A lot of our band councils are not representing the people in our communities. We see that the native people only represent 4% of the population. There have been many studies done. The overrepresentation is 50% to 70% in the justice system. There's something wrong. To try to create something that is going to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic...because it's getting worse.
I live in a community where we have a major opioid crisis. We had seven deaths last week. We have problems, but unless we are able to deal with some of these problems head-on, I don't think we're going to see the reduction.
The Gladue reports were put into place because the Supreme Court in its wisdom saw that the sentencing judges had to look at the circumstances of aboriginal people. That hasn't been expanded to the correctional system, not to my knowledge. I write these reports, spend a lot of time, talk to people, get into the souls of these individuals, their families, and then it stops there.
The recommendations that we make oftentimes are not used by the correctional system. There's a need for healing plans rather than putting people in solitary, in what a lot of inmates call “the hole”. You know, it's counterproductive. Sometimes the only thing they get is a bible and many of them have literacy problems, so sticking them in a room for 22 hours a day, with no human contact and no chance to rehabilitate themselves, is just going to lead to their going into the communities and reoffending.
I would like to see the Gladue program implemented in the correctional system because we do a lot of this work, and where does it go? It has to go somewhere to be meaningful for families, for inmates. The work I'm doing with the neuroscience, you might think that's kind of odd. I've worked in criminal justice for many years, but I'm doing doctoral research with one of the leading neuroscientists in the world, Dr. Bryan Kolb. We're looking at ways in which we could perhaps look at some of the conditions, and not just the mental health, cultural and economic ones. Maybe we could look at the biology, the science, because in many cases a lot of these offenders have been misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. There are ways to treat them and to prevent or even reverse some of the effects.
FASD is a big problem. A lot of the individuals who are in the justice system have been diagnosed by various people: social workers, teachers, all that. They're labelled as slow learners, and so on. They're given Ritalin because they're hyperactive. Maybe they're just bored in school. I've talked to teachers for many years. We need to look at different approaches. Rather than spending a lot of money creating something new, maybe looking at new prisons, new-generation facilities, maybe we could look at expanding the Gladue program into corrections and utilizing that.
I also believe that we need to involve band councils. The terminology that is used in this bill is perplexing because they're changing it from “aboriginal” organization to “indigenous governing body”. That could have negative effects on indigenous people, because you have to get the permission. Right now there's no impetus. There's no reason why band councils should get involved in these issues like criminal justice. Make them. Put in the resources and get people in there like these governing bodies to help solve some of these problems.
I'm here with regard to implementing the Gladue into corrections.