Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Tend the Wound - Felicia Murrell

Felicia Murrell

Open Table, June 2021

Tend the Wound

Luke 10:38-42 (N T Wright): On their journey, Jesus came into a village. There was a woman there named Martha, who welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the master’s feet and listened to his teaching. Martha was frantic with all the work in the kitchen. “Master,” she said, coming in to where they were, “don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work all by myself? Tell her to give me a hand!" “Martha, Martha,” he replied, “you are fretting and fussing about so many things. Only one thing matters. Mary has chosen the best part, and it’s not going to be taken away from her.”

Even though Jesus does not specifically name what Mary chose, if you’re like me, you’ve probably heard dozens if not hundreds of sermons on what Mary chose. I assure you, my heart this afternoon is not to add yet another one of those.

I actually want to focus on Martha, but before I do…Mary.

Will you ponder Jesus’s words with me? “Only one thing matters. Mary has chosen the best part…”

What if the best part was an invitation to wholeness, an invitation for Mary to be true to herself? An invitation that Mary fully and completely owned; this is who I am – I am a disciple of Jesus. This is where I want to be – I want to sit at his feet and learn. This is the yes I’m living into in this moment.

This is my holy sacrament - to fully and consciously participate with self-emptying love in this present moment.

What does choosing the best part look like for you? Could it be, as Paul Young encourages, living in the grace of this one day?

And if that looks like sitting at the feet of Jesus, soaking in his teaching and wisdom, sit. If that looks like cooking and serving for you, serve. If that looks like academic rigor for you, study. If it looks like solitude for you, meditate.

“Mary has chosen the best part,” or “the good portion.” She knows what she has said yes to in this moment; and her yes is hers alone. She’s owning what she has chosen, what she holds most precious in the moment. She’s not projecting it or trying to force it on another; she’s not demanding her sister or anyone else take up the causes she’s passionate about or do the same things she does. She’s chosen the best part - she’s given her full attention to this moment she’s said yes to AND she’s not trying to pull her sister out of conscious participation with what she’s said yes to. I am, may you be…

And then, there’s Martha. I wonder… What judgment did Martha make? What did Martha assume about Mary? About Jesus? What lie did she believe? What cultural practices had she normalized and bought into? What assumptions, traditions, and expectations shaped Martha’s role and the way she moved and ordered her existence?

She welcomed Jesus. She was frantic with the work in the kitchen.

Whether this story is literal, metaphorical, allegorical or perhaps a multilayered, complex mix of all three, I’ll leave that for theologians and those scholars who are trained for that discourse. I always like to be clear that I’m neither when entering the conversation. I’m just curious about the text and what Love is inviting me to see.

And while the historical-cultural context of this story certainly is important, I’d like to make a comparative leap through the lens of my own lived experience and invite us to think about:

Every Child Matters: Repentance and Incarnational Justice — By Andrew Klager

When I was on Vancouver Island this past weekend, I paid my respects at the memorial on the steps of the BC Legislature in Victoria commemorating the 215 indigenous children whose graves were recently discovered on the grounds of the Kamloops Residential School. Today, it was announced that 751 more unmarked graves were found at the Marieval Residential School in Saskatchewan.

We in the peace and justice community try to instill in others the truth that every human loss in any part of the world — from northern Iraq and DR Congo to Colombia and Burma, and everywhere in between — is equally tragic. We should pay attention to these lost lives just as relentlessly and mourn just as authentically. Many in my circle therefore rightly decry the silence of those whose myopic privilege atrophies their compassion for the oppressed in other parts of the world simply because their lives don’t intersect our own.

And yet, peace and justice is ultimately incarnational — it’s embodied, specific, local, connected to one’s own life context.

