McDonald's chicken nuggets, booze smuggled by drone into Canada's most secure prison: union

The union representing correctional officers is raising the alarm after it says an inmate had a drone drop off a McDonald's meal and alcohol to what's supposed to be Canada's most secure prison earlier this week.

The union said the drone delivered McDonald's chicken nuggets and fries complete with sauce and some alcohol straight to the inmate's cell window in the special handling unit at the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Que., facility at around 3 a.m. on Thursday.

"The inmate found that really funny in the morning when the guards did their rounds," said Mike Bolduc, regional president of the UCCO-SACC-CSN union, in an interview.

But he's not laughing. The union has been growing increasingly concerned about contraband, from cellphones to knives, getting into the maximum security facility via drone.

"We're at the breaking point where an inmate went and delivered himself McDonald's.… What's the next thing? Is that a loaded gun? You know, it's scaring us, it's really scaring us," he said.

The inmate's unit — known as the SHU — houses extremely violent and high-risk offenders. Some of Canada's most notorious killers, like Clifford Olson and Allan Legere, spent part of their incarceration at the Quebec prison along with convicted terrorists.

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"It's supposed to be the most secure jail in Canada and he's eating McDonald's," said Bolduc.

Drones are an escalating problem for Canada's penitentiary system and those who run it.

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) deploys unmanned aerial vehicle detection technology at its institutions, but Bolduc said it's concerning that the radar didn't appear to detect this drone.

He thinks inmates probably get multiple drones sent out to find blind spots.

"So what happened here is that they beat the technology," said Bolduc. "The drones are incredible [with] the damage that they're causing."

The union been pushing for a far more low-tech solution: physical netting

"It's not harder than that," Bolduc said. "This now has to be a cry for help saying that we need that netting as fast as possible."