B.C. Appeal Court gives Ottawa more time to fix solitary confinement law
VANCOUVER — The British Columbia Court of Appeal has given the federal government more time to fix its solitary confinement law after a lower court declared the law unconstitutional last year.
The B.C. Supreme Court ruling last January gave Ottawa a year to enact replacement legislation, and the Appeal Court has now extended the deadline to June 17, with conditions to protect prisoners’ constitutional rights in the meantime.
Those conditions include that health-care professionals must complete daily visual observations of inmates in solitary confinement and advise the institutional head within 24 hours if they believe the inmate must be removed from segregation.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of Canada launched the legal challenge, and the two groups also oppose a bill introduced in October.
Bill C-83 would allow segregated prisoners to spend four hours a day outside their cells, with a minimum of two hours to interact with others, but it does not include hard caps on how many days or months prisoners could be isolated from the general population.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association launched a separate case against solitary confinement in Ontario, and the Court of Appeal in that province has given the federal government until April 30 to enact new legislation.