This is why Canada’s complicity in the genocide of First Nations peoples hits me so hard. The intersection of a church that scoffed at the Beatitudes with a government that has allowed me to become too comfortable is where the incarnation of justice passes through my own field of vision. I live as a settler on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territory of the Ts'elxwéyeqw Tribe of the Stó:lō First Nations and Coast Salish Peoples in what we now call the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada. I’m also a Christian. And I have young children of my own, though I have no reason to fear that they will ever be taken from me against my will or end up dead without anyone notifying me. For years, I lived a block away from St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission, BC, regularly passing by unmarked graves with my own children on our way to Heritage Park that now surrounds these graves. My own ancestors, the United Empire Loyalists of Upper Canada, were, according to indigenous writer, Chelsea Vowel, among the first to benefit from land surrender treaties after the year 1783 in contrast to treaties before this that focused mostly (though not always) on trade and security alliances.[1] This is the context of the pain and suffering into which Christ enters in front of my own eyes, which means that the 215 graves of these indigenous children mark the location of Christ’s incarnational descent in the present to which I need to pay special attention.

Yet even after giving myself permission to feel these compounded tragedies in the pit of my stomach more so than other tragedies around the world, I struggle to identify the proper response. And the only thing I can muster at the moment is the sacramental response of confession and repentance as a way to avoid reasoning my way out of the need to take responsibility and take action. This is all I’ve got right now — confession and repentance wrought in the crucible of contemplation (however clumsily I stumble down this path).

When our default impulse is to constantly judge, analyze, measure, evaluate — anything to justify absolving ourselves of any responsibility and complicity or dilute the perception of our ongoing benefit — it’s important to eschew these impulses through the contemplation (theoria) of simply resting in true and full Being, the source of the shared existence of all humans — myself, you, those 215 indigenous children — to cultivate love as compassion for those from whose suffering I benefit. Lanza del Vasto observed that the knowledge of good and evil that the serpent promised Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden if they took the fruit before it was offered to them as Gift is precisely our discursive reason that has become a poor substitute for contemplation — i.e., the direct “knowledge” and apprehension of God through theoria. In our impatient attraction to shortcuts and with our egos always at the helm, it’s this discursive reason — our impoverished knowledge of good and evil in contrast to direct contemplation — that constantly compels us to judge, analyze, measure, and evaluate, whether to reinforce superficial divisions, to justify our dehumanization of First Nations peoples, or to get us out of the need to confess and repent.

Taken as a whole, these two dimensions of incarnational justice and direct contemplation by means of confession and repentance (metanoia — or the transformation of our nous) reflect the humanity and divinity of Christ, or the hypostatic union of the crucified One who trampled down death by his own death — through which “the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many” (Mt. 27:52–53).

Lord, have mercy.

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[1] Chelsea Vowel, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada (Winnipeg, MB: Highwater Press, 2016), 246–248.

 

What Is GOD Like? Response to critics from a white children's author - Brad Jersak

What Is God Like? 

story by Rachel Held Evans and Matthew Paul Turner

illustrated by Ying Hui Tan

 

My response to this children's book is simple:

Thank you. Buy it for the children in your life.

 

My response to certain critics:

Some critics of this book have made a BIG deal of how inappropriate it is for white children's authors to illustrate their books with BIPOC children. Something about co-opting, something about exploitation, something about having no right to appropriate BIPOC characters for a book by white people.

As a white children's author, I employed an illustrator who generated three characters for my first book, Children, Can You Hear Me? Jesus ended up looking too much like me, and the children represented two bullied children--one because of weight shaming and the other for her poverty. The complaint I heard was that the characters were white. The people and the environment looked like they came from the neighborhood where my illustrator lives. My critics were right. I should have asked for more racial diversity.

I agree. It is very expensive for a self-published author to illustrate a book over again from scratch, but I was willing to do it. My plan was to have a middle-eastern brown Jesus, a rural African boy, and an Asian girl from inner-city Bangkok. But I ran into several roadblocks:

First, while in China and in Thailand, I was told by Christian nationals that if the book included a Black child, I should not expect to sell it to Asians. The racism I encountered was overt and presented as a factual reality to consider. I hope that does not represent a broad consensus, but it was the message I heard repeatedly. Then, when a Mongolian publisher licensed the book, I asked if we could hire a Mongolian artist to redo the illustrations appropriate to their people and culture. My rep. presented it to the Mongolians, who declined. They loved the illustrations and asked if they could distribute it 'as is.' I was disappointed but that was their preference. Okay.

