Month: August 2023

Correctional Service of Canada fears OPCAT!

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

“How Canada’s prisons can take on torture,” published in the August 7th Toronto Globe and Mail, is an op-ed piece by Catherine Latimer, the executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, an organization with multiple branches across the country committed to protecting the human rights of imprisoned people.

This is Canada.  We are told by our governments, no matter the party in power, that this is a land that upholds the human rights of every person, foreign and domestic.  We spend millions in international aid each year to promote those rights.  Canada ratified the UN’s Convention Against Torture (CAT).  Canada adopted the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules).  Our country’s leaders speak up for the oppressed in other countries, and we have paid a political and economic price for doing that. So why is Catherine Latimer and the John Howard Society needed?  Why too the countless institutions and individuals with the same aim?

Many of us are vulnerable to exploitation and depravation, from our Indigenous peoples to refugees to the disadvantaged to the elderly in long-term care to children and youths in foster homes and juvenile carceral settings to the racialized and stigmatized to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.  So too the inmates in our jails and prisons.

There can be no pecking order to grade the greatest needs for protection, but the nature of imprisonment compels the many calls for international third-party oversight.  As has been reprinted here several times, the Senate of Canada’s Human Rights Committee wrote of Correctional Service of Canada that, “The security features inherent to federal correctional facilities are designed to keep people in as much as they are to keep people out.  As a result, the management of the federally-sentenced population is largely conducted away from public scrutiny.  Invisible to the general population, federally-sentenced person are often forgotten.”

Ms. Latimer noted in her op-ed that the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) made a submission to the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) which focused on men and women in Canada who are “deprived of their liberty.”  As a member of the United Nations, we are now receiving a UPR assessment.  Our various stakeholders like our human rights organizations are invited to appraise the state of human rights in Canada.  In its statement to the UPR, the CHRC wants Canada to ratify the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), writing that this would allow “ongoing and enhanced independent oversight, monitoring and reporting in all places of detention.”

The John Howard Society endorses the CHRC recommendation, and this space has done the same, most recently in a June 18th posting.  OPCAT was adopted by the UN in 2006.  The singular most important question for Canada’s government here is why it hasn’t ratified this protocol.  Why not?  Why has our government not provided an explanation?  Why will Canada not “put its money where its mouth is?”

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When Correctional Service of Canada talks about transparency and accountability, it’s referring to operations other than its relationship with and treatment of the inmates under its control.  CSC makes a sound argument supporting its pro-active disclosures in compliance with the government’s “measures to strengthen public sector management.”  As for the care of inmates, not so much.

Brennan Guigue is an activist inmate; he files numerous articulate and detailed grievances when justified.  Almost all are futile exercises, but they are kept in records.  Even occasional small wins only serve to accent CSC’s scant attempts at transparency and accountability when dealing with inmates.
This is one example:
More than two years ago, he was moving unescorted from one area of an institution to another.  He passed through a metal detector at a checkpoint, overseen by a guard with a reputation for taking opportunities to put his hands on inmates, and creating scenarios to use his fists.
The alarm went off.  Brennan’s watch was in his pocket.  He put it on a table, but the guard wanted to search him.  He said he wanted another to do the search.  With that, this guard pushed him against a wall and punched him in the stomach.  Other guards out of earshot, thinking this was an incident, rushed Brennan and threw him to the floor.
There were no institutional charges against him, there was no incident report, it just didn’t happen.  He filed a grievance.  There was video but no audio.  It took about a year for a response.  His grievance was upheld.  It ruled he should not have been treated as he was.  What was the outcome?  The guards involved would be asked to review proper procedures so this wouldn’t happen again.  That is CSC accountability.

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“I want to reassure you that we take any allegations of misconduct involving our staff very seriously.  All allegations, regardless of source, are duly investigated and, when required, we always take appropriate measures toward our staff members.”

This is from a prison warden’s letter this past July in answering one of ours.  Over the years, we have collected many letters from Correctional Service of Canada personnel at the national, regional. and institutional levels, citing this paragraph verbatim…or close to it.  Where inmate interests are involved though, the correct reaction is…no, they don’t…no, they don’t.…no, they don’t.

Canada needs OPCAT!

Where have we been? What’s happened?

turnoverarocktoday Brennan Guigue: Wars of my world

BRENNAN GUIGUE WAS TRANSFERRED from Port Cartier Institution in eastern Quebec to the structured intervention unit (SIU) at Donnacona Institution near Quebec City at the end of March.  The information and accusations underpinning the move were fabricated under the direction of Port Cartier’s warden, Jerome Vigneault.  His motivation?  He had an activist inmate making justifiable and legally correct “waves” directed at the institution’s health care unit.  With that as a starting point, the warden enlisted the aid of underlings to create a series of unsubstantiated allegations to support Brennan’s transfer.

