Author: turnoverarocktoday

Correctional Service of Canada fears OPCAT!

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

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

Where have we been? What’s happened?

turnoverarocktoday Brennan Guigue: Wars of my world

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!

Where are the angry women?

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

A LOST RESOURCE?

Most prison inmates who have community support, people ‘at home’ they can call, people who make them feel missed, and loved, are women.  Wives, girlfriends, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, daughters.  Speaking to these women on the phone, despite the occasional moment of domestic tension, or seeing them in on-line and in-person visits are bright spots in an inmate’s otherwise grey day, something that lifts them, a plus to counter the drudging monotony and suffocating and often hostile bureaucracy that is life for offenders in the prison industry.

This lines up with Correctional Service of Canada’s mandate to rehabilitate and safely return offenders to the community, doesn’t it.  The connections make reintegration more likely to succeed, won’t they.    Constructive influences make for positive outcomes, right?  All to the good.  However, there’s an uneasy reality at play here that can undo the apparent positive influences of familial intimacies.  Most of these inmates don’t want to intentionally say anything to upset or worry the women in their lives and with few exceptions they are left out of the real world of prison life and the negative impact it has.

A few years ago, this writer spoke with an inmate’s sister who lived in New Brunswick.  She was his only contact, they didn’t speak often, and he didn’t know how to be honest with her about his life behind bars and to tell her how much he appreciated her support.  He had lost the ability to be open to another person but wanted her to know the truth of his circumstances, not something many prisoners want to do.  He asked me to speak for him.  I was a stranger, but as I talked with her, she understood why he wanted her to know what life was like for him and why he had difficulty speaking for himself.

A Black mother in Ontario kept in close touch with her son who, after his conviction, was sent to Renous, a maximum-security prison in the Maritimes.  The man spent five years there before a transfer back to an Ontario institution.  He kept a positive slant to their conversations and the mother didn’t know he would have spent far less time there if he was white.  The prison industry’s own statistics underscore that non-white inmates spend more time in higher classification confinement.  The mother didn’t know until we told her.

Only two examples, but they represent how people who could play a role in bringing prison conditions to the public’s attention are purposely kept in the dark ‘for their own good.’  Are prisoners who don’t want to upset their wives, girlfriends, mothers, grandmothers, etc., helping themselves and their families?  Or, would the raised voices of hundreds of angry women bouncing off the walls of Correctional Service of Canada’s head office on Laurier Avenue in Ottawa do more?

More postings on Brennan Guigue’s challenge to prison practices (see July 20) are in the works…lots to wade through.

Prison policy vs prison practice

turnoverarocktoday Brennan Guigue: Wars of my world

(8 minute read)
Brennan Guigue would readily agree that people have good reason for their low opinion of him.  He deserves to be in prison, as do almost all men and women who walk the ranges of our federal institutions.  Under the law though, prisoners also deserve the benefits of the obligations Correctional Service of Canada has under its governing legislation and policies to rehabilitate and safely return offenders to the community, and to uphold that as its principal aim.

Policy is one thing; practice is another.  Inmates too often are overwhelmed by a system that doesn’t listen to itself, won’t regulate its own infractions, and where truth is what it says it is.  Most offenders simply ‘cave.’  How can you stand up to a system that has so many ways to kick your legs out from under you?

Brennan Guigue is intelligent and articulate and speaks truth to power.  He picks his battles and when he takes a stand, it’s not just about him.  It’s for the people who can’t/won’t speak for themselves.  It confronts the uniforms who do what they want with impunity.  It’s for what’s right.

Readers of Brennan’s letter to a correctional investigator we’re publishing here are right to think they’ve begun reading a book from the middle.  Background will come in a later posting but the crux of the issue is the help he was giving other inmates to deal with prison health care was seen as an insurrection.  Creative CSC writers went to work to demonize Brennan without supporting documentation and then suppressed his access to files that would support him.

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Correctional Investigator Schwartz.                               June 29, 2023
Office of the Correctional Investigator.
P.O. Box 3421, Station “D”,
Ottawa, ON  K1P 6L4

From:   Brennan Guigue, FPS#104902C
Donnacona Institution

Written from May 23 to June 01, 2023

Thank you for responding to my contacts with the Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) regarding the decisions at Port-Cartier Institution to remove me from my range, house me in the restrictive movement unit (ADR), and then transfer me to the structured intervention unit (S.I.U.) at Donnacona.

