Blass v. Canada
(Attorney General)

(2000), 197 F.T.R. 294, [2000] F.C.J. No.1978 (F.C.T.D.)

    The applicant B was placed into administrative segregation following a mass disturbance generated by inmates in his institution, during which some significant material damage occurred. B was segregated on the ground that he might impede the investigation concerning the disturbance in question. B applied for judicial review of the decision to segregate him and was reintegrated into the general inmate population once the CSC's investigation was concluded, which was some time before the application was heard by the Federal Court. Two issues were dealt with: 1) Did the inmate's release from segregation render the judicial review application moot such that the Federal Court had no jurisdiction to hear it? 2) Was B provided with sufficient disclosure of information from CSC officials that would have enabled him to challenge their decision to place him into segregation?
    Lemieux J. allowed the application and ordered that the comments by the authorities, to the effect that B was an instigator of the disturbance in the prison and that they had reasonable grounds to segregate B while the investigation was proceeding, be stricken from B's record. While the CSC submitted that the case was moot and should not be heard by the Court, Lemieux J. disagreed and applied the principle of collateral legal consequences warranting a decision on the merits. Despite being a moot issue in terms of the segregation itself, Lemieux J. felt that it would be unfair to allow the inmate's record to remain in the state it was without court intervention. Such a record, if left unchanged, could have had some collateral practical effects - particularly eligibility for parole. In regards to the merits of the case, Lemieux J. held that the authorities violated procedural fairness in failing to give B any information indicating why he had been identified as one of the instigators of the events in question, although that was the reason for his administrative segregation. The lack of information meant that B was unable to rebut in any real and effective way the decision to place him in administrative segregation.
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