Those are the questions, Mr. Chair. I'll go back to debate at this point.
I just want to share with the committee that with my 18 years of experience as a Crown prosecutor, I can probably recall, with some precision, at least a dozen cases in those years of prosecuting in the city of Brantford, Ontario, and in a small jurisdiction approximately 40 minutes southeast of Brantford, Ontario, in a little town called Cayuga, which is very close to the Six Nations of the Grand River as well as the Mississaugas of the Credit. I also had an opportunity of prosecuting in a smaller town known as Simcoe, Ontario, and for a period of time also in Hamilton.
I've had experience in a cross-section of small rural communities with an attachment to an indigenous population, a mid-sized city and large cities. I can tell you that in that experience, gun-related criminal offences really have no boundary. It's as prevalent and dangerous in a rural centre as it is in a larger centre and a mid-sized centre.
I will give credit where credit is due to my colleague, Mr. Naqvi. I don't know whether he's still with us—yes, he is. He had, in my view, an exemplary track record as the attorney general of our province. Mr. Naqvi insisted that policy had to reflect the appropriate balance in terms of how we hold offenders accountable while at the same time not being overly restrictive in our ability to exercise decision-making unencumbered by him, unencumbered by the attorney general, unencumbered by a Crown manager. It would only be a situation in which a decision that I made was called into question. If I had the ability to justify the decision that I made and the considerations that I took before making that decision, so long as the decision was grounded in law, grounded in Crown law policy and reflective of the circumstances of the offender, I had the backing of my former boss. I had the backing of my former Crown attorney in my jurisdictions that the decision would be respected and would be upheld by my superiors.
I'm saying this because I was part of a team of close to a thousand Crown attorneys in the province of Ontario. We would often refer to the Ontario Crown Attorneys' Association as the largest law firm in the country that practises nothing but criminal law. We have Crown attorneys from coast to coast to coast. I can only speak for Ontario, but I'm sure that the Crown attorneys in the other provinces would have conducted themselves in much the same fashion as Mr. Naqvi in giving those assistant Crown attorneys the discretion and the tools to make the right decision.
The reason I'm taking the long way around to make my point is to really highlight that we as Crowns are not just walking robots. We are human beings. In addition to our legal responsibilities, we are citizens of our communities. We reflect societal views and values.
I've repeated this, and I'll repeat it until my career as a parliamentarian ends: We as parliamentarians have to take steps to address the over-incarceration of indigenous offenders. To take a look at the statistics.... We've heard from several colleagues that the percentage of male offenders and female offenders in our prisons either meets or exceeds the 50% threshold in provincial institutions and federal institutions across this country. When you factor in the actual population of the indigenous population in Canada, it is a horrible statistic, but I think it's a danger to say that in each and every case when an indigenous offender commits a criminal offence such as a serious criminal offence under section 244, the default position has to be that we need to look at alternatives to incarceration.
The sad reality, Mr. Chair and members of this committee, is that I recognize that there are indeed first-time offenders with an indigenous background or a marginalized background, but a vast majority of those classes are repeat offenders. Really, it's a sad statement on society, because we have failed them as a government.
Our prime minister in 2015 made the pronouncement during that election that there was no greater relationship a government should have than with its indigenous neighbours. I believe that. I live that. I have numerous indigenous friends and have had them all my life. I was born and raised in Brantford and I'm proud to continue to reside there, but we have to take a look at what's happening on reserves across this country. We had the truth and reconciliation report that came out years ago, and the current government is still grappling with the concept that you have to make this a priority. We have to address the calls to action.
We have issues with respect to legacies and traumas from the failed residential school system. We have issues of a lack of appropriate housing. My community, the Six Nations of the Grand River, under the Harper government was able to secure funding of almost $40 million to secure the right and the ability to build a water treatment facility. The sad reality is that the treatment facility has the capacity, Mr. Chair, to service all of its 25,000 residents and businesses on that territory, but to this day—I think it was built in 2013 or 2014, some eight or nine years later—that treatment facility serves 20%, because they don't have the funding. The government dried up all the funding that was necessary to ensure that the necessary infrastructure and all the pipes were placed in the ground, so we have numerous issues of lack of potable water, and it's disgusting that in today's day and age, in the 21st century, in the leading democratic state of Canada, we have indigenous Canadians still with boil water advisories. It's inexcusable.