Sure. Thank you very much.
It's a tremendously complicated area of inquiry. There is no one first nations perspective. There are a number of first nations, so one of the very first things to understand is that one size will not fit all. The Correctional Service of Canada is challenged to provide appropriate cultural programming for indigenous Canadians from the north, from the two coasts, from the prairies, to properly engage with communities, and most importantly to fully implement sections of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that were put into place to try to address what was then seen as a crisis of overrepresentation back in 1992.
When my office did an investigation into whether or not the will of Parliament was properly reflected in the operations of the Correctional Service of Canada in relation to the aboriginal-specific sections of their governing legislation, specifically sections 81 and 84, we concluded in a nutshell that no, the will of Parliament was not reflected.
I said back in 2013 that there were no new significant program investments in the community for federal aboriginal corrections, that there was no deputy commissioner for indigenous programming—as I've mentioned already today—and that there was no progress in closing the well-documented gaps in outcomes between indigenous and non-indigenous offenders. Those statements are just as true today.
There have been only four section 81 agreements to open up community-run healing lodges in the last 20 years. One of those agreements was renegotiated to include, finally, some beds for women, but we still have capacity in those healing lodges for less than 2% of the eligible aboriginal population.