Thank you, Chair, and committee members. It's good to be here.
There are very few words to describe the current state of corrections in Canada today. Crisis, lawless, unaccountable and tragic would be some of them. In my 30 years as a lawyer I have never seen failings of this magnitude.
Let's start with COVID. In March 2020, CSC assured stakeholders that it was “prepared to handle any cases of influenza or other respiratory illness, such as COVID-19.” Reliance on its influenza strategy soon proved no match for a virus that we knew was far more contagious and deadly than the flu. Epidemiologists from around the world were calling for the safe depopulation of prisons, particularly for those who were medically vulnerable, but this did not happen in the federal corrections system.
Instead, CSC chose to combat COVID with extreme isolation: no activity, no family, no books, no programming, no contact—complete isolation. Inadequate consideration was given to the severe mental health impacts these lockdowns have caused. CSC might claim that these measures were required by public health officials, but ultimately CSC was the decision-maker, and it should have known that Canadian courts have found that this type of extreme, cruel isolation violates prisoners' rights and is prohibited by international human rights documents.
While CSC assured us that everything was under control, its own records show quite the opposite. December 2020 correspondence from the warden at Saskatchewan Penitentiary showed that prisoners had suicide and starvation pacts. Correctional officers kept COVID-positive prisoners in the general population and simply hung flammable shower curtains around their cells to separate them from non-COVID prisoners. This was a formula for spreading the virus.
On December 24, the same institution said, “The health and safety of our employees, offenders, and the public remains our top priority during this public health pandemic.” Further inconsistencies are revealed in internal documents, from wardens telling correctional officers to ignore the advice of health authorities, to wardens telling prisoners that correctional officers do not need to wear masks. We have lots of documented inconsistencies that we would be happy to share.
Prisoners were generally not consulted about what steps should be taken to protect their health. When protests arose, usually about correctional officers failing to wear PPE, significant force was brought to bear: concussion grenades in one case and rubber bullets in another. The correctional investigator, Ivan Zinger, in his second update on COVID in June 2020, stated, “Some of these restrictions reach beyond measures or controls contemplated in either domestic or international law. Public health emergencies must be managed within a legal framework. Rights need to be respected and restored.”
I agree with Dr. Zinger. Rights were violated and legal limits were exceeded in CSC's approach to the pandemic.
In the end, COVID-19 technically decimated the federal prison population, with more than 10% contracting the disease, six deaths and unquantified enduring health complications.
The Liberal Party made a commitment, a campaign commitment, to implement Ashley Smith's coroner's recommendation, which included limiting solitary confinement to 15 days. In 2018, administrative segregation was ruled unconstitutional in Canada as violating charter rights.
In 2019, we were told that abusive solitary confinement had ended and was being replaced by structured intervention units, where prisoners would be out of their cells for four hours a day with two hours of meaningful human contact. As we learned from Dr. Doob and Dr. Sprott, this is not happening.
Among the significant problems that have been identified, the structured intervention units are not delivering the measures the government promised they would, and 10% of the placements in structured intervention units experience the same prolonged solitary confinement condition that the courts found violated charter rights that are defined in international human rights documents as a form of torture. Yes, Canadians are being tortured by state officials.
Minister Blair accepted these findings before this committee, yet the government has not directed CSC to stop placing people in solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days.
Section 4 of the Department of Justice Act requires the Minister of Justice to see that the administration of public affairs is consistent with the laws. The Department of Justice has lost litigation in class action lawsuits on the basis that prolonged solitary confinement violates prisoners' charter rights.
The publication of the Doob and Sprott report last February should have signalled to the Minister of Justice or his staff that CSC was not administering public affairs in a manner consistent with the charter. He has not acted on his statutory obligations. This tolerance for the torture of Canadian prisoners should shock the conscience of us all and needs to stop immediately.
I'm delighted that the committee has agreed that the disclosures from CSC that are required will be made public. There is a profound public interest to know how this dire situation arose and has been allowed to persist: why 44% of SIU prisons are indigenous and 18% are Black; why Canada chooses to ignore international human rights standards, like the Nelson Mandela Rules, yet calls on other countries, like China, to respect those rules in relation to the treatment of the two Michaels; whether, as many feared, the SIUs are simply solitary confinement renamed, as the commissioner herself said in response to the Doob and Sprott finding of torture in the SIUs. She said, “I always stress with staff the importance of speaking of structured intervention units and not administrative segregation/solitary confinement.”
Whatever it is labelled, wherever it is occurring in the federal correction system, keeping prisoners in their cells for more than 22 hours without meaningful human contact is solitary confinement, and such confinement for more than 15 days is prohibited as a form of torture and a charter violation. It must end.
I know I'm running short on time so I'm going to be quick.