Public Safety Committee on March 30th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'd like to bring this meeting to order. This is the sixth meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We're continuing our study of prison farm closures.

I would like to welcome to our committee quite a number of presenters.

Ms. Dowling, would you mind starting?

We will have all of you limit your comments so that we can complete them in about half an hour. That will mean from three to five minutes for each person, if that's okay. I've discussed this with some of you.

Introduce yourself, please, and give us your name. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your position. We'll keep moving around the table, because we have quite a large number of presenters.

I welcome all of you.

We'll begin with Ms. Dowling.

[Dianne Dowling, President, National Farmers Union, Local 316, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank the committee for this opportunity to explain why farmers support the continuation of the prison farm program.

I'm Dianne Dowling. I'm the president of Local 316 of the National Farmers Union, which is the local of the union in the Kingston area.

About a year ago, our local, along with Urban Agriculture Kingston and the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul, developed a position statement asking the federal government to do the following: to put a freeze or a halt on dismantling the prison farms while we had a chance to discuss it; to do a full review of the costs and benefits of the program; and to consider possible enhancements or enlargements to the program instead of closing it.

We asked several farm and food groups, as well as social justice and labour groups and other individuals, to sign onto this position statement. We have representation from the Federations of Agriculture, locally, provincially, and federally, as well as the National Farmers Union, the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, and food groups such as Food Secure Canada and the Toronto Food Policy Council. There is a longer list, which I could supply if you wish.

Therefore, the campaign to revitalize the prison farm program at Corrections Canada has engaged thousands of farmers and citizens who are in support of keeping the program going and in fact revitalizing it.

You might ask why farmers care about the prison farm program. Our initial concern was about the potential loss of the farmland. There are six prison farms across Canada. Two of them are in the Kingston area. They are very obvious to the citizens of Kingston because they are on major roads and they represent a very large tract of valuable prime agricultural land, of which we do not have a surplus in the Kingston area, where we specialize in rocks and trees.

This land has been federally owned for decades and it remains preserved as farmland today. We see this farmland as a precious public asset. Considering that we're facing worldwide issues such as peak oil, climate change, and uncertain political and economic times, and for the sake of the food security of Canadians, we need to keep every acre of farmland that we have in this country.

We also care about the possible loss of critical farm infrastructure. At several of the prison farms, there are abattoirs that are used by local farmers, at least in the Kingston area, to enhance their operations. Because the abattoir is there, they are able to sell their meat to local customers and therefore realize more profitability in their businesses.

The prison farms have also been major customers of the agribusinesses in our area: the feed mills, the farm equipment dealers, other suppliers, and, of course, tradespeople in the area. I'm told that Frontenac Institution spends about $900,000 a year on these farm services. Of course, this helps support those businesses for the rest of us farmers in the area; if they were to lose such a major customer it would have a very detrimental effect on agribusinesses in our area, which could be harmful to other farmers.

We've been working for many years at trying to build the local food system in our area. We believe that every community should increase its capacity to feed itself. The prison is a community and the inmates are helping to feed themselves. We applaud that. We do not regard it as competition to our local farmers. For instance, the dairy farm at Frontenac has a herd of 130 milking cows. The average dairy farm in Ontario is about 60 cows, so that's the equivalent of two family farms, and I don't think that's a major source of competition to the milk market.

There's another area of concern. CSC regional commissioner Ross Toller told you on Thursday that CSC is moving to larger food tenders to take advantage of so-called economies of scale. If the prison farms are closed and are not supplying milk, eggs, and meat to CSC, we do not believe that the average Canadian farmer will be in a position to fill that market.

The food tenders are offered on a system called MERX. You have to be a member of MERX, at a fee, and the tenders are in the millions and hundreds of thousands of pounds of product. I don't think local farmers are going to be able to take advantage of the gap left by the prison farms going out of business. Furthermore, the contracts have to be compliant with NAFTA, which means they could go anywhere in North America.

