Mr. Sapers and Dr. Zinger, thank you very much for being here. Thank you for your important work.
Mr. Sapers, to you especially, thank you for your long-standing service in this field. I offer you the very best wishes in your new role.
I would like to spend my seven minutes with you on the area of our indigenous communities and their relationship with the federal correctional system. In fact, early in its mandate this committee expressed some interest on the part of at least some members in doing something about this area. I'm very mindful of what you said about further studies, but if you could take my questions through the lens of helping this committee formulate an approach to perhaps becoming more involved with this very important issue, that might be helpful to us.
With respect to our first nations, our government has very much put front and centre the commitment to a nation-to-nation dialogue. That extends into issues we saw this week, such as the pipeline approvals. It extends into indigenous health and also infrastructure in the Far North with respect to clean water. But in few areas is the message as profound, I think, as it is in the area of corrections.
I want to put to you four general themes that I noticed from your report, but also from the third report of the Auditor General, “Preparing Indigenous Offenders for Release”. We're dealing with overrepresentation, with access to correctional programs, completion of correctional programs, and then also the very important area of release and reintegration.
I want to add to that the very important question of indigenous women. I'm mindful of the report's comments on women in general, but if we use a gender-based analysis and we combine the two sets of being indigenous and being female, we have some heightened attention on some very pressing issues.
I want to put it over to you. Can you give us from your writing, from your report, the most salient messages, maybe beginning with the area of overrepresentation? Some say that isn't really the fault of the correctional system, because upstream there's a judicial process and people are being put into the system. That's a separate question, but how can we address overrepresentation with respect to giving better access to culturally specific programs?
Then, looking at the release process, how can we make it better and eliminate the risk of reoffending but also facilitate the reintegration into society?