Police & Prisons

Noise Demos Outside Montreal-Area Prisons Following Death of Prisoner and a Hunger Strike

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May 112020

10 May, Montreal – At 2pm today, a caravan of over 30 vehicles visited the Federal Training Centre prison in Laval and the Bordeaux jail in Montreal, demanding the immediate release of all prisoners in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vehicles, decorated with slogans such as, ‘Prison Should Not Be A Death Sentence,’ & ‘Free All Prisoners,’ honked their horns, made noise, and held banners in solidarity with those inside.

“We’re here today to show people inside these prisons that they’re not forgotten and that we’re out here working for their release,” said Ellie Santon, a participant in the demonstration. “What’s happening in these prisons is a crisis created by the government. If they wanted to, they could solve all this tomorrow. For some reason they seem intent on letting people die.”

On May 5th, Correctional Services Canada (CSC) announced that a prisoner held inside Laval’s Federal Training Centre had died from COVID-19, the second death inside a federal prison due to the pandemic. 138 prisoners have now tested positive for COVID-19 in the Federal Training Centre, making it the largest outbreak in a Quebec federal prison.

“The government has spent months refusing to act and now the virus has exploded inside prisons and people are dying,” said Virginia Boucher of the Prison Support Committee. “There is no justifiable reason for this. People should be released from prison, now. People in halfway houses should be allowed to live at their own homes full time. Everyone released should have access to safe housing and healthcare.”

On May 5th, prisoners in Quebec’s Bordeaux jail also began a hunger strike that has since spread to multiple sectors of the institution. There are over 60 cases of COVID-19 associated with the Bordeaux jail, where 75 percent of prisoners are being held pre-trial, making it the 2nd largest outbreak in a provincial prison.

“I’m worried about my partner, who is in one of the infected sectors,” said Jean-Louis Nguyen, a participant in the demonstration. “He finally got tested on Friday, but we don’t know the results, and his parole hearing just got postponed by two weeks. Quebec needs to provide public information about what’s happening in its prisons and expedite bail and parole hearings to get as many people as possible out of prison and back with their communities.”

“Quebec’s jails now have the highest infection rate of any province, but they’ve refused to act,” said Ted Rutland of the Anti-Carceral Group. “Provinces like Ontario and Nova Scotia have released thousands of prisoners by speeding up bail hearings and releasing people close to the end of their sentence, but Quebec refuses to follow their example.”

Social distancing is impossible inside prisons and prisoners are at high risk of contracting COVID-19. Health care in prison is abysmal. Guards have employed pepper spray and force against prisoners across the country who have taken action to protest their situation. There are now over 500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to prisons across Canada.

#liberezlestou.te.s
#grevedefaimbordeaux
#bordeauxhungerstrike
#FreeThemAll
#FreeThemAllCaravan
#FreeThemAll4PublicHealth

Fuck the Police – Tomorrow and Forever [Video]

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May 022020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

May Day is an occasion to remind ourselves why we fight for a more just world, a world not submitted to the domination of a capitalist elite, a world where we can dream. However, for reasons that are clear, we won’t be able to assemble in the streets this year, but this doesn’t mean the resistance is dead. Despite its ravages, the coronavirus crisis has provided many with the opportunity to break with normality and reconsider the anxiety-inducing, senseless and dehumanizing rhythms of our lives. More than ever, these troubled times are the occasion to reflect on the possibilities of creating a new world that only we can shape through mutual aid and solidarity.

However, times of crisis are also fertile ground for the development of authoritarian solutions. So it’s important to remind ourselves that the proper management of this crisis passes through our capacity for collective action and that we must prepare to respond to police forces that, for their part, will operate with more violence and arrogance than ever. Whether here, in Villeneuve-la-Garenne in France, or elsewhere in the world, confinement measures have given police services a wide array of new powers, allowing them to act with increasing brutality with impunity. Faced with this reality, it was important for us to tell these parasites that, despite the crisis, they will never be welcome in our communities.