Of course, we were startled to hear that inmates on the farm program did not gain employable skills. We feel that they gained hard skills like operating equipment, repairing it, and looking after it and that they also gained skills in the food processing that goes on at Frontenac, for instance. Probably just as important--or more important--are the attitudes of punctuality, teamwork, responsibility, and so on.

All of those characteristics are transferable to other jobs and, in fact, are critical to keeping a job. If you have a welding certificate, you might get the job, but you're not going to keep it if you can't get along with your employer or your colleagues.

I will be so bold as to say that Canada and, indeed, civilizations throughout history were built on the work of people who were farmers. Surely that is recommendation enough for CSC to maintain the prison farm program. Farmers and non-farmers alike in the Kingston area, from whom I've heard by the hundreds through their petitions and their participation in our events, are in complete disagreement with the statement that farming does not give inmates employable skills. We certainly endorse the return of trades training to the prisons and feel that it would tie in very well with the farms, because inmates could practice the skills on the farms.

The previous minister of public safety referred to the prison farm system as a 1950s model with outdated technology. I'm a dairy farmer myself and I toured the farm last fall. The dairy operation at Frontenac is modern and well managed. They participate in provincial management programs and they work with the University of Guelph on a calf-feeding program. It is certainly not a 1950s program.

We urge the minister and members of this committee to visit the prison farms in Kingston, as they are the closest to Ottawa--

[Applause]

--and to see this effective, humane, and practical training and rehabilitation program in action. See for yourself that this program works, and at what I would consider to be a modest cost. I urge the committee to look at the value of the program, to reverse the decision to close it, and to work with interested Canadians to expand the program with innovative and useful initiatives.

I thank you for this opportunity to speak with you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Leeman, are you prepared to make a statement?

[John Leeman, LifeLine InReach worker and Ex-lifer Farm Program Participant, As an Individual]

Thank you.

My name is John Leeman. I'm an offender who served a life sentence and I wanted to come here today to speak on behalf of the inmates who have benefited from the farm.

When I was in higher-security facilities, we had a lot of trades in them. I was a person who was very motivated to do them, but as we all know, when you are in higher security, it's more about focusing on punishment. The shops only open up for maybe two hours in the morning and maybe an hour and a half in the afternoon. They may be locked down for periods of time.

I will stress this, because I ended up picking up all four welding tickets while I was inside. I also got my autobody licence while I was in higher security. There used to be almost every shop that you could have to teach inmates a trade. While I was in, I watched these shops—welding, carpentry, painting, and masonry—all disappear. Among all of them, the farm program has succeeded. I believe the reason that the farm had one so is the reintegration process.

I grew up in a foster home on a farm. I milked by hand, so when I went to the dairy farm, the first thing I was doing was looking for a pail and a stool, and I found out that wasn't going to happen. Even with the welding tickets that I brought in there from the machine shops, to use when the machines were breaking down, I was never able to utilize the trade I had; I found out while I was in there that a farm boss had to teach me how to re-weld some of the stuff, because welding two plates gets you your ticket, but it doesn't give you the experience.

As I say in every talk I give, I take my hat off to the farmers; they've taught me life skills. They taught a lot more than just farming; it was the work ethics. Being up at four o'clock in the morning is pretty shocking for anybody coming down through the system. I've been out for 19 years now--

[Applause]

--and I utilize those tools today in my daily work ethics.

I would like to see some people from Parliament come down to see just how that whole operation runs. It's a phenomenal thing. It's not geared to just one specific inmate; it runs from a two-year sentence right on to the longest sentence you could ever get. We've seen guys who never got along together taught by the shop bosses how to be team players and take animosity out of the institution. I've been reading the papers today and I still see the same messages coming back in the newspapers: they are rewarding the same things. The insight is there.

I just can't emphasize enough that I feel, as a former inmate, that this is a bad mistake for inmates. It has more than just a trade.... As I say, not everybody is going to come out and become a farmer, but a farmer teaches a lot more than just farming. There are a lot of related trades in there that are being implemented in the community today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Flanagan.