Then, a representative from Africa approached me and asked if I'd consider employing an African artist to recreate the illustrations for their context. I was keen to do it, but when the sample artwork came back, the Jesus character was impossible to use. No smile. No life in his eyes. It communicated everything that screamed 'aloof and non-relational.' I was reminded just how good my illustrator, Ken Save, was at creating living characters, full of expression, whose emotional vividness transcended color. 

In the end, I decided I'd just let it go and create a new book, titled Jesus Showed Us. My illustrator, Shari-Ann Vis, used Eastern and Ethiopian Orthodox icons as models with a Jewish-brown Jesus and a more racially and ethnically diverse set of characters. Apparently, it resonates. But is that allowed?  

Some say no. With the publication of What Is God Like? the critics are decrying white authors using BIPOC characters. So here's the double bind:

1. White children's authors should not use white characters.
2. White children's authors should not use BIPOC characters.  

Conclusion? White people should not author children's books. Or is there some third option? 

I presented this problem to a BIPOC critic who I relate to on Instagram. When I presented the double-bind they were promoting and asked for a third way, they kindly suggested that if white authors intend to create children's books that include BIPOC characters, they should create the book in collaboration with a person of color. In other words, white people should not produce children's books unless they have BIPOC collaborator.

Some might object to this idea. I do not. I love collaboration and believe that working together with those who don't look like me greatly improves the outcome. I would not see such a plan as a limitation at all. The fact that my first attempts to do so failed doesn't exhaust the possibilities. I'm thrilled to take that route.  

Ying Hui Tan

Here's the thing: What Is GOD Like did exactly that! The author(s) DID collaborate with a Malaysian illustrator, Ying Hui Tan, who brilliantly captured diversity in terms race, culture, and ability. The characters include black, brown, and white children (including a character in a wheelchair). So my question is whether Tan's ethnicity doesn't count somehow, or whether illustration doesn't suffice as collaboration. Or what? Now there's the question as to whether Asians count as people of colour or not. Depends who you ask. Or when it's convenient. I'm of the persuasion that the BIPOC brand is inclusive of brown people. Let me know who wins that debate. 

At some point, one wonders what's really going on. In the end, I've learned that listening to BIPOC voices for the last word serves me well, and when they don't agree with each other, I'm best off looking to those I already trust. In this case, I defer to Austin Channing Brown, author of the bestselling book I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Here was her generous assessment of What Is God Like?   

“This is how I want my child to be introduced to the concept of God. This is the divine presence I want my child to explore. This is the book I need for him, and it’s the one I need for me. Cuz sometimes I need to remember what God is like too."

 

Zacheus Makes Amends - Brad Jersak

Luke 19  Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² And behold, a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. ³ Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and he was unable due to the crowd, because he was short in stature. ⁴ So he ran on ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree in order to see Him, because He was about to pass through that way. ⁵ And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him,

“Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 

⁶ And he hurried and came down, and received Him, rejoicing. ⁷ When the people saw this, they all began to complain, saying,

“He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner!”

⁸ But Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord,

“Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I am giving to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I am giving back four times as much.” 

⁹ And Jesus said to him,

“Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Zaccheus’ story provides an excellent demonstration of how grace transforms the heart and life of a lost and alienated human being. The tax collector and the Shepherd engage in a mutual act of hospitality described in Revelation 3:20. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. When anyone who hears my voice opens the door, I will enter and have supper with them, and they with me.” So, it was for Zaccheus. God’s grace filled his deepest longing and out of Zaccheus’ newfound sense of belonging, he was “saved”—from alienation to communion. Christ in his home, Christ in his heart—the living connection that changes us.

