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Class Action News Issue #18 Summer 2020

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Class Action News Issue #18 Summer 2020 - 1 - 2 > CAN-#18 < Editor’s Note > < Contents > It is Summer & Issue #18 News …………………………... 3-12 of ‘Class Action News’. Health & Harm Reduction …..…... 13 This magazine is by & for Resources ………….……….... 14-16 the Prisoner Class in Canada. < Artists in this Issue > In every Issue we provide a safe space for creative expression and literacy development. Cover: Pete Collins These zines feature art, poetry, stories, news, observations, concerns, and anything of interest to share. Health & Harm Reduction info will always be provided - Yes, Be Safe! Quality & Quantity: Items printed are those that are common for diverse readers, so no religious items please. < Funding for this Issue > Artwork: Black pen (tat-style) works the best. Cover Artist will receive a $25 donation. Very special thanks to: Writings: only short poems, news, stories, … Groundswell Community Justice Trust Fund! Items selected are those that fit nicely & allow space for others (½ page = 325 words max). < Ancestral Territorial Acknowledgment > For author protection, letters & story credits will all be 'Anonymous'. We respectfully acknowledge that the land on which Prison Free Press operates is the ‘Class Action News' is published 4 times a Traditional Territory of the Wendat, the year & is free for prisoners in Canada. Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee, and the If you are on the outside or an organization, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. please send a donation. We do not have any funding so it really helps to get this inside! e ‘Dish With One Spoon’ Treaty f Editor: Tom Jackson Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms Publication: Class Action News Publisher: PrisonFreePress.org • The right of life, liberty and security of person PO Box 39, Stn P (Section 7). Toronto, ON, M5S 2S6 • The right not to be arbitrarily detained Email: [email protected] (Section 9). • The right not to be subjected to cruel and Circulation: 350+ unusual punishment (Section 12). Recirculation: ???? • The right to be equal before and under the All original artwork, poems & writings are the law (Section 15). sole/ soul property of the artist & author. Fair Dealing & the Canadian Copyright Act The Whole World Is On Lock-Down! Do You Now Understand Why It Is Inhumane? Sections 29, 29.1, 29.2: “Fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review, and news reporting does not That's not a chip on my shoulder, infringe copyright.” that's your foot on my neck. - Malcolm X Summer 2020 Class Action News Issue #18 #18-CAN < 3 < News > “When an unsuccessful party does not file a bill of costs but alleges over-lawyering, courts are Ottawa ordered to pay $1.12M in legal fees very skeptical about the allegations,” Perell said. for prison segregation class action It would appear, the judge said, that Ottawa spent at least as much, if not more, on lawyers The federal government has been ordered to than did the plaintiff. pay $1.12 million in legal fees for a segregation The two class actions, Perell said, were class action in a judgment critical of Ottawa’s substantively different and Ottawa’s claim to the arguments for paying less. contrary was unjustified. Nor could it be said In awarding the costs to representative plaintiff that pressing them as a single suit would have Jullian Reddock, Superior Court Justice Paul been more efficient, he said. Perell rejected the government’s contention that “The federal government was quite happy to the requested fees were unreasonable or take ironical and inconsistent approaches in excessive. advancing its defences and playing one case off “If anything, it is the pot calling the kettle black against the other,” Perell said. “It takes irony for the federal government to submit that class and hypocrisy for the federal government to say counsel over-lawyered the case,” Perell said. there were efficiencies to be achieved.” The fee award comes in a class action involving Perell did reduce Reddock’s requested fees by the placement of inmates in administrative $113,000 for a sliver of counsel overlap he solitary confinement. Lawyers from McCarthy found in the two cases. Tetrault and Koskie Minsky were involved. Administrative segregation involves isolating Reddock launched the action in March 2017. inmates for safety reasons where authorities He said he had sometimes spent days without believe there is no reasonable alternative. leaving his cell and that he binged on an anti- Prisoners spend almost their entire day in small anxiety drug. cells without meaningful human contact or In August, Perell awarded the thousands of class programming. members $20 million in damages, with the right Critics argue the practice can cause severe of individual complainants