The long game · Why Pillar exists
Canada has empty towns, a housing shortage, a trades shortage, and prisons that cost more every year while sending people back out no better prepared. Hope is our plan to connect those four problems. We'd partner with corrections to turn an empty town into a place where people serving time learn a trade building factory-made homes, live a normal life, and leave with a job.
Planned non-profit · concept · in research · funded by Pillar’s ventures
01 · The problem, in numbers
These are Canada’s own numbers, from Public Safety Canada and Correctional Service Canada.
$156,744
a year to hold one person in federal prison. Supervising someone in the community costs $47,522.
2023-24 · Public Safety Canada
75%
of people starting their first federal sentence said they had no high school diploma. In the general population it’s about 20%.
Admissions 2008-13 · CSC
3.3×
Keeping someone locked up costs 3.3 times as much as supervising them in the community. Every person who makes it outside frees up that money.
2023-24 · Public Safety Canada
33%
of people in federal custody are Indigenous. That’s many times their share of the country.
2023-24 · Public Safety Canada
Correctional Service Canada measures reoffending two ways. These are the latest figures CSC has published, reported for 2020-21.2 Together they show where the system breaks.
The danger zone is release itself. About four in ten people stumble while still on parole or statutory release, which is exactly the stretch Hope is built to cover. The five-year number also only counts people who come back to federal prison. Someone who picks up a shorter provincial sentence after release isn’t in it, so the real churn is higher than it looks.
“You can’t torture a blind man into understanding how to paint. And right now, that’s exactly what these jail systems try to do.”Nick Kernaz · 8.5 years inside · founder
Prison takes away everything a normal life is made of: cooking, paying bills, showing up to work, looking after a home. Then it releases people and expects them to do all of it on day one. Most of them have never lived that life, and nobody shows them how.
01b · The idea underneath Hope
Punishment answers the misdeed. Development answers the person. A society heals from the bottom up: you start with the most vulnerable people it has and build from there. The evidence backs it.
80%
of men in federal prison went through at least one adverse childhood experience, like abuse, neglect or a parent in jail. For women it’s 86%, and Indigenous people had the highest rates.
2023 · CSC Research R-445
44%
drop in youth sentenced to custody in one year, after Canada’s 2003 youth law told courts to use custody as a last resort.
2003-04 · Statistics Canada
7-10%
a year: the return to society from one early-childhood program, counted in less crime and better lives decades later.
Perry Preschool · Heckman et al. 2010
Born in Ontario
Circles of Support
Volunteers form a circle around a high-risk person leaving prison. In a small Canadian study (44 people with circles, 44 without), sexual reoffending was 83% lower for people with a circle.23
Hollow Water First Nation
Community healing circles
A Manitoba First Nation handled abuse through its own healing process. It cost about $2.4 million over ten years, against an estimated $6-15 million for the government system.24
Everywhere
Restorative justice
When the person who caused harm meets the person they harmed and makes it right, victims are more satisfied, and repeat offending drops modestly.25
Hope is the far end of this. The best fix is upstream, with kids and families. But for the people already inside, the next best thing is to stop adding trauma and start building them up.
02 · The opportunity
4.8M
new homes needed by 2035, at CMHC’s high estimate, to get affordability back to 2019 levels. That’s about double the current pace of building.
June 2025 · CMHC
245,000
homes a year: Canada’s projected building pace. Getting back to 2019 affordability takes 430,000 to 480,000 a year, and a much larger, modernized workforce to build them.
June 2025 · CMHC
$13B
in starting money for Build Canada Homes, the new federal agency that puts factory-built housing first.
Sept 2025 · Prime Minister’s Office
Modular and prefab homes are built in a factory and shipped out. One product touches nearly every construction trade: framing, electrical, plumbing, drywall, finishing. That makes a modular factory one of the best classrooms there is for the trades, and its product is exactly what the country is short on.
