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| John L. Hill |
The Toronto firms Goldblatt Partners LLP and Sotos LLP have filed a statement of claim alleging that lead plaintiffs Vanessa Fareau and Ransome Capay were exploited when Bell entered into a contract with the Ontario government in 2013 and obtained the exclusive right to provide telephone services to prisoners in jails, detention centres and other similar correctional facilities operated by the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. Bell paid the Crown undisclosed commissions based on a percentage of all gross monthly revenue generated from the contract.
The lawsuit alleges that the Crown provided a captive population needing phone services, while Bell charged excessive rates and funnelled commissions to the Crown. To maintain phone contact with family and the outside world, prisoners had only one option: collect calls to landlines at exorbitant and unconscionable prices extracted from anyone who accepted the calls or otherwise paid for them. Bell falsely represented that the calls cost the same as it charged the general public, specifically Bell’s residential customers.
The class action claim rightly points out that the provincial Crown has a statutory and fiduciary duty to rehabilitate prisoners in its custody. Phone contact between inmates and their community support is essential to rehabilitation. However, the claim accuses the Crown of financially benefiting from the commissions paid by Bell and that the ministry had an interest in higher rates to generate higher commissions. The plaintiffs argue that receiving those commissions was explicit or tacit support for Bell’s conduct. They maintain that the Crown preferred its interests to those of the prisoners and, in doing so, breached its statutory and fiduciary duties to the prisoner class. The result of this exploitation was that Bell and Ontario made millions of dollars from vulnerable class members under their control and subject to their imposed monopoly.
The litigation documents in the lawsuit against the province and Bell, which ran the phone system in the province’s jails from 2013 to 2021, allege that the charges were exorbitant. There was a flat rate of $1 for local calls and about $1 per minute, plus a $2.50 connection fee for long-distance calls. CBC has reported that Bell Canada made more than $64 million in gross revenues from such calls over that period and gave nearly $39 million to the province as commission.
David Sterns, a lawyer with Sotos and a counsel in the class action suit, expressed his frustration in trying to get the courts to hear and rule on the class action. He has been buoyed by the recent stance of the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The CRTC decided in December that it does not have jurisdiction over the subject matter of the class action case. Still, it is “concerned about the overall provision of telecommunications services in correctional facilities across Canada.”
“While the current proceeding has a narrow focus, it has highlighted broader concerns about the rates charged to inmates and their families, as well as the availability of calling options in correctional facilities,” the commission wrote in its decision.
Catherine Latimer, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, also commented and acknowledged that allowing inmates to maintain contact with their families and support networks makes society safer.
She, too, remarked to CBC that “one of the factors that is instrumental in promoting pro-social conduct, or helping people rehabilitate and reintegrate successfully, is maintaining good connections with family and community.”
While most Canadians would correctly expect that conditions in American prisons can be much worse, communications between inmates and the outside world are much better in the United States.
David Sterns said he hopes the CRTC will take on the issue as the Federal Communications Commission has done in the United States. The FCC set caps on rates for correctional facility calls at between six and twelve cents a minute, depending on the institution’s size.
“They recognized that this is an area where the prisoners are literally and figuratively captives of the telephone companies and that there’s no incentive and no competitive force requiring the rates to be lower,” he said.
One would have assumed that people who exploit the vulnerable should be the ones in prison and not the ones running them.
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a J.D. from Queen’s and an LL.M. in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. He is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books) and The Rest of the [True Crime] Story (AOS Publishing.). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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