When I met with you last week, you told me basically that nothing can be done about the allegations against me because they’re opinions, more or less.  Opinions!  Are you telling me that my life has suffered major disruptions because of someone’s opinions?  How can that be?  Do I have no rights?  Can Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) say whatever it wants, and inmates have no recourse?  Am I not to be believed simply because I’m an inmate?  This reeks of discrimination.

I cannot understand your conclusion that my transfer was justified when you only considered the institution’s position.  Nobody from your office asked for my version of events, and as far as I know, no one from the OCI has investigated the veracity of Port-Cartier’s allegations.  How can you tell me I have no basis to challenge CSC’s claims because no one will believe me?  What about CSC’s own file information that does not support what is alleged?  Doesn’t that carry any weight?  How can false assertions have more relevance that facts?

It’s insane.  Actually, it’s depressing, and frustrating.  Worst of all, it’s par for the course with CSC.  The system can work, but if federal courts can’t compel the Agency to eliminate the difference between policy and practice, what hope do I have to win this fight?  Where is the political/institutional will to stand up for what is right?

I will be the first to admit that I am no angel.  Far from it.  However, this shouldn’t be just about me, or the countless offenders adversely impacted by the arbitrary agendas of CSC staffers like Port-Cartier Warden Jerome Vigneault, who act with impunity under Correctional Service of Canada’s shielding.  It should be about holding CSC to the higher standards of integrity and honesty it claims to champion.

Would it interest you to know that the ‘fight’ with inmate Chris Melanson at Port-Cartier was the first in the previous 18 months.  CSC’s position that I “participated in a reign of terror by attacking the most vulnerable inmates” is not supported by any evidence.  In fact, I truly believe that this is the reason why relevant documents are being withheld from me, and that I was ‘emergency transferred’ before I had an opportunity to obtain the information that would contradict their allegations.  Warden Vigneault’s reasons for wanting me out of his institution has very little, if anything, to do with the reasons given in the SIU file information.  It can’t be any other way.

Would it be unreasonable to argue that helping other inmates in their efforts to exercise their right to file lawful grievances should not be listed as an “incident” to justify the illegal transfer of an inmate from an institution for “security reasons”?  How about questioning a completely fabricated statement in a legally significant document, like an Authorization for Transfer writ?

When one reads a statement such as, “Mr. Guigue incites disorder by being the main instigator in a major movement against the Health Care Centre (HCC),” doesn’t that make anyone wonder what I could have done to prompt such a statement?  Is the writer suggesting I organized a group of inmates to participate in a “picket line” outside the HCC?  Or perhaps I led a peaceful/violent stand-off of some sort?

No, what I was doing was attempting to avoid stand-offs of any kind, and to save my fellow inmates a great deal of anguish when they learned that CSC does not resolve health care complaints.  CSC does not have any authority to compel HCC’s to do, or not do, anything.  I was helping the guys to file complaints against perceived mistreatments, or lack of treatment, with the appropriate provincial medical regulatory bodies.

I have had my own frustrations dealing with HCC’s at Port-Cartier as well as other institutions, and have a better understanding of the ins-and-outs of the process.  Unfortunately, other than that initial statement no further explanation has ever been offered.  Neither have officials at Port-Cartier cared to even elaborate on the allegation.  When I ask for one, I’ve been met with an almost impenetrable wall of resistance.

Do you know that since arriving at Donnacona Institution I have yet to meet anyone from my “case management team”?  All my requests to receive and review documents necessary to my defence had all gone unanswered.  Except for one.  The assigned Parole Office (P.O.), Marie-Pierre Gagnon, responded to a request by telling me that I must write to the Access to Information Office of Canada, pay a $5 fee, and then wait however many months it would take for the material to arrive.  It seemed to me that my P.O. was trying to impede my efforts to form an adequate defence to the allegations against me.  As strange as that sounds, I could not come up with any other reasonable explanation.

