“…some imprisoned people tell us that guards have refused to provide them with their prescribed medication, including for pain.  Although seemingly passive, withholding pain medication constitutes torture under the Criminal Code because it is the intentional infliction of “pain and suffering” through “omission.”  Catherine Latimer, Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada, quoted from her “Canadian prisons need international oversight to prevent human rights violations,” published in the Globe and Mail, August 7, 2023, and Class Action News, Issue 31, Fall 2023.

This is but one example of a violation of the Mandela Rules, and how dual loyalties interfere with health care delivery in federal prisons.  As referenced on September 24 in “Prison health care – It’s not okay,” clinical decisions may only be taken by the responsible health care professionals and may not be over-ruled or ignored by non-medical staff.

Just so, when guards escort inmates to health care unit appointments, those escort guards might not allow inmate privacy with a health care provider.  If an inmate is on cuff status (put in handcuffs when out of their cell), guards might not remove those restraints for treatment or consultation.  Guards can become privy to an inmate’s health care information which is passed on to other guards for use as convenient.  Confidentiality of medical information is required, unless maintaining such confidentiality would result in a real and imminent threat to the patient or to others.  What is or is not a threat is a subjective assessment but is not within the authority of a prison guard in any case.

Health care personnel shall not have any role in the imposition of disciplinary sanctions or other restrictive measures.  Not to impugn the professionalism of prison nurses and doctors, there is all the same a mirky, grey indeterminate space between the medical and non-medical groups.  An inmate’s conditions on a range and in a clinic can be shaped, and are shaped, by consultations between the two parties.

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Kim Morin had no reference to damage to Brennan Guigue’s left knee in his prison health file at Port Cartier Institution in eastern Quebec when we spoke with her by phone on August 2, 2022.  She oversaw health care services in the prison at the time and the conversation was Correctional Service of Canada’s response to criticism of health care in that prison which began a few months earlier.

Brennan’s concerns had been ignored or brushed aside by the nurses and doctors since he arrived at Port Cartier at the beginning of the previous November.  We added our voice to his in a May 9, 2022, letter to Nadia Pelletier, who was then heading health care there before going on leave.  We copied the CSC’s assistant commissioner for health services in Ottawa, CSC’s regional health services director in Laval, and the correctional investigator and public safety minister, both in Ottawa.

On May 24, Manjeet Sethi, Acting Assistant Commissioner, Health Services, at CSC headquarters in Ottawa, answered our May 9 letter on behalf of Nadia Pelletier.  He ended with a typically baseless CSC position, “…I can assure you that Health Services are always available to Mr. Guigue, and that he is receiving care in accordance to his actual diagnoses and needs.”  “Factually incorrect,” we wrote back on June 24.   “Blatantly untrue” we noted when we copied the Sethi letter to Nadia Pelletier on July 2.  CSC NHQ in Ottawa then messaged Port Cartier via the Quebec regional office to snip this thorn.  Ergo the conversation with Kim Morin.

Kim Morin met with Brennan on July 15 for about an hour to discuss his concerns which at that time centred on his Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) Suboxone dosage and his relationship with Dr. Geneviève Coté who oversaw the program, and with his many requests for his mental health needs.  Our phone conversation followed on August 2, referencing those same two issues, but adding the status of a response to Brennan’s atrial fibrillation (AFib) and the treatment plan for his knee.

This was a refreshingly frank discussion, with Ms. Morin acknowledging she had no notation about AFib in Brennan’s file, even though he had been diagnosed at the same prison years before.  She had nothing about his knee on file although Brennan had been diagnosed with either a torn meniscus or damaged tendon two years before at Warkworth Institution, an MRI order was never executed, another doctor at Millhaven seconded the MRI order, again not executed.  I told Ms. Morin that Brennan had a video visit with the Port Cartier’s doctor two months earlier, brought up the problem with his knee, and the doctor’s response was, “Well, we’ll have to look into that.”

Ms. Morin conceded that inmates can be in for long waits.  For instance, the institution has 1 psychiatrist, who Brennan claims is in the prison once in every one or two months,1½ mental health nurses, 2 psychologist and 2 social workers to serve the rated 237 inmate population of Port Cartier.  An inmate who is not considered critical may never get on the list.  Health care resources overall are limited, but ‘understaffing’ is not in the CSC vocabulary.

