Who needs OPCAT?
WE DO! WE DO! WE DO!
NOW!
On November 1st, Ivan Zinger, Canada’s Correctional Investigator, and Charlotte-Anne Malischewski, Interim Chief Commissioner for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, jointly emailed a three-page letter to six federal cabinet members and four deputy ministers.
The subject? Open letter calling for Canada’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT)
It was sent to ministers Mélanie Joly/Foreign Affairs, Pascale St-Onge/Canadian Heritage, Arif Virani/Justice, and Dominic LeBlanc/Public Safety, expressing their concern for the lack of progress to Canada’s ratification of OPCAT, and the implications that had for “individuals deprived of their liberty in this country.” Copies went to ministers Marc Miller/Immigration, Kamal Kher/Diversity and deputy ministers David Morrison/Foreign Affairs, Isabelle Mondou/Canadian Heritage, Shalene Curtis-Micallef/Justice, and Shaw Tupper/Public Safety.
According to the letter, OPCAT has been available for ratification for over 20 years, and there were currently 92 State parties and an additional 13 signatories. Canada had indicated an intention in May of 2016 to ratify OPCAT, but despite many calls to follow though, “the public record on Canada’s ratification of OPCAT remains unclear.” That was far too polite, given the evidence of rights’ abuses. At one point, 27 countries recommended that Canada ratify the protocol. (Editor’s note: The United States has also declined to accept OPCAT.)
It went on to clarify the needs for ratification, the country’s inadequate current oversight of human rights for vulnerable people, and the readily available process to achieve the government’s 2016 intention. The bottom line? “Accordingly, we call on Canada to sign the OPCAT without delay and ratify it in a timely manner in order to strengthen human rights protections for people deprived of their liberty across Canada.”
We sent a supporting letter to the same 10 politicians and public servants on November 13; it was a much shorter and blunt endorsement of the Zinger/Malischewski appeal. We asked for an apology to our vulnerable populations for obstructing their rights. We inferred that CSC Commissioner “Anne Kelly, her senior CSC staffers across the country, and the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers management teams would have conniption fits at the prospect of compliance with OPCAT.”
Correctional Service of Canada fears OPCAT! was published here on August 27, 2023. It underscored how ratification has been stymied by opposing forces in the public service.
An excerpt:-
“’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 measure 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.”
Commissioner Kelly sends out frequent “messages for correctional employees,” and “messages for offenders and their families.” Less often she issues “messages for correctional stakeholders,” and “messages for volunteers.”
Her November 14th message to offenders and their families included a shout-out for Nurse Practitioner’s Week (November 12-18) which prompted a comment from us on behalf of an inmate in an Ontario federal prison. The relevant portion of our letter reads:-
“Referring specifically to paragraph three where you congratulate nurse practitioners as valuable members of the Health Services team who play a crucial role in providing high-quality care in institutions, you ask that nurse practitioners be thanked for their ‘expertise, compassion, and commitment to improving health.’
You have your head in the sand was the inmate’s reaction.
His implication is that what CSC publishes for public consumption does not match the inmate experience in federal institutions. Or it might be that you truthfully believe what you commit to paper, in which case you are not familiar with life in the trenches.
The quality of care provided by nurse practitioners may be a minor issue in CSC operations overall, but it does example the need for OPCAT’s ratification as argued by Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger and Interim Chief Commissioner Charlotte-Anne Malischewski of the Canadian human rights commission in their November 1st letter to six cabinet members and four deputy ministers.
Canada talks the talk on human rights but does not walk the walk. One wonders why.”
OPCAT promises to sort CSC facts from CSC narrative, and separate misinformation from disinformation.
Why wouldn’t we want that?
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