One of the good things about the bill is that notion of clinical independence and health professionals' autonomy. That is also a very good reflection of the Nelson Mandela rules. The goal of that independence is to ensure that health professionals' opinion could not be ignored by correctional authorities for security reasons. I think there is always some tension between those two groups.
Does that suffice? If I was more innovative and wanted to implement a mechanism more in line with the Nelson Mandela rules, I would suggest that the assistant commissioner of health services at the Correctional Service of Canada, or CSC, report to the deputy minister of Health Canada. The objective would be to create a direct link to the health sector and to protect the separation of health-related functions from correctional authorities' functions. That would be one approach to consider.
It may be easier to do that in the provinces. In the management of correctional services, provinces have well-established health services—which they provide—while that is not the case at the federal level. Health Canada does not provide client services. However, federal authorities could try to do the same as the provinces. The notion of loyalty is always a problem for health professionals, who must deal with their employer, the CSC and the professional order of which they are members, be it a college of physicians or a college of nurses.