federal system.”

The Office of the Correctional Investigator releases an Annual Report as a review of Correctional Service of Canada’s operation during its previous twelve months.  There are few laurels, many barbs, numerous recommendations, and a lengthy section of charted statistics.  What is notable throughout these dozens of pages is the year after year repetitiveness of some of the report’s judgements, and the prison agency’s evasions and rejections of the OCI’s counsel for improved outcomes.

The correctional investigator heads a multi-million-dollar-a-year exercise, backed by investigators and support staff, to scrutinize a cocooned government bureau.  The OCI can access people, places, papers where conversation, observation, and examination flows to the summaries, deliberations, and suggestions that are the meat of its work.  That yearly report justifies the effort.  It represents millions of spent dollars and thousands of public service hours in preparation.  Parliament expresses its gratitude, moves on to other business, the report is carefully filed, and another groundhog-year begins.

At what point do honest, straight-shooting, stand-up men and women cry “enough”?  At what point is there the demand that their hard work has meaning, that the annual thanks-very-much-and-now-go-back-and-start-over doesn’t cut it, ignores the unsound status quo, and won’t make Canada safer?  Where is the screaming from the rooftops?

There are rooftops in Ottawa.  Why is it so quiet?  Why indeed.

)()(

The correctional investigator mirrors in a very public way the experience of hundreds of individuals and organizations who work for carceral change and reform in this country, turnoverarocktoday.com included.

In searching our files for data on another topic, an issue of Klassen Mailing List relevant to this posting stood out.  The precursor to turnoverarocktoday.com, Klassen Mailing List had the same purpose as its digital successor but was printed and distributed to a cross-country mailing list.

Issue #12 was published on November 6, 2007 with the title “Correctional Service of Canada….making me proud to be an ashamed Canadian!”  In part, it reported on an information picket we set up outside CSC’s Ontario District Office on Dundas Street West in Toronto on Thursday, October 11 of that year.

Issue #12 also set out a list of eleven ‘bones to pick’ with CSC:

• Limitations and delays in health care delivery,
• the scam the Millennium telephone system is,
• the inconsequential grievance and complaints process,
• lack of adequate accountability and transparency,
• the absence of due process in so many instances,
• some dubious professionalism,
• examples of inaccuracies and fabrications to the information in offenders’ files,
• limited educational opportunities,
• the inefficacy of cookie-cutter programs,
• a dearth of substantive job skills and trades training programs, and,
• in general, a pervasive failure to meet the burden of the CSC Mission Statement.

Only one item from this list has been resolved.  For the last many years, Bell Canada’s telephone system in federal prisons now reflects reasonable tariffs for prepaid and collect calls.  Bell still is securely in control of the telephone service contracts and continues to gather benefits from its monopoly.

That’s it.  That’s all.  And other sources have a longer list.  Then too, Klassen Mailing List was more polite than turnoverarocktoday.com.

Where is the minister in all this?  A good question.  We’ve contacted current Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino often.  He seems to be absent from the prison file.

Portage-free letters will reach him at the House of Commons, Ottawa, K1A 0A6.  His office phone is 613-992-6361, and there’s a fax number, 613-992-9791.