"RESPONSE TO SMITH INQUEST "ORWELLIAN" "

The above title is the same one as in last Friday's Waterloo Region Record. All the honest parties around the Ashley Smith Inquest are condemning the behaviour of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). Apparently they are fully confident in their immunity from serious accountability. Otherwise they would have been desperately looking for any way possible to make amends or at least take some steps in recognition of their disgusting policies and behaviour which ended in the death of Ashley Smith. Apparently in Canada killing one person gets you serious jail time but doing it repeatedly via provoking suicide through mistreatment of incarcerated citizens does not.

From Ashley Smith's mother to Kim Pate of the Elizabeth Fry Society, the condemnation of Canadian federal prison authorities is unrelenting as it should be. From repeated prison transfers, years of solitary confinement and bureaucratic walls preventing visits after transfers the abuse of inmates was and is unrelenting. Our federal Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, may he rot somewhere in isolation, did nothing but make excuses for the CSC. The authorities can't even seem to admit that solitary confinement is exactly that. They think that wordsmithing it into "administrative segregation" makes it better. It does not. It is cruel and unusual treatment and our prison authorities as well as senior federal bureaucrats desperately need to develop some morals and ethics.