An update on the founder & Director of the Us Too Advocacy Group, who has now spent 117 days in custody at Surrey Pretrial Services Centre (SPSC) due to false allegations made against him. June 1st will mark the start of his 5th month in custody, and he has lost 45 pounds to date during his incarceration.
While some of the weight loss can be attributed to his poor physical & mental health while incarcerated, the inescapable fact remains that he is unable to eat solid food, due to his dentures being broken.
The background: our Director was incarcerated at North Fraser Pretrial Centre (NFPC) from mid-June to October 1st, 2021, on a frivolous breach issued by his then-CSO supervisor. In August, due to NFPC’s ongoing refusal to provide him with denture adhesive, his dentures fell out of his mouth onto the floor, and broke.
As it turns out, SPSC is no better at providing denture adhesive than NFPC. Our Director has asked to be provided with denture adhesive through SPSC’s Healthcare unit (run by the PHSA, Provincial Health Services Authority) but has been told to order – and pay – for the product through the facility’s Canteen program instead. Notwithstanding the fact that every single product available through Canteen is sold at grossly inflated prices that are at least double (and in some cases triple) the true market value of the product – our Director still cannot obtain the adhesive, due to every Canteen order form coming back marked “Not in Stock” or “Unavailable”!
Yes folks, that’s just ONE of the many infuriating dichotomies that inmates at remand centres face on a daily basis.
Here’s the real kicker though: upon his arrival at SPSC on February 1st 2022, our Director almost immediately filed a request to have new dentures provided to him at no cost, since his dentures were broken due to negligence on NFPC’s part when our Director was in their custody in 2021. After meetings with the Deputy Warden at SPSC, our Director finally received confirmation in late April 2022 that he would indeed receive new dentures at no cost to him, and that the replacement had been approved by the Administration at SPSC. Subsequent to this approval, our Director was taken to a denturist outside the SPSC for a consultation (which should have meant a subsequent visit to have a mold cast). Unbeknownst to our Director, however, SPSC then attempted to get NFPC to pay for the new dentures – and NFPC flatly refused, even though they had written documentation from our Director from August 2021 detailing the reason for the breakage of his dentures. Even more baffling is that both remand centres are fully funded by the B.C. Provincial Government; therefore, neither NFPC nor SPSC would be ‘out of pocket’ by paying for our Director’s new dentures.
Strangely enough, our Director could obtain all the methadone he wants, at no cost, if he so desired (to assist with his anxiety and disordered sleep), yet he is unable to obtain new dentures, which would give him the ability to fulfill one of the most basic survival needs that the rest of us take for granted – eating.
As of this writing, our Director still has ill-fitting, painful, broken dentures; still cannot eat; and continues to exacerbate his poor physical & mental health by losing more and more weight; SPSC has suddenly implemented a brand-new ‘policy’ stating that broken dentures are not their responsibility; and the Healthcare unit at SPSC (run by the PHSA, remember) has now advised our Director that new dentures will not be provided – despite approval being given by the SPSC Administration themselves, and despite the breakage of the dentures having occurred at NFPC, through their own negligence, while our Director was “in their custody – in their care.”
Meanwhile, guards at SPSC regularly accuse our Director of ‘being on a hunger strike’ and threaten him with getting moved to a segregated unit where his food intake will be ‘monitored.’ The guards also regularly tell our Director that he should just go onto SPSC’s ‘soft diet.’ Appropriately, our Director’s response to this asinine comment is to give the guard a verbal smack upside the head, by pointing out that he cannot eat due to NFPC’s negligence, so why should he let them off the legal & moral hook by agreeing to slurp puréed food?
(And lest you think that SPSC’s soft diet consists of nice individual dollops of individually-puréed foods, like a hospital’s soft diet – it doesn’t. SPSC’s soft diet means that an inmate’s entire meal – protein, carbohydrate, and vegetable – is dumped into a single blender, puréed into a disgusting slop, and given to the inmate. Yes folks, I can hear you retching from here).
Appalled?? Join our fight! Post this article to all of your social media accounts (please credit the Media Director, Us Too Advocacy Group), and contact:
Surrey Pretrial Services Centre
604-599-4110
Ask to speak with Deputy Warden Bobrownik
PHSA
Patient Care Quality Office – Complaints
http://www.phsa.ca/about/accountability/patient-experience/feedback-form
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