Evolve Our Prison Farms

Last month we shared an article from Ontario Farmer about an inmate at Joyceville speaking out about mismanagement on the prison farms. It appears he has been punished for telling the truth. After posting the print article on our website (the only place it appears online) there were a significant number of visits from CSC servers. Two weeks later, at the peak of CSC traffic to our page, the inmate was transferred out of Joyceville to a medium security institution away from hi...s family and away from the prison farms. No reason for the transfer has been given. This happened while he was on his way to his job in CORCAN's upholstery shop, on his birthday, one month before his parole hearing. This is not the first time this has happened to an inmate who has passed on information about the prison farms. We were silent in the past, to protect against further targeting, but we will not be silent this time. We are witnessing increasingly brazen measures of control being imposed on inmates and on the democratic process to protect the image of CSC's new multi-million-dollar flagship "rehabilitation" program, which in reality is a for-profit institutional agribusiness rife with human rights abuses and harms against animals and the environment. We continue to negotiate with CSC's Access to Information department to cease their sudden attempts to prevent our requests from being processed, including our request for all records relating to the deaths of the bull calves. Tomorrow we have a third meeting with the Director of the department who has assured us he will identify a solution. In the meantime, we are concerned about the fate of any inmates who exercise their freedom of speech. Read the article for yourself: did this inmate do anything to deserve getting sent "back behind the wall," potentially costing him his chance at freedom? We are filing Access to Information; if there is any connection between this article and his transfer we will find it, expose it, and hold this institution to account. We have assured this inmate's family that they are not in this alone. His father said he knew this was risky, and he's devastated at the consequence, but he is proud of his son because "the truth is the truth." https://evolveourprisonfarms.ca/former-dairy-farmer-watche/

On October 30, the Green Party of Canada's Critic for Agriculture and International Trade, Paul Manly, presented our petition to the House of Commons calling for prison farms to transition from for-profit industrial animal agriculture to non-profit plant-based farms (https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details). Here is the video along with an added personal message from MP Manly wishing us success. Please take a moment to thank him on his page!

A lot of people are asking for more information about the calf deaths on the prison farms. Here is a summary of what we know - and don't know. After inmates reported to us that calves were dying on the prison farms, we began investigating. The Correctional Service of Canada acquired 19 bull calves in December 2019. In January 2020, CSC's media department confirmed to us that "some calves have not survived" but did not indicate how many and stated that the "specific cause is u...Continue reading

In this 2019 article, the reopening of prison farms is criticized by the Conservative Party of Canada - Parti conservateur du Canada. The former prison farms were closed because they "didn't result in employable skills for inmates" yet employability is the reason given today for reopening the farms. The absence of logic in that alone deserves scrutiny but now that prison farms aren't feeding prisons and will instead be a for-profit agribusiness for the private sector, the pro...gram has lost all relevance. The comments from Conservative national defence critic James Bezan, MP are spot on: You’ve got to remember that the offender population is urban based and the prison population wants to move back to their homes and to their families. Even for those Indigenous members that want to go back to their northern communities, there’s no farms there, there’s no farms in cities, no farms on reserves and no farms in northern communities. So what are we giving them? Nothing. Secondly, prison farms are in competition with us as agricultural producers. As a farmer, I think it’s completely inappropriate for the government of Canada to be subsidizing food production in prisons to compete against us in the marketplace." https://www.thewhig.com//prison-farms-should-not-have-reop

Here is the latest response from the Correctional Service of Canada's media department. More cows. Calving is beginning. Dairy barn isn't built. No research quota yet. Insemination was done with "interested inmates" observing. *** "There are 41 cows, including 26 dairy heifers and 15 beef cattle (including calves) at the penitentiary farms. There are four at Joyceville Institution and 37 at Collins Bay Institution. Cattle will be housed at Collins Bay Institution for the win...ter and placed on pasture (at both institutions) next summer. New calves are introduced as part of the cycle of farming including consumption of milk. There is no other types of livestock currently at the farms. Since the last update, there have been no additional calf deaths. To date, seven cows have been bred - four in the fall of 2019 with resulting births in September 2020. The other three cows were bred one each in February, June and August 2020 with respective due dates in November 2020; March 2021 and June 2021. The breeding of the cattle was conducted through artificial insemination by an insemination technician and incorporated with the offender training program, ensuring animal care and industry standards for breeding timeframes and procedures were respected, with interested offenders observing the process for learning purposes. The quota for the cow milk at the penitentiary farm is to be covered through Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) research quota granted to the penitentiary farms, with the amount to be determined in discussion with DFO once full operational dates are confirmed. The penitentiary farm program teaches employment and employability skills to offenders and this is an important opportunity for offenders to work with smaller groups of livestock in preparation for full dairy operations prior to the full dairy barn being constructed. The scaled operations allow milking in their current location with produced milk fed to new offspring and additional calves. This is providing offenders with the opportunity to learn various elements of livestock care and farming practices."

This article was published yesterday in Ontario Farmer as agricultural journalist Ian Cumming continues to expose problematic realities of the new prison farm program. In this article, an inmate at Joyceville Institution speaks out about the "appalling" mismanagement he is witnessing on the prison farms. He does this knowing that it puts him at risk. Problems include everything from overspending to poor crop management, crop failure, and incorrect fence installation. ... If the Correctional Service of Canada can’t even get the basics right, how will they manage significantly more complex animal operations like the planned industrial goat dairy? Given that 14 calves on the farms have died this year, CSC has already proven that is is incapable of responsibly managing land or animals. It is a tragedy that what could have been a healing and restorative program has been coopted by industry interests, hollowed of any relevance to prisoners or the rehabilitative process, and mismanaged to the point of inevitable collapse. https://evolveourprisonfarms.ca/former-dairy-farmer-watche/