And there are empty towns. Mines close, fisheries collapse, and whole communities empty out, leaving their houses, roads and buildings behind. They do sell. Kitsault, BC, a mining town with 92 houses, 7 apartment buildings and a hospital, sold in 2005 for under $7 million.9
03 · The proof it can work
Canada · CSC
Inmates already build homes
CORCAN, part of Correctional Service Canada, builds ready-to-move homes for First Nations in the Prairies. Each home gives 6 to 10 people about 1,000 combined hours of on-the-job training, plus carpentry apprenticeship hours.4
Canada · CSC
A job cuts reoffending
People with a job in the community were almost three times less likely to be sent back for a new offence. A trade certificate on top of prison work improved the odds of earlier release on parole and of getting hired.5
Canada · CSC
Education pays off
People who took education programs inside had lower rates of failing on release, and the effect was strongest for higher-risk people.3
Norway
Prison built around work
In Norway, where prisons focus on job training, a prison term cut the chance of reoffending within five years by 29 percentage points. The drop came from people who weren’t working before they went in.10
United States · RAND
Teaching beats warehousing
A review of 50 studies found that people in prison education programs were 13 percentage points less likely to go back to prison.11
Canada · CCRA s.81
The law allows community-run corrections
Section 81 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act lets Indigenous communities and organizations run correctional services under agreement with the federal government.12
03b · Around the world
Each country counts reoffending differently: by new arrest, new conviction or new prison term, over different windows of time. Researchers at Oxford warn these numbers can’t be compared country to country.14 So read these as what’s possible, not as a scoreboard.
Norway
Normal life, inside
Prisons are built to look and run like normal life. At Bastøy, an island prison, people live in houses and do the work that keeps the island running. Nationally, about 20% were reconvicted within two years (2005 releases).14
Singapore
Cut it in half
The two-year reoffending rate fell from about 44% to 21.9% over two decades, after the country put jobs and community support at the centre of release.15
Italy · Bollate
Open cells, real jobs
An open prison near Milan where people work real jobs, some outside the walls. Economists found that a year there instead of a regular prison cut reoffending by about 6 percentage points.16
San Francisco · Delancey Street
A community that pays for itself
A residential community for people coming out of prison and addiction, run by its own residents. It says it takes no government money: its businesses fund it, and the residents built their own 400,000 sq ft home base.17
Denmark & Finland
Open prisons
A large share of people serve time in open prisons, with more freedom, real work and family contact. They count reoffending differently from Canada, so we don’t put their numbers side by side.
United States
What warehousing gets you
Of people released from state prisons in 2012, 71% were rearrested within five years and 46% went back to prison.18
04 · How a Hope town would work
Hope doesn’t run the prison. Corrections keeps custody, security and release decisions, the way the law requires. Hope would build and run everything else: the factory, the training, the housing, the town’s businesses, and the jobs waiting on the outside.
01 · Arrive
Assessment and real programming
An honest look at where each person is starting from, with programs written for adults, built with people who have lived it.
02 · Train
The factory floor
Factory bays building modular homes, starting with two and growing to eight. Trade instruction is tied to apprenticeship hours that count toward Red Seal.
03 · Live
A home to run
As people move up, they move into a house in town. They cook, clean, do laundry and budget. For a lot of them, it’s the first normal life they’ve had.
04 · Earn
A real wage
Pay that can cover rent, food and furniture, so people learn what money is like on the outside, not what a prison canteen teaches.
05 · Contribute
The town runs on its people
The grocery store, the thrift and furniture shops, and the crews doing maintenance and cleanup. Every job a town needs is a job someone can learn.
06 · Move up
Stages of freedom
Zones with more freedom at each step, matched to Canada’s security levels and release stages. People earn each step by how they live.
07 · Leave it right
Hand the house back
Before release, everything gets returned or sold back and the house is left the way it was found. That’s responsibility you actually practise.
08 · Walk out working
Aim: six months of job security
The homes would ship across Canada, and the work would go with them. The goal is that everyone leaves with a job lined up and people who will help them through the first stumbles.
“If you’ve been reprogrammed properly, instead of reprogrammed with trauma and more trauma, you might actually stand a chance.”Nick Kernaz
04b · How Hope would pay for itself
Hope will be a non-profit. It isn’t registered yet. Its engine would be a social enterprise: the modular home factory. The goal is for the town to run on what it builds, not on handouts.
01 · Sell
Homes for builders and developers
The factory sells modules to home builders, condo and rental developers, and housing providers across Canada. That steady order book pays wages and keeps the lights on.
02 · Keep
Buildings we’d own
Profit would go back into rental buildings Hope would own. The rent would become steady income that doesn’t depend on the next order.
03 · Give
One building every few projects
Every four or five builder projects, Hope builds a small building and gives it away for low-income, homeless or transitional housing. The people who built it know exactly who it’s for.
04 · Save
Money back to the public
Every person supervised in the community instead of held in federal custody saves roughly $109,000 a year ($156,744 minus $47,522).
