Revitalizing Canada’s Prison Farms National Campaign
Posted: June 4, 2009
Categories: News from Sustain Ontario
Dear Food System Leaders,
The National Farmers Union and partners working on the Revitalizing Canada’s Prison Farms campaign ask that your organization endorse the attached Position Statement.
The timeline is tight because Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has agreed to meet a coalition of farm organizations on this issue on June 8. We are increasing pressure on the Minister leading up the meeting by reaching out to farm, labour organizations, food security groups, and social justice and prisoner advocates across Canada and asking them to sign this Position Statement to bring to Ottawa.
Furthermore, we will be hosting Media Conferences, in Kingston outside Frontenac Institution next week (Wednesday, June 3) and on Parliament Hill on June 8 to announce the national campaign Position Statement and report on the Minister’s response to our call for the revitalization of Canada’s prison farms.
We understand that different organizations will have varying timelines for responding to this call for support. You are welcome to provide input and sign the Position Statement whenever possible, but we do hope that some will be able to sign quickly so that we have a national show of support going into the meeting on June 8.
We will be following up with an email call to the general public early next week, including a link to an online petition. Please feel free to forward this to ORGANIZATIONS within your networks.
Please see the attached Backgrounder and link to http://nfuontario.ca/316/prison-farm-campaign for information, media links, and a sample letter for Parliamentarians. We welcome all forms of support – we have some limited staff time and resources and would appreciate any contributions your organization might make.
This issue unites farm, food security, social justice, labour groups and citizens of all stripes across Canada – it is becoming a lightening rod for confronting the federal government’s short-sighted policies on farming, food, justice and rehabilitation.
We look forward to working together on it and welcome all kinds of questions and concerns.
Sincerely,
Peter Dowling, National Farmers Union, Local 316, dowling@kos.net
For more on this campaign, link to the NFU website below.
Revitalizing Canada’s Prison Farms National Campaign | nfuontario.ca.