….. HARBOURING “SECRET ONTARIO.”

Provincial jails in Ontario fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Solicitor General but are run by ghostly covert forces, shadowy bodies with no face or form, no office or officers, no accountability, no liability, a protected potent blight infesting the weak and vulnerable.  Its corruptive cankers are wherever there is the powerless…jails, youth group homes and foster care homes, places where the elderly are stored, anywhere the defenceless are gathered.

How else do we explain the difference between policy and practice?  How do we square what the people we’ve entrusted with power tell us against the truths hiding beneath the rocks under their feet?  “Secret Ontario.” **

Avoiding scrutiny is paramount.  Our governing institutions invoke the Victorian maxim often used in this space, “I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”  No one can know.  Maplehurst did well at hiding the chaos and lawlessness guards and management inflicted on 192 inmates in December of 2023; that is, until courts began staying inmate charges, reducing inmate criminal liabilities, and issuing damning condemnations against the jail.  Then, as whatever it is we like to call it, hit the fan and we saw videos and heard testimonies.

So, what has happened?  We continue to hear of stayed or reduced charges for Maplehurst inmates impacted by the events of December 22-23, 2023.  A class action lawsuit is underway.    What of the perpetrators?  What came from the two investigations?  Have you heard anything?  Has anybody heard anything?  Imagine the anger at Queen’s Park for Maplehurst management and staff allowing itself to “frighten the horses.”

In a freedom of information (FOI) request, we asked for the name of the current Maplehurst superintendent. The answer confirmed that today’s Millhaven superintendent is not the same person as was in that office in December of 2023.  We didn’t ask where that superintendent was now because, as it turns out, that information would have been none of our business.

Three further freedom of information (FOI) requests were submitted in December of 2025.  One asked for the number of Correctional Officers charged with criminal or policy offences arising from that pre-Christmas incident in Maplehurst in 2023.  Another asked for the number of criminal and policy offences laid against guards.  The third wanted to know how many guards had been dismissed because of that disorder at the jail.

All were answered with the same response.  “Please be advised that access to the requested records is denied.  Access to the responsive information is denied in accordance with section(s) S.65 (6) of the Act as follows: S.65 (6), Labour Relations & Employment Related Records.”  In other words, as noted earlier, this is none of the public’s business.  Privacy issues are a real and justifiable concern, but should civil service wrongdoing be privileged?  Criminal charges are in the public domain unless otherwise court-ordered, but Ontario will do what governments always aim to do.  Minimize the damage.  I doubt there’ll be any charges.  We passed on appealing to the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario……this time.

Another FOI was submitted on March 6. 
“What do your records show are the number of institutional and criminal charges laid against Correctional Officers at Maplehurst Correctional Complex arising from the incident at the facility on December 22-23, 2023?
This is not a request for the number of Correctional Officers who have been charged of for any information which would identify any Correctional Officer.”

We expect the same previous response, but this time the option to appeal will be exercised.  Let our provincial government double-down on its right (power?) to support “Secret Ontario.”

Ever feel governments take on more power than we intend them to have?

**”SECRET CANADA” IS A PROJECT OF THE GLOBE AND MAIL.  TAKE A LOOK.

Tommy Bassio was 15 days short of his 22^nd birthday on November 25, 1994, when the Sureté du Quebec (SQ) SWAT teams stormed his home in Laval at 6am and arrested him for the mob-styled killing of a Max Jubert who was shot in the back of the head and buried in cement.  Bassio was known to police, but mostly for financial type crimes.

A day earlier Thomas Hartmann was arrested for the same crime and immediately cooperated with authorities.  His statement, written in his own hand, absolved himself of any wrongdoing and placed the blame on Bassio.  According to the SQ, after Bassio was arrested, he confessed to the murder, and his statement was word for word on many points what was written in Hartman’s confession.