In Zaccheus’ case, the natural overflow of his encounter with Jesus resulted in a tangible response. He became a willing participant in his freedom and salvation, prompted by the Spirit to make amends. In 12-step recovery, making amends refers to personally addressing issues with people who have been harmed by our behavior or our treatment of them. Zaccheus had done great harm in his community. His complicity with Rome as a collections agent for the empire was a great betrayal of his own people. Indeed, he was their enemy in ways that Rome could not be.

The second kind of enemy comprises those persons who, by their activities, make it difficult for the group to live without shame and humiliation. It does not require much imagination to assume that to the sensitive son of Israel, the taxgatherers were in that class. It was they who became the grasping hand of Roman authority, filching from Israel the taxes which helped to keep alive the oppression of the gentile ruler. They were Israelites who understood the psychology of the people, and therefore were always able to function with the kind of spiritual ruthlessness that would have been impossible for those who did not know the people intimately. They were despised; they were outcasts, because from the inside they had unlocked the door to the enemy. The situation was all the more difficult to bear because the tax collectors tended to be prosperous in contrast with the rest of the people. To be required to love such a person was the final insult. How could such a demand be made? One did not even associate with such creatures. To be seen in their company meant a complete loss of status and respect in the community. The taxgatherer had no soul; he had long since lost it. When Jesus became a friend to the tax collectors and secured one as his intimate companion, it was a spiritual triumph of such staggering proportions that after nineteen hundred years it defies rational explanation. (Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, 83).

As alarming as Jesus’ overture of friendship would have been to his disciples, his opponents, and to Zaccheus’ victims, no one was as staggered at the taxman himself. As Paul would say, “The kindness of God leads to repentance”—defined not as self-loathing or as a mere change of mind, but a reorientation of a life. Conversion from self-centeredness to the real-life expression of other-centered love. And this is where Zaccheus’ amends (and ours) come in. Zaccheus’ amends were substantial. Since he lays them out before Jesus, let’s call his intentions a proposal.

• First, he assesses his wealth in relation to the poverty he been complicit in creating. He decides to make amends to his community by giving half of his possessions to the poor.

This reminds me of a friend who made a habit of stealing from the church where she volunteered in order to pilfer money for her addiction. Years later, she needed to make amends to the church, not because they needed her money or would repay individual donors, but as a way to participate in her grace-transformation. She first apologized to someone in authority, then they worked out a plan for her to make restitution, whether by service or repayment.

• Second, with what remained of his wealth, Zaccheus identified specific people who he had extorted. He did not simply say, “Sorry, folks. I really messed up. But I’ve cleared it up with Jesus and I’m forgiven now. So, we’re all good now, right?” Rather, he actually calculated how much he had squeezed from them, repays them, and adds 400% interest. Why so much?

I can think of two reasons. First, Zaccheus sees that the harm he caused exceeds the cash he’d taken. The cost of his sin to those he’d robbed had compounded. What had they lost in potential income, time lost, additional hardships, and emotional impact? Real reparations take the toll to the whole person and their family into account. Rarely do we do that outside of civil lawsuits, but Zaccheus did so without being sued. Why? This speaks to our second reason for his generosity. The law may demand proportional amends: eye-for-an-eye, dollar-for-a dollar. But grace motivates us to pay forward the generosity we’ve received. So Zaccheus calculous went beyond the harm he had caused to the “how much more” grace he had received. The 400% was measured by the superabundant mercies we experienced. Principles

