Thank you, Auditor.
On the chapter dealing with aboriginal children.... I have a federal penitentiary in my riding. The last time I checked with the warden of the facility, I think something in excess of 70% of the inmates in the penitentiary were of first nations or aboriginal background. I know there are people out there who would criticize the court system and the justice system for the high rate of first nations in the penitentiary. I disagree with them.
To me, this is a symptom of a much greater problem than the justice system. It's like blaming the barometer for the weather, as far as I'm concerned, to blame the courts. I have worked in the court system, and I do believe that 99% of the people who are in penitentiaries are there because the evidence was there and they committed a crime. So it's a symptom of a much bigger problem, a failure of a system quite literally for a group of people.
Using the same approach here, if we have eight times the number of aboriginal children who are pulled out of their homes and put into foster care or other facilities and so on, one way you could interpret that is that the people who are removing children from the homes are being arbitrary and aren't using the same approach they would use in non-native homes or off the reserves. I guess the other interpretation is the same sort of problem we have with the high conviction rate for aboriginal people. Is this more a symptom of a much larger, complex social problem, or is it an indictment against the end part of the process, the people who have to deal with the social problems?