A Case Study:     

Frontenac Institution, Kingston, Ontario

“It’s been a working penitentiary farm for many years and is highly valued for the produce it supplies to local federal institutions and food banks in the surrounding area and for the skills passed on to the inmates whose labour and sweat keeps the production going…. Obviously, there’s more than one good product coming from this farm operation and the most important one is the positive changes it makes in inmates’ lives.”

Correctional Service Canada officials must squirm when they read that glowing tribute to the Frontenac Institution’s farm program. Not the least because it’s from one of their own publications. And not a generation ago, but in 2006. Frontenac’s farm opened in 1962 on 455 hectares of Class 2 farmland that is the best in the region, if not the country.  Its farm program annually donates produce to food banks across Ontario.

The Institution’s dairy herd is acknowledged to be one of the highest-quality and best-managed anywhere. Its 130 cattle produce 4,000 litres of milk a day. That ranks the herd among the top 20 percent in productivity in the province. One result is that Frontenac’s highly-successful dairy operation is able to provide milk to all federal prisons at a price to the government of 28-cents a carton.

The staff and inmates involved with Frontenac’s farm program are also model environmentalists, having adopted conservation-oriented pasture-management system. Along with Ducks Unlimited and other partners, the Frontenac Project has restored five precious wetlands and their adjacent uplands on the pasture area of the institution. Fencing was erected around the habitat to restrict cattle access and five water-control structures were installed to restore and maintain the wetlands' historical water levels.

On virtually any measure, Frontenac Institution’s farm program is a success. Its wide-ranging benefits reduced prison food expenses, positive links to the surrounding community, heightened inmate self-esteem, a strong work ethic and basic working skills applicable to many jobs.

Yet, all this means nothing to the Harper government. Frontenac, along with the other productive prison farms, is falling victim to a toxic combination of bad public policy and political expediency.