ONTARIO
The preferred site is on 178 acres of heritage land formerly owned by a college, about one kilometre from the community's quaint downtown.
Author of the article: Aedan Helmer
Publishing date: Oct 16, 2021 •
Local residents opposed to the plan to build the Greater Ottawa Correctional Complex in Kemptville gathered at the proposed location in early October.
PHOTO BY TONY CALDWELL /Postmedia
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It’s a nonsensical place for a jail, opponents say.
The grassroots movement to stop the construction of a provincial institution slated to be built on a pristine parcel of Kemptville farmland has been bolstered in recent months by a chorus of academics, advocates and arm’s-length agencies. They all question the logic of placing a 235-bed correctional institution in a community with no access to public transit and a lack of support services for prisoners.
“It should be communities — the local municipalities and the residents who live there — who make the critical decisions about infrastructure that’s going to profoundly affect the future of that community. And that simply didn’t happen here,” said Colleen Lynas, who leads the local Coalition Against the Proposed Prison (CAPP).
Documents obtained by opposition groups last year through access to information laws show the Ministry of the Solicitor General considered 38 properties before narrowing its shortlist down to five potential sites for the new Eastern Ontario Correctional Complex (EOCC).
The government’s preferred site for the jail, on 72 hectares (178 acres) of heritage land formerly owned by Kemptville College, about one kilometre from the community’s quaint downtown, was deemed the best choice despite scoring the lowest of those five properties when it came to proximity to Ottawa’s city centre.
Situated 60 kilometres away from the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, and a 54-minute drive from the city core, Kemptville is more than twice the distance of the other four properties the province considered.
The shortlist included a 138-acre rural property on Rideau Road that was already conditionally sold, 40 acres on Uplands Drive about 18 km from OCDC, two properties on Leathem Drive near the RCMP headquarters that could potentially be combined to a 98-acre plot, and a 40-acre property on Walkley Road that was eliminated due to its proximity to the railway, and the potential for adjacent lands “impeding operations,” among other factors.
The Kemptville site scored a red ‘X’ when it came to transit access, according to a ministry report outlining each of the five potential sites, which was first circulated internally in 2019 and was released in a heavily-redacted version last fall.
Lynas said Kemptville should have been disqualified as an option due to the distance and
There is likewise a lack of community support services for inmates and their families in Kemptville, she said, and there remain concerns the new jail could strain local infrastructure and overburden the local hospital and other town resources.
Hundreds of “No Prison” lawn signs have popped up in town and around the rural community (with a population of 4,000 as of 2016 and a taxpayer base of about 7,400 in North Grenville).
Opposition groups staged a demonstration outside MPP Steve Clark’s office in Brockville on Friday.
“First of all we do not need another prison — that’s the bottom line,” said Bryonie Baxter, former executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society who resides in North Grenville and sits as a member of the Kemptville Hospital board. Baxter noted she was speaking as a resident and not on behalf of either organization in her opposition to the jail.
“We have a broken prison system that needs to be fixed — we don’t need another jail. And if we did, we would definitely need a (host) community that has access to supports for the individuals who are incarcerated, and for the families who visit them, and for the people and agencies who help them with rehabilitation and readjustment into the community.”
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It’s a nonsensical place for a jail, opponents say.
The grassroots movement to stop the construction of a provincial institution slated to be built on a pristine parcel of Kemptville farmland has been bolstered in recent months by a chorus of academics, advocates and arm’s-length agencies. They all question the logic of placing a 235-bed correctional institution in a community with no access to public transit and a lack of support services for prisoners.
“It should be communities — the local municipalities and the residents who live there — who make the critical decisions about infrastructure that’s going to profoundly affect the future of that community. And that simply didn’t happen here,” said Colleen Lynas, who leads the local Coalition Against the Proposed Prison (CAPP).
Documents obtained by opposition groups last year through access to information laws show the Ministry of the Solicitor General considered 38 properties before narrowing its shortlist down to five potential sites for the new Eastern Ontario Correctional Complex (EOCC).
The government’s preferred site for the jail, on 72 hectares (178 acres) of heritage land formerly owned by Kemptville College, about one kilometre from the community’s quaint downtown, was deemed the best choice despite scoring the lowest of those five properties when it came to proximity to Ottawa’s city centre.
Situated 60 kilometres away from the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, and a 54-minute drive from the city core, Kemptville is more than twice the distance of the other four properties the province considered.
The shortlist included a 138-acre rural property on Rideau Road that was already conditionally sold, 40 acres on Uplands Drive about 18 km from OCDC, two properties on Leathem Drive near the RCMP headquarters that could potentially be combined to a 98-acre plot, and a 40-acre property on Walkley Road that was eliminated due to its proximity to the railway, and the potential for adjacent lands “impeding operations,” among other factors.
The Kemptville site scored a red ‘X’ when it came to transit access, according to a ministry report outlining each of the five potential sites, which was first circulated internally in 2019 and was released in a heavily-redacted version last fall.
