Oct 23, 2026
Sometime between late Wednesday night and around 3 am on Oct. 15, a drone slipped past the fencing of one of Canada’s most secure prison units in Quebec. It delivered a McDonald’s order to an inmate’s cell window: nuggets, fries, dipping sauce, along with some alcohol to enjoy.
Guards on their morning rounds found the remnants of the order, along with a drunk inmate.
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It’s a funny story, but it’s also a bit of a problem, and Ottawa has been trying, and paying, to solve it for years. The latest response is decidedly low-tech: nets.
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What happened at the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines prison?
The drone delivery landed at the special handling unit (SHU) of the Regional Reception Centre in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Que. That unit houses some of Canada’s most violent, high-risk offenders. The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), the federal agency that runs the country’s penitentiaries, is investigating.
According to The Canadian Press, the drone slipped in through a gap between the fencing and a window that had been broken from the inside. Frédérick Lebeau, national president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO-SACC-CSN), which represents federal prison guards, says exterior cameras and counter-drone technology both missed the drop. He also says the facility is part of a federal pilot program to jam drone signals.
In this case, it was McNuggets and some booze, but next time, it could be something far less funny. “It could be firearm, it can be a ceramic knife,” Lebeau warned.
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What did the $6M anti-drone plan cover?
Drones aren’t a new problem for federal prisons. In 2019, CSC committed to spending $6 million over three years on radar-based drone detection at six institutions. Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines was not one of them, so this breach isn’t proof that those systems failed.
A final report with recommendations for a national approach was due back in March 2023, but it doesn’t appear that its findings and any national rollout have ever been publicly confirmed.
In March 2025, Ottawa granted CSC a legal exemption to test radiofrequency jammers, but detection and prevention aren’t the same thing. The Office of the Correctional Investigator, the federal prison watchdog, reported 90 drone incidents in the first six months of 2024 and found that 98% were detected. Spotting the drone doesn’t always mean stopping its cargo.
Why are taxpayers now paying for nets?
A CSC spokesperson says an incident like this underscores the need for ongoing investment in technology and infrastructure. In the meantime, CSC is installing physical barriers, such as nets, at the facility. It has not disclosed what they cost.
Those measures arrive during a period of belt-tightening. CSC’s 2026 to 2027 departmental plan calls for about $4 billion in total spending, alongside $75.6 million in reductions under the federal government’s Comprehensive Expenditure Review.
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The union puts the longer-term target higher. It says CSC must find roughly $132.2 million in operational savings by 2028 to 2029, including cuts to detector dog handlers, mobile patrol officers and posts that intercept ‘throw-over’ contraband (illegal items tossed over perimeter fences.
Frank Caputo, the Conservative public safety critic, told The Canadian Press that cutbacks have hit areas such as perimeter security and dog handlers. Simon Lafortune, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, called the incident unacceptable and said the minister expects CSC to identify what went wrong.
What does a prison security gap cost Canadians?
Incarceration already carries a hefty price tag. Public Safety Canada, the federal department responsible for corrections policy, reports that keeping one person in a federal institution cost an average of $156,744 a year in 2023-24, which breaks down to about $428 a day. That’s up from $126,253 in 2019-20, according to the department’s latest Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview.
A security breach adds costs on top of that. In this case, those costs include a federal investigation, new nets and, according to Lebeau, temporary extra patrols that ended a few days later. None of these costs has been made public.
That doesn’t mean the spending on security is wasted funds. The watchdog’s 98% detection rate shows some tools work. The union has a different concern: that cuts to frontline staff could weaken the response to what those tools detect.
As Lebeau puts it, the gap needs fixing soon, because “one day we will have a major incident.”
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Leslie Kennedy served as an editor at Thomson Reuters and for Star Media Group, followed by a number of years as a writer and editor and content manager in marketing communications, before returning to her editorial roots. She is a graduate of Humber College’s post-graduate journalism program and has been a professional writer and editor ever since.
