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Eddy Nalon bled to death in a segregation cell at Millhaven Penitentiary on this day in 1974. For every year since, prisoners have courageously marked Aug. 10 as Prisoners Justice Day.
Despite this international standard and the admonishments of Canadian courts, Canada continues to practice this form of abuse.
They fast, refuse to work and think about all prisoners who have died. Long before the medical science backed them up, prisoners knew that being locked alone in a cell indeterminately would undermine sanity and drive them toward suicide.
The consciousness of Canadians has caught up with what prisoners have known for years. Prolonged solitary confinement is torture. Canadian appellate courts in B.C. and Ontario have now held that indeterminate periods of isolated confinement violate Charter rights. Class action lawsuits have been successful resulting in damages for the cruelty prisoners experienced for being held in segregated confinement for more than 15 days straight.
The United Nations defines solitary confinement as 22 hours or more alone in a cell without meaningful human contact. More than 15 consecutive days of it has been prohibited as cruel and a form of torture. Yet, despite this international standard and the admonishments of Canadian courts, Canada continues to practice this form of abuse.
In 2019, Canada repealed legislation permitting administrative segregation, one form of solitary confinement. Ministers said this would be the end of solitary confinement in Canada. They were wrong.
Confinement in cells for more than 22 hours without meaningful human contact continues under different names. From dry celling to lockdowns to medical observation--the list is long. Solitary has worsened over the last two years with a ready public health justification for cruel confinement.
Most concerning is that structured intervention units (SIUs) that were billed as the answer to abusive solitary confinement now perpetuate it. Prof. Doob and Sprott's analysis of the SIUs revealed that 10 per cent (195) of SIU placements result in prohibited, prolonged, solitary confinement or torture. This finding was accepted by the minister of Public Safety before a Parliamentary Committee.
When Parliamentarians learn that Canadians are being tortured right here at home, the practice should be stopped immediately. Canadians should not tolerate other Canadians being tortured by state officials.
Stopping this is not difficult: Direct and legislate correctional authorities to cap solitary confinement at 15 consecutive days; ratify the optional protocol against torture; and denounce torture in all forms, particularly in our own backyard.
The correctional investigator, auditor general, senators, and advocates have raised countless failings in our correctional system. They are frustrated that recommended reforms have been ignored.
It would take a wholesale transformation of the federal correctional system to fully respect the rule of law and provide prisoners with the rights and justice to which they are entitled--but surely, stopping practices that are recognized in international human rights documents and by our courts as cruel and torturous is not too much to hope for on this Prisoners Justice Day.
How many more Eddy Nalons will Canada fail?
Now that it's clear Premier Doug Ford will rule over Ontario for another four years, we can begin to survey the damage he's likely to do in some key areas--like health care.
It takes decades of careful planning and wilful treachery to devise a health-care system as wretched as the American one.
Somehow, Ford managed to get through the recent provincial election campaign with almost no scrutiny of his health-care plans.
The media is largely to blame. Media outlets mostly ignored the most significant thing Ford's Progressive Conservatives revealed during the campaign about their health-care plans: that they intend to expand private health care as a way to deal with the huge medical backlog created by the pandemic.
In other words, COVID will be the cover for doing what they want to do anyway.
Now, this doesn't mean we'll end up with a disastrous health-care system like the largely private one south of the border. It takes decades of careful planning and wilful treachery to devise a health-care system as wretched as the American one.
Instead, we'll maintain our basic public system, but more medical entrepreneurs will be allowed to operate private clinics, often as part of corporate chains. One thing is clear: these private operators will make a good profit for themselves, so that a growing portion of our public health-care dollars will go to enriching them.
In many cases, the private operators will offer faster access to medical services for their paying clients, rather than determining access to medical care based on who is sickest, as the public system requires.
It's easy to sympathize with private clients wanting to get treated as fast as possible. But faster service for them means slower access--or no access at all--for others.
That's because there are a limited number of medical professionals, and they all work within the same broad, publicly subsidized system.
The public system pays for the education of doctors and nurses employed by the private clinics, and it provides the high-level medical infrastructure of publicly funded hospitals, which are essential in case things go wrong at the clinics.