to push for higher psychological harm and amounts to cruel and amounts depending on their circumstances. unusual punishment, facts that Perell - and “The Correctional Service operated other courts - have accepted. Ottawa has said administrative segregation in a way that legislation that takes effect Nov. 30 will alleviate unnecessarily caused harm to the inmates,” the problem. Perell said. Reddock requested $1.24 million to cover the Colin Perkel legal costs of his successful fight. The The Canadian Press government, however, claimed the fees were Oct 26, 2019 “disproportionate and excessive.” In its submissions, Ottawa argued a substantial cut was warranted because the Reddock lawyers from McCarthy Tetrault were also involved in a separate segregation class action against the government. That lawsuit, with Christopher Brazeau as one of the representative plaintiffs, involved mentally ill inmates placed in administrative segregation. The lawyers’ decision to separate the lawsuits was “duplicative” and the litigation approach “unreasonable,” the government maintained. Perell, however, rejected the arguments, noting among other things that the government did not say what costs would have been reasonable or how much it spent on its own lawyers. Issue #18 Class Action News Summer 2020 4 > CAN-#18 Canada abandons solitary confinement At the time the court challenges were filed, the appeal to Supreme Court prison service was facing heavy criticism for the deaths of two inmates, Ashley Smith and After five years of fervent legal defence, Ottawa Edward Snowshoe. is abandoning a Supreme Court appeal of Ms. Smith, a New Brunswick teen, died in 2007 several lower court decisions that rendered by self-strangulation as prison staff at Grand solitary confinement unconstitutional in federal Valley Institution watched. She had spent more prisons, bringing an unceremonious end to the than 1,000 days in solitary confinement. A 2013 practice of confining prisoners to cells the size of coroner’s inquest jury ruled the death a parking spots for months and years at a time. homicide. In two notices of discontinuance filed with the Mr. Snowshoe died by suicide in 2010 at court on Tuesday, the Attorney-General stated it Edmonton Institution. He’d languished in solitary “wholly discontinues the appeal.” for 162 days. A subsequent Globe and Mail That single phrase terminates a protracted legal investigation found that his deteriorating mental battle with civil rights groups that has state had been ignored by prison staff. fundamentally reshaped prison management in In the wake of the deaths, various bodies the country by rendering any form of solitary recommended that prisons limit solitary confinement stretching more than 15 days as confinement to 15 days, install independent cruel and unusual punishment. oversight for segregated prisoners, and prohibit “It’s a huge victory. We are thrilled,” said Noa segregation for certain vulnerable groups, such Aviv Mendelsohn, equality program director at as mentally ill, young and pregnant prisoners. the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, one of Those three planks became the basis of the the groups that sued the federal government in court challenges when it became clear the 2015 arguing that the Correctional Service of correctional service was ignoring the Canada practice known as administrative recommendations. segregation violated the Charter of Rights and In court, government lawyers declared that Freedoms on several grounds. administrative segregation was a rare and “They have been fighting us for so long and Charter-compliant practice necessary to uphold clinging to this practice for so long,” she said. the safety and security of federal prisons. A joint statement released on Monday from the Federal prisons had been holding around 800 offices of Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and prisoners in solitary confinement in 2015. As the Attorney-General David Lametti said the litigation wore on, and the government came government decided to abandon the appeal under continual pressure to enact reforms, the because legislation passed last year effectively solitary population plummeted below 200. repealed administrative segregation, the The rights groups notched repeated victories in prisoner-isolation method akin to solitary lower courts. But Ottawa tried to derail the confinement that has been the target of recent proceedings by promising legislation that would court challenges. address every aspect of the judicial decisions. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association With Bill C-83, passed last year, the government and the John Howard Society of Canada filed a said it was abolishing administrative segregation similar challenge in B.C. Supreme Court. The entirely and replacing it with a new form of Supreme Court had agreed to hear
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