If we want safer streets, we can’t ignore what happens once someone is incarcerated — and what they need before they’re released.

That’s why Correctional Service Canada’s decision to scrap the CÉGEP program at Quebec’s Cowansville prison is so wrongheaded.

The fact is that most incarcerated individuals will be released. The growing law-and-order sensibility of many Canadians — including the Province of Ontario’s “keeping criminals in jail” advertisements — ignores the reality that our correctional institutions are meant to punish and rehabilitate, and then (when appropriate) release.

So how do we ensure that when someone is released, they can effectively reintegrate into society and contribute to their communities?

As I saw when I went to Cowansville this summer to speak to some of the people taking CÉGEP courses, education can be crucial.

One of the most compelling stories I heard was from a man who was in prison for the second time. The first time, he was trained to work in construction and released. He did well for a few years — worked hard, even bought a house — but eventually committed a crime and was reincarcerated. Then, he was offered the exact same programs he had taken the first time.

It’s the height of insanity, he told me, to be told to do the same thing again, and expect different results.

Attending CÉGEP gave him the opportunity for a new approach, one he feels is working. He wasn’t the only one who sought a path outside of construction or other trades. Many of his peers agreed that higher learning was fundamentally changing the way they saw society and community, and helping them understand the way they could contribute after serving their sentences.

But ahead of this month’s closure of Cowansville’s in-prison CÉGEP, he asked me: “Are we not even worth an education?”

His peers echoed those concerns, speaking about trying to break the cycle of poverty, escaping the criminal mindset and desperately seeking tools to be prepared for the “outside.”

Later, speaking with the CÉGEP’s teachers, they spoke about the changes they saw in their students, how it built confidence, motivation and autonomy, as well as communication and critical thinking skills.

I wish I could share with you every testimony I heard. How focused these men were on their rehabilitation. How proud they were to tell their families about their success in school. How they worried about putting food on the table for their kids when they left prison. How CÉGEP instructors rehumanized them and provided them with the mentorship they’d needed their entire lives.

I know cost-saving measures will impact federal departments across the board. I know investing in rehabilitation won’t help this government win elections. I also know how incredibly expensive it is to run our carceral institutions.

And yet.

The money already being spent is wasted if there’s no opportunity for an incarcerated individual to rehabilitate, to learn new ways of being so that they don’t reoffend.

My case to the commissioner of Correctional Service Canada, to the Government of Canada, to all Canadians, is this: we can’t afford to cut the very programs that give incarcerated individuals a chance to change. The safer communities we crave lie in effective rehabilitation. Let’s fund it.

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Senator Bernadette Clement represents Ontario. She is the former mayor of Cornwall, Ontario, and a legal aid lawyer.

This article was published in The Hill Times on September 21, 2026.