Per the recommendations of the 1996 Arbour Commission and the proven inadequacy of other forms of oversight, Tona’s Law would enhance court oversight of correctional decisions about isolation to ensure respect for human and Charter rights. It would require Correctional Service Canada (CSC) to apply to court to keep someone in isolation for more than 48 hours, and would allow people to apply to court for a sentence reduction where they have experienced isolation or other correctional mismanagement.
The requirement to seek court approval for isolation longer than 48 hours will encourage CSC to find humane alternatives instead of relying on isolation as a harmful default response to those with mental health issues and other complex needs
- Less time in isolation: The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) found that every day that a person spends in isolation in segregation/structured intervention units (SIUs) costs Canada $1,269/day.
- Fewer lawsuits: Canada has already paid $28M+ in damages for a single class action (Brazeau-Reddock-Diggs) related to heavy-handed use of the former administrative segregation regime, with additional class actions now challenging the new SIU regime (e.g., Fournier in QC). Tona’s Law would avoid future, costly litigation.
- Minimal upfront costs: In 2024, the PBO found that Tona’s Law would result in $6.8M per year in court-related costs for the federal government—a mere 0.21% of CSC’s $3.17B budget for that year. In reality, however, costs would be even lower:
- One third of this $6.8M related to the costs CSC anticipated of escorting prisoners to court for in-person hearings. In reality, most applications would be heard by video, from the prison, with no such costs.
- The $6.8M in court costs was based on CSC having to make an application to extend isolation beyond 48 hours for each of the 1,860 people who spent more than 2 days in SIUs that year. The PBO also clarified, however, that in reality, CSC will release many people from SIUs rather than going to court.
The provincial and territorial court systems currently deal with hundreds of thousands of bail decisions each year—about 250,000 bail decisions in Ontario alone. Applications under Tona’s Law in Ontario would be barely 0.1% of that amount (a generous estimate would be 250 applications per year in Ontario, if we assume 2,000 cases per year nationally based on PBO numbers, with about 12.5% of SIU bed spaces being in Ontario)—a drop in the bucket.
- Criminal law expert Michael Spratt: “[W]ith experience, courts can be efficient in dealing with these matters. We see superior courts dealing with bail reviews and detention reviews in the pretrial stage, and they’re able to accommodate those. … There are many more people than the numbers you’ve cited in pretrial custody, unfortunately.”