2026-09-02 from law360.ca
There is something profoundly unsettling about a society that regards prolonged solitary confinement as unconstitutional in prison yet appears prepared to tolerate the same isolation when the person behind the locked door is a psychiatric patient.
A recent Toronto Star investigation into Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in Penetanguishene raises precisely that question.
The Star reports that patients at Ontario’s only maximum-security psychiatric hospital have been kept in seclusion for extraordinarily long periods. One patient, Camelott Hamblett, has reportedly spent more than 20 years in isolation. Another, Andrew Azevedo, has been secluded for more than five years. In a single 20-bed unit, an Ontario Review Board hearing revealed that at least 11 patients were being secluded.
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