• An amends demonstrates that we own what we have done. No blaming. No sidestepping. Yes, there are reasons for our misdeeds, but when these are shared in an amends, they come across as excuses and justifications. Zaccheus names his sin: extortion. NOT “I was just doing my job” or “The Romans made me do it.” Instead, “I did this. I did it to you. That was wrong.” Amends are strictly about cleaning up my side of the street, even if those we wronged have also wronged us.
• An amends demonstrates that we recognize the harm we have caused. It should also include listening to those we’ve harmed to hear what they experienced. Zaccheus may have known that he extorted someone and impacted their financial stability. But he might need to hear how his actions also humiliated them, hardship to their family, and introduced fear and hatred into their hearts.
• Amends are NOT about extracting forgiveness from the other so we can feel better. Those we hurt may be years away from the healing they need to release us, if ever. Those we harm have experienced broken trust that may or may not ever be restored. Our amends need to be a unilateral expression of sorrow for the harm we caused, not contingent on any response, including forgiveness or reconciliation. We may hope for that, but must not use our amends with those expectations. Otherwise, we’re still guilty of manipulation.

This is why it’s good to submit our amends as a proposal to a mentor or sponsor before delivering them. When I make amends, I run it by my sponsor first to examine it carefully for ways I might justify, minimize, or manipulate. Just this morning I heard a lawmaker who was expected to apologize for a public racist slur directed at a colleague. It was horrid. There was blame-shifting, self-justifying, both sides-ism, and the horrid phrase, “IF I offended anyone…” He needed a course in Amends 101 and a chat with Zaccheus.

• Finally, amends are lived, not only spoken. Sometimes “sorry” doesn’t help. And even a cheque just seems like payoff. Maybe you’ve fallen a thousand times and any amends will lack credibility. No matter. As Zaccheus continues to be faithful, perhaps his sincerity will prove itself. Luke must have thought so.

So beyond specific words and acts of restitution, repentance and amends are a new way to live every day. While we may make direct amends with words, those events happen inside a new life empowered by grace and a grateful response to God’s mercy. Zaccheus’ amends were a real demonstration of the inner change that was occurring—of the new man he was becoming. Summary statement: Zaccheus’ story challenges us to undergo the impact of the gospel in our lives. Salvation is far more than a personal feel-good event. Jesus invites us to living communion that generates radical transformation. In this case, it includes courageously and joyfully making and living our amends.  

The Rhetoric of Unworthiness, the Wounds of Shame - Bradley Jersak

Question:

I am a seeker investigating the Eastern Orthodox faith. My background includes membership of a very conservative and legalistic Protestant church that advocated penal substitutionary atonement, so I am encouraged by what I find in the Orthodox tradition. The theology seems so beautiful, but I am having difficulty understanding something in the Divine Liturgies of Saint Chrysostom and Saint Basil.

In the Prayer of the Cherubic Hymn, we find verses that say:

• … No one bound by carnal desires and pleasures is worthy to approach, draw near, or minister to You, the King of Glory. 
• … Your sinful and unprofitable servant, and cleanse my soul and heart of a wicked conscience. 

Before Holy Communion, we find a verse that says

• I believe and confess, Lord, that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. 

I find healing in thinking of God as a loving Father, but the above stanzas make me question that understanding of God. Can you please point me in the right direction? 

During the Trisagion, there is a verse that says,

• You have granted us, Your humble and unworthy servants, to stand even at this hour before the glory of Your holy Altar of sacrifice and to offer to You due worship and praise.

If we are children of a loving Father, then how is that compatible with thinking of ourselves as unworthy servants?

Finally, in the liturgy of Saint Basil there is a verse in the Trisagion Hymn that reads

• Your lowly and unworthy servants, 

I find that when I think of myself as lowly and unworthy, thoughts of shame come to mind. Since Christianity is about healing, this shows that I might not be understanding this verse correctly.

Response:

What a good and (ahem) worthy question. Truly worth thinking through. 

The Rhetoric of Unworthiness

As I think about the rhetoric of unworthiness, I am reminded not only of the Divine Liturgy, but of our Scriptures, and how even Jesus’ words have been misused as bludgeons. The following points are important to consider. I offer them for your consideration:

Reflections on Stephen Maher's "John A. Macdonald can wait" by Wayne Northey

"We are at the beginning, not the end, of a process of reassessing our history, and filling in the silences that are needed to get at the truth." - Stephen Maher

WAYNE NORTHEY: It is the human condition that historians from within a culture generally silence any contrary narrative that might put into a negative light the moral rectitude of that culture/nation: a variation of the observation that history is always written by the victors, not the vanquished.

