Health order sending Manitoba woman to jail for tuberculosis treatment ‘wildly excessive’: lawyer

A woman from northern Manitoba with no criminal charges spent a month in jail after public health officials ordered her detained to treat her tuberculosis, even though she wasn’t infectious at the time.

Geraldine Mason, 36, was arrested under the Public Health Act on Oct. 27 and initially ordered to spend three months at the Winnipeg Remand Centre or Women’s Correctional Centre.

Mason, who has no criminal record, was taken to the remand centre, strip searched and forced to spend the night sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

“I was scared,” she said of stepping into a jail for the first time in her life. “I didn’t know who to call. I didn’t know what to do.”

Mason, who lives in God’s Lake First Nation, spent a week at the remand centre before being transferred to the women’s correctional centre. She missed her son’s 13th birthday and her grandson’s first Halloween.

“I was upset. I was lonely,” she said. 

WATCH | Ordered to jail for missing tuberculosis medication:

Under provincial legislation, a medical officer of health is allowed to apply to a court to apprehend anyone they believe is a threat to public health. 

In this case, a medical officer said Mason wasn’t consistently taking the medication needed to cure her tuberculosis, an infectious disease that can be fatal if not treated, according to the apprehension order obtained by CBC News. 

Consistently missing the doses can make tuberculosis drug-resistant, the officer wrote.

Mason said a nurse told her they weren’t going to treat her like a criminal, but that’s what ended up happening when she was housed with several other cellmates in the general population at the Women’s Correctional Centre. 

She was only allowed out of her cell for four hours a day, and could only make three 15-minute phone calls a day for free. 

At one point she was taken to the hospital in handcuffs and shackles for an X-ray. 

“It was so embarrassing,” Mason said.

‘No justifiable reason’ for jail time: lawyer

It’s not clear how often these types of detention orders are made in Manitoba. A provincial spokesperson said they are rare, but couldn’t provide annual figures because they are not centrally tracked.

Media reports dating back to 2008 show this has happened before in Manitoba. That year, a woman with tuberculosis was incarcerated in Winnipeg after she repeatedly ran away from hospital treatment. 

In 2011, another tuberculosis patient was jailed. A medical officer told the media at the time there had been five to 10 such cases over the preceding few years.   

Mason says she never refused her medication, but admits she sometimes missed doses.

Originally, she was supposed to go to the nursing station in God’s Lake — a fly-in community about 550 kilometres north of Winnipeg — to take her medication in front of a health-care worker. The pills made her nauseous and she would sometimes put off taking them to get housework done, she said — by which point the nursing station would be closed. 

Mason said she would take her pills anyway, but unless a health official saw her do it, they assumed she did not.

Some in the legal community are denouncing Mason’s detention, calling it an overreach by public health and a violation of Charter rights.

“They locked her in her room for 24 hours a day in order to have someone watch her take a pill for 10 seconds a day,” said Leif Jensen, a Legal Aid lawyer who took on Mason’s case after she was detained.  

“That’s what happened here. And that was wildly excessive.”

Canadians value individual freedom and civil rights, he said.

“If we start chipping away at them and if we start putting people in jail, which is the most serious thing we can do to someone for these sorts of reasons, then we’re setting incredibly dangerous precedents.”

Mason’s release date was supposed to be Jan. 27.

But Jensen, who works at the University of Manitoba’s prison law clinic, filed an application in Court of King’s Bench on Nov. 18, arguing she should be released as her detention violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

Following that, and CBC’s subsequent request to interview Mason, she was released on Nov. 28.

Her case is being monitored by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a national non-profit human rights organization.

“There is no justifiable reason for someone to be detained in a prison for purely public health reasons,” said Harini Sivalingam, a lawyer and director of equality with the association. 

She described the detention as “deeply alarming” and questioned why Mason wasn’t sent to a hospital.

“The best place for someone who is ill is to be is a health-care setting, not a prison,” said Sivalingam.

The Public Health Act doesn’t specify a detention location. The officer can order a person quarantined at a specific location or sent to a health facility for treatment. 

“I don’t understand why they just didn’t take me to a hospital instead of being in jail,” Mason said.

Didn’t take medication consistently: order

While the rate of tuberculosis cases has significantly dropped in the last four decades, factors such as overcrowding, poor ventilation in homes and poorer health are all associated with greater transmission of the disease on First Nations.

In Manitoba, 175 cases had been reported so far this year as of Nov. 27. There were 183 cases last year and 198 in 2022, according to a provincial spokesperson.

Mason was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2022 — the third time she had contracted the infectious disease, which is spread through droplets and causes infection in the lungs. 

Tuberculosis is treated with multiple antibiotics over a period of six to nine months. Mason was hospitalized and successfully went through a round of treatment.

However, she had to restart the treatment a few months later because the disease was still active. That was not a result of Mason’s behaviour, according to the apprehension order.

But over the next two years, health officials argued she was not consistently taking her medication, causing the tuberculosis to remain active, according to her apprehension order.

They believe she infected others with tuberculosis during this period.

Regular treatment ensures the disease remains non-infectious. A one-on-one treatment plan was created for Mason and showed signs of success, but the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch didn’t have the resources to maintain it, according to the apprehension order. 

One of the conditions of her release is that she connect by FaceTime every day at 1:30 p.m. with a health-care worker, who watches her take her medication.

God’s Lake First Nation Chief Gilbert Andrews, who wrote an affidavit supporting Mason’s release, said no one from public health told him they were arresting Mason, and if they had, the community could have figured out a plan to take care of her.

Arresting her was an extreme reaction, he wrote in the affidavit sworn Nov. 26.

Mason told CBC she is grateful for the work her lawyer and Chief Andrews did to help her get released and return home.

Mason flew back to God’s Lake First Nation on Sunday, ecstatic to be reunited with her children and grateful she’ll be able to spend Christmas at home — something she thought might be impossible for the past month.

“I felt like I wasn’t ever going to get out.”