There were no eyewitnesses, no DNA, no evidence linking either man to the crime.  The only direct evidence were the two statements, made by the two suspects, and both statements tell the same story.  Bassio was the author of the crime. Usually here’s where Hartmann would become the main prosecuting witness, and Bassio the sole accused.  That didn’t happen.  Both men were placed on trial, charged with first-degree murder.

On April 1, 1996 (April fool’s day) Tommy Bassio was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life-25.

Now the story gets even weirder. The Crown Prosecutors had basically proved their version of events.  Bassio was the person who planned and executed the murder; Hartmann was 100% innocent.  But after Bassio was sentenced and went off to serve his life sentence, the prosecutors continued to go after Hartmann. After nine months of backroom dealings, the Crown struck a deal with this man, a man they proved was innocent, for a 12-year sentence, minus time served, leaving 8 years.

Why would an innocent man accept a 12-year sentence?  More puzzling why would Crown Prosecutors seek to imprison a man they themselves proved to be innocent?  Two men were sent to jail, both convicted under odd circumstances, both convicted for a crime only one could do. Deconstructing this case turned up undisputable facts, and evidence.  The SQ tortured Bassio, refused his right to a lawyer, and lied about the confession. The Crown did in fact knowingly send an innocent man to jail, and that innocent man, as the evidence showed, was Tommy Bassio.

What happened?  Nothing.

Over the years, as he continued to protest his innocence, Tommy Bassio became a prison organizer, reformer and activist.  He complained to all three levels of our federal prison industry (CSC), institutional, regional, and national, about the growing problem of innocent people in Canadian prisons.  The Correctional Service of Canada’s response was that “there are no innocent prisoners in Canadian prisons.”  That’s a problem right there.

According to an essay in the Archambault Report 2.0, the Innocence Project and others like it only take cases where there is newly found evidence that can exonerate an inmate serving time for a crime he/she did not commit.  Bassio’s parole applications were rejected.  His refusal to admit to his crime, his activism, systemic racism, all contributed to Bassio’s continued confinement. 

In the end, on October 14, 2025, and with much persistent community support, Tommy Bassio was released from prison on parole after 31 straight years in jail while being innocent.  In his statement, Bassio wrote that “while much has changed, the truth has not.  Justice did not suddenly correct itself.  Time did not erase what was done, nor did it absolve those responsible.  I did not survive 31 years to live quietly inside another kind of cage.”

Sourced/quoted from helpfreetheinnocent.org and the Archambault Report 2.0

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March 1, 2026

The Honourable Sean Fraser,
Minister of Justice,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON  K1A 0A6

Re:      Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission Act

Dear Minister Fraser:

This Act, also known as David and Joyce Milgaard’s Law, establishes an independent body with one full-time Chief Commissioner and four to eight commissioner members to review wrongful conviction applications.  It will look at investigations and jury trials that may have been sullied by racism and prejudice, and it will most certainly consider the conduct of law enforcement and prosecutors in securing convictions.

The legislation received Royal Assent on December 17, 2024, and with that the process of appointing commissioners could begin.  As of February, this year, no commissioners or a chair has been appointed, no staff have been hired, and no office space has been secured.

Fourteen months and nothing?  Are you kidding?

Since 2018, the interim process for reviewing miscarriages of justice is handled by the Honourable Morris J. Fish, Special Advisor on Wrongful Convictions.  This is unacceptable, given a few dozen likely cases of the wrongfully convicted are still in our prisons, against what the Special Advisor has been able to accomplish.

Tommy Bassio is a prime example.  He spent 31 straight years in prison for a murder he did not commit.  His innocence was no secret, but it was only through the persistence of supporters that he was finally released on parole last October.  “I did not survive 31 years to live quietly inside another kind of cage,” he said.  I hope he makes lots of noise.

It’s time to execute the law.  It’s time for justice.

Canada needs the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT).
It’s been sitting in front of us for the last twenty years, waiting for our ratification.

WHAT DOES OTTAWA FEAR?