Federal prisons will not be used to house inmates displaced by the G7 summit in Alberta in June. The province says that it does not plan to manage its penitentiary populations in the same way that the last time the world leaders gathered in Kananaskis, Alta.
In 2002, the Calgary Correctional Center was eliminated in the weeks prior to the G8 summit, so that it could serve as a retention center for detained protesters. The inmates were sent to the Federal Prison of Media Security in Drumheller, which had recently been rebuilt after a riot.
Dave Bronconnier, then mayor of Calgary, warned protesters about repeating the violent confrontations in Italy the previous year, warning that they could pass the summit in the Spyhill prison.
Street protests in Calgary ended up being largely peaceful.
This time, Canada’s correctional service says it has not been contacted by any external agency to make arrangements to house the people arrested during the next summit.
“There are no ongoing discussions or plans for Canada’s correctional service to accommodate the current inmates of the Correctional Center of Calgary or people arrested during the G7 summit at the CSC facilities,” the federal agency said in a statement to CBC News.
Alberta correctional facilities will continue to operate businesses as usual, and there are no plans to create additional capacity or empty facilities of Calgary.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security and Emergency Services of Alberta said the province “would implement the appropriate operational responses if the services are interrupted due to public demonstrations.”
He added that the Ministry, including Alberta Sheriffs, is working closely with the federal and municipal law agencies to support security and security planning.
“The management of the population of inmates is part of the daily and strategic planning for the correctional services of Alberta, and the operations in all the provincial correctional facilities will continue uninterrupted during the duration of the G7,” wrote the communications director that Sheena Campbell in a statement sent by email.
“For security reasons, we cannot provide more details about operations and planning.”
Virtual bail courts, same arrest processing installation
The province said that the people arrested during the protests of the G7 in Calgary would be taken to the arrest processing facilities of the Calgary Police Service in Spyhill, as well as the standard procedure.
The apparitions in the Court would be carried out virtually through the Provincial Court of Alberta, either by video or by telephone, and will be added in the additional bail rooms “as necessary” to address the arrests of G7.
Doug King, a professor of criminal justice at Mount Royal University in Calgary, said that the last time the G8 was held in Kananaskis, was due to terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001.
“I think much of what happened in 2002 was in response to that. And it may have been justified, or it may have been overprotection what was taking place. We don’t see that now,” he said.
Today, there may be less concern about large -scale manifestations, particularly because the summit takes place in a remote place, King said.
“However, they are better to be cautious because the G20 remembers in Toronto … there were great protests,” King said, adding that the Calgary Remote Center is “absolutely full” at this time.
He added that the police are now using more sophisticated security and intelligence collection techniques compared to 2002.
“There must have been a calculation … that they simply did not need to empty prison facilities to keep the protesters. They must have made that calculation. It would not have been an oversight,” King said.
The leaders of the United States, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada, as well as the European Union, will attend this year’s summit, which is scheduled from June 15 to 17.
The last time Kananaskis organized the summit, its price was estimated at $ 300 million. When Canada last organized the summit in 2018, in La Malbaie, which., Presupposed $ 600 million.