Sir Winston Churchill was no doubt right too that if we do not learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. He and Allies however used the language of inducing citizen terror in support of Britain’s Bomber Command headed by Sir Arthur Harris. We read:

An Associated Press war correspondent named Howard Cowan soon filed a dispatch (which inexplicably cleared the censors) stating that “the Allied air commanders have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of German population centers as a ruthless expedient to hastening Hitler’s doom.” The report was widely circulated in the United States, to awkward effect. Among other things, Cowan’s phrase “the Allied air chiefs” linked the British and the Americans in ways that the Americans found uncongenial. (Sifting Dresden’s Ashes: Sixty years after the Allies’ bombing of Dresden enveloped the city in flames, controversy persists over whether the attack was militarily justified or morally indefensible. But another question, no less crucial, is seldom asked: Did wartime conditions allow military leaders to look away as they violated their own principles?, Tami Davis Biddle, Essays | Spring 2005, Wilson Quarterly Archives. (emphasis added)

Yet we Canadians (and Westerners!) do not like associating our military's past or present with “terror,” “genocide,” etc. See for instance: Canadian War Museum changes controversial wording on WWII bombing. We too prefer a sanitized history. See more generally my post: Why Canada’s special forces ‘shadow army’ is still fighting ISIS.

One wonders, Churchill notwithstanding, what or whether we Westerners have learned a thing about the inevitable “ethics” of war! For to start with, “ethics” and “war” in the same breath constitute an oxymoron. When it comes to war, we still keep on repeating . . . The most age-old historical repetition of all time!

Yet again, as the highlighted article indicates, the truth hurts. And the truth will out.

And so indeed: Sir John A. Macdonald can wait.

And yes indeed: Mr. Kenney, good Catholic that you are, our illustrious first Prime Minister was a certified racist¹, and, good Anglican that he was, it was under his auspices that the perduring horror of residential schools was initiated. The Truth hurts, and indeed, The Truth will out—which, however painstakingly, is now happening.

In your denying the truth about Macdonald, it is hard to not think of you as in spirit one with “The Proud Boys,” or with the veterans at Canada’s War Memorial, who are more interested in protecting a mythical white settler narrative that does not square with the Truth. And one wonders: how do you align then with Jesus, who in your (and my!) belief is (the very incarnation of) “The Truth?”

CLICK HERE to continue

Petition: Canada's Solitary Confinement Deemed "Torture": Call For Commission of Inquiry

Wayne Northey started this petition to The Honourable David Lametti; Correctional Service of Canada

 

TO SIGN YOUR PUSHBACK AGAINST SOLITARY PUNISHMENT, CLICK HERE

After nearly fifty years of work in Canada's Criminal Justice System, and seeing personally and professionally how prisons in general, solitary confinement in particular, often do irrevocable harm to their keep, it seemed appropriate to use this platform for the petition.

All statements are supported in the "Sources" below. Most were cited from the first source.

Whereas the Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that more than 15 days of administrative segregation—the most prevalent form of solitary confinement—is a Charter of Rights and Freedoms violation.;

Whereas Rule 44 of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the ‘Mandela Rules’) defined solitary confinement as more than 22 hours of isolation without meaningful human contact and prohibited it after 15 days.  UN Special Rapporteur Mendez advised that such confinement beyond 15 days was a form of torture. Canada is a signatory.;

Whereas to align Canada’s practices with court requirements and treaty obligations, Bill C-83 came into force in 2019. The Bill replaced the rights-violating administrative segregation provisions of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA) with “Structured Intervention Units” (SIUs). Section 36 of this legislation mandates that prisoners be out of their cells for four hours daily, with a minimum of two hours of daily, meaningful human contact. But Section 34 of the CCRA also sets out a range of allowable exceptions.; 

