Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for allowing me to take part in your meeting today. I'm here for two reasons. First of all, as an aboriginal woman, I take great interest in what occurs within your committee, and I congratulate all members of the committee for the fantastic work you do each and every time you appear.
But as an aboriginal woman and the daughter of a woman who spent her entire career in a correctional facility dealing with mainly aboriginal women offenders, I wanted to be here today to express my concern about the fact that there is a motion before your committee to accept these recommendations,when I have to agree with Mr. Duncan that they're clearly out of the mandate of this committee. I appreciate Ms. Crowder's willingness to try to help aboriginal people.
The second reason I'm here is that I am a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. It is in that committee that we are presently looking at mental illness in the prison systems, and we are focusing quite a bit of our time on the fact that we do have a number of aboriginal offenders who are in fact affected by mental illness and addiction.
The report by the Correctional Investigator is the basis of much of our study. In fact, as many of the members here know, each and every party represented has taken part in an extensive trip to visit and to study prisons across Canada, and we've also made an effort to visit institutions in other countries, so that we can provide the best possible recommendations to the House in collaboration with a number of stakeholders, including the Correctional Investigator.
The countries we have visited are Norway and England, so there has already been substantial cost on the endeavour in this study. We are looking at very similar recommendations and we are studying the recommendations of the Correctional Investigator. It would be highly untimely for this committee to put forward some kind of proposal in the House. It would interfere with the work that is being done. It would really, in my opinion, tell the taxpayer that we don't care how we spend their money, that we're going to interfere in any way we can, even knowing that it's an obstacle to the good work that others are trying to do, at a high cost to the taxpayer.
More than anything, we want to help these offenders. We want to make sure they get every benefit of the Correctional Investigator, of the stakeholders within Correctional Service of Canada, and of parliamentarians who are working very hard on this issue.
I truly believe that each and every member of this committee wants what's best for aboriginal people. I truly believe that. That's why I'm here today to suggest that this is an inappropriate submission at this point, knowing what all of the parties are involved in other committees, and knowing that we are all trying to do the right thing here.
The fact that it's inadmissible, given the points that Mr. Duncan has provided, suggests that all of us should look within ourselves and really dismiss this motion at this time, because it will negatively impact on the things we're doing in the public safety committee.
I want to tell a very short story just to put into perspective how this study that we're doing in the public safety committee is impacting aboriginal people. With Mr. Don Davies from the NDP, I met a young woman, an aboriginal woman by the name of Debra, and she was actually incarcerated for a murder in the Saskatoon--