THIS IS THE TAG CORRECTIONAL SERVICE OF CANADA HAS EARNED FROM THIS ADVOCATE/AGITATOR AFTER DECADES OF OBSERVATION; WITH THAT COMES CSC’s UNOFFICIAL MOTTO, “WE DON’T CARE.”

CSC is Canada’s federal prison industry and operates under the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness which assigns to it core responsibilities:-
Care and Custody that “provides for the safety, security and humane care of inmates, including day-to-day needs of inmates such as food, clothing, accommodation, mental health services, and physical health care.”
Correctional Interventions where it “conducts assessment activities and program interventions to support federal offenders’ rehabilitation and facilitate their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens.”
Community Supervision that “supervises offenders in the community and provides structure and services to support their safe and successful reintegration into the community.”

And then on its website, CSC’s Mandate “is to contribute to public safety by actively encouraging and assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens, while exercising reasonable, safe, secure, and humane control.”

The Ministry of Public Safety and CSC cannot but say other than what it does.  Our federal prisons must work within the law, and its policies must comply with the socially accepted standards we expect of the public service in Canada.

The difference between what is law and what is policy and how the Service interprets both in its practices is often pronounced.  Even so, criticisms at any level, institutional, regional or national, are met with pushback references to policy and the law, as if violations are not tolerated and don’t happen.  And CSC doubles down to persistent naysayers, tenacious in its resolve to deny wrongdoing.

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The Senate of Canada’s Standing Committee on Human Rights published two comprehensive reports assessing CSC performance, one numbering over 300 pages, and encapsulated its concern  at the beginning of its interim report of February, 2019, with a judgement often reprinted in this space:
“The security features inherent to the 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 persons are often forgotten.”

CSC, as it puts it, “also engages Canadian citizens as partners in its correctional mandate.”  These are often volunteers providing various approved services inside institutions as well as in the community.
One volunteer who worked inside prisons for 15 years had this to say about the experience:-
“The volunteer training is illuminating:  all volunteers are warned that they will be manipulated.  CSC tries to pit inmates against volunteers throughout the training.  It so bothers all the volunteers it actually works against CSC – and before volunteers even start they don’t care for CSC staff nor respect them.  Not for a minute have I thought about my safety nor has any other volunteer.”

Today’s edition could be read as an adjunct to “No criminals, no prisons” and “No criminals, no prisons – more” from May 20 and June 5 of this year respectively.  May 20 postulates that while we need a means of separating some people from society, there are over 18,000 civil servants employed by CSC for whom prison inmates are their bread and butter.  The Mandate is but one component to lowering crime rates but is relevant only when executed.  June 5 says the Mandate can work when every inmate is given the opportunity to fully engage to counter each and every impediment that led to their imprisonment.
Good luck with that!

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We’ll cite one typical random example of multiple forces uniting to oppose a CSC decision, knowing all the same that any victory will be countered by retaliatory measures, including punishing inmates who take actions against it.  The fight never ends.

Inmates Frank Dorsey and Ghassan Salah each applied in 2022 under the Habeas Corpus Act for a writ of habeas corpus to challenge CSC denials of their applications for transfers to lower security prisons.  They didn’t apply under the Charter but alleged the denial of their requests engaged four sections of the Charter.  The two inmates consented to have their applications joined for the purpose of determining a common threshold legal issue.

In June of 2022, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed their applications.  The Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed their appeals in December of 2023.  In August of 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada granted a leave to appeal the decisions of the lower courts.  Aside from the appellants Frank Dorsey and Ghassan Salah and the respondent Attorney General of Canada, by 2025 several parties intervened to support the inmates.

Those intervenors include the John Howard Society of Canada, Canadian Council for Refugees, Alberta Prison Justice Society, Aboriginal Legal Services, West Coast Prison Justice Society, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, Black Legal Action Centre, Pivot Legal Society, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Prison Law Association, and Margaret Lee Cole, a long-serving inmate with the same issues presented in this action.
The Court’s final decision is pending.

So here we have a case few if any are likely to know, championed by a number of groups unknown to most, but it’s only one of many actions involving inmates and other organizations trying to bring CSC to heel.

And yet with all that action, we label CSC as morally corrupt and ethically bankrupt.

Why?

Don’t ask your MP.  They will run for cover.

(Ed note:  A one-person operation can come up against circumstances that demand full attention. This long publishing gap is not the first; probably not the last.)