[Bill Flanagan, Dean, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual]

My name is Bill Flanagan and I'm the Dean of Law at Queen's University.

I'd like to thank the committee for permitting me to speak to you today.

At Queen's law faculty, we have a correctional law clinic that has operated for well over 30 years. For many years, our students have participated in this program, advising inmates and working in the prisons on prison appeals and disciplinary matters. So at the law school, we have a very large interest in the local prison population, and a long-standing relationship with the federal penitentiaries.

I didn't know a great deal about the prison farm issue until last December, when I attended a Save Our Prison Farms coalition town hall meeting in Kingston. It was a remarkable meeting. It was a unique coalition of farmers, correctional staff, local residents, students, seniors, aboriginal leaders, and church groups, all of whom spoke passionately about their commitment to saving our prison farms.

I found the meeting personally very moving and it inspired me to want to visit our prison farm at the Frontenac Institution. I contacted CORCAN and asked if I would be allowed to visit the facility.

At the time, I was told that due to the ongoing public controversy surrounding the prison farms, public visits to the farms had been curtailed. I contacted Peter Milliken's office and requested his assistance in approaching CORCAN to see if I could tour the facility. It was only after his office intervened that I was finally permitted a tour of the prison farm.

When I was able to tour the farm, I was deeply impressed by what I saw. I had the chance to talk with the correctional staff and several inmates, all of whom spoke with great passion about the value of the farm in helping inmates to learn life skills and work skills that helped them reintegrate into society upon their release.

I know that the government takes the position that these programs are not cost-effective because few inmates find work in the agricultural sector upon their release, but I am not persuaded by the government's rationale. To me, it is clear that the government policy is being driven primarily by ideology and has little to do with cost-effectiveness.

We know that for many years crime rates have been steadily declining in Canada; however, with the government's law and order agenda and a growing range of mandatory sentences, prison populations are projected to increase in Canada by over 10% in the next few years.

As reported in yesterday's news, notwithstanding huge federal deficits, the budget for Corrections Canada is projected to rise by 27% in the next two years, to over $3 billion and a 25% increase in the number of employees, so I would submit that the government is not shutting down these farms to save money. On the contrary, the government is prepared to needlessly throw millions of dollars more into our prisons.

Why, then, in the face of such public opposition and clear evidence of the utility of these programs, is the government determined to close the prison farms? The only explanation that makes sense to me is that we have a government bent on punishment and increasingly indifferent to rehabilitation. We have a government that wants to get tough on crime and tough on prisoners because they think this will garner them votes. I can assure you that there are no votes for this in Kingston and the Islands.

[Applause]

Instead, there is an extraordinary coalition of highly motivated citizens, many of whom you see here today, who are repelled by the government's contempt for farming as a rehabilitative program for inmates and are repelled by the government indifference to the well-being of these inmates.

We do not want to lose our prison farm in the heart of Kingston and have it replaced by a “super prison” built to house an ever-growing prison population. The people of Kingston have long lived with prisons in our midst, and we want these facilities to be places that provide fair treatment to offenders and ample opportunity to develop the skills that will help them re-enter society and not reoffend.

Prison farms play an important role in a humane criminal justice system. I ask you to listen to the many diverse voices of those of us who care deeply about this issue and save our prison farms.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

Ms. Lally, please.

[Sister Pauline Lally, Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul, As an Individual]

My name is Pauline Lally. I'm a sister of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul in Kingston.

I'm sitting here and looking up at this beautiful picture, and I'm thinking of what Dianne just mentioned, which is that Canadian history is built on people who were farmers. It's right here in front of us.

I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you on a subject close to the hearts of Kingstonians. When Bishop Horan asked the Sisters of Providence to come from Montreal to Kingston in 1861, it was to establish a congregation for the sick and poor in their homes, the aged and the orphaned, and the inmates in Canada's oldest penitentiary, and that's what we've attempted to do for almost 150 years.