April 19 #FreeThemAllCaravan Reportback

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Apr 232020

From Solidarity Across Borders

On April 19th, solidarity caravans drove to prisons and migrant detention centres across the country as part of a day of action against imprisonment. The caravans made noise and held signs in solidarity with those locked up. This mobilization brought together former detainees, prison abolitionists, and migrant justice activists in a first united call, across so-called Canada, to demand the immediate release of all prisoners and status for all migrants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’ve included links to footage and report-backs from the different caravans below. You can also listen to a special live radio broadcast with dispatches from the caravans here. For more footage or reports from the caravans, just search #FreeThemAllCaravan on twitter.

Kingston, ON

Surrey, BC [Twitter link]

Toronto, ON [Twitter link]

Laval, QC [Facebook link]

Background:

Social distancing is impossible inside prisons and detention centres and those inside remain at high risk of contracting COVID-19. There are now over 260 confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to Canadian carceral institutions around the country, where people are held on both criminal and migrant holds. There have also been cases confirmed in both Laval and Toronto migrant detention centres. On April 16th, the Correctional Service of Canada confirmed that an inmate at BC’s Mission Institution prison had died due to COVID-19, with over 50 other inmates testing positive for the virus.

From March 24th to April 1st, detainees at the Laval migrant prison held an eight-day hunger strike to demand their immediate liberation and decent, safe housing upon release. While many hunger-strikers have since been released, 11 people remain in detention.

Despite the mounting calls from dozens of organizations for Canada to release migrant detainees and prisoners, the Canadian government still refuses to free all prisoners. The CBSA for its part has been slowly releasing migrant detainees on a case-by-case basis through individual detention review hearings.

Released migrants often remain under threat of deportation and face precarity, with no housing, long processing times for work permits, and limited or delayed access to support programs.

The Confinement of Consciences

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Apr 132020

From the Emma Goldman Collective

In the West we laughed at the images of consumers at big chain stores desperately struggling for irrational amounts of toilet paper. When asked by the media, the consumers said they didn’t know why they needed so many rolls, or that they had simply followed the crowd.

The feeling of catastrophe is difficult to deny. Government experts are asking us to put our trust in the same health care heroes they have overworked, exhausted, and discouraged through repeated budget cuts and devaluing of their jobs in preparation for collective bargaining negotiations.

The dissonance is intense… so is the anger. Management is “rationing” protective equipment for employees; to this day, there are still no masks and few gloves for caregivers in many seniors’ homes despite the mounting deaths.

Entertainment and scapegoats. While the “guardian angels” are working themselves to death for lower real wages than in previous decades (prosperity is the order of the day for Quebec bosses!), the people are being asked to look the other way – to watch videos of baby animals. It’s going to be fine… and above all, wait patiently for the government to restore the normal conditions of your exploitation. It’s not a beautiful dream. The state is the coldest of monsters that, to paraphrase Nietzsche, tells us with lies crawling out of its mouth: ‘I, the state, am your caretaker’.

The story we all tell of these events is not just personal… it is shaped in large part by the state. In the face of the crisis, the state is bringing out the same old stories. Xenophobia being what it is, many people, including Trump, believe the virus is of Chinese nationality, or at least that fault lies with the Chinese people; a deception that suits the populists, who felt their national pride offended by the rise of China. Racism is never really confined to the “realm of ideas”. It has manifested itself in many ways through expressions and actions that are hateful to people of Chinese origin or associated with them for sometimes stupid reasons. A Chinese-born Chicoutimi woman, for example, has denounced several incidents in our region [https://www.iheartradio.ca/energie/energie-saguenay/nouvelles/coronavirus-une-chicoutimienne-nee-en-chine-victime-de-racisme-1.10852664].

