“How Canada’s prisons can take on torture,” published in the August 7^th 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 18^th 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!