When we started, more punitive measures to deter criminals were the norm. However, as Gandhi explained, the norm of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth could render most of the world blind and toothless.

I am not soft on crime. Some dangerous offenders belong behind bars. But I am big on rehabilitation, and that's what the farm programs do: rehabilitate.

Education and experience have taught us that a commitment to rehabilitation reduces reoffending rates. That's why our penal system has moved slowly over the past 150 years toward a restorative system appropriately called “corrections”.

But tell me: what is “corrections” correcting in closing the prison farms? Our system has been held up to the rest of the world as an example of a penal system that works. Until now. we have been proud of that. People from all over the world have toured our prison farms because they work.

Why would we stop something that is working? Why would we stop something that is sustainable, that services milk, meat, and eggs to all the federal penitentiaries in the area as well as supplying surplus eggs to food banks?

We are here today because of our grave concern that the current government is about to take away the most successful program in the system. In reading the Correctional Service of Canada's own document, called “Let's Talk”, which I have provided for you today, you will understand that, as it states, this farm is “highly valued for the produce it supplies to local federal institutions and the food banks in the surrounding area and for the skills passed on to the inmates whose labour and sweat keeps the production going”.

In the same document, Craig Chinnery, the operations manager, explains that many of the inmates had never held a steady job in their lives until they arrived at the penitentiary farm. He says:

We're trying to develop a work ethic in these guys. Get them accustomed to getting up in the morning--

Like you said: getting up at four o'clock.

--and putting in a full day's work. And teaching them certified skills they can take with them to the job market.

The article continues, stating:

These inmates seem happy and eager in their work. It's obvious that they take pride in the operation.

They are learning real work ethics. They are learning to take pride in a job well done.

Corrections Canada also understood the rehabilitative value of animal therapy. Said Mr. Chinnery, and again I quote him from the document on Correction Canada's website:

The animal/human connection is a good thing....

...[it] has a calming effect on many of these guys.

Last May, I visited the farm outside the walls of Collins Bay penitentiary. On the prison farm, there are no walls--only fences for the animals. A cow had given birth to a calf. The calf had died. The mother could not get up, so obviously she was going to die as well. And there, under the birthing tree, was an old, burly inmate, complete with his long hair and his forearms covered with tattoos, giving what l'd call palliative care to that animal.

He was crouching there, stroking her muzzle, and talking softly to her. That is the true rehabilitative value of this program. No laundry work or classroom can provide that for inmates. If we are truly interested in safer communities, we must look closely at any program that, as Correctional Service of Canada states, has a calming effect.

CSC goes on to explain:

The work instills a sense of responsibility in the inmate who must provide daily care for the livestock. There's a general feeling of accomplishment amongst both the inmate farm workers and the instructors as a result of their work.

Obviously, there's more than one good product coming from this farm operation, but that's the most important one: the positive changes in an inmate's life.

These were not my words but words taken from the Correctional Service of Canada website, and they reflect how much these farms were once valued. Now they will be closed without any expert review.

Prophetic voices pronounce justice. Restoring perpetrators to society is just. To do this safely, we must concentrate on healing and rehabilitation within the philosophy of restorative justice. The healing power of animal therapy is understood, and must, if anything, be expanded.

Rehabilitating inmates is CSC's responsibility, and it reflects our wonderful Canadian values. We therefore ask that a moratorium he placed on any dismantling until independent experts have had an opportunity to review the value of the farm program.

We trust that you, as Canada's public safety committee, will take our concerns seriously and put a stop to any dismantling and any transformation of our system until independent experts, chosen carefully for their skills and impartiality, have an opportunity to research the direction proposed by the current government and the “Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety” document.

Thank you.

[Applause]

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Doherty, are you going to be making a statement?

[Sister Bridget Doherty, Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul, As an Individual]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You're not going to be making a statement? Okay.

[A voice]

It was an arrangement that we had...[Inaudible--Editor].

