My colleague Brian Lilley reports on some discord — a polite way of saying yelling and screaming — within the federal cabinet about Canada's acquiescence to the U.S. request that convicted Canadian terrorist Omar Khadr be allowed to serve most of his 8-year sentence in Canada. He'll serve at least a year in the U.S., likely at his current facility at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Station. (That's me, by the way, left, standing outside Camp 4, the facility Khadr was being held in when I toured the camp earlier this year.)
Khadr will have to apply to Canada's public safety minister, Vic Toews, for a transfer to Canada.
I wondered about the Conservative record on these applications.
The received wisdom in Ottawa's political and journalism circles is that since the Conservatives formed the government in early 2006, they planned to differentiate themselves from their predecessors — and demonstrate just how tough on crime they could be — by declining applications from Canadians sentenced to jail times in other countries who wanted to do their time in a Canadian facility. “If you do the crime there, you'll do the time there,” was the prevailing attitude.
But I've just crunched the stats, found in the most recent annual report international prison transfers, and it's not so clear that the Conservatives have, in fact, declined that many.
In other words: They appear to be as tough/soft on crime, in this respect at least, as many other governments.
Certainly, for the first three years of the Conservative administration the overall number of transferred from prisoners are down compared to the last three years of the previous Liberal administration. Meanwhile the new applications for transfer has remained fairly steady over the last five years (more on this below). That said: The Tory record on approved transfers for the last three years seems to be roughly comparable to the Liberal administrations of Jean Chretien in the 1990s. Here's the bar chart showing the total number of Canadians transferred from a jail in another country to a Canadian jail and the total of number of Canadians transferred from a U.S. jail to a Canadian jail:
It's difficult to say precisely, from the statistics Corrections Canada compiles, exactly how many applications for transfer were approved by the public safety minister in any of Stephen Harper's cabinets. (The fiscal years used for reporting purposes here end on March 31 and the Harper government was sworn in on January 26, 2006.) But let's say that the Harper government's tenure really began in fiscal 2007 (the year from April 1, 2006 to March 31, 2007). That means that, since taking office, Conservative public safety ministers (Vic Toews currently has that job but it has been Stockwell Day's and Peter Van Loan's) have approved the transfer of 359 Canadians jailed in the U.S. and abroad to do their time in Canada.
Corrections Canada reports that it can take between 6-9 months from the date an inmate applies for transfer to the decision by the minister to approve the transfer. Canada and the U.S. have four set “transfers” each year so, presumably, after the transfer is approved, the inmate waits until the next batch of inmates are transferred.
Also of some note: The efficiency with which applications for transfer are disposed of seems to have improved under the Conservatives.
Corrections Canada reports that, since 2004-05, there were between 262 and 274 applications each year from a Canadian jailed abroad to come home. Under the last two years of Liberal Paul Martin's government, nearly 350 applications were still outstanding at the end of the fiscal year and had to be carried over to the following year. The Conservatives, in their first year, have done much better clearing the paperwork with just 306 cases carried over to the next year in 2008-2009 and a low of 242 cases carried over in their first year of office.
