Kemptville, Ontario. Residents Concerned About Proposed Provincial Prison For Their City – Kingston | The Canadian News

The former Kemptville Agricultural School site is now slated to be the province’s new 235-bed correctional complex in eastern Ontario.

“This is a project that has a lot of inquiries,” says MPP Steve Clark. “Yes, there was a site selection process by SOLGEN (the Attorney General’s office) and they ultimately chose a provincial-owned site in North Grenville.”

That’s a big part of the problem for Colleen Lynas, a member of the Coalition Against Proposed Prison (CAPP).

She says there was no public consultation on the site selection and that residents had to gather information through a freedom of information request.

“Out of a potential 145 relevant pages, only 10 were provided,” says Lynas.

But she says those pages were still enough to raise concerns about the prison for CAPP, and Kirk Albert, a member of another group called the Jail Opposition Group, agrees.

He says the community of four to five thousand residents does not have the services to maintain the prison.

“We are not an urban area,” says Albert. “We have a small local hospital, we don’t have Elizabeth Fry, we don’t have the John Howard Society, we don’t have public transportation.”

All of which creates problems for families visiting those incarcerated in the potential prison.

The groups say they have also encountered resistance from their own MPP, who filed a complaint with Elections Ontario that their signs and mailings were political advertising from unregistered third parties.

“The issues were referred to Elections Ontario,” says MPP Clark. “They have provided, contacted all the groups, helped them with compliance, and we have not received any further instructions from Elections Ontario.”

“Elections Ontario turned against him in that regard and considered that our activities were not political advertising of third parties,” says Lynas.

Albert says they have put together a list of four demands or requests for the provincial government that he says will help address residents’ concerns.

They include a moratorium on the construction of any prison in Kemptville, inquiries about the best use of the property, and the release of site selection documents held by the Attorney General’s Office.

“We would be interested in having them restart the selection process due to the shortcomings we have identified to date,” adds Albert.

Another round of public consultations on design and functionality is scheduled to take place in November.