Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for inviting us to share our views on Bill C-43 with you today. I will start off with an introduction and then I'll hand it over to my colleague Francisco. Francisco is OCASI's Toronto regional director, and he is here in that capacity.
We would like to focus our presentation on the impact on children and youth, particularly children and youth from racialized communities.
We are very concerned about clause 24 of Bill C-43, which takes away the right to appeal for a permanent resident who is convicted of a crime punishable by a sentence of six months.
Canada's visible minority population was over five million in 2006. That represents 16.2% of the total population. Canada's racialized population is younger than the rest of the Canadian population, and the recent census numbers from Stats Canada show that the prison population grew by 17% between 2006 and 2011.
In December 2011, Canada's Correctional Investigator said he was concerned about the sharp increase in the number of black inmates in federal prisons over the past decade, an increase of about 50%. Statistics on the disproportionate numbers of incarcerated black and aboriginal individuals are not easy to find. The most recent set of comprehensive figures that we could find were from a 2004 study by Corrections Canada, which confirms that black offenders are overrepresented in prison while Caucasian and Asian offenders are under-represented relative to the general population. Visible minority women are also overrepresented compared to Caucasian women.
The Corrections Canada study also found that visible minority offenders tend to be younger and that they are at a lower risk of reoffending.
Now I'll hand it over to Francisco.