I have learned that those very same documents were requested by Independent External Decision Maker (I.E.D.M.) Sabine Michaud who is reviewing my status and they were to be given to me by CSC in preparation for my upcoming S.I.U. Review Committee hearing which was scheduled for April 25, 2023.  Even though it was my right to have them, and CSC’s obligation to provide me with that specified list of relevant documents, they failed to do so.  That included security file documents with logged observation and offence reports.  How can I confidently mount a challenge if the very proof I require is being withheld by CSC officials, parole officers, assistant wardens, guards, and so on?

I believe most people know b.s. when they hear it, and this situation is clearly that.  Yet nobody seems to want to acknowledge it because that would force them to actually do something.  God forbid they should ever go against any of their fellow colleagues in whatever conflicts that may arise with inmates.

I think I’ve made my point clear enough.  You informed me during our conversation that I shouldn’t expect that you will be able to do much on my behalf, as many of the allegations being put forth in the Authorization for Placement in the S.I.U. are that of someone’s opinion.  However, I will point out to you that, no, the allegations cited in the document are presented as fact, and therefore should be supported by factual documentation.  And that especially if they are intended to justify major disruptions in an inmate’s life, and even more so if those same claims are later used to determine a level of risk that inmate may present to the community in matters of parole eligibility.  They better damn well be true!

Actually Mr. Schwartz, I put it to you that the reason I shouldn’t expect much from you in this matter is more likely due to your identifying as ex-law enforcement.  There are some who view the world through “rose coloured glasses,” and I would suggest that you cannot help but view inmates as guards look at inmates, through “blue coloured glasses.”  Sure you can take the man out of the uniform, but you can’t take the uniform out of the man.

I honestly don’t believe you have any business at all being a Correctional Investigator.

Sincerely,

Brennan Guigue, FPS #104902C

cc:      Jerome Vigneault, Port-Cartier Institution
Sonia Tetreault, Port-Cartier Institution
Sabine Michaud, Senior IEDM, Eastern Region
Anne Kelly, Commissioner, CSC
Ivan Zinger, Correctional Investigator
Sena Hussain, Communications, Cell Count
turnoverarocktoday.com

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Brennan is challenging “practice.”  More to come……

Whither goest Mendicino?

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

EXACTLY!
What does it take for a politician elected to public office, a federal cabinet minister no less, to stand up and do the right thing?  And what would we call one who wouldn’t?

How many times has this space featured the revision to Correctional Service of Canada’s Commissioner’s Directive (CD) 022 – Media Relations?  How many letters were posted to how many Ottawa addresses?  Is this a search for a panacea for Canada’s ills?  No, this is an uncomplicated rewrite of a prison agency policy to fully comply with the law and the Charter.

What began as a letter from Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger in December of 2019 prompting CSC Commissioner Anne Kelly to update its policy around inmate contacts with the media became a conundrum demanding the attention of pundits from across a brain-storming spectrum.  Why?  And here in June of 2023, this update is still under study.

A letter arrived recently.  Dated May 4, it was from Kirstan Gagnon, Assistant Commissioner in the Communications and Engagement Sector of Correctional Service of Canada.  Apparently, Public Safety Minister Marc Mendicino and CSC Commissioner Anne Kelly delegated Ms. Gagnon to respond to three of our letters to the Minister and two to the Commissioner, dating from October of last year to mid-March of 2023.

The essence of her message:-
“Important work to update the current CD 022 has been ongoing and many internal and external subject matter experts have been consulted throughout the process, providing valuable feedback, and proposing important changes to the directive.  CSC also worked diligently with stakeholders, such as the Office of Privacy Commissioner of Canada, to ensure that changes and updates to CD 022 respect the privacy and security of offenders, institutions, victims, and the public.  It is important to note that while we await the new version of CD 022, the current directive remains in effect and continues to provide offenders access to media outlets and representatives, as per their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
..and…
“CSC appreciates the essential role performed by journalists and the media, and as such, we remain committed to being open, transparent and respectful of all media.  Since 2020, CSC has approved and facilitated more than 200 request from media outlets across the country to speak with offenders under its care.”
…and…
“We are now doing consultation on the CD with our executive committee, which is one of the last steps in the process.  Once we have incorporated any final input, the new CD will be approved by CSC’s Commissioner and promulgated.”