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I hope that everyone in the back can hear me. We normally do not allow any participation by observers in our proceedings here at the committee, so I would kindly ask you to hold back your enthusiasm and applause. I know it's all orderly, but it's just not normally practised at the committee.

Thank you.

Mr. Edmunds.

[John Edmunds, National President, Union of Solicitor General Employees]

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for allowing me to speak here today.

I am John Edmunds. I am the national president of the Union of Solicitor General Employees. I represent the people who work on the farms to train the offenders.

I can sit here today and talk about what the farm program does, but through my normal course of action in a day I'm not getting the answers that I require. The government has come out with a very public statement saying they're losing $4.1 million a year on the farms, yet I stood at 269 Laurier in September as part of a 2,000-person protest asking the then Minister of Public Safety to produce said document, to produce an audit to explain where the money is going.

Right now there are just too many questions that remain unanswered for me as a representative of over 15,000 people inside the federal system, those people being in law enforcement essentially. Everybody is focusing on the loss, but I'm trying to find out what the actual cost of the farm is and what the loss of the farm will cost the Correctional Service of Canada.

If we look at something as simple as a 250-millilitre container of milk that is produced for anywhere between 23¢ and 28¢ and sold to the government, what is that going to cost us when we go to the free market to try to buy these products? What's going to happen when the farms are no longer there and we have a riot at one of our institutions? At this point in time we can change our orders and we can pick up what we need and get it shipped.

I want this committee somehow to please stand up and ask the questions that I can't get answers to.

It's being said that the training people receive on the farms is not relevant in this day and age, and it's been quoted here that the farms are from the 1950s. Up to about a couple of years ago, I believe $500,000 was reinvested in the Bowden Institution. Where's that good government spending? We're putting money into these institutions, into the farms, but now, with a stroke of the pen, we're losing them.

The sunset on this is winding down fairly quickly. There are two herds that I believe are going to be auctioned off in June and July, one in Winnipeg and one in Kingston. These herds have been around for years. The bloodlines are of value. They're going to be split up and sold, one cow at a time.

Where do we go from here? I'm not going to say that I believe we're going to have super prisons on the grounds in Kingston or on any other farm site, but I do believe that shutting down the farms is a grave mistake. The rest of the civilized world is looking at Canada. We even have places in the United States--and I'm not a big supporter of corrections in the United States, but even they have expanded a farm program to go green, and they're actually doing what the sign at Frontenac Institution says, which is “paying our way through agriculture”.

I think these are the things we're missing, and I'm hoping this committee can get answers, because it's very frustrating to ask the questions and not get the answers. Every time you ask the question, the answer is that it's a sensitive cabinet document.

This is a committee of cabinet. This is a committee of the House of Commons. I'm hoping that you people here have the authority and the ability to, one, stop the closure of the farms, and two, ask the questions and get the documents out to the public.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. McDermott, please.

[Larry McDermott, Former Rural Forum Chair, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all on the committee and my fellow speakers for sharing this opportunity with me.

I was a elected municipal official for 28 years. I'm the former rural chair of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In fact, I was the founding chair just a few short years ago. I'm also a councillor with the Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation and a commissioner with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

In fact, just a little over a week ago, I spoke to the Canadian Coalition of Municipalities against Racism and Discrimination, from a rural and an aboriginal lens. I'd like to share a few statistics from that presentation to highlight the circumstance that I'd like to outline in the few minutes that I have.

First I'll say, from a rural perspective, something you probably already know, which is that economic activity is hard to come by in rural Canada, for the most part, so the loss of a few jobs and a small amount of economic activity that may look minuscule on the grander scale can have a profound effect on our rural communities.

From an aboriginal perspective, some of the statistics that I shared are as follows: 87% of those incarcerated in Saskatchewan are aboriginal women. Across the country, the statistics show that 30% of the women are aboriginal. By the way, that 87% in Saskatchewan is 87% of the women, just for accuracy's sake, but these are startling statistics when you consider that the aboriginal population is actually 4% of the population of Canada. It is a hugely disproportionate share.

