Corrections Canada will build maximum-security cellblocks inside medium-security prisons in Ontario and Manitoba, a move that some observers believe is a government scheme to create super-prisons while avoiding public scrutiny and controversy. “They tell you they’re not going to build a super regional complex but it’s already here, it’s going to happen,” said Jason Godin, Ontario president of the union that represents correctional officers. “They wanted to appease the critics and say, ‘We’re not building a super jail.’ ”
Ex-convict Pat Kincaid says a prison treatment program that helped him make sense of decades of distorted thinking was the key to going straight. “It taught me how to make decisions the proper way and go over the consequences of my actions,” said Kincaid, who was paroled from a minimum-security prison in Kingston nearly two years ago and has since lived crime free. Thousands of federal offenders are not taking intensive programs like the one Kincaid credits for his turnaround, according to figures (doc after jump) compiled by Corrections Canada and recently released.
As expected, Ottawa unveiled another significant round of prison building initiatives today, part of the Conservative government’s scramble to get cells built swiftly enough to accommodate a surging prison population. The number of convicts going to penitentiaries is spiralling upward because of Tory get-tough tactics. The announcements today total $158 million in spending on 624 new cells at eight prisons in four provinces. 
The Conservative government barely blinked in response to a 100-page parliamentary report that condemns the decision to close prison farms and recommends they be resurrected. “We could not disagree more with the misguided priorities of the Ignatieff Liberals and their coalition partners,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews states, in an e-mailed response to my request for comment.
Corrections Canada is scrambling to build more prison cells to house thousands more inmates who’ll be imprisoned because of the Tory tough-on-crime agenda, but they’re mindful of appeasing those convicts with frozen treats. It’s all there on the government’s contracting website, MERX, where Corrections has hastily issued an appeal for bidders to plan and supervise the construction of spaces for 192 more inmates at Bath Institution, a medium-security prison near Kingston, Ontario. On the same website, you can find a Corrections call for proposals to deliver ice cream to several federal pens in Quebec, including the prison where serial child killer Clifford Olson is housed. The ice cream deal is worth a cool $43,000.
There’s a surreal feeling to watching a government trot out an announcement about spending nearly $100 million to build more prison cells as a good news story ($95M in Kingston and $60M in Quebec on Wednesday). This was my experience Wednesday inside Collins Bay Institution, a medium-security federal penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario, where prison minister Vic Toews (OK, really he’s the Public Safety minister) made another of those election-style announcements borne of the Conservative government’s self-induced prison space crisis (hear the full audio of his presser after the jump). Prison’s aren’t nice places. Some are cesspools of violence, despair and humanity under siege. We should not be celebrating the need to build more of them.
The Tories hauled away the prison cows, but prison minister Vic Toews will do an impression of a cash cow Wednesday in Kingston, Ontario. Toews will be in the eastern Ontario city – Canada’s penitentiary capital with 7 pens in the area – to make yet another election-style announcement about Tory plans to pour millions into the construction of new prison cells. Cancrime has learned that Toews will announce plans for another 96-cell unit at medium-security Collins Bay Institution, another 50 cells at minimum-security Frontenac Institution, which is adjacent to Collins Bay, and more cells at medium-security Bath Institution, just west of Kingston. Frontenac is one of six federal pens across the country where prison farms were shut down by the Tories, despite howls of protest. Toews’ Kingston visit was announced in a news release issued late Tuesday afternoon, perhaps part of a strategy to ensure that protesters don’t have time to organize and show up at or near the institution to try to spoil Toews’ prison payout party. 
Things could get ugly inside Canada’s 58 federal penitentiaries – but not because of convict uprisings. Watch out for rallies, demonstrations and other protest actions by prison guards. The 
