TORIES DENY PRISONERS' TRANSFERS BACK HOME

B.C. Lawyer Places Blame for New Policy With Public Safety Minister

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 cozier
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 policy is part of the Conservatives' hardline on crime, which 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 the corrections agency believes
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 refusal discretion 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.

The minister must also consider whether the foreign prison system is
a threat to the offenders' human rights.

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.

"We now have not only confusion in the law," says Conroy, "but a
situation where citizens in prison outside the country don't have the
right to enter Canada, even when the country in which they did the
crime is ready to send them back.

"Many of these people are convicted of bad offences. Nobody's going
to say we should ignore their offences. But citizens are still
citizens, even after they're convicted of a crime, and the government
can't just render its citizens stateless."