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!