So, what came of all this?  His Suboxone dosage was adjusted.

As a footnote, the correctional investigator’s office took an interest in that May 9 letter to Nadia Pelletier.  Derek Janhevich, the OCI director of operations for Ontario and Quebec wrote on May 20 that their senior investigator assigned to Port Cartier would be in the institution presently and would meet with Brennan.  They did meet in the second week of June, and Brennan reported, “I sat there talking to him for ten minutes. ‘I can’t help you,’ was his answer.  Useless.”  Why?  The correctional investigator’s team does have concerns about the care inmates receive but it can’t act.

It’s important to keep in mind that this cites health care issues of only one inmate, but that one inmate is representative of system-wide deficiencies for all prison populations.

Brennan Guigue’s left knee?  Well, he’s still waiting for help.

….WHEN YOU HAVE A TOOTHACHE IN PRISON?

“The lack of accountability CSC provides its physicians also allows for the negative stigma associated with criminal behaviour to infect those treating prisoners,” is from one of the media releases by Executive Director Catherine Latimer of the John Howard Society of Canada.

Prison inmates are no angels, and interactions with health care professionals can be difficult in some cases, but there is no place in the law or in our collective conscience for negative branding.  As omnipresent as it is throughout the penal system, the health care professionals treating incarcerated patients do well to recall our Supreme Court reminder that it is who we are, and not who they are, that governs our actions.  The few dissenters tarnish the reputation of their vocation, but any prison health care worker is under some pressure to compromise.

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You have a toothache, or otherwise need the attention of a dentist.  Only fear or uninsured expenses stand in the way of asking for help.  You can be in a dentist’s chair within hours if necessary.  That’s not so in our federal prisons.

“Miss, I have a toothache.”  Most inmates will see or pass by a nurse daily.  “Put in a requisition,” will be the response.  That’s the routine; use the institution’s internal mail system to ask for a dental appointment, and then wait.  Wait to be called to health care when your turn comes up.

How long is the wait?  That depends.  That depends on how a need is triaged, at times without the input of a dentist, and sometimes it depends on the health care unit’s subjective assessment of the needs of individual inmates.  Then too, because inmates don’t have advance notices of appointments, the call to a range to send an inmate to health care may not get to the patient, in which case the record will show that the inmate ‘refused’ to attend.  But, when an inmate doesn’t show up for an appointment, why doesn’t health care double-check with the guards on the range?  Why not?  There should be a concern for why the appointment was missed.

There is much anecdotal evidence of the impact of delayed dental care on inmates.  From two inmates in a Kingston institution a few years ago who were put in hospital on intravenous antibiotics to combat infections while waiting months for care, to a more recent case of an inmate in Quebec with a badly swollen jaw and cheek who could squeeze puss out of his tear duct be applying pressure under his eye.  These men must have been suffering through heavy pain with no recourse but to wait for help, not knowing when that help would arrive, and hopefully with the resources to pay for expensive prison black-market illicit drugs for relief.

Dentists are authorized to provide basic and essential care and from all accounts they are diligent in their service within the contractual limits and imposed time constraints.  Government bureaucracy and the proverbial red tape can prolong contract renewals for medical services, and the maximum number of dental clinic hours allowed in those contracts are often insufficient to meet patient needs.  In the case of the former, there are no dental appointments in institutions waiting new contacts, and with the latter, too few treatment hours leave some inmates on long waiting lists.

Looking at terms in some recent agreements, Collins Bay Institution in Kingson can accommodate up to 750 inmates, but a dentist is on site there a maximum of 12 hours a week.  Warkworth about two hours away allows 1 day a week, about 6 hours, for a population of up to 537.  Millhaven in Bath has contracted for a maximum of 364 hours a year, averaging 7 hours a week over a 52-week year.  In some prisons, dentists may book clinics (about 6 hours) according to need but only up to the contracted maximum number of hours.

While contracts prescribe a maximum number of hours, no dentist has spare openings for prison patients.  What’s more, internal institutional issues affecting inmate movement and incidents that lead to lockdowns will delay or cancel health care appointments.  Security trumps toothaches.