I should add that male and youth statistics don't get much better. We could talk at length about the factors behind this, but years of policy, residential schools, and other forms of discrimination are some of the things that have contributed to this disproportionate share that we find in our prisons.

I believe that the honour of the crown is at stake here. We need to look collectively at how we got to this point and collectively how we are going to solve this tragic problem.

If I may, I'm going to quote from a friend of mine, who offers that one aboriginal healing paradigm realizes that the real essence of creation lies in what is going on between things, not merely on individual incidents, because when society has focused its attention solely on incidents, like our present model of justice does, it reduces the wrongdoers' humanity to the level of their wrongdoing and not on restoring relationships, where the focus should be. Prison farm livestock and agriculture teach wrongdoers that they are mutually interdependent on each other. Both have value. Both have worth.

Let me now expand the circle to include all prisoners, regardless of background. My wife worked with prisoners in several federal penitentiaries, and her conclusion is emphatic: prison farms teach prisoners important life skills that prepare them for life as contributors to society.

There are statistics associated with work in similar circumstances, such as community gardens. The U.S. has been referred to. In the city of Los Angeles, the recidivism rate was improved by 50%--and this study is readily available--through the use of community gardens. In a hard-core place like Los Angeles, you hardly think of farming or even gardening, but it worked.

I want to conclude by offering my hope that Parliament will view this issue from what one elder says is our longest journey--from our heads to our hearts. I hope you'll look long and hard at this situation, because we know that the relationship on a farm with living things does something that academic solutions.... Some of the ideas we have for correction, some of the ideas we have for truly changing and preparing an individual to return to society, just simply don't stand up to the value of a prison farm and the impact that a prison farm can have on its people. Yes, I want to stress that this is important from an aboriginal perspective, but it's also important for all prisoners.

I thank you.

Merci. Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

We'll move now to Mr. Perry, please.

[Dave Perry, Agribusiness Instructor for the Abattoir, CORCAN Agribusiness, Pittsburgh Institution, Correctional Service Canada]

I'd like to thank the committee for allowing us to speak here today.

I'm a sixth-generation farmer, president of the Frontenac Cattlemen's Association, a director of the National Farmers Union, and an agribusiness supervisor for these prison farms.

I've worked on both sites in Kingston. I supervised the dairy operation for a number of years. I currently supervise the abattoir. It's the only abattoir between Toronto and Montreal that wholesales meat into the community. There are other small abattoirs where you can take an animal if you're a farmer, have it processed, and take it back to your freezer, but you cannot sell it into the community, and we do that.

We also train inmates. We train 14 to 16 or sometimes 18 inmates in the abattoir, and any inmates who complete that process and want a job in that field are able to find one. They might not all want to follow through or they may go to another area, but there are jobs out there for them. We have tracked them ourselves. We have just currently toured a large meat plant north of Toronto, Holly Park Meat Packers, and they're employing two of the inmates we trained. There are notices on meat shops and butcher shops in Kingston--I know of four--looking for meat cutters, so once these inmates complete this program, there are going to be jobs there for them if they want to pursue them.

We provide a service at the abattoir for about 350 area farmers. They can take their animals there. They can have them processed for themselves, or the operator will purchase that animal and distribute that meat into the community. There's quite a local food movement in the Kingston area. Without that abattoir, the local food movement is dead. There will be no local meat for the area. It can come from the United States or western Canada or wherever, but it will not be local. There are 150 businesses that rely on that abattoir to provide them with meat.

I suggest that an agricultural advisory committee be formed to help make these decisions. There's a citizen advisory committee, so why not have an agricultural one? I believe there are people who made this decision who do not understand agriculture. Maybe they're not interested in it, but they certainly do not understand it. We could help them with that. When the announcement was made, it was a great slap in the face for farmers to find out that agriculture is no longer important in today's society. As I said, I'm a sixth-generation farmer, and there are others out there in the same area.