We responded by writing to the Minister:-

June 6, 2023

The Honourable Marco Mendicino, Minister of Public Safety,
Ottawa, ON  K1A 0A6

Re:      Minister missing in action

Dear Minister Mendicino:

If Correctional Service of Canada had substantively justified the prolonged delays in promulgating the revised Commissioner’s Directive (CD) 022 – Media Relations, I would not have written your office last October 17, and January 30 and March 15 of this year.

There was no need to bring this to your attention if you and your staff were on top of the CSC file.  But rather than question the Agency, you simply consigned my queries to their Communication and Engagement Sector (“control the message office”).  Assistant Commissioner Kirstan Gagnon’s May 4 letter’s core paragraph is an exercise in obfuscation.

The Correctional Investigator prompted the revision to a defective Commissioner’s Directive in December of 2019, a straightforward assignment.  Commissioner Kelly readily agreed.  Since then, CSC has twisted itself into a pretzel as it engineers a rewrite to preserve an unsound status quo, referencing numerous resources as an explanation for the wait.

CSC has good reason.  Canada pays lip service to the Mandela Rules.  Canada ratified the Convention against Torture in 1987.  But Canada won’t sign the UN’s 2006 Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT).  Why?  Canada will talk the talk.  Canada won’t walk the walk.

Correctional Service of Canada wants it that way.

Kirstan Gagnon and Ivan Zinger were copied, as was Senator Kim Pate who asked to be kept informed.

Yes Minister, what does it take to stand up?

Correctional Service of Canada…..

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

….IS OFFENSIVE!

Try this:  Google “prison criticisms of Canada’s federal system.”

The Office of the Correctional Investigator releases an Annual Report as a review of Correctional Service of Canada’s operation during its previous twelve months.  There are few laurels, many barbs, numerous recommendations, and a lengthy section of charted statistics.  What is notable throughout these dozens of pages is the year after year repetitiveness of some of the report’s judgements, and the prison agency’s evasions and rejections of the OCI’s counsel for improved outcomes.

The correctional investigator heads a multi-million-dollar-a-year exercise, backed by investigators and support staff, to scrutinize a cocooned government bureau.  The OCI can access people, places, papers where conversation, observation, and examination flows to the summaries, deliberations, and suggestions that are the meat of its work.  That yearly report justifies the effort.  It represents millions of spent dollars and thousands of public service hours in preparation.  Parliament expresses its gratitude, moves on to other business, the report is carefully filed, and another groundhog-year begins.

At what point do honest, straight-shooting, stand-up men and women cry “enough”?  At what point is there the demand that their hard work has meaning, that the annual thanks-very-much-and-now-go-back-and-start-over doesn’t cut it, ignores the unsound status quo, and won’t make Canada safer?  Where is the screaming from the rooftops?

There are rooftops in Ottawa.  Why is it so quiet?  Why indeed.

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The correctional investigator mirrors in a very public way the experience of hundreds of individuals and organizations who work for carceral change and reform in this country, turnoverarocktoday.com included.

In searching our files for data on another topic, an issue of Klassen Mailing List relevant to this posting stood out.  The precursor to turnoverarocktoday.com, Klassen Mailing List had the same purpose as its digital successor but was printed and distributed to a cross-country mailing list.

Issue #12 was published on November 6, 2007 with the title “Correctional Service of Canada….making me proud to be an ashamed Canadian!”  In part, it reported on an information picket we set up outside CSC’s Ontario District Office on Dundas Street West in Toronto on Thursday, October 11 of that year.

Issue #12 also set out a list of eleven ‘bones to pick’ with CSC:

  • Limitations and delays in health care delivery,
  • the scam the Millennium telephone system is,
  • the inconsequential grievance and complaints process,
  • lack of adequate accountability and transparency,
  • the absence of due process in so many instances,
  • some dubious professionalism,
  • examples of inaccuracies and fabrications to the information in offenders’ files,
  • limited educational opportunities,
  • the inefficacy of cookie-cutter programs,
  • a dearth of substantive job skills and trades training programs, and,
  • in general, a pervasive failure to meet the burden of the CSC Mission Statement.

