Q & A | Why this woman wants to send senators to jail

Kim Pate has spent most of her adult life advocating for Canadian prisoners. 

And now, as a newly appointed senator, she's not wasting any time drawing attention to the hundreds of women locked away in Canada's prisons.

In her first speech in the Red Chamber, she issued a challenge for all senators to go behind bars with her.

In this conversation with Now or Never host Trevor Dineen, Senator Pate tells us why she believes everyone — from senators to her own children — should visit a jail. 

What's it like walking into a prison for the first time?

You have mental images, B-grade movie images,  that get created of what prisons are like. And what you really see are the people who have the least, the fewest opportunities. But it struck me, the fact that I could walk out, [that] added a huge responsibility to the privilege I had of being able to walk in as well.

What sound or sight in that first visit has stuck with you all these years?

Always the rolling of the gates and the closing of doors. My kids laugh because lots of people, when they go to bed, they close their door at night. I never have. I probably shouldn't announce this on radio, but I rarely lock my door.

What reaction did you get when you told people you took your young kids into prison?

It's interesting. In 1994 when the prison [Kingston's Prison for Women] was getting ready to close, a fight broke out between a couple of women that escalated. I was the first person into the prison after those incidents. Because I was a single mom, I took my son with me. He was three at the time. A woman was unlocked to take care of him — even though the entire prison was in lockdown — so I could go up to segregation and meet with all the women and see what was happening.

The guards threatened to call the media and announce that in the midst of a lockdown after a so-called riot, that an outside child was in, and that a killer was unlocked to take care of him.

Technically that was all true. But I just said, 'Go ahead, call the media.' Some people would think I'm a crackpot. But most people know that no mother would take her child into an environment that's unsafe.

You've taken your own children behind bars, and now you're trying to get senators in there, too. Why?

Any senator who wants to go to prison, I will be happy to take on a prison visit. We have an obligation to go and meet with prisoners, so they have first-hand information from people who are in our prisons right now. You don't get a sense of how prisons operate just by looking at them.

This interview has been edited and condensed.