On the news two night ago, we learned the Canadian government has just donated $120 million to Afghanistan to build a dam for irrigation purposes, while they say they're coming up $4 million short here. If that's the case, I would think they could come up with the $4 million we need, if that's the correct number.

There are some members of this committee who are in favour of closing these farms. I think they actually know better, and I would urge them to take the actions required to stand up and save these prison farms. They are very important. Wherever I travel in Ontario, I run into an inmate I have trained over the years. That person will come up and greet me like a neighbour because he's so happy that we were able to work together while he was serving his sentence.

Unless you actually go there and tour and see what's going on, you have no understanding of the situation and how they work in agriculture, working with animals and even growing plants. Many of these inmates, if they so wish, have their own garden plots. They can grow vegetables so that they do not have to use the cafeteria or purchase vegetables through the institutional stores, which is a saving, and they actually donate surplus vegetables to the food banks.

I would also like to urge the current minister to tour these sites.

In closing, I just urge the total committee to do the right thing and save these prison farms before it's too late.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you, Mr. Perry.

Last but not least is Mr. Amey.

[Ron Amey, Acting Production Supervisor, CORCAN Agribusiness, Frontenac Institution, Correctional Service Canada]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, members of the committee. My name is Ron Amey. I am acting production supervisor of Frontenac Institution. I am responsible for the day-to-day operations, the budgets, and new ventures.

I supervise over 10 staff members, who oversee up to 70 offenders involved in a full agriculture and food-processing operation.

I have seen many changes over the years. I started in 1981 as an instructor at Frontenac Institution. At that time it was a work camp, and inmates had to work on the farm. We escorted them to the farm, and they were under constant supervision.

Today the offenders have their own alarm clocks. They get up, get breakfast, and report for work at 5:30 in the morning. They start their duties just as they would at any job. Many offenders attend school during the day and after class return to work, finishing at six o'clock at night and completing a twelve-hour day.

The atmosphere has changed dramatically. We have an employer-employee relationship. Production has increased to the point that we have one of the top herds in the area. Now offenders ask to come to the farm for the benefits offered: fresh air, a sense of accomplishment, and the skills they can learn. Physical work is a stress reliever.

This is not a 1950s operation. Offenders are exposed to modern technology. We have computerized milkers and a TMR mixer. We have just implemented an acidified milk program through the University of Guelph; this is something that was developed in Sweden, and the inmates have come online with that and helped us out quite a bit with it.

They're exposed to many areas of job skills: construction, mechanical maintenance, welding, fabricating, and clerical work. Farmers are a cheap bunch; we use the talents that we have and we construct our own equipment. We work as a team, with interactions among others to perform our duties. A lot of these fellows don't usually work too well together, but once they are in a minimum security setting like this and see what is going on, they interact better. They have more reliance on others, so if one fellow is not there, the other guy knows he has to do the work. They learn responsibility, the care of animals, having someone depend on them, and meeting deadlines.

I'll talk about job ethics, meaning getting to work on time and keeping a job. Many have never even held a job. The human-animal bond, as we heard here earlier, helps to de-institutionalize offenders. We had the story of one offender. He came to us with substance abuse and anger management issues and a violent past. With us, he formed a bond with the cattle, was able to function in a group environment, came to grips with his problems, and eventually worked his way up to one of the top positions on the farm. This inmate is now on parole in downtown Ottawa.

The intention is not and never was to train inmates to be farmers. We strive to release a better citizen into the community. For over a hundred years, we have been supplying food to area prisons, and we have been paying our way through agriculture.

I hope I can answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'd like to thank all of you very much.

You've actually stuck fairly closely to the time. Some of you may not be familiar with the procedures here; what we usually do now is start with the official opposition--the Liberal Party--and then go to the Bloc, the NDP, and the government. We'll keep rotating around, and almost everyone will have a chance to ask you questions. Because there are so many of you, don't feel offended if you don't get asked a question. I'm just warning you about that.

The time for the first round is seven minutes, and the following rounds are five minutes each. Without further ado, we will go to Mr. Holland, please.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Let me start by thanking the witnesses.