Only one item from this list has been resolved.  For the last many years, Bell Canada’s telephone system in federal prisons now reflects reasonable tariffs for prepaid and collect calls.  Bell still is securely in control of the telephone service contracts and continues to gather benefits from its monopoly.

That’s it.  That’s all.  And other sources have a longer list.  Then too, Klassen Mailing List was more polite than turnoverarocktoday.com.

Where is the minister in all this?  A good question.  We’ve contacted current Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino often.  He seems to be absent from the prison file.

Portage-free letters will reach him at the House of Commons, Ottawa, K1A 0A6.  His office phone is 613-992-6361, and there’s a fax number, 613-992-9791.

The prison machine – can’t say “I’m sorry.”

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

FORCING A PERSON INTO SOLITARY CONFINEMENT for more than a few days, or repeatedly putting that same man or woman into those barren bathroom-sized cells even for a few days at a time, is mentally corrosive, can cause permanent damage, and is torture, plain and simple.  This is as true today as it has been at any time in our history, and the United Nations Human Rights Council and its Committee Against Torture came to recognize it as such during the last half of twentieth century.

The Office of the Correctional Investigator, Canada’s prison watchdog, noted in its 2020-2021 Annual Report that its work during the previous year “has shown us just how vulnerable those in institutional settings are – from long-term care homes to prisons – and how we must ensure their protection to the highest extent possible.”

The report went on point out that, “Canada has been known as a world leader in protecting human rights and democratic values……Canada has also been a leader by joining many international human rights treaties and making a commitment to report to the United Nations on their implementation.”

As an example, Canada signed the Convention against Torture (CAT) in 1985 and ratified it in 1987.  “However,” the correctional investigator goes on, “merely reporting on how it meets its CAT obligations is not enough to ensure that the most vulnerable who are in places of detention are protected against mistreatment and torture behind closed doors.  There exists a gap in Canada’s human rights system in protecting those in detention.”

The UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) fills that gap.  Countries who ratify OPCAT must adhere to human rights obligations under international law for detention facilities, and replace the secrecy traditionally associated with prisons with openness, transparency, and accountability.

“The most effective way of preventing torture therefore is to expose all places of detention to public scrutiny,” says a conclusion adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on August 14, 2006.

Canada has not signed OPCAT.  Can you wonder why?

Administrative segregation is how Correctional Service of Canada labelled solitary confinement.  CSC is fully aware of its consequences to prisoners from the earliest days of the country’s prison system.  After all, it was the perpetrator, and outcomes were plainly visible.  And yet, even as late at 2012 Correctional Service of Canada refused to limit its use.  It would take another seven years before parliament adopted Bill C-83 to end solitary, or more correctly, to technically end solitary confinement.

In the meantime, Arlene Gallone had had enough.  She was a former federal inmate in Quebec who became the lead plaintiff in a class action against the government over the use of solitary confinement.  The suit was launched on February 24, 2013, and the Superior Court of Quebec authorized the class action on January 13, 2017.  In Ontario, two similar actions were underway with Christopher Brazeau and Jullian Reddock as the leads.  These were filed jointly with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on March 12, 2021.

Negotiations began.  There was no course where the government would allow this to be heard in open court, just as it is with any legal matter arising with Correctional Service of Canada.  In the end, the Brazeau, Reddock and Gallone (BRG) class actions were settled together, with $28 million in aggregate damages awarded to eligible claimants, and a further assumed undisclosed settlement for legal fees.  The judgement applied to all federal institutions across the country.  Canada was required by the court to turn over all relevant documentation and CSC was to assist inmates with the claims process.

That it did.  Lawyers began the interviews of class action members during 2022.  The claims administrator made disbursements in January of 2023.  All claimants received an equal share of the award, calculated at $5,469.85.  Class members whose solitary confinement experience was egregious were also able to proceed further on one of two different ‘tracks’ to claim up to $50,000 or more in addition to the base amount, dependant upon the severity of their confinements.  These payments are scheduled for later in the year, but participants have been told that the full value of the claims can’t be met with the funds available.  All the same, the amounts awarded will be relatively substantial.