Whereas many correctional law advocates feared that Bill C-83 would cause little change, the federal government appointed an oversight body, the ‘Structured Intervention Unit Implementation Advisory Panel,’ chaired by renowned emeritus criminologist Dr. Anthony Doob. After a very public battle over data access, the Panel’s just-released first report shows that, for most prisoners held in SIUs, it’s been torture as usual:—they remain locked in for more than 20 hours per day, therefore Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) remains in ‘flagrant non-compliance’ of solitary confinement rules.;

Whereas the SIUs are just the beginning. Federal prisoners are held in solitary in many different ways. Based on no clear legislative authority, prisoners are held in Special Handling Units, with too few programs and too little meaningful human contact. Lockdowns, where prisoners are confined to cells for 23 hours daily, are common. Millhaven Institution experienced eight such lockdowns in September 2019 alone.;

Whereas medical observation cells and dry cells also isolate prisoners in demeaning and degrading environments. And alongside this dismal post-C-83 normal stand the COVID-19 prison lockdowns. For months, Correctional Services has kept hundreds of prisoners in extreme isolation. It looks like Canada continues to torture its citizens with impunity.;

Whereas even if federal prisons are subject to provincial states of emergency, which is contentious, Article 4(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Canada is a party, lists the right not to be tortured as absolute, in an emergency. Even if we call solitary confinement “by any other name,” ICCPR Article 4(1) makes clear, and Canadian emergency legislation echoes, that rights may be derogated in an emergency only “to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation.;”

Whereas at the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organization came out strongly against this mode of infection control. There are other, better ways to keep prisoners and prison workers safe;

Whereas Section 4 (c) of the CCRA, requires CSC to use the “least restrictive measures” for enforcing sentences. In contrast, under section 4 (d), “offenders retain the rights of all members of society except those that are, as a consequence of the sentence, lawfully and necessarily removed or restricted.;”

Whereas if Canada wants to take a stand against human rights abuses abroad, it’s time Canadians took a stand against the torture of our own prisoners. C-83 has to be more than legislative sleight of hand.;

Whereas literary and statesmen giants as diverse as Fyodor Dostoevsky and George Bernard Shaw, Sir Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela have all stated variously that the measure of the degree of “civilization” of any nation is the treatment of its prisoners.;

Whereas under the heading, “Prisons’ Function in the Annihilation of Humanity,” Canadian philosopher John McMurtry writes: “The primeval function of prisons from the inception has never [in Establishment society] been recognized. It is the brute right of established ascendant force to publicly defeat any perceived adversary by a victory of force so total that not a single dimension of autonomous human being remains. And the one overarching goal of prison is “to break human beings into subjugated animals.;”

Whereas in the 2011 leadership debate with Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff stated: “I worked in a prison when I was a younger graduate student. I worked with lifers. I’m utterly unsentimental about criminals, but one thing I know about prison: it’s that prison makes almost everybody worse who’s in there.”;

It is time for Canadians to take a good, hard look at the use of solitary confinement in our federal and provincial prisons. 

It is time for Canada to establish a Commission of Inquiry into solitary confinement in the nation’s prisons, with the aim of securing real accountability at both federal and provincial levels.

It is time for Canada to make the penal system truly restorative/rehabilitative; to stop making “almost everybody worse who’s in there.”

It is time for Canada to fully implement the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the ‘Mandela Rules’).

Sources:

Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS), University of Ottawa, Solitary Confinement in Canada’s Prisons: Time for Real Accountability.

Professor John McMurtry, cited in Northey, Wayne “Restorative Justice: Peacemaking Not Warmaking: Transformative Justice: Penal Abolitionism Not Prison Reform,” The Kenarchy Journal (2021), Volume 2, 73-102.

Journalist Samantha Wright Allen in The Hill Times, November 4, 2020.

Journalist Justin Ling in Maclean’s “Houses of hate: How Canada's prison system is broken,” February 28, 2021.