On Friday, I was in the Fraser Valley Institution for Women to meet with a number of women serving life sentences and the elders. There was a gathering.
The elders reminded us that there are three main components that everybody needs to get out and to be successful. One is a community of support. I think that's true. We all need a community of support. Another is having something to do that is meaningful, and hopefully it's something that you can also get paid for; if you don't get paid for it, then you need some income. Another component is safe, stable housing.
That was one piece. A number of the elders.... In fact, the first elders going into the prisons when I was working in the prisons weren't paid. They came from communities because their community members were in prison, and so effective were the interventions that in fact, as Neal said, Corrections saw the benefit for indigenous prisoners in particular, but also for other prisoners. Often, the brotherhood and sisterhood would welcome others.
Even then, those elders said that what they really needed was to be able to bring people out, back to their communities. I recently had some discussions with some communities who said that section 81 and section 84 agreements may work best if we can also take people from other communities as a bridge to them going back to their own communities. I would be interested in Neal's perspective on this.
The example used was one community where someone was in for a life sentence for being involved in the death of another member of the community. The community felt that they wanted to work with that person, but they weren't ready for them to be right back in the community. They were negotiating with another community about whether the person could be paroled—it was actually an urban community with indigenous support from the friendship centre—and then have a transition.
It made me think that we haven't thought through all of the options and opportunities for how to do that, as Mr. Freeland has said, but part of the problem is coming from corrections, from the prisons out, and not from the community in—