DAY STANDING IN CONVICTS' WAY: CRITICS

Tories Accused Of Stranding Canadians Serving Time In U.S.

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, the federal government never denied an application for the
transfer of a convict from a U.S. to Canadian prison.

In 2006, the year the federal Conservatives took power and Mr. 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 approved by the U.S. had
been turned down by Canada, while only two were approved.

In the five years before Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. Day directly for the policy.

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

Mr. 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.

However, federal documents show 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.

Transfer programs and their related international treaties, the
report said, "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.

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

Since 2006, Mr. 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
Mr. Day overrode it.

Another Canadian, Plamen Kozarov, 52, is serving a five-year,
10-month sentence in Florida for drug dealing. Mr. Kozarov's
applications for transfer have twice been refused by Mr. Day's
office, on the grounds that Mr. Kozarov abandoned Canada for a life in the U.S.

Mr. Conroy, who represents Mr. Kozarov, filed for judicial review of
the government's decision. He argued that Mr. Kozarov's Canadian
citizenship and his constitutional mobility rights to enter and exit
Canada are not extinguished simply because he is a convicted criminal.

The Federal Court of Canada only partly agreed.

"Plamen Kozarov is a Canadian citizen; not a very good one, but a
citizen nevertheless," Justice Sean Harrington wrote in a decision last month.

But Judge Harrington ultimately sided with the government, saying a
citizen isn't free to exercise his mobility rights as long as he is in jail.