Mr. Speaker, 15% of federal prisoners are aboriginals, even though the aboriginal population nationally is only 3%.
Provinces have been working hard to reduce the number of aboriginal people in jail. Today, Saskatchewan's NDP justice minister, Frank Parnell, said, “striking down the conditional sentencing laws as proposed by the Conservatives may reverse that trend”.
Is this reasonable or fair? How will the government ensure the percentage of aboriginal Canadians incarcerated does not go up?