Gladue and subsequent rulings by the Supreme Court, like Ipeelee, are absolutely essential to making progress.
The Correctional Service of Canada has a responsibility to use a Gladue lens in correctional decision-making. What we see, though, is that it happens a little haphazardly. One piece of research that the Correctional Service conducted for itself, I think indicated that in 98% of the case files they reviewed, there was attention paid aboriginal life history. Therefore, there was some documentation that the decision-makers had looked at the life history of the individual before them. That would suggest they had looked at that through a Gladue lens.
However, there was really no conclusion at all that their consideration of the aboriginal person's life history had translated into any kind of differential decision-making, or any mitigation. That's the problem. What the court perceived would be something that would lead to restraint in the imposition of a sentence or a lengthy period of incarceration or difficult conditions of incarceration has, in correctional practice, translated into just the opposite.
Certainly, there is a fear that those same factors don't mitigate and don't lead to restraint. In fact, they lead to just the opposite. Those factors lead to higher security classifications, longer times in custody, delays in release, etc.