When you look at the variety of backgrounds from which you come and the variety of perspectives you're offering, it's hard to think of a better case for keeping the prison farms open than the one you've given us here today. I hope all committee members are listening and keeping open minds on the matter before us.

I'll start where we left off in the last meeting, when we had department officials with us. What we found was that they have no statistics whatsoever. They have nothing on rehabilitation, or on recidivism, as an example. They have nothing comparing the prison farm program to other programs to tell us about its relative efficacy.

What we hear today comes from individuals who are coming forward and giving us anecdotal stories about how positive the program is and how well it works. I asked department officials for any examples at all that they could give us to show that this program isn't working. Given that the principal objective of corrections is rehabilitation, you'd think that if they cancel the program, when it's one of the most effective I've ever seen....

I have to say, Mr. Leeman, that it's looking into the eyes of people like you and other inmates that gives me the passion I have for this project, because never before have I seen a program that has had such a dramatic impact upon inmates and upon their rehabilitation.

I'll leave rehabilitation. They have nothing there, and I think the anecdotal case has been made overwhelmingly.

The next point they make concerns employment skills.

To Mr. Perry and Mr. Amey, first I should say that I appreciate the courage of all witnesses here today. I know there was a tremendous amount of pressure not to testify. I know that we asked you to appear today. I am deeply appreciative of that.

Could you talk to the fact that they talk about the number of people who haven't gone directly into agriculture? I've been to the Pittsburgh facility and the Dorchester facility; in fact, I've been to pretty much every prison farm facility in the country. I saw other programs that had people building birdhouses or sewing pockets onto vests for military vehicles. No one asked how many of them went off to jobs building birdhouses or sewing pockets onto canvas material, yet in agriculture it seems to be a question only of jobs directly in agriculture. We have no statistics for how many jobs they get, period; in other words, we have no statistics for the relative success of that program over other programs.

What we do know--and this is off the CORCAN website--are the top ten occupations with vacancies in Canada. I will list those for you and you can tell me, from operating these programs and being on the front line of them, how you feel these programs relate to the top ten vacancies. The list includes truck drivers, sales, wholesale sales, retail sales, delivery and courier drivers, cooks, food and beverage servers, customer service clerks, estheticians, and janitors.

Can you talk about the skills that are learned through this program that are directly applicable? Second, can you talk about your experience in terms of the success of inmates getting employment with this program versus some of the other programs that are in the Correctional Service of Canada today?

[Ron Amey]

We have quite a diversified industry. We go from the seed right up to growing it, and then right to the very end, with the product shipped out in a bag.

One big draw that we have is in the milk plant. The inmates learn safe handling of food. We offer a course on what is called a bagging machine, an IS-6. DuPont of Canada supplies this machine, which we use to package our milk. They come down yearly to maintain this machine, but they also teach its operation. Two years ago we put 12 inmates through that training. That is one of our biggest employability procedures. We have known three inmates who actually got jobs in Toronto, Peterborough, and the Renfrew area. Those skills can be used anywhere.

We offer training in lift truck operation. We have lift trucks in our shipping and receiving, so that's something these fellows can gain.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Can you tell me anecdotally how effective you think the prison farm program is in preparing people for release, in terms of recidivism and in terms of their employability relative to other programs?

[Ron Amey]

Like I said earlier, the biggest thing I see is that a lot of these guys are not used to working. They come from higher security, they've been sitting around, and it's pretty hard to get motivated.

Once they come here to our institution, they have to get up on time and get there on time. They need to get in the groove and to get that momentum going. They may not milk cows somewhere, but there's such a diversification here that when they get out.... They're going to have to start on the ground somewhere. Most of these fellows aren't bondable. They can't get jobs in a lot of areas because they get asked where they've been for five years.

At least if they can say that they've worked on a farm and have been there for six months or whatever, that carries some weight. I've heard that before. If you're in prison and you've come out of the farm, employers have a respect for that.