Liberals unlikely to back away from jail in Kelowna

By AlISTAIR WATERS Jun 06 2007 http://www.kelownacapnews.com/

The great Kelowna jail debate is about to begin again. The last time the city was slated to become home to a provincial prison, the plan caused such an uproar some residents who lived near the proposed north Kelowna site actually sold their homes and moved away. But that was after a myriad of protests, anger, frustration and the unsuccessful attempts to paint the city as the second coming of Devil’s Island if the provincial jail, and its two-years-less-a day sentences, came to town. With Solictor General John Les publicly musing about the Liberals desire to revive the NDP plan to build a jail on part of the former Hiram Walker Distillery site on the Kelowna-Lake Country border that his government killed in 2001, the battle is about to be waged anew. Back in the late 1990s when the former NDP government announced its plan to build a jail and remand centre here, the need was clear. The Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre was filled to capacity and the RCMP cells at the Doyle Avenue RCMP detachment were taking the place of proper cells for prisoners incarcerated for short-term stays.

Now, nearly 10 years later, the only thing that has changed appears to be the provincial Liberals’ attitude towards the project. Prison overcrowding in B.C. is still a problem but the Liberals have put enough space between themselves and the former NDP government that it can dust off its predecessor’s plan and make like it’s their idea for dealing with the prison population problem. The need was there then, and here now, but that’s not the issue. This is politics after all. Back in the 1990s, opponents wailed that the majority of the criminals to be housed here would be imported from elsewhere despite statistics showing the number of local prisoners who needed to be housed closer to home and, in the case of those prisoners held here on remand, closer to the Kelowna court house. Like the housing of any “undesirables,” no one wants them in their back yard. With Les’s latest comments about the government now revisiting the Kelowna jail plan, the same arguments are likely to be resurrected and the same fight will ensue.

And, as was the case in the 1990s, the residents will lose this one. If the NDP had won the 2001 election, the jail would now be up and running. Given the track record of the current provincial government over the last six years, it is unlikely this is a trial balloon. The Liberals seldom raise issues they don’t intend to follow through on. The most spectacular exception to that was the ill-fated plan to privatize operation of the Coquihalla Highway. So we can expect provincial corrections officials to be doing time in Kelowna, selling the idea of a prison here. Maybe not right away. But sooner rather than later.