If the private operators were obliged to cover the full costs of providing their services--paying to educate their medical professionals and providing the sophisticated health-care infrastructure needed as backup--their costs would be astronomical and their business model wouldn't be viable.
Instead, private operators take full advantage of the public system, and then use their power within it to move their clients to the front of the line, ahead of sicker people who haven't paid them a fee.
In effect, the private clinics are, leeching off the public system. They couldn't exist without it. But even as they rely on the public system to function, they subvert its key goal of prioritizing patients by sickness.
In the process, the sickest patients are kicked to the curb.
If we reject this corporate freeloading, it doesn't mean we have to accept overrun emergency departments or endless waits for medical treatment.
Much of what ails our system can be fixed--not through the self-serving private solutions always being peddled, but by adequately funding our public system.
Ottawa definitely needs to increase its health-care funding. But so does Ontario--a rich province but a cheapskate when it comes to health care.
Ontario actually spends less per person on health care than any other province, according to Ontario's Financial Accountability Office, the province's independent financial watchdog.
It's this underfunding that creates a demand for private health care.
Consider this: if Ontario just spent as much as the average of the other provinces--which isn't setting the bar unduly high--it would mean an extra $7.6 billion a year for health care, notes Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Imagine what could be done with that money! With even a small portion of it--$2 billion--Ontario could hire an additional 24,000 registered nurses.
I'd wager that an extra 24,000 registered nurses would do more to reinvigorate our overwhelmed emergency rooms than an influx of medical entrepreneurs, driven by a desire to redirect a big chunk of our public health dollars to themselves.
In many ways, the long-running battle to save medicare from privatization is a battle for the soul of Canada. And it's a battle that's about to heat up.
Public health care is much more cost-effective than private health care--as illustrated by the fact that the mostly private U.S. system is far more expensive than the mostly public systems in Canada and Europe.
On one side are a large number of Canadians, for whom medicare stands out like a sparkling jewel--a nationwide system dedicated to the proposition that access to health care be based on need, not money.
On the other side are some highly organized, right-wing groups that object in principle to collective, egalitarian solutions like medicare. Among these well-funded groups are the Fraser Institute and the Canadian Constitutional Foundation, a fiercely anti-government organization that raises funds for court challenges to medicare.
And now there's a new right-wing opponent of medicare--SecondStreet, which is closely affiliated with the ultra-conservative Canadian Taxpayers Federation and has recently financed polls that purport to show Canadians warming to private health care.
Allied with these right-wing ideologues are business interests that want to open up the potentially lucrative Canadian health-care market to private enterprise.
The anti-medicare crowd, which usually faces an uphill battle due to the popularity of medicare in Canada, is sniffing opportunity in the air these days--largely due to the pandemic.
After months of hospitals being overwhelmed with COVID patients, the backlog of delayed medical procedures is enormous--roughly a million surgeries and 20 million non-surgical procedures.
The obvious solution to this massive backlog would be a significant increase in government funding and better use of existing public facilities. That's because public health care is much more cost-effective than private health care--as illustrated by the fact that the mostly private U.S. system is far more expensive than the mostly public systems in Canada and Europe.
If Ontario turns to the private sector to help with the backlog, the procedures will still be paid for by government (that is, taxpayers); it will just cost us a lot more.
But Premier Doug Ford, who rarely believes a problem can't be solved through privatization, seems oblivious to this higher cost when the money is to be funnelled to private interests.
Ontario currently has about 1,000 private clinics, officially called "independent health facilities," which mostly carry out diagnostic procedures like ultrasounds and x-rays.
But, with the chaos created by COVID as a cover, the Ford government seems poised to allow a considerable expansion of private health care in the province.
In remarks at a press briefing in Ajax last month, with the premier standing directly behind her, Health Minister Christine Elliott mentioned "private hospitals" as among the facilities that will be dealing with the backlog.
"We're opening up pediatric surgeries, cancer screenings, making sure that we can let independent health facilities operate private hospitals, all of those things that are possible," said Elliott.
Her reference to "private hospitals" was brief but, for veterans of health care battles, it stood out like a bleeding appendage.
