I will take this question. Thank you very much.
The reasons for the over-incarceration of indigenous people in our prisons, particularly indigenous women and gender-diverse people, are multi-faceted. Certainly, the justice system has its role to play. We must go back hundreds of years to look at the assimilation practices of the state, including residential schools, the sixties scoop, the millennial scoop, our current practices around child protection services and the many ways that indigenous communities are over-surveilled by police, by social workers and by schools.
All the way up until they reach the justice system, they are already underserved and over-surveilled or over-policed. However, certainly, once we reach the justice system, mandatory minimum penalties and the lack of availability of conditional sentencing, as Mr. Rudin pointed out—all of the arguments that were made in Sharma—have contributed to the over-incarceration of indigenous women and girls.
I have to tell you: If you go to the prisons in the prairies and particularly to where people spend most of their time, which is in the provincial jail system, upwards of 90%—up to 98%—of the people there are indigenous. It is a failure, and it is extremely shameful. We need to consider them when we are thinking about the word “public” in “public safety”.
Thank you for your question.