For more than a decade, incarcerated women have voiced concerns about stifling heat in the maximum-security unit at the Edmonton Institution for Women (EIFW). One cell, near the boiler room, gets so hot in the summer it’s known as “The Microwave.” 

Women in the unit have reported indoor temperatures rising above 30 degrees in recent years, according to an Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) document obtained by the IJF through an access to information request. Even the warden acknowledged to a correctional investigator that the heat in the unit was “unbearable.”