The federal government has revealed that 1,944 inmates in Canadian federal prisons are not citizens, including 244 convicted of murder, according to documents tabled in Parliament

The figures were disclosed in response to a written question from Conservative MP Blaine Calkins (Ponoka — Didsbury), who asked Correctional Service Canada (CSC) to detail the number of foreign nationals in custody, their crimes, and the costs associated with their incarceration.

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CSC’s answer confirms the numbers but fails to include a full accounting of costs or deportation outcomes, leaving taxpayers with little transparency on how much they are paying to jail convicted foreign nationals or what happens to them after their sentences end.

The response to Order Paper Question Q-301 lists nearly 2,000 non-citizen offenders currently serving time in Canada’s federal prisons. Of those, 244 have been convicted of murder, representing more than one in 10 foreign national inmates.

The figure underscores the seriousness of crimes committed by non-citizen offenders being held in Canada, many of whom are serving long or life sentences for violent or sexual offences.

Calkins’ inquiry also sought details on the annual and per-inmate cost of housing non-citizen offenders. The government did not provide that information. However, estimates from the Parliamentary Budget Officer peg the average annual cost of incarcerating a federal inmate at about $151,000, suggesting taxpayers may be spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to keep foreign nationals behind bars.

Canada’s International Transfer of Offenders Act technically allows Ottawa to send convicted foreign nationals back to their home countries to serve their sentences. But such transfers require approval from both governments. Yet, in reality, they rarely happen.

That means even the worst offenders, including convicted murderers, often serve their entire sentences in Canada before the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) begins the deportation process, one that can drag on for years.

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada found in a 2020 audit that CBSA had a massive backlog of deportation files and “removed few of the foreign nationals who were subject to enforceable removal orders.” At the time, there were roughly 50,000 enforceable removal orders still in the system, many of which had been outstanding for years and in thousands of cases, the CBSA had simply lost track of the individuals.

A subsequent CBSA internal briefing confirmed that as of late 2020, out of approximately 217,000 individuals in its removals inventory, only 4,175 were considered “working” cases — meaning they were actively being processed for removal.

The rest were stalled by legal appeals, bureaucratic delays, or poor coordination between Correctional Service Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and CBSA.

In practice, that means even dangerous foreign offenders are often released into Canadian communities on supervision conditions while their deportation paperwork lingers — sometimes for years.