Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, Mr. Sapers, Madam Kingsley, for your important work, and for being here and giving us your expertise and testimony.
I'd like to spend my time on the issue of aboriginal corrections and follow up in detail on some of the comments that you've made in your opening remarks. In particular, I want to emphasize that this government has committed to resuming or opening a nation-to-nation relationship with our first nations, and our Prime Minister has said that this relationship is one of his top priorities. This committee also has expressed a very specific interest in following through on the issue of aboriginal corrections and the overrepresentation, so I can offer this to you as an opportunity to help us structure our thinking and to come up with the right questions to ask and the areas of inquiry that we should direct our attention to.
You've made some remarks already on the state of affairs, and I don't want to repeat much of what you've said except to say that on the regional distribution side we're looking at some even more disturbing numbers. Aboriginal inmates account for 47.21%—according to your report—of all inmates in the prairie region, and then a gender-based analysis would suggest that there's a very specific problem with respect to women of our first nations, Inuit, and Métis communities. The Edmonton Institution for Women has a 60% rate of first nations inmates.
I'd like to ask you to comment on what you think is still missing in terms of data or of our understanding of the structural problems, including also your perspectives on first nations culture and its integration into the corrections process.