True to form, the state also sent its armed wing to “contain the crisis”. The calls for law and order have generated a veritable snitching culture in which everyone is called upon to spy on the actions of others and rely on the police. Your neighbour is potentially the enemy. The situation in Quebec is currently so pitiful that even the cops say they are overwhelmed by the flood of sordid calls and are asking Quebecers to “chill out” with the snitching! Some politicians believe that the state is too soft and are calling for the army to intervene. You’d think that this virus is some kind of anarchist…

Finally, the borders. It was through the power of politicians, not the medical profession, that the popular narrative of events came to include the belief that the virus would be spread by people from outside the country, especially immigrants, and that closing national borders would be one way to stop its spread. Following populist pressure, the Canadian government even took steps to prevent refugee claimants from entering Canada. Do we think we can live in an airtight glass bubble? The fantasy of right-wing populists is utterly stupid. Billions of people in the global south, many of whom have no clean drinking water at home or have to fend for themselves on a daily basis to meet their families’ basic needs, are being asked to live in forced confinement. How many will die of hunger or thirst rather than coronavirus, while countries like Canada would rather invest billions to support the destructive fossil fuel industry? How can we not think that this lack of solidarity with the global South in the context of the pandemic will not encourage an even more intense spread of the virus and make it even more difficult to fight in Canada in the future? Fuck!

Please, let’s protect ourselves from the virus, but let’s also fight the confinement of consciences through class solidarity and international solidarity. Let’s target the real enemies.

Anarchist of Pekuakami

International Call for a Dangerous May

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Apr 132020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

In May, Let’s Play : A Call to Conflict

Here we can easily realize that rubbing alcohol gel can be used equally well to disinfect our hands as to start a fire.

In other terms: that we don’t need guidelines from the state to take care of our friends, and, once we have taken care of the question of survival, we have nothing better to do than go out looking for ways to strike a damaging blow. More than ever we are in need of revenge and true friendships.

Now that we are stuck in this futuristic system, our only solution is to declare war on normality, if we don’t want to die in asepticized boredom.

We face a dual movement. On one side it seems that power has never been so strong, winning its compliant citizens’ hearts and minds. On the other hand, it seems that it never had to manage such a complex situation (at least since we were born).

Therefore, we can maybe conclude two things:

First of all, it is not about waiting for any masses that would wake up to confront it.

Secondly, the moment seems favorable for attack.

Favorable here doesn’t mean the ONLY good moment. It’s always the good moment to fight.

No, favorable here means that our opponent is totally busy with other things, and we cannot know what exactly will be the consequences of our actions (in such an unprecedented situation), neither if we will have another opportunity soon.

It looks like an interesting wager for all the enemies of power. To seize the opportunity and see what can happen.

Now that the control forces canvassing the territory with vehicles, drones or just by foot have never been so present and overworked, what could happen if they were threatened inside their fortresses, with death threats written in paint? Regularly attacked with some stones/cocktails/fireworks/firecrackers in the middle of the night as they sleep? If they were ambushed during their patrols?

Now that the cages are chock full and that people slowly die behind bars, what could happen if the guards’ cars would unfortunately meet with a screwdriver/hammer/firestarter? If the people who lock up and stand guard, already under constant pressure, were hit and beaten while going back home?

Now that almost everyone works/studies/shares/relaxes/learns/rebels/has sex/… in front of a screen, what could happen if some easily accessible fiber optic cables were sabotaged?

Now that almost everyone “communicates” using cellphones, orders/commands/plans/organizes production (and sometimes activism) or “takes care” using applications or incessant phone calls, what could happen if some relay antennas, sometimes located in very out-of-the-way places, were put out of service?

Now that almost everyone lives confined in domotic nests hyperconnected to the matrix like a substitute of life, what could happen if a high-voltage pylon were to fall down?

We absolutely do not know what could happen. And that’s precisely why we imperatively should try it.

Disseminate and translate this text if you liked it. Attack and conspire if you want to participate.
Claim and develop your ideas if you want to dialogue with other rebels.

This short text is an invitation for a dangerous May.

Note n°1 : if you are too impatient to wait for the month of May and if you liked this invitation, you can just attack in April and say it in a potential communiqué.

Note n°2 : if you are too impatient to wait, you can attack in April AND May !

#FreeThemAll: Email campaign to release Federal prisoners

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Apr 122020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

SUPPORT ALL PRISONERS NOW! NO ONE SHOULD SPEND A PANDEMIC IN PRISON!

