OTTAWA — While the numbers of Canadian citizens held in federal prisons continue a downward trend, populations of non-Canadians behind bars continues to rise.

But information on where these inmates are from is largely missing from the data provided by Public Safety Canada – with the national origin of nearly 35% of Canada’s non-citizen prison population listed as “unknown.”

In a response to an order paper question filed on Sept.15 by Conservative MP Blaine Calkins, Canada’s federal prisons held 14,837 inmates in FY 2024/25 – down from 14,712 inmates in FY 2015-16, but up from the ten-year low of 12,328 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When broken down by citizenship, 14,023 of the 14,712 federal inmates in 2015/16 were Canadian citizens – a number that decreased to just 13,

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