The Canadian Forensic Mental Health System: An Overview

Abstract

The term “forensic mental health system” is often used to refer to the intersections of the mental health system and the criminal justice system (Betteridge & Barbaree, 2004). Here, I will provide a brief overview of aspects of the Ontario Mental Health Act, the Criminal Code of Canada, and the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act relevant to the topic of deportation for those identified with mental health issues. The Mental Health Act applies to every psychiatric facility with regards to rights or prohibitions for people identified as having a mental disorder. It includes provisions or restrictions regarding voluntary and involuntary examination, admission, treatment, consent, detention, psychosurgery, and community treatment orders. These policies and laws are continually being rearticulated to reinforce ideas of an unrehabilitatable criminal, an untreatable mentally ill person, and undeserving foreign alien. The Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act passed the House of Commons on June 19, 2013; the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act received royal assent on June 20, 2013 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2013b; Department of Justice, 2013). These laws are dependent on the continuations of colonial technologies and practices that channel ideas of racial hierarchy, eugenics, and foreign exoticism. Individually, these changes and laws can be presented as progressive maneuvers working to improve safety, save tax dollars, or to be responsive to the public while adhering to old systems of refusal of entry, confinement, punishment, containment and ejection.