A transsexual killer who was given sex toys while at the Edmonton women's prison was booted from the jail after threatening staff and smashing the inside of the building.

Synthia Kavanagh was transferred last week to Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont., after threatening staff and damaging property at Edmonton Institution for Women.

"I see our government bending over backwards to accommodate the interests of prisoners and forgetting the entire role of prisons is to protect society and to reform some prisoners," said Tory justice critic Vic Toews.

"What it appears to me is the government is trying to accommodate the interests of the prisoner and, quite frankly, forgetting the interests of taxpayers."

But Cathy Stocki said CSC changed its policy in 2001 to pay for "sex reassignment surgery" in those cases where it is considered essential by a gender identity expert.

Toews said while taxpayers are ready to fund corrections, they want the government to focus on the key goals of jails, which are to rehabilitate prisoners and detain them.

Kevin Grabowsky, president of the prairie region of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, the group that represents guards at the EIFW, said Kavanagh's case illustrates that the Correctional Service of Canada needs to create a special handling unit for violent female offenders, like there is for men.

In 1999 Kavanagh complained to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that she was being discriminated against on the grounds of disability and sex because she was denied hormone therapy and a sex change.

The complaint was settled and CSC revised its health policies to allow the surgery for prisoners who meet certain criteria. The department also made hormone treatment more readily available.

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