Scott Reid disses plans to re-open Joyceville Abattoir in his riding

Jeff Green | Jul 17, 2024

MP Scott Reid expressed his concern over the impact of the fire that destroyed Quinn’s Abattoir two weeks ago, but he does not see re-opening the former abattoir at the Joyceville Penitentiary as a viable option.

In an email response to a question about the idea from the News, he said: “Both the Quinn’s facility and the Joyceville facility would have to be rebuilt from scratch - including entirely new buildings. Both will require approval from the provincial regulator in order to go back into operation. So it would be just as fast to reopen the Quinn’s facility, which was destroyed in the recent fire, as to open up any other facility, including the one at Joyceville.

“The priority therefore ought to be to ensure that a facility (Quinn’s), which has a willing owner, gets reopened as quickly as possible, rather than putting that same energy into trying to reopen a Corrections Canada-owned facility at Joyceville, when Corrections clearly doesn’t want it.”

Reid also said that problems with access to abattoir services for Eastern Ontario go back over 20 years, to 2003 “when the US border was shut to Ontario beef---including access to American slaughter facilities. That’s two decades ago, and no change of government---either federal or provincial---has done anything to solve the problem.”

He said that both Quinn’s and the former Wallace Abattoir at Joyceville were provincially licensed, so the immediate problem is to make sure that provincial licences are available and that costs are reasonable.

But he also blamed the current federal Liberal government for not making federal licenses available to help the beef industry in the region.

“The greater question is why the incumbent Liberal government, at the federal level, has failed, after nine years in power, to make more federal licences available. As things stand, small-scale farmers in the region have no ability to produce products for export across provincial lines. That’s a federal problem, and Mark Gerretsen should be able to explain why nothing at all has happened on this front.”

Reid is also concerned that any initiative by the federal government to step back into meat processing at Joyceville, would result in cost overruns.

He has been active, as recently as June 13, in addressing the dairy operation at Joyceville, which is scheduled to open this month, 6 years after then Minister of Corrections, Ralph Goodale, announced that the prison farm program at the Joyceville Penitentiary was to be reinstated.

On May 31st, Reid asked a question in the house that included information about the cost of the dairy program. According to Reid, in 2018 Minister Goodale stated that one of the conditions that the dairy program had to meet was to stay within a $4.3 million budget over 5 years.

According to Reid, that condition was breached almost immediately, and cost estimates increased exponentially over the next three years, until they reached $25.9 million. Reid said that most of these increases related to a planned goat dairy operation that was put on hold in 2021 and had not surfaced since then, not the dairy operation that is slated to come on stream.

The costs associated with the dairy program do not bode well for any potential return to the meat industry at Joyceville, Reid asserts.

“I note as well that Corrections Canada has shown a remarkable history of cost overruns and repeated delays with regard to the dairy barn construction project just up the road from the now-shuttered abattoir. The same thing could well occur with a federally-run facility,” he told the News last week.

The federal government does not share Scott Reid’s assessment of the dairy program at Joyceville.

In response to his questions, MP Jennifer O’Connel, who is the Parliamentary Secretary tothe Minister of Public Safety, said that the prison farm program has been a success.

“Since it was reopened in 2018, the penitentiary agricultural program at Joyceville and Collins Bay institutions have worked to help federal inmates gain employment skills to find meaningful employment in the community upon their safe, gradual release. I recently visited the institution with the minister, as well as the member for Kingston and the Islands.

“The farm operations at these two sites provide on-the-job and vocational training that is both technical, as it relates to the agricultural industry, and transferable to other industries ... These activities mirror the work that takes place on agricultural lands all across the country, which employ tens of thousands of people at any given time. In addition, the Collins Bay and Joyceville farms work to enhance a safe reintegration of offenders in our community, when it is safe to do so, while also working to reduce recidivism,” she said

She did not address Reid’s assertions about cost overruns, however.

As reported in the News on July 4th, Liberal MP Mark Gerretson (Kingston and the Islands) said that the building that formerly housed Wallace Beef at Joyceville can be brought back on stream as an abattoir, a perspective that Scott Reid does not share as Reid says a brand new facility would have to be constructed.

In a letter to the News, Calvin Neufeld of the group “Evolve Our Prison Farms” claimed that the facility is in a state of disrepair, and provided some recent photographs to support that position.

The building is indeed old, having been built in the 1950’s, but there are no reports that it has any structural deficiencies that would prevent it from being upgraded. What it would cost to do so, is a question that has not yet been addressed.