Advocate group joins calls for corrections minister’s resignation over handling of COVID-19

A group of advocates are joining calls for the province’s minister of corrections to resign amid the COVID-19 pandemic, after inmates at correctional centres in Prince Albert and Saskatoon started refusing meals.

The strike started Monday. Prisoners are calling for Christine Tell’s resignation for failing to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in the province’s jails.

There have been outbreaks at correctional centres in Regina and Saskatoon.

Now, a Saskatoon-based group the Indigenous Joint Action Coalition has started a petition calling for Tell’s removal. It took part in a day of solidarity with those incarcerated Wednesday.

“Minister Christine Tell has let down a lot of people,” said group spokesperson Erica Violet Lee. In August 2020, the advocacy group called for prisons to be abolished.

“These systems are inherently flawed in the way that they lock people away from society, in the way people in prison are considered less worthy than those that aren’t.”

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As of Wednesday evening, the petition has over 400 signatures.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 22 inmates were refusing food trays at Pine Grove Correctional Centre in Prince Albert, and 51 at the Saskatoon Provincial Correctional Centre as of Wednesday.

1:51 Saskatchewan no longer holding back coronavirus vaccine doses

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