Lynas said Kemptville should have been disqualified as an option due to the distance and
There is likewise a lack of community support services for inmates and their families in Kemptville, she said, and there remain concerns the new jail could strain local infrastructure and overburden the local hospital and other town resources.
Hundreds of “No Prison” lawn signs have popped up in town and around the rural community (with a population of 4,000 as of 2016 and a taxpayer base of about 7,400 in North Grenville).
Opposition groups staged a demonstration outside MPP Steve Clark’s office in Brockville on Friday.
“First of all we do not need another prison — that’s the bottom line,” said Bryonie Baxter, former executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society who resides in North Grenville and sits as a member of the Kemptville Hospital board. Baxter noted she was speaking as a resident and not on behalf of either organization in her opposition to the jail.
“We have a broken prison system that needs to be fixed — we don’t need another jail. And if we did, we would definitely need a (host) community that has access to supports for the individuals who are incarcerated, and for the families who visit them, and for the people and agencies who help them with rehabilitation and readjustment into the community.”
A map from a government document showing the location of the new proposed Kemptville jail from Ottawa. jpg
The lack of access to public transit in Kemptville is one of the biggest issues that opponents of the plan fear will fall to the taxpayers of North Grenville. But it presents other obstacles — to those outside and inside the jail — that Baxter said the government must consider.
“The reality is, the state does have an obligation to get the person who has been incarcerated back to their home community, and there is no way to do that here. People will simply have the doors thrown open and be left to fend for themselves, and often that can involve returning to some sort of desperate measure to cope with that situation.
“If prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation, then we need the supports, otherwise it’s just a revolving door of incarceration over and over again,” Baxter said.
“We also have an obligation for family reunification. And we know from multiple studies that the success of that reintegration into the community depends on their social supports and their family supports.”
Families will often make “superhuman effort” to stay connected with loved ones in jail, Baxter said, “And we cannot assume that everybody has a car, or access to a car.”
That would leave families resorting to “virtual visits” through videoconference, Baxter said.
“All of us who have been through this pandemic can now appreciate, when you’re trying to connect with a loved one, how inappropriate and difficult that can be.”
While larger urban centres such as Ottawa have the Salvation Army, John Howard Society, Elizabeth Fry Society and other advocacy groups, “Out here in Kemptville, we do not have those,” Baxter said.
“And we do not have Indigenous supports out here, when we know Indigenous people are disproportionately represented in jails with between 30 and 40 per cent of the prison population.
“We have a small hospital and we do not have the infrastructure or the experience in place to deal with the medical needs of the population we will now be serving,” she said. “We’re a small farming community and we do not have those supports in place.”
Critics are taking a “wait-and-see” approach to the province’s recent commitments to finance infrastructure upgrades and pay all costs of policing associated with the jail, said University of Ottawa professor Justin Piché, who co-founded the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project along with his Carleton University counterpart Aaron Doyle.
Piché and Doyle questioned the government’s rationale for building new prison spaces after collecting data through the pandemic showing Ontario’s prisoner population decreased from about 8,300 pre-pandemic to about 5,800 inmates by June. That was largely due to the efforts of defence lawyers, Crown attorneys and judges, Piché said, opting for alternatives to incarceration during the bail phase.
The lack of access to public transit in Kemptville is one of the biggest issues that opponents of the plan fear will fall to the taxpayers of North Grenville. But it presents other obstacles — to those outside and inside the jail — that Baxter said the government must consider.
“The reality is, the state does have an obligation to get the person who has been incarcerated back to their home community, and there is no way to do that here. People will simply have the doors thrown open and be left to fend for themselves, and often that can involve returning to some sort of desperate measure to cope with that situation.
“If prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation, then we need the supports, otherwise it’s just a revolving door of incarceration over and over again,” Baxter said.
“We also have an obligation for family reunification. And we know from multiple studies that the success of that reintegration into the community depends on their social supports and their family supports.”
Families will often make “superhuman effort” to stay connected with loved ones in jail, Baxter said, “And we cannot assume that everybody has a car, or access to a car.”
That would leave families resorting to “virtual visits” through videoconference, Baxter said.
“All of us who have been through this pandemic can now appreciate, when you’re trying to connect with a loved one, how inappropriate and difficult that can be.”
While larger urban centres such as Ottawa have the Salvation Army, John Howard Society, Elizabeth Fry Society and other advocacy groups, “Out here in Kemptville, we do not have those,” Baxter said.
“And we do not have Indigenous supports out here, when we know Indigenous people are disproportionately represented in jails with between 30 and 40 per cent of the prison population.
“We have a small hospital and we do not have the infrastructure or the experience in place to deal with the medical needs of the population we will now be serving,” she said. “We’re a small farming community and we do not have those supports in place.”