The situation facing prisoners during the COVID19 pandemic is terrifying. It is widely understood that prisoners are in a dangerous position during this pandemic due to the close living quarters, lack of health care, and lack of access to sanitary supplies. Correctional Services Canada has done little to address the risks inside, aside from cancelling all visits, temporary work releases, and trailer visits. Predictably, COVID19 has already started to spread in the federal prison system with prisoners and staff testing positive in more and more institutions.

Calls for the release of prisoners have come from many different people and groups around the world and many mainstream news publications in Canada have published articles detailing the reasoning behind releasing prisoners now. We would like to add our thoughts to this conversation.

At the federal level, there are many tools that Correctional Services Canada and the Parole Board of Canada can use to release prisoners. These include: the extension of unaccompanied temporary absences, the use of Section 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), expedited hearings for suspension and revocation cases, and using section 121)1.b) of the CCRA, which states that ‘parole may be granted at any time to an offender […] whose physical or mental health is likely to suffer serious damage if the offender continues to be held in confinement.’

The use of existing provisions to release prisoners to protect their health is not unprecedented. Indeed, as Jane Philpott and Kim Pate explain in an article in Policy Options, “sections 29, 81, 84, 116, and 121 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act were specifically created to move people out of prisons to address health issues, for other personal development, for compassionate reasons or for work. Sections 81 and 84 provide for the transfer of Indigenous prisoners to Indigenous communities but could be applied to others as well” (emphasis added).

In this context, we demand immediate action to protect the health and safety of federal prisoners. Specifically, we demand the following:

1. IMMEDIATELY RELEASE ALL VULNERABLE PRISONERS: Anyone who is over 50 years old, immunocompromised, pregnant, sick, or who has a preexisting condition that makes them at high risk of dying from COVID-19.

2. RELEASE ALL OTHER PRISONERS, STARTING WITH THOSE IN MINIMUM SECURITY PRISONS AND HALFWAY HOUSES: According to Correctional Service Canada’s own logic, those in minimum security prisons and halfway houses are considered the lowest risk to public safety, so start there. Let those with homes go home, provide safe physical distancing in halfway houses where people choose to remain, widen access to Canada Emergency Response Benefit funding to include people getting out of prison, and open up vacant housing for those with no homes.

3. TAKE IMMEDIATE SANITARY AND PREVENTATIVE ACTION TO PROTECT THOSE WHO REMAIN IMPRISONED: Provide soap, hand sanitizer with proper alcohol content as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), water, bleach, cleaning supplies, and self assessment tools (like thermometers) to every prisoner at no cost, and transfer prisoners in maximum and medium security into the empty minimums to allow for proper physical distancing.

4. NO MORE PUNISHMENT. PRIORITIZE CONTINUED ACCESS TO COMMUNITY AND FAMILY FOR THOSE WHO REMAIN IMPRISONED: Provide free phone calls and video visitation, allow phone calls and video visitation for volunteers and non-family supports, access to cell phones to limit use of communal phones and so that access to the outside continues if medical isolation happens, and stop using lockdowns to inhibit access to community and family supports. The World Health Organizing, stressing the importance of communication with the outside, has said that “decisions to limit or restrict visits need to consider the particular impact on the mental well-being of prisoners … The psychological impact of these measures needs to be considered and mitigated as much as possible and basic emotional and practical support for affected people in prison should be available.”

5. MEDICAL SERVICES FOR ALL: Ensure medical services are fully funded, accessible 24/7, and extra health care practitioners are hired. Provide training, PPE, and regular testing. Waive the need for guards to accompany prisoners to the hospital. No sending prisoners to special military hospitals.

Who should you contact?