These are your tax dollars going out the door.  And the BRG class actions represent only a portion of the outstanding lawsuits against our prison industry.

There’s one striking observation in what Correctional Service of Canada published on its website for assisting class members with their claims.  No doubt it is following the instructions agreed by the government, nothing more, nothing less.  It reads at one point, “Three separate class actions lawsuits have ended with the Courts finding that the rights of inmates were violated.”

Nowhere does CSC acknowledge wrongdoing.  Nowhere does it say, “I’m sorry.”

“I just want to be treated like a human being.”

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

In Canada?  Why would anyone say that?  What’s going on?  Who is this?  What is happening?

It’s not likely the average Canadian would hear it face to face from another person.  You might pick it up in a radio or television newscast, or when paging through a newspaper in hand or on-line.  Or could it be overheard from the conversation of others in a busy mall food court?  “I just want to be treated like a human being.”

This isn’t about a journalist’s reporting from countries where human rights are ignored.  This is here, in this country, in real time.  “I just want to be treated like a human being.”

This could come from a seasonal agricultural worker, brought here to help grow and harvest our food.  We know there are complaints about the treatment of foreign workers by some corporate farmers.  Or it could be the kids in our child welfare system, housed in foster and group homes where abuses are not uncommon, and where the overdosing of controlling drugs is too frequently a catch-all alternative to therapies.  Are victims of domestic violence and schoolyard bullying whispering this under their breath?

Most of us won’t hear this and don’t hear this from prisoners.  It’s there but it doesn’t get past prison security barriers “designed to keep people in as much as they are to keep people out,” as Canada’s Senate said in a 2019 report about carceral human rights.  The management of the prison “population is largely conducted away from public scrutiny,” the report continued.  Prison inmates can become inured to the vagaries, hypocrisy, and dishonesty that pervades the institutional environment and the air they breathe.  It smothers hope, it chokes the screams.  The words are there though.  Can you hear them? “I just want to be treated like a human being.”

This space has frequently highlighted the proposed revision to a commissioner’s directive on media relations to bring inmate/media access into line with the law and the Charter.  It’s been over three years since Anne Kelly, the head of what we call Correctional Service of Canada, committed to make changes.  A draft is ready and available, but it isn’t in effect.  Why?

Despite all, word can escape the darkness.  Google Joey Toutsaint to read his 3-page complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Committee.  To see Joey Toutsaint in conversation, call up YouTube’s “APTN investigates – 2180 days inside corrections.”  Listen to Mary Wiens interview Nathanael Williams March 10 and March 23 of this year, broadcast on CBC’s Metro Morning.  As a by the way, Nathanael did not get parole.

“I just want to be treated like a human being.”

Soleiman Faqiri – Canada’s George Floyd?

turnoverarocktoday Justice & the Penal Systems

No, not if we continue to allow our police services and provincial government to erase Soleiman’s existence with a gag-order-settlement and a years-from-now nonconsequential inquest.

No, not if we don’t demand all three levels of government address the need for mental health initiatives and social programming in our neighbourhoods and change the way we treat people in distress who come into conflict with the law.

No, not if we don’t stop jail and prison guards from disregarding policy, the law, and just simple human decency.

Two events in early March presented another opportunity to keep Soleiman’s name in front of the men who would rather not hear it.   Two events that open this latest letter…….

April 5, 2023

Thomas Corrique, Commissioner,                  Mark Mitchell, Chief,
Ontario Provincial Police,                              Office of the Chief of Police,
Lincoln Alexander Building,                           Kawartha Lakes Police Service,
777 Memorial Avenue,                                    6 Victoria Avenue North,
Orillia, ON  L3V 7V3                                      Lindsay, ON  K9N 4E5

Commissioner Corrique & Chief Mitchell:

In the early hours of March 6, 2023, Jeffrey Munro was assaulted by four men and stabbed in downtown Toronto.  He died later in hospital.  Police in Toronto have named four men who have been or will be charged with second-degree murder.

Irvo Otieno died in custody at about the same date in a facility near Richmond, Virginia.  Seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital employees have been charged with second-degree murder.

The outcome of the charges against these fourteen men and women will be determined by the courts, but police in both cases understood that Jeffrey Munro and Irvo Otieno did not die from an act of God, but rather was due to the deliberate actions of the people who have been charged.