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Brennan Guigue’s inmate activism makes him a primary source of information, and this segment on prison access to dentists will end with one of his past oral health care experiences.

He was in Millhaven Institution at the beginning of 2019.  He’d been suffering with toothaches for a few months and was making futile requests for help.  He didn’t know then that CSC was still negotiating a new contract for dental services, and in the meantime, patients would have to wait.  Anxiety and discomfort exacerbated his distress as he watched what other inmates were going through.

We stepped in, expecting an intervention would be in vain.  Letters went to the institution, to the Assistant Commissioner for Health Services at CSC national headquarter in Ottawa, and to the Ontario regional headquarters in Kingston.  Eventually, a call from Ian Irving at the regional headquarters assured us that Brennan would be taken to a dentist.

By the first half of March, he had been transferred to Collins Bay temporarily due to operational issues.  He was taken from there to a Canadian Forces Base Kingson dentist on Monday, March 25, where x-rays were taken, as CSC had requested.  The dentist was concerned by the images, checked Brennan’s mouth, and felt he couldn’t let Brennan leave his office without help if he wanted it.

(“I can’t believe they left you in this condition.”)

Four teeth were extracted, including the 1-8 (upper right molar) which had a cavity and the beginning of an abscess, plus three others that were broken, pitted, blackened and rotting. The dentist gave him care instructions, a minimum supply of pain killers, and told him four other cavities needed attention but were not emergencies.

Brennan saw a dentist at Millhaven on Wednesday, May 8.

More prison health care, next…….

CSC CAN’T SEE THE MOUNTAIN

When concerns about the health care that offenders receive in our federal prisons is raised with Correctional Service of Canada staffers who can speak to it, there is this incessant insistence that inmates receive the appropriate health care services they need.

That’s not true, and those CSC spokespersons must know that.  There are simply too many complaints.  Are they misled by subordinates, or not following up on what passes in front of them?  Are they misinformed or disinformed?  There’s the rub.  The obfuscation is blinding.  Comparing the dates on health care requests filed by inmates and the dates they received service would prove a point.  The bottom line though is that if someone with a voice at Correctional Service of Canda admitted to health care struggles in the system, then CSC would be expected to do something ‘corrective.’

CSC spends millions every year on health care for inmates in its institutions and the offenders under its supervision in the community.  Because CSC is self-insured, those millions are a part its budget, and incentives are in place to hold the line on expenses.  The issues we have with health care in the community are usually centred on underfunding and staff shortages.  Prison health care is under the same stressors, and perhaps to a greater degree, given its high-needs population.  And since all care is triaged, lag times can be excessive, even for inmates with serious conditions.  It becomes problematic if an inmate is transferred from one institution to another while waiting for help.

There’s an additional irritant impacting the efficacy of prison health care.  Correctional Officers, guards, have a waste-of-skin type prejudice towards the offenders under their care/control.  “We’re treated like dogs; less than dogs,” one inmate lamented.  No question that while there are many guards who comply with their job profile, often in the face of co-worker hostility, inmate degradation prevails all the same.  And it can be infectious.

CSC employs some health care professionals, such as nurses and psychologists, and then contracts for doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, and other relevant specialists.  All are registered or licensed, meet professional standards, and almost universally work to deliver sound medical services.  Nevertheless, anti-inmate bias is frequently evident in the clinics.  One minor example is the response of a nurse to an inmate’s question as he was about to meet with a doctor after waiting weeks for an appointment.  He asked what happens if an inmate’s request for care is marked ‘urgent’.  He quoted her as saying, “Oh, we don’t pay attention to that.”

Then too there is “the challenge of dual loyalties.”  All CSC health care professionals are required to meet The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) which sets out the terms of dual loyalties for health care as:-
Health care personnel shall not have any role in the imposition of disciplinary sanctions or other restrictive measures.
Confidentiality of medical information is required, unless maintaining such confidentiality would result in a real and imminent threat to the patient or to others.
Clinical decisions may only be taken by the responsible health care professionals and may not be  over-ruled or ignored by non-medical staff. 

To be generous to CSC, the subjectivity here in these three directives is not umpired by empowered third party referees, leaving ample latitude for interpretation.  Plenty of evidence calls for intervention, but management prefers to defer to the muscle in the trenches, falling back on the comfort of the established policies it claims are enforced.  CSC is in a tough spot.  It’s unmanageable; it denies, deflects, and delays, leaving the fallout for Attorney General lawyers to arbitrate.  Our prison industry needs OPCAT (see August 27, 2023).

