Dianna Cochrane
Ontario Ministry of Health
Manager of the forensics and justice unit at the Ontario Ministry of Health.
Connected Scandals
Ontario's only maximum-security psychiatric hospital has kept severely mentally ill patients locked alone in rooms for years — one man for about 20 years — in conditions an independent reviewer found akin to what the UN "deemed to constitute torture." The Ford government was warned in 2018 and responded with a single phone call.
A civil servant, not an elected official. As manager of the ministry’s forensics and justice unit, Cochrane was involved in the ministry’s 2019 follow-up to the December 2018 warning, and in February 2026 made the requests that participants in the ministry’s confidential review of the forensic mental health system sign non-disclosure agreements.