Luc Bouchard testified Wednesday at the ongoing inquest into the death of Nathaniel Krug.
The 21-year-old died in hospital after consuming a “lethal” amount of fentanyl and etizolam – a drug used to treat insomnia – in his cell at SWDC on March 10, 2021.
Bouchard was charged and later pleaded guilty to trafficking the drugs to Krug that day.
“I would never have ended up in the ‘pen’ (federal penitentiary) if I had access to more programs,” Bouchard told the inquest jury.
He told the jury he was addicted to drugs when he was incarcerated at SWDC – a provincial jail.
“The drugs for me were what led me to commit more crime,” Bouchard confessed.
Bouchard was sentenced to four years in the federal prison system in August 2022.
“I went to ‘the pen’ with the intentions of never going back.”
Federal vs. provincial corrections
Bouchard admitted he had been sentenced before to serve in a provincial jail.
In his experience, inmates in a provincial jail are there for socializing and “comparing notes” on how to break the law.
He told the jury, in his experience, programs in a provincial jail had no “pressure” to complete.
And once he was released on probation, the worst punishment was a breach.
“That was a joke to me,” Bouchard testified. “It was nonsense.”
He also said there is no halfway house for inmates leaving provincial jail to reintegrate into society.
“You get out with nothing,” he said, before admitting he would return to his criminality.
The federal system, Bouchard testified however, is much stricter.
He said offenders are given “one chance” to attend and participate in court-ordered programming in a halfway house “or they throw you back in jail and open the bed for somebody else”.
Bouchard said the programs offered through the federal prison and parole system “breaks down the thought process” for his criminal behaviour.
“The provincial jail system, there needs to be something similar to a halfway house,” Bouchard said to the jury.
Today, Bouchard says he has an education, a good job and is about to get his own place so he can leave the halfway house.
Bouchard recommendations
Bouchard believes naloxone spray should be readily available in every jail cell in Ontario, so inmates can save their cellmates lives in the event of an overdose, without calling for help from a Corrections Officer.
He also believes every jail should have a weapon or drug ‘amnesty box’ at intake so inmates give up illegal contraband or weapons without prosecution.
Bouchard credited the Province of Ontario for its Good Samaritan Act that prohibits people from being prosecuted should their efforts to save someone from an overdose have an adverse effect or cause injury.
“Countless people have been helped by my hands because of the good samaritan law,” Bouchard said, telling the jury, now he doesn’t hesitate to call for help if he sees someone overdosing on illegal drugs.
-Reporting by CTV Windsor's Michelle Maluske