What happens when an inmate has a toothache?
Stay tuned.

A MOUNTAIN TOO HIGH?

A look at the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) website is a place to start: “…one of our priorities is ensuring that individuals incarcerated in Canada’s federal institutions have access to quality, safe, patient-centred care.”

This is mandated under sections 85, 86, and 87 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.  Basically, it says that the Service will give every inmate essential health care, and reasonable access to non-essential health care.  This includes medical, dental, and mental health care delivered by registered professionals or persons acting under their direction.

While there’s no specifics with medical and dental care other than it “shall conform to professionally accepted standards,” it does define mental health care as, “the care of a disorder of thought, mood, perception, orientation or memory that significantly impairs judgement, behaviour, the capacity to recognize reality or the ability to meet the ordinary demands of life.”

And the Act further stipulates that the Service “shall take into consideration an offender’s state of health and health care needs” in all decisions affecting the offender’s placement, transfer, SIU confinement, disciplinary matters, and preparation for release.

This is CSC’s health care protocol on paper.  It doesn’t always jump off the page into practice.  It often doesn’t jump off the page into practice.  “Health non-care” is a common chorus heard among inmates for what CSC labels as health care.

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Health care in our federal prisons invites constant scrutiny and deserves an exclusive forum which is why, in the absence of dedicated surveillance, this space circles back to the subject frequently.  For this first of the next few postings, a reference from the Office of the Correctional Investigator’s 2018-2019 Annual Report underscores one of CSC’s health care failings.

Correctional Service of Canada facilities across the country include five regional treatment centres for offenders with serious mental health conditions.  Correctional Investigator Dr. Ivan Zinger’s report for that fiscal year focused in one chapter on the difference between protocol and practice for the use of force in the system in general but found “most troubling” the use of force in these RTC’s or psychiatric hospitals.  He exampled an incident at Millhaven RTC in the Bath Institution on the same grounds illustrating a reality in mental health care units.

We reprint it here:

Range video evidence shows an inmate, diagnosed with a serious mental health disorder with significant impairments, engaged in a therapeutic interview with a Behavioural Technologist (BT) in the recreation room.  During the interview, he asks an officer standing nearby at the control post if he could go to the yard for recreation after the interview.  The officer declines, explaining that due to ongoing maintenance work the inmate would have to wait until later.

The inmate becomes agitated, directing a verbal protest towards an officer standing just outside the barrier of the recreation room.  The officer’s response further escalates the situation.  While the BT attempts to de-escalate through verbal coaching, without warning or consultation, officers decide to discontinue the interview due to alleged “staff safety concerns.”  The BT’s report would later state that at no point did s/he feel the inmate had put anyone’s safety at risk, and that the inmate was “appropriate and polite” in all interactions.

An officer opens the barrier and orders the BT “get out of here.”  The BT attempted to leave the area; however, a group of four other officers had already gathered at the exit.  The inmate lunges toward the officers attempting to strike one of them.  The officers charge, tackling him to the floor.  The inmate is held down by the weight of the four officers while lying prone.  A nearby health practitioner reports later that an officer was kneeling across the inmate’s neck and that his face was purple.  The inmate is seen gasping.  One of the officers is reported to have said, “want me to jizz on you face?”  The others are seen laughing on video.

The inmate is handcuffed while on the ground and then lifted and slammed against a steel door, his head pressed against it while being held from the back of his neck.  He is searched while restrained in this position.  He is then escorted, without incident, to an observation cell.

Still handcuffed, he is forced onto the cell bed in a prone position with his face planted firmly onto the metal surface until his handcuffs are removed.  The last officer to exit the cell is seen pinning the inmate’s head to the bed and applying a “pain compliance” technique (forceful twisting and stretching of the arm and wrist) to maintain control as he exits the cell.

This is how CSC mental health care treatment can look in a prison hospital setting, and it’s closer to standard operating practice than it is an isolated incident.

There’s more coming……

“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?”

)()(

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.

)()(

“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!

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.

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?

….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.

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.”

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.”