More recently, the Supreme Court of Canada has discussed the impact of Canada’s international human rights commitments to interpreting Canadian statutes. In Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration),⁸⁶ a majority of the Court held that immigration law and policy is presumed to respect the values contained in international instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child⁸⁷ and that those values are part of a “contextual approach to statutory interpretation and judicial review.”⁸⁸ As articulated by noted feminist legal scholars, Shelagh Day and Gwen Brodsky:

Courts have held that domestic statutes should, whenever possible, be interpreted so as to be consistent with provisions of international instruments to which Canada is bound.⁸⁹

Although there is no binding treaty that deals exclusively with the treatment of prisoners and conditions of imprisonment, the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs),⁹⁰ endorsed by Canada in 1975, provide the blueprint for States to incorporate the SMRs into their domestic correctional regimes.

However, as witnessed by Professor Michael Jackson: “40 years after their initial adoption certain rules have not been fully implemented and remain a challenge to correctional authorities.”⁹¹

In her 1996 Report, Madam Justice Arbour underscored that:

While Canada, and the Correctional Service in particular, are not obliged to conform to the specific terms of the UN Rules in the management of prisons, those rules are accepted as international norms and minimum standards, and departures from them generally only occur where there is reasoned justification.⁹²