Prison farm staff protest at Prince Albert

Correctional Service of Canada employees at the Riverbend Institution in Prince Albert, Sask., held a demonstration early Thursday, worried the prison farm may close.

The prison farm, a minimum security facility adjacent to the medium security Saskatchewan Penitentiary, has a fully functioning dairy operation and meatpacking plant and grows a variety of field crops. As of 2007, 108 federal inmates were assigned to the farm, according to the Correctional Service of Canada's website.

The federal government has announced  it plans to replace the country's six prison farms with other programs, Barry Stoler, a union representative for corrections workers, said it's not clear what those programs may be.

"The government of Canada essentially has said that farming doesn't matter, that these aren't marketable skills that offenders are learning that they can take into the community," he said. "Yet the government of Canada, having said that, hasn't provided any strong rationale as to what they're going to replace it with."

Employees distributed flyers at Thursday's demonstration. The union says it plans to hold a larger rally to draw public attention to the issue next month.

An estimated 300 inmates work on Canada's half-dozen prison farms, which have been around since the 1800s.