1. CSC’s International Obligations

i) Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs)

The SMRs have been accepted by Canada and applied to its domestic correctional regime and, as the Human Rights Working Group of CSC has stated,⁹⁵ Canada should consider itself bound by these internationally sanctioned rules and principles.

Section 8, in particular s. 8(a), of the SMRs has been breached by Canada (CSC):

s. 8 The different categories of prisoners shall be kept in separate Institutions or parts of institutions taking account of their sex, age, criminal record, the legal reason for their detention and the necessities of their treatment. Thus,

(a) Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions, in an institution which receives both men and women. The whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate (emphasis added).

The discriminatory effect of CSC’s classification system, and the fact that FSW classified as maximum security, are housed in male institutions, is set out in detail in the background section of this paper. This is clearly a contravention of s. 8(a). Both Amnesty International and the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action described their concerns regarding this particular discriminatory practice in recent submissions to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).⁹⁶

This discriminatory practice also contravenes section 67 of the SMRs:

s. 67 The purposes of classification shall be:

1. to separate from others those prisoners who by reason of their criminal records or bad characters, are likely to exercise bad influence.
2. To divide the prisoners into classes in order to facilitate their treatment with a view to their social rehabilitation (emphasis added).