Mr. Chair, thank you very much.
I will be splitting my time with Ms. Damoff, which means I have three and a half minutes. I'd like to direct them to Ms. Latimer.
It's poignant, Ms. Latimer, that we're having this discussion about a month away from the 70th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I'd like to take you back to the UN standard minimum rules that Ms. Gentile referred to, or the Mandela rules, as revised in 2015. Rule 44 of that document makes reference to the 22-hour threshold. It also brings in the language we're discussing, that being “meaningful human contact”. The UN does not define that, and probably quite deliberately. There's no UN definition of that, which sort of sets the stage for our discussion here. Presumably, it's left up to member states to find the definition that fits their social circumstances.
I'm most interested in the second paragraph of rule 45, which states, “The imposition of solitary confinement should be prohibited in the case of prisoners with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.” I take it from your submissions that we shouldn't confine ourselves just to disabilities but to any pre-existing mental health conditions that would be exacerbated by any kind of solitary confinement, whichever label you want to put on that.
I'd like to give you my two minutes to give the committee a full appreciation of what you call the institutional “resistance” to what I believe is care, whether it's physical care or mental health care. How wide are those gaps? What percentage of inmates are suffering, at the point of entry, from addictions and mental and physical health problems, and to what extent are they being exacerbated in the current correctional system?