That's because private hospitals have been banned in the province since 1973, a year after OHIP was created. (Private hospitals that were operating at the time were grandfathered. A few, such as the Shouldice Hernia Hospital, still operate today, providing services paid for by the province.)
But prying open the long-sealed door to permit the creation of new private hospitals would be a dramatic development, allowing hospitals--the centrepieces of our health-care system--to be governed by corporate boards that prioritize profits, as in the U.S.
Elliott's statement attracted little media interest, but it certainly caught the attention of Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, who called it a "bombshell."
Mehra argues that private hospitals would undermine medicare by enabling well-to-do patients to gain faster access to treatment. And she points to the disastrous impact privatization has had on long-term care homes, now largely consolidated into corporate chains, where COVID death rates have been significantly higher than in non-profit homes.
The strong attachment of Canadians to medicare has survived over time, even in today's corporate-dominated society.
Indeed, in a world where the rich can buy their way to the front of just about every line, there's something inspiring about a health-care system where they can't.
After decades of contentiousness, it's surprising how quickly Canada's new national child-care program has become as familiar and comfortable as your dog's favourite squeeze-toy.
Or maybe it isn't surprising. Why wouldn't Canadians welcome a program that makes their lives as parents so much easier, giving them the freedom to work if they want while sparing them the exorbitant costs--often compared to a second mortgage--of child care?
The success of Scandinavian-style child care stems from the fact that it is a truly public system--like our school system--with no place for private profit-making, which leads to cutting corners on staff and resources.
Now that it's arrived, the $30-billion national child-care program, announced by the Trudeau government last April after years of Liberal stalling and Conservative opposition, seems like a no-brainer. The aim is to provide $10-a-day child care across the country by 2026.
The plan is being hailed as an important first step that could lead to the development a strong, public child-care system--with strict limits on private profit-making.
So far, even provinces with Conservative governments are on board with the new plan.
Ontario is the lone provincial holdout, but the Doug Ford government has signalled negotiations with the feds are going well and a deal is likely soon.
This has prompted accusations that Ford is deliberately stalling negotiations so the new program can be announced closer to the provincial election this spring.
But hold it! Is it possible that Ford--always keen to cut government spending--wants to ensure he gets credit for bringing the province into a new program that dramatically expands the role of government?
Apparently, yes. Similarly, hard-right Alberta Premier Jason Kenney signed a child-care deal with Ottawa last November.
Right-wing ideologues like Kenney and Ford typically resist any suggestion of expanding social programs.
But when the idea turns into a concrete plan with $30 billion attached to it, offering such clear advantages that ordinary citizens get excited at the prospect--even conservative premiers have trouble saying no. Their desire to win re-election trumps their inner ideologue.
And, of course, once implemented, social programs quickly become popular, making it difficult for conservative governments to scale them back.
That's why right-wing think-tanks and business groups try to derail social program expansion while it's still on the drawing boards, by insisting we can't afford it--an objection that is never raised against government plans to spend enormous sums on, say, military jets.
We hear little about how popular and generous social programs are in Europe, particularly in Scandinavian countries, where child care isn't just affordable but is actually spectacular--housed in beautiful buildings with well-designed play spaces indoors and outdoors, and providing warm and tasty meals.
Compare this to Canada, where child care, when available, is often housed in makeshift quarters, with few resources and underpaid staff.
It's weird that we put such a low priority on providing for our children.
Of course, right-wingers argue that child care should be an individual responsibility. That's fine for families that can afford expensive child care or even live-in nannies. But if the goal is to provide excellent care for all children, a public system is the most cost-effective; it's really the only viable option.
And now that it's clear a national child-care system is politically viable, it will be up to the Trudeau government to ensure that the one it's started to build is strong--and public.
The success of Scandinavian-style child care stems from the fact that it is a truly public system--like our school system--with no place for private profit-making, which leads to cutting corners on staff and resources.
But child care is a big international business, and a growing portion of Canada's child care is provided by corporate chains that are anxious to expand here.
The real test for the Trudeau government will be whether the billions it's investing in child care will be used to build a strong public system--or get scooped up by child-care multinationals spotting an easy and reliable source of cash.