Nakurmiik.
Ujunga Alyssa Flaherty-Spence.
Hi, I'm Alyssa Flaherty-Spence. I am a youth board member at Pauktuutit.
In southern Canada, you have psychologists, psychiatrists. You have a hospital with doctors available. You have counsellors. You have RCMP, police. They are always available. I don't know how many of you have been to any communities up north, but these are not available. For instance, a treatment centre is years and years to get to.
The reason I'm saying this is that the Gladue decision and the obligations for a judge, a justice, to provide a CSO for an offender.... They have to provide conditional sentencing orders for any aboriginal offenders. Up north, when a judge has an aboriginal offender in front of him, he or she has to provide conditional sentencing orders. These conditional sentencing orders require treatment centres, resources, in the north.
These resources are not in the north. There's nothing available there. What happens is that offenders are sent down south, probably to Ottawa to a non-Inuit-specific treatment centre, or the closest city where it costs the least to send them. They are treated. They are sent back into the community, again with no resources, and they reoffend against the victim. And they reoffend against the other victims who are in the community. It could be a community of 400 people. Everyone knows each other.
The victim has no place to go. The victim has no resources, no counsellors, and no doctors available; they're usually Skyped or teleconferenced in. There's no place for the victim to go to. For instance, there are barely any shelters; 70% of the communities in the north of Canada do not have shelters.
Where is the victim going to go? Is the victim going to go next door where the offender probably knows where the victim is going? Is the victim going to fly out of the community? Probably not, as it's going to cost thousands of dollars. A woman who is 19 years old in the community doesn't have the resources. They can't escape. The victim can't escape the community. There are no psychiatrists. There are no substance abuse facilities in the communities for the offenders to go to, so they revictimize not only the person previously but other people.
The justice system in the north doesn't have anything that's community oriented or trauma informed. As you know, there is a lot of colonization with Inuit. They're not going after the root cause, which has a lot to do with the trauma that has happened for Inuit and for aboriginal people. The justice system just doesn't look after, pinpoint, any of that trauma that has happened for the victim and for the offender.
These are just a couple of points that I wanted to bring forward.
Thank you.