And so it was that the Kawartha Lakes Police Service investigated the death of Soleiman Faqiri on December 15. 2016 at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario, but could not assign blame.  A second investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police came to the same conclusion.  The OPP was prompted to look again, but with the same result.

You have the names of every person who entered Soleiman Faqiri’s cell during the assault.  You know the only reason the jail guards were there was to “teach the inmate a lesson” for giving them a hard time earlier, a common practice in Canada’s jails and prisons.  You know that every one of those individuals was either actively or passively responsible for this man’s death. 

The family and supporters of the thus-far absent justice for Soleiman are now to be satisfied with a far-off inquest, years from now when the man’s name will be archival to the general public.  The inquest’s recommendations will focus on avoiding future such deaths, even though others will die similarly in the meantime.

No matter.  It will come to nothing.  Good on you.


Charles H. Klassen

cc:       Myron Demkiw, Chief, Toronto Police Services         Wendy Gillis, Toronto Star
Michael Kerzner, Solicitor General, Ontario             Yusuf Faqiri

Nothing will change the narrative around Soleiman’s death without the participation of people like you and like me.

Nothing will change the outcome of future deaths in custody without the participation of people like you and like me.

You can’t do nothing when you can do something.
Joyce Milgaard (1930-2020)

The smell of bull dung?

turnoverarocktoday Brennan Guigue: Wars of my world

Brennan Guigue was speaking recently about the total absence of social or rehabilitative programming at Port-Cartier Institution in the far reaches of eastern Quebec where he’s been incarcerated since early November of 2021.  He dug into his personal archives for an earlier experience to underscore how little Correctional Service of Canada, or the Parole Board of Canada for that matter, cares about returning inmates safely to the community, then and now.

Brennan has been in prison on and off for most of his adult life.  He has repeatedly asked for mental health care intervention that would help break his cycle of criminal behaviour.  He’s still waiting.  Along the way, there has also been a lack of health care in general, which is the basis for so many inmate complaints to CSC, the Office of the Correctional Investigator, and the provincial professional bodies that regulate doctors and nurses.  Treatments for physiological ailments become more urgent with age, and inmate requests, pleas, and petitions for help often gather dust.

But for this outing, an experience from several years ago about safe reintegration into society is worth the telling.

Brennan was in a maximum-security prison several years ago, and approaching his warrant expiry date, that date a criminal sentence imposed by a court at sentencing officially ends.  The Parole Board of Canada in a scheduled hearing a few months prior had ruled he was too great a risk for an earlier release.  He would be held to the end of his sentence.  Brennan was getting no programing and of course no mental health care.  He asked the board for support prior to and after his release to lessen his risk to the community, post-release help like counselling and a residency period in a halfway house.  The answer was ‘no.’  The parole board would do nothing to help him or reduce the risk it judged him to be.

Now, some time before that scene played out, Brennan was in a session with a prison social worker.  He talked about his concerns for not completing his correctional plan because there were no programs available, how unprepared he was for the outside, and the fear he would do something to prevent his release.  After that last parole board hearing, the social worker went to the institution’s security unit and told them about that conversation.  No issue of confidentiality here.

Brennan was put into solitary confinement as a preventative measure for the entire three months before his release.  Better to increase his risk to the community with what has become recognized as torture than chance a mishap in the institution, according to CSC logic.  This was before Bill C-83 nominally eliminated solitary confinement in November of 2019.  The practice continues of course by other means, but that’s for another time, another place.

Thirty days before his release, Brennan wrote to the parole board, again asking for help to mitigate his risk to the community.  His letter was ignored.  He went to his institutional parole officer with the same plea.  His parole office told him it wasn’t his responsibility to help.

So, if he was considered too great a risk for parole before spending 90 days in solitary confinement, he would have been an even greater risk to reoffend when he was dropped off on a street corner at the end of his sentence.

How about this.  The Parole Board of Canada and Correctional Service of Canada are much more concerned about covering their own butts than they are committed to community safety.  Looks that way, doesn’t it.

As a by the way, how long do you think it was before Brennan reoffended?