ADAMS: They’re gutting prison libraries for pocket change

I support Mark Carney. I believe in competent governance, in leaders who understand that running a country requires the same discipline and foresight as running an economy. But let me be blunt: eliminating every prison librarian in the federal system is not competent governance. It is a disgrace, and there is no serious defence of it.

Starting April 1, Correctional Service Canada will lay off every prison librarian in the country. 31 people. 38 institutions. All of them are gone. And what does the government save for this act of self-sabotage? $2.4 million.

That is pocket change in a federal budget. It's less than what we spend on a single military procurement memo. It's a rounding error in a department tasked with finding $132 million in savings. And yet, here we are, sacrificing something fundamental for almost nothing in return.

Let's be clear about what we're actually losing. Prison librarians are not shelf-stockers. They are the people who help an inmate with a Grade 4 reading level find a book that doesn't humiliate them. They are the people who ensure that a man fighting his own legal case can access the resources he needs, often without a lawyer. They are the people who connect incarcerated individuals to distance education, to correspondence courses, to the one pathway that study after study shows actually reduces recidivism: education.

When we cut education in prisons, we are not being "tough on crime." We are being stupid about crime. The vast majority of people in federal prisons will eventually return to our communities. We can either return them with skills, hope, and a reason to believe in a different future, or we can return them with nothing but the same desperation that landed them there to begin with. A librarian is often the difference between those two outcomes.

The government's own spokesperson tried to defend this by pointing to a “modern library model” without dedicated librarians. Let me translate that for you: they are calling an empty room with some old books and a few supervised tablets “modern.” That is not modern. That is abandonment. In any public library in this country, the first thing you'll find is a librarian. In a prison, where access to information is already tightly controlled, where digital resources are strictly limited and available only under supervision—there, apparently, we've decided no one needs to help.

This is not fiscal prudence. It is short-sighted and it is ridiculous.

This decision also flies in the face of something else: the United Nations Mandela Rules, which Canada has endorsed up to this point. Those rules explicitly require access to libraries in prisons. Cutting the people who make those libraries functional is a violation in spirit if not in letter. It is a choice to put a tiny budget line ahead of human dignity and public safety.

I support Mark Carney because I believe he represents serious leadership. But serious leaders do not double down on mistakes. They correct them. There is still time before April to reverse this decision. A government that claims to believe in evidence, in opportunity, in second chances, should not be in the business of sabotaging all three for the price of a rounding error.

This policy is indefensible and embarrassing, and it makes a mockery of any government that claims to take rehabilitation seriously. We are better than this. Or at least, we should be.

This piece was written by an individual contributor and reflects the editorial position of The Provincial Times and Left Lane Media Group. Read our Content Policy here.