We’re modelling it honestly. Our working model shows the factory covering its running costs at full speed, but the town needs significant start-up money first. That would come from grants, a corrections partner, and impact investors. Big modular builders have gone broke before by trying to do too much at once, so Hope would grow one bay at a time, and only when the orders are there.19
05 · The hard questions
No, and Hope won’t try. Ontario tested a privately run jail in Penetanguishene from 2001 to 2006, then took it back after a review found the public jail it was compared with did better on security, health care and reoffending.13 Hope is a partnership. Corrections keeps custody and security. Hope supplies the town, the factory, the training and the jobs. The routes we’re exploring are a contract with Correctional Service Canada and CORCAN, a provincial pilot, and Indigenous-led partnerships under Section 81, which would happen only if a community wants to lead one.
Yes, and that’s the biggest weakness in the idea. Research ties family contact to lower reoffending. So Hope has to plan for it from day one: family visiting houses in town, help with travel costs, and video calls as standard. We’ll also pick towns that are a reasonable drive from a city, not the most isolated ones.
Not if the pay is real. Prison jobs in a lot of places pay pennies an hour. Hope’s whole point is learning how life on the outside works, so wages have to be close enough to real that rent, groceries and savings mean something. The homes sell at market rates, and that money pays wages, training and the town’s upkeep.
Staff need homes too, and the factory makes them. Hope also hires people who’ve finished their time and want to stay on as instructors, crew leads and mentors. People who’ve lived it are the best teachers.
Canada needs millions more homes, and the federal government has put $13 billion into an agency built around factory-made housing. First Nations communities in the Prairies already receive ready-to-move homes built by inmates through CORCAN. The demand is there. What we have to prove is quality, price and delivery. Shipping is the real limit: modular units are oversized loads, so where a town sits on the highway network matters.
Maybe not the same way, and comparing reoffending rates between countries is shaky. That’s why the plan starts small and proves itself on Canadian numbers before anyone buys a town.
06 · The roadmap
Phase 0 · Now
Pillar’s client work and ventures pay for it. We register Hope as a non-profit, finish the research, and build an advisory circle: people with lived experience, trades instructors, corrections people, and Indigenous partners.
Move on when: the money and a partner willing to pilot are both in place.
Phase 1
One modular build shop in or near a city, for people on parole or day release. Real wages, apprenticeship hours, and homes sold to non-profit and Indigenous housing providers. No town needed yet. This is where we prove the numbers.
Move on when: graduates are working and staying out at better rates than the baseline, and the shop covers its own costs.
Phase 2
Secure a town with good road access. Sign a partnership agreement with corrections. Open two factory bays and grow toward eight. People move through the town in stages.
Move on when: the first town works on its own numbers, measured independently.
Phase 3
Repeat what worked, adapted to each region and led locally wherever a community wants to lead it.
07 · Why we’re called Pillar
People go in hurt, come out more hurt, and go back in. That’s the loop. A pillar carries load so something can stand on top of it. That’s what Pillar Incentive is for. Every client website and every venture will help fund the first Hope town.
I spent eight and a half years inside. I know what the system teaches, because it taught me. Read the full story.
08 · Get involved
We’re putting together Hope’s founding circle. These are the seats we’re trying to fill. If one of them is you, or someone you know, reach out.
Money
Impact investors and funders
People and foundations who want a return measured in homes built and people who stay out, plus patient capital for the first factory bays.
Buyers
Builders and developers
Home builders, condo and rental developers, and housing providers who’d sign a steady order for factory-built homes.
Justice
People who know the system
People with lived experience, reintegration workers, former corrections staff, and parole and halfway-house people who know what actually works.
Government
Policy and partnership people
Anyone who knows how corrections, housing and skills funding really gets decided, and can help us knock on the right doors.
Town life
Remote community operators
Work-camp and lodge managers from mining, oil and gas, and northern projects: the people who know how to feed, house and run a remote community of hundreds.
The factory
Modular builders and trades teachers
People who’ve run a modular or prefab line, plus Red Seal journeypersons who want to teach.
Partnership
Indigenous-led communities
First Nations and Indigenous organizations interested in leading or co-leading a Hope community on their own terms.
The board
Lawyers, accountants, governance
People who can help set up and steer a non-profit properly from day one.
Tell us which seat you’d fill and why. We read everything. If you’re a business, hiring Pillar moves this forward too. We’re not taking investments or donations yet: right now we’re building the founding circle.
Sources