At this point you could call or email:
1. Anne Kelly – Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada: anne.kelly@csc-scc.gc.ca, 613-995-5781
2. Angela Connidis – Deputy Commissioner for Women, Correctional Service Canada: angela.connidis@csc-scc.gc.ca, 613-991-2952
3. Jennifer Oades – Parole Board of Canada, Chairperson: jennifer.oades@pbc-clcc.gc.ca, 613-954-1154
4. Bill Blair – Minister of Public Safety: Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca
5. Kim Pate – Senator pushing for decarceration: Kim.Pate@sen.parl.gc.ca
6. Marilou McPhedran – Senator pushing for decarceration: Marilou.McPhedran@sen.parl.gc.ca
7. Jack Harris – NDP Public Safety Critic: jack.harris@parl.gc.ca, 709-772-7171

You can use the graphics at this link (demandprisonschange.wordpress.com) on social media! Tweet at @csc_scc_en AND @csc_scc_fr with the hashtags #FreeThemAll AND #FreeThemNow.

in solidarity,
the Termite Collective

CALL TO ACTION: Hunger Strikers Released as CBSA Resists Demands to Release Remaining Detainees

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Apr 032020

From Solidarity Across Borders

#HungerStrikeLaval #FreeThemAll #StatusForAll

Migrants detained in the CBSA’s Laval Immigration Holding Centre suspended their hunger strike yesterday as two more of the hunger strikers, including their spokesperson Abdoul*, were released yesterday, and another today. Around 20 detainees remain in the main part of the centre, along with more held in the Rivière-des-Prairies jail in Montreal.

— SEE WHAT YOU CAN DO BELOW

— GALLERY OF SUPPORT

— MESSAGE FROM ABDOUL, JUST RELEASED

The migrant detainees’ courageous 8-day hunger strike provoked an outpouring of support from coast to coast, demanding the immediate release of all detainees with adequate & safe housing ensured. The CBSA is instead slowly releasing migrant detainees one by one, through individual detention review hearings.

The strikers’ demands are even more urgent now than when the strike began. Migrant detainees and prisoners are at an increasingly high risk of contracting COVID-19. At least one employee at the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre has already tested positive for the virus. Detainees, whether in Laval or in other cities, in prisons or in detention centres, must be released immediately with adequate, safe housing ensured!

This crisis has made the necessity of removing the manufactured barriers and exclusions created by hierarchies of immigration status clearer than ever. For the good of all: Status for all!

Follow the continuing campaign here and on twitter.

Read daily updates from the men in the Laval Immigration Holding Centre here.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

SOCIAL MEDIA
Use the hashtag set #FreeThemAll #StatusForAll along with #HungerStrikeLaval to show your support for the struggle on social media! We encourage you to tag Bill Blair, Marco Mendicino, Justin Trudeau, and other government officials who refuse to free the detainees.

SOLIDARITY DRAWINGS
We are calling for artists of all ages to share drawings in solidarity with the struggle to free the detainees. We encourage you to post your art to social media with the hashtag set #FreeThemAll #StatusForAll as well as #HungerStrikeLaval.

CALL IN
Continue to pressure the government for the immediate release of all detainees!
Send support statements to detenuslaval@gmail.com

Direct calls and emails to:

Federal Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair
Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca
Telephone: 613-995-0284
Fax: 613-996-6309

Email script:

I am appalled that the government continues to flout its own public health recommendations when it comes to detention facilities, even as guards and prisoners test positive across the country. It is incredible that men detained in the Laval Immigration Holding Centre had to go on a hunger strike to pressure Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to take action.

Migrant detainees and prisoners remain at an extremely high risk of contracting COVID-19. At least one employee at the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre has already contracted the virus. Minister Blair has not responded to the widespread call for immediate, collective release. The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) is instead slowly releasing migrant detainees through hearings. This is a wholly inadequate response to this urgent crisis.

All detainees, whether in Laval or in other cities, in prisons or in detention centres, must be released immediately with adequate, safe housing ensured.

Communiqué from Prisoners in the Laval Immigration Holding Centre: Hunger Strike Until We Are Free

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Mar 242020

From Solidarity Across Borders

Laval, 24 March 2020

Following the petition we wrote [on 19 March, sent to government officials and asking to be released in the context of the pandemic*], which had little impact on our situation of detention, we have decided to move to the second phase of our plan. This is to go on an indefinite hunger strike, starting today. This will be done in the most peaceful way and we are not breaking any detention centre rules. Thank you for your support and all help is welcome.

