WHAT: BCCLA at Supreme Court of Canada to intervene in Dorsey v. Attorney General of Canada

WHEN: May 13, 2025, at 9:30 am EST/ 6:30 am PST

WHERE: Supreme Court of Canada 

Ottawa, ON (unceded Anishinabe Algonquin Territory) – The BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is intervening at the Supreme Court of Canada tomorrow in Dorsey v. Attorney General of Canada. This case will decide whether prisoners whose applications for security reclassification to a lower security institution have been denied can access habeas corpus court review to ensure the denial is legal. 

Habeas corpus, called the “great writ of liberty,” is a powerful mechanism which grants prisoners access to court review to ensure that their detention is legal. It’s constitutionally protected by s. 10(c) of the Charter and is essential to the s. 7 right to liberty and the s. 9 right against arbitrary detention. But the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and the majority of the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the applications for habeas corpus brought by Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Salah, saying that a decision to deny reclassification to lower security does not constitute a “deprivation of residual liberty.”  

BCCLA intervenes to argue that all illegal detentions must be swiftly and robustly reviewed to ensure the rule of law is upheld inside prisons. The Court’s modern jurisprudence urges broad access to habeas corpus and has resulted in expanding its availability in different contexts. This justifies the Court revisiting the meaning of “deprivation of residual liberty” to give it an interpretation that is broad and alive to the realities prisoners face. This includes the systemic and discriminatory deprivations of liberty experienced by Indigenous and racialized people. 

Ga Grant, Litigation Staff Counsel for the BCCLA, says: 

“To maintain the rule of law, court review must always be available in the case of illegal detentions—and when someone is unlawfully being held in a higher security institution, that’s an illegal detention. This is particularly important because the evidence shows Indigenous and racialized people are more likely to experience discrimination and be over-securitized in institutions, which has a cascading effect on access to parole and re-integration. Conditions of detention must always be legal, period.”