Critics are taking a “wait-and-see” approach to the province’s recent commitments to finance infrastructure upgrades and pay all costs of policing associated with the jail, said University of Ottawa professor Justin Piché, who co-founded the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project along with his Carleton University counterpart Aaron Doyle.
Piché and Doyle questioned the government’s rationale for building new prison spaces after collecting data through the pandemic showing Ontario’s prisoner population decreased from about 8,300 pre-pandemic to about 5,800 inmates by June. That was largely due to the efforts of defence lawyers, Crown attorneys and judges, Piché said, opting for alternatives to incarceration during the bail phase.
A government document ranking the options for a replacement to the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre. jpg
“For years we’ve been told that those kinds of reductions were not possible,” Piché said. “And if they invest more money into community re-entry supports that population could be reduced even further. So this idea that we need to go and blow hundreds of millions of dollars to build new jails and new jail spaces because of a crowding issue — that doesn’t pass. We do have alternatives that are more effective, less costly and more just.”
If a new provincial jail is to be built, making the case for Kemptville is a tough sell, Piché said.
“Kemptville has a small hospital, there’s no volunteer base in Kemptville, no community agencies that work with criminalized people, there’s no public transportation to get visitors to the prison… there’s no transportation to get released prisoners back to their home communities, no re-entry supports.
“This really doesn’t make sense in a lot of different ways.”
The Ministry of the Solicitor General said in a lengthy statement their “modernization strategy” for the region, which includes the new jail in Kemptville, “will play an important role for the safety and wellbeing of those in custody and our staff.”
The EOCC will “help address capacity pressures throughout the eastern region, create additional space for programming and expand our supports for inmates with mental health issues,” said Stephen Warner, press secretary and spokesperson for Solicitor General Sylvia Jones. “It also will provide frontline correctional services staff with a facility, work environment and supports they need to do their jobs safely and effectively and will ensure appropriate supervision and care for those in provincial custody.”
Warner said the government considered numerous sites in eastern Ontario and reviewed government-owned land, but none of the candidates “met the project requirements, such as municipal servicing, size, site configuration and conserving natural heritage. The ministry also considered privately-owned sites, however, they were not viable because of market conditions or did not offer adequate proximity and highway access for services such as police, fire and emergency medical services.”
Deputy Solicitor General Deborah Richardson confirmed to North Grenville council in a letter in June the ministry’s commitment “to fully pay for the necessary infrastructure, including servicing the land for water and sewer, and any related road upgrades that would be required.”
Steve Clark, MPP for Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, said he is working with the Solicitor General and with the municipality of North Grenville “to ensure the proposed Kemptville correctional facility delivers the best outcomes for the community and support the local economy.”
Clark said in an email the site’s proximity to Highway 416 and other “key attributes” make the former Kemptville college lands “a practical location” for the jail.
Clark said the province has committed — at his request — to allow North Grenville to retain any surplus lands and existing buildings on the site that the facility will not need.
Clark said that will allow the municipality to use the land surrounding the jail “for locally-driven opportunities like agriculture, equine, and horticulture initiatives that are what make Kemptville such a thriving, prosperous community.”
North Grenville Mayor Nancy Peckford issued a statement in June saying the province has been “responsive and engaged” and Clark said the government will continue with public consultations.
“I’ve heard a lot of support for this project,” Clark said, “especially from small businesses who see the benefit of having new customers come to the area.”
But critics believe the government’s promise of economic spinoff is “overstated” and “overblown.”
According to Piché, the Solicitor General has stated that a number of staff destined for the Kemptville jail would be transferred from existing provincial facilities like OCDC.
And in an earlier presentation, Piché said, the government showed what it called a “heat map” of current correctional staff, which indicated a significant number already living within Kemptville’s radius.
“So this idea that this jail is going to generate this kind of economic boom activity is definitely overblown,” said Piché. “And the contracts to design, build and maintain these facilities typically go to large conglomerates — not the local companies — so the real economic benefits are going to these big construction companies with head offices elsewhere.”
The government’s talking points have shifted lately, according to opposition groups, from the idea of local job creation to the prospect of other economic stimulus.
“We believe very strongly there will be a reluctance to invest, particularly in downtown Kemptville, where the municipality has really had a focus on revitalizing,” Lynas said. “The municipality has also been putting a priority on tourism, and we believe the prison would actually be a deterrent to people wanting to invest in downtown.
Protestors at Clark’s constituency office in Brockville demanded the government release more information on the site selection process, said Kirk Albert, who leads another local opposition group.
“We want the process suspended until there is actual regional public consultation,” Albert said. “And failing that, we want this selection process started over, this time identifying that Kemptville has no access to public transit, it exceeds their 40-kilometre boundary criteria… it currently has no municipal servicing and it has adjacent rural residential and light industrial activities of concern.”
One of those concerns, as critics have noted, is that a child care centre, an elementary school and a high school, among other services, are located on a neighbouring property at the former Kemptville College campus.
“My objection is that, first, we don’t need a new prison,” Baxter said. “And this is entirely the wrong location.”
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