Despite being a strong advocate for the protection of human rights and the advancement of democratic values abroad, Canada has a moral crisis on its hands at home. While many Canadians remain unaware of the conditions within federal corrections facilities, Canada is failing to uphold the basic rights of inmates through its use of solitary confinement. Over the past two years, the Liberal government has touted Bill C-83 as an end to the practice of solitary confinement. But after a full year in effect, it is clear that the supposed reform of federal corrections facilities has not made much of a difference. Given the dire effects of solitary confinement on inmates’ mental health, this is a clear human rights crisis that the government is failing to adequately and substantively address.

 Solitary confinement, also known as isolation or segregation, is defined by the United Nations as “the confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.” In addition, the UN considers the use of solitary confinement for a period longer than 15 days to constitute torture, often triggering or exacerbating psychological suffering. Deprived of human contact, many segregated prisoners often report experiencing anxiety, panic, insomnia, paranoia, aggression, and depression. One of the driving forces of the push for reform in Canada is the story of Ashley Smith, a New Brunswick teen who took her own life in 2007 after spending over 1,000 days in isolation.

 We often think of solitary confinement as an extreme punishment, used only for the most dangerous and uncontrollable prisoners. But in reality, the use of solitary confinement in Canada is common, widespread, and subject to few restrictions or limitations. The Correctional System of Canada (CSC), which is governed by the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), is responsible for all federal inmates – about 14000 people – serving a sentence of 2 years or more. According to the parliamentary budget office, between 360 and 434 people are in solitary at any given time.

 Aside from mental health consequences, equally troubling is how Indigenous people disproportionately bear the effects of solitary confinement. Indigenous Canadians are already overrepresented within the criminal justice system, making up 30% of admissions to federal custody while comprising only 5% of the Canadian adult population. Moreover, Indigenous women account for 42% of women in federal custody and 50% of federal female inmates placed in solitary confinement. The isolation of prisoners under the CSC’s watch only amplifies the racial injustice inherent within Canada’s criminal justice system.

 Facing public pressure to end the use of solitary confinement – not to mention two high-profile lawsuits from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and John Howard Society of Canada and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association – the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-83 to end the CSC’s use of solitary confinement. Ostensibly designed to eliminate isolation, the bill replaces solitary confinement with 7-by-7 foot specialized living units called Structural Intervention Units (SIUs). It also amended the time period for which inmates can be segregated, limiting isolation to 20 hours a day and mandating 2 hours of meaningful human contact. Ultimately, Bill C-83 was given royal assent in June of 2019 and has now been in effect for over a year.

 Yet, vocal critics such as Senator Kim Pate argue that what Bill C-83 does is simply “rebrand” solitary confinement by employing “linguistic trickery.” The cells remain the same in everything but name, and the prisoners can now only spend 20 hours in their cell, which conveniently falls outside the UN definition of solitary confinement. SIUs remain extremely restrictive, and even more worrisome, the bill may make it easier to place inmates in solitary confinement. With no specified limit on the number of days a prisoner can remain in isolation and oversight left to a correctional services administrator rather than a third party, Senator Pate argued that the bill does little to prevent the abuse of isolation.  

 Furthermore, after one year with Bill C-83 in effect, the CSC has resisted sharing data about the reform with the public. A government-appointed expert panel tasked with monitoring changes to solitary confinement disbanded in August at the end of its year-long mandate, revealing that it had received no data from the CSC. When the CSC finally released information about SIUs, the panel reported that reform has only been partial at best. They found that 16% of all stays in SIUs lasted for two months or more, significantly longer than the UN’s 15-day limit. Only 21% of prisoners in SIUs spent four or more hours outside their cells on at least half of the days in the SIUs, and only 46% received two hours of human contact on at least half of their days in the SIUs. Additionally, most prisoners in SIUs had identifiable mental health needs before they went to the SIUs, and inmates in SIUs were disproportionately young, male, and Indigenous. The CSC has failed to respond to the report, arguing instead that there were “data integrity issues” affecting information on prisoners’ stays in the SIUs. Clearly, despite passing Bill C-83, prisons still aren’t allowing inmates the human contact and time outside their cells that the courts and Canada’s Charter of Human Rights mandate.

 As it is currently structured, Canada’s correctional system strips away the dignity of incarcerated men and women while exacerbating mental health issues and racial injustice. Rather than facilitating rehabilitation into society, dehumanizing punishment makes prisoners more likely to re-offend and remain a part of the system. A 2015 prisoner reconviction study found that Canada’s recidivism rate for people serving two years was 41% – a rate 12% higher than Denmark, 14% higher than Iceland, and double the rate of Norway, all of which are countries widely praised for their humane approaches to prison systems. In addition, studies have found that access to education and vocational training would be more effective in reducing crime than harsh punishments and longer prison sentences. 

 The use of solitary confinement within prisons is far from the only problem in Canada’s criminal justice system. But in order to adequately reform the system, the government’s first step should be to meaningfully commit to ending the use of solitary confinement in prisons, not merely change it in name only. Bill C-83 doesn’t do enough to protect inmates’ basic human rights, and the oversight of the bill is clearly weak. As a global leader in the protection of human rights abroad, if Canada wants to avoid charges of hypocrisy, it needs to substantively work towards more humane treatment of its prisoners at home.