*Petition to free the detainees, sent to Ministers of Immigration and Public Safety on 19 March 2020:

We are currently detained at the Laval Immigration Holding Centre. Given the urgent situation of the propagation of the coronavirus, we believe that we are at high risk of contamination. Here in the detention centre we are in a confined space, every day we see the arrival of people, of immigrants, from everywhere, who have had no medical appointment nor any test to determine whether they are potential carriers of the virus. There is also the presence of security staff who are in contact with the external world every day and also have not had any testing. For these reasons we are writing this petition, to ask to be released.

#HungerStrikeLaval #FreeThemAll

3/25/2020 – New call for solidarity

Post-demo Communique – March 15th, 2020

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Mar 182020

From the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP)

Approximately 150 people marched today in downtown Montreal as part of the 24th Day Against Police Brutality. In these troubled times, it’s easy to retire within oneself and forget about the rest of the world. We may be in quarantine, but the cops are not, anywhere in the world.

Not wanting to reduce the severity of the current health crisis, it must not be used as an excuse to forget and stifle the dissent that is taking place around the world. Whether in Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, France, Hong Kong, or even here in the unceded territories of the Wet’suwet’en, Mohawk or Mi’kmaq.

And this current situation is part of a broader ecological crisis. Obviously, crisis also means repression. Because the States are able to cut all social services but will never cut the police, on the contrary: it is becoming more militarized.

This can be seen everywhere in the world where resistance is multiplying. The more the people refuse the status quo, the more the state pours out fortunes to maintain it. And this resistance will multiply here too. Resistance can only grow when the most vulnerable continue to lose their jobs and the landlords’ associations continue to evict them. Resistance can only grow when indigenous and non-indigenous people continue to block the multinationals and the big shareholders continue to spread their hate propaganda. Resistance can only grow here, in South America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

The state can finance this wall of cops between us and the richest, but it will find us in its path. And we will be there: for Pierre Coriolan, for Bony Jean-Pierre, for Fredy Villanueva, for Sandra Bland, for Tamir Rice … and for all the vulnerable people who are always the racist system’s first victims.

This cannot go on for much longer. The lie that sustains this colonial system has never been so close to breaking. And its death bring us collective liberation, a space to build a new environment, where we can all live in peace, respect and dignity.

Together, there is nothing we cannot achieve.

Together, united, we will build this new world.

International solidarity.

Finally, we have been informed that 3 people arrested have been released with safety highway code’s tickets.
We are making a call out for witnesses; If you have been arrested, brutalized or if you witnessed an arrest or a case of police brutality, please contact the COBP cobp@riseup.net

We also remind you to be careful with what you publish (photos and videos) on social media.

The COBP

Spring of Action launched with Disruption of Lemay Offices

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Mar 082020

From Solidarity Across Borders

On Friday, community members entered the offices of Lemay, architects of the new prison for migrants in Laval. Chanting slogans, distributing flyers, and carrying silhouettes of friends and neighbours who had been detained and deported, they disrupted business as usual.

The new prison, located at 400 Montée Saint-François in Laval, will replace the current one. Like all prisons in Canada, it will be filled with poor, brown, Black, and Indigenous people colonized by European powers. This prison is an essential part of Canada’s border strategy, keeping poor people from the global south out and wealth in the hands of a few.

Tisseur, a construction firm located in Val-David, has worked through the winter with the result that the new migrant prison is beginning to take shape despite widespread, concerted community opposition (to see photo from last month, click here).

This is a call to stop any further construction of this prison. Take action! Work with others, thoughtfully, strategically, in love and determination. This prison must not be built!

Contact (for coordination, flyers, media points, petition, information, toolkit, backgrounders, etc.): solidaritesansfrontieres [at] gmail [dot] com

For more about immigration detention in Canada and the new migrant prison, click here.

For more about the companies involved in constructing the new Laval migrant prison, click her e.

To sign our statement against the prison, click here.

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