TORIES ACCUSED OF NEGLECTING CONVICTS

Canadians in U.S. Prisons Can't Serve Sentence in Canada

OTTAWA -- The Conservative government has become the first in a decade
to deny Canadian citizens imprisoned in the United States the chance
to serve out their sentences in Canada.

Critics say this new trend reflects the personal political agenda of
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

Documents from the Correctional Service of Canada, the agency that
deals with international prisoner transfers, show that from 1997 to
2005, Ottawa never once denied an application to transfer of a convict
from a U.S. to a Canadian prison.

In 2006, the year the federal Conservatives took power and Day was
appointed the minister in charge of correctional services, five
transfer requests were denied, even though U.S. authorities had
approved the transfers.

This year, as of June, 12 transfer requests already approved by the
U.S. had been turned down by Canada, while only two were approved.

In the five years before Day took charge of the agency, the government
approved an average of 38 transfers from U.S. prisons each year.

In a column published last November in the Penticton Western News, a
newspaper in his British Columbia riding, Day wrote of his disgust
with prison transfers for convicted drug dealers.

"B.C. dope dealers busted in the U.S. are demanding to be transferred
back to cosier Canadian jails and reduced prison times," he wrote.
"Memo to drug dealer: I'm no dope ... Enjoy the U.S."

John Conroy, a B.C. defence lawyer who represents several Canadian
convicts whose transfers have been turned down by the government,
blames Day directly for the policy.

"Is Mr. Day acting in the public interest or because of a peculiar
attitude he has toward various offences?" Conroy asks.

Day declined a request for an interview, but his spokeswoman said the
new government policy is part of the Conservatives' hard line on
crime, something the party campaigned on in the last election.

"(The annual transfer numbers) show that the previous Liberal
government put criminals' rights first," Melisa Leclerc said. "We do
not. Canada's new government will always put the security of Canadians
and their communities first."

However, federal documents show that the corrections agency believes
that transfer programs actually contribute to public security. A 2005
internal report on the agency's international transfer of offenders
program said convicts who are transferred home fall under the watch of
Canadian authorities, who can monitor their behaviour in prison and
assess their risk to society.

"The alternative is that the offender is deported to Canada (at the
completion of his or her U.S. sentence) without correctional
supervision/jurisdiction and without the benefit of programming and a
gradual structured release into the community," the report says.

Transfer programs and their related international treaties, the report
says, "have proven to be successful and continue to be a permanent
feature of international relations between our country and many others."

Canada's International Transfer of Offenders Act says the minister has
discretion to refuse transfers if the applicants are a threat to the
"security of Canada," if they have abandoned Canada as their place of
permanent residence, or if they lack family or social ties in this
country.

Since 2006, Day has denied transfers to at least two Canadians on
security grounds, including Arend Getkate, a 24-year-old Ontario man
serving a 30-year sentence in Georgia for child molestation. Both U.S.
and Canadian corrections officials had approved his request, but Day
overrode it.