Prison Farms Fraught with Problems, Delays, Cost Overruns, and Aimlessness

Calvin Neufeld | Dec 06, 2023

Researchers with Evolve Our Prison Farms continue to investigate and document the introduction of the new prison farm program in Kingston, Ontario, which remains delayed, costly, and fraught with difficulty.

Nothing has yet been achieved in prison farm implementation, which began in early 2018. After nearly six years, over $30 million has been spent – $21 million in direct spending and more than $10 million in procurement and consultancy fees – and the Correctional Service of Canada is still months away from completing a barn.

The original plan in 2018 was a 2200-goat commercial operation. The goat barn was to be built by 2019, with revenues beginning in 2020 and “full sustainability achieved” in 2021. But due to lobbying from CSC’s Farm Advisory Panel members, CSC agreed to add a small herd of cows, on the justification that cow milk can be fed to goat kids, thereby “offsetting longer term kid feeding costs.”

CSC intended to add the cows into the planned goat barn. Designs were adapted for a “dual function” barn, which delayed construction. Later, CSC learned that the Milk Act prohibits two types of livestock in one facility. CSC revised plans again, designing two separate barns and changing the construction site location from an existing concrete pad to building over the farmland and pasture fields.

CSC maintained that both barns would be built by 2020. CSC assured the Public Safety Minister that CORCAN and inmates would be doing all the construction, saving money, but in the end it was contracted out.

It wasn’t until March 2022 that CSC awarded a contract for the construction of the first barn, the smaller facility for the cows. That contract was $10.5 million. A pre-fabricated equivalent would have cost ten cents to the dollar, an estimated $1.4 million according to three industry experts who have been consulted.

Access to Information shows that CSC didn’t want pre-fab construction. They intended to include vocational training classrooms in the cow barn, which wouldn’t have been available in a pre-fab model.

At the last minute, CSC learned that under fire code regulations, a classroom would require the facility to meet National Building Code standards, rather than the less stringent Farm Building Code. This would cause more delays and expenses in switching to non-combustible building materials and incorporating sprinkler systems. CSC decided to remove the vocational training classrooms and proceed with a combustible build.

The construction contract was awarded in March 2022 and CSC projected completion within 12 months, but in December 2022, the framed barn structure collapsed in a windstorm. Rebuilding caused further delays. Completion is now anticipated in March 2024 and milking is anticipated in April 2024. The scope of the cow barn contract includes the “site services, access roadways, and liquid manure tank to serve the future goat barn.”

The goat program remains officially but dubiously “on hold.” After the “temporary pause” was announced in March 2021, CSC insisted that the goat program “will resume,” and documents show that CSC revised its spending projections into 2026. CSC also told Public Safety that cow dairy alone is not feasible “unless coupled with later revenue generation from the goats.” The market for the goat milk hasn’t opened because Health Canada has not issued a license for the Chinese infant formula factory in Kingston to begin commercial production. The goat farm and the infant formula factory remain in limbo, despite both having been scheduled to begin operations in 2019.

As the founder of Evolve Our Prison Farms, I had the opportunity in November 2023 to tour the farm at Joyceville Institution with MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston). Ten senior CSC staff escorted the tour, which consisted of viewing the barn from a distance equivalent to standing on the side of the road. We were granted access into the prison abattoir, which closed in September 2022 after Evolve produced a report on the violations there. The abattoir remains empty but CSC is reviewing options for reopening under a new private sector partnership. There is pressure from industry and from politicians who argue that businesses realize more profitability through the prison labour service.

After Evolve’s report was published, an industry representative published a letter in the Kingston Whig-Standard calling the report “biased bull” and claiming that the abattoir is “a clean, well respected, state-of-the-art facility.” That is contradicted by reams of documentation and direct observation. Photographs were taken of broken doors, cracked floors, rusted hooks, rat traps, feces, crystallized body fluids, and mold. We were told that fans had to remain on at all times because the mold is so severe that it quickly takes over if the fans turn off. We spent an hour in the abattoir and many left feeling physically ill.

Even in the best of circumstances it runs contrary to sense for CSC to train prisoners to kill, but having witnessed the state of that small, dilapidated 63-year-old facility, the prospect of reopening is untenable. No food should be produced there, and no one should be exposed to such an unhealthy, hazardous working environment, let alone as “rehabilitation” without employee status or fair pay. It’s harmful and abusive on every level, all to reap profitability from the backs, and the souls, of incarcerated men.

As for the barn that will have taken two years to build, it will begin with 30 cows. For this, CSC expects to receive research quota from Dairy Farmers of Ontario. Once the goats arrive, CSC will expand to approximately 60 cows and use the surplus milk to feed goat kids.

There are at least three problems with this plan. One, CSC still hasn’t secured the quota and there is no guarantee that they will; farmers are having their quota cut due to surplus milk in the system and it won’t look good for CSC to be given nearly a million dollars in free quota for a prisoner training farm when real farmers are losing theirs. Two, the cows offer no revenue stream to offset the cost of the program which already exceeds $30 million, compared to the original budget of $4.3 million. Three, what research will be done in a prison with 30 cows?

We asked this question during our tour. The answer was “We don’t know.” We asked what will be done with the milk. The answer was “We don’t know.” We asked what kind of vocational training will be associated with this dairy research program. The answer was “We’ll see.” We asked whether the goat operation is still forthcoming. The answer was “No one here can answer that.”

Since the government began its so-called “public consultations” and feasibility study into reopening prison farms, we have gone from a planned 2200-goat commercial farm for the Chinese market to an unplanned 30-cow research program for McGill University, at an immense cost to the public purse, and not even CSC can say how it will translate into jobs for prisoners upon release, which is – in case anyone forgot – the point.

A dairy farmer journalist was present for the tour. He told CSC officials that one person can milk 60 cows in one hour, easily. “How many inmate jobs will there be when it’s a half hour’s work for half a person?”

This is conceivably CSC’s most ambitious “vocational training” investment in its history, and its costliest failure. After this, it’s unlikely that CSC will make any significant investment into much needed vocational training programs any time soon. That money could have been better spent on something far more relevant to the 21st century job market than a barn.

The CEO of CORCAN, Kelly Hartle, who was responsible for the program’s planning and implementation, was quietly replaced in July 2023. The new CEO is Christopher Hill, with a background in private industry construction.