Port Cartier and Donnacona management must have thought that Brennan Guigue would not ‘fight city hall,’ he would roll over and simply accept whatever decisions Correctional Service of Canada made.  Their unfettered bias against English-speaking inmates and/or Black and Indigenous inmates emboldened their disregard for policy, procedure, the law, and the Charter.  To boot, conditions in the Donnacona SIU more closely resembled the outlawed “administrative segregation” ranges of old, particularly in the first few weeks he was there.

THIS HAS KEPT BRENNAN GUIGUE AND HIS SUPPORT engaged with the here and now.  No time to rehash the past.

As one example, while we have the original documentation that would unravel a part of Warden Vigneault’s claims, Port Cartier and Donnacona have “repaired” the file twice to remove information that could expose their malfeasance.  It’s possible too that the changes to the file came about from an unauthorized management breach of a right to confidentiality Brennan has with certain designated parties.

We also have documentation from the independent external decision maker (IEDM), a party to the Implementation Advisory Panel formed by the federal government to monitor SIUs, that lists Donnacona’s failures to provide Brennan Guigue with his entitlements.  As if to underscore the deprivations, on July 28, a Quebec judge gave the go-ahead for a class action lawsuit to test the validity of the SIUs, based on the lead plaintiff inmate Daniel Fournier’s charge that his 40 days in Donnacona’s SIU amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.  Brennan Guigue has so far spent over 100 days in the unit.  Currently, this suit applies only to Quebec federal prisons.

In addition, the Montreal lawyer who was to pursue Brennan’s cause suddenly experienced an undisclosed medical event and dropped out of sight.  It took two months and an appeal to the Quebec association that oversees lawyers to retrieve the relevant material he had sent her.

It’s a challenge to keep up.

SO, WHAT HAPPENED at Port Cartier to bring down the wrath of the prison industry upon Brennan Guigue?

This will be skeletal.  Two points to begin:  First, most federal prisons have inmate committees made up of approved members who mediate inmate concerns with staff/management.  Port Cartier instead is one of a very few that have range representatives who meet as a group with management to the same purpose.
Second, prison health care is a major sore and sour point for federal prison inmates.  A subject for another time, but briefly for here, while community issues with health care arise primarily from underfunding, prison health care suffers from both pronounced underfunding and conflicts with delivery.

Brennan Guigue did not want to be a range rep at Port Cartier, even though he was a preferred choice by guards.  There are imposed responsibilities and the higher profile can make reps a target for both disgruntled inmates and staff.  He reluctantly agreed to take the post.
In addition, his long experience with prison health care taught him that the CSC grievance process is not the forum to air complaints.  It appears that Correctional Service of Canada can’t oblige its health care units to follow its directions.

Frustrations with accessing proper, timely, and legally set down health care in the CSC facilities where he has been incarcerated over the years led Brennan Guigue to bypass internal complaint processes and file his concerns with the disciplinary bodies that govern doctors, nurses, and dentists.  He did this at Port Cartier with a doctor who failed to comply with prescribed CSC policies and medical ethics.  We supplied the relevant Quebec College of Medicine forms, and when Brennan learned the scope of the problem with other inmates, we forwarded further complaint forms, and he had additional copies photocopied to meet the demand.

This led Warden Vigneault to claim that Brennan “incites disorder by being the instigator of a major movement against the Health Care Centre” as a lead argument for an unwarranted transfer.  As Brennan argued, “How is helping the men to file proper grievances, which is our right, grounds for a transfer?”  More than that, the institution’s records justify the complaints; that is, assuming Port Cartier has not “repaired” health care data, too.

To further flesh out a supporting scenario for a transfer, the warden alleged that “Guigue actively participates in the reign of terror in the IM (where Brennan was the range rep) by attacking the most vulnerable inmates,” pointed to “17 incidents in the past year,” accused him of “six incidents in which Guigue was in possession of a slasher,” and “delaying the official count.”  Guards in contact with Brennan, and even the institution’s security officer disagreed with the warden but could not risk censure for the sake of one inmate.

Since Brennan is creating a paper trail of complaints and grievances, the written assaults continue.  Most recently, his Parole Officer at Port Cartier (he met with this person only three times in almost two years) filed a report alleging that he exhibited bad behaviour when meeting with his case management workers.  No such meetings took place.  Inmates should have regular case management meetings under CSC policy, but the institution simply doesn’t bother.

How can this happen? …….We let it!