Yes. There is significant evidence of this now, and you saw this in the aboriginal justice inquiry report back in 1991. You've seen it in the Judge Lynn Ratushny report into the self-defence review after we had a case in the Supreme Court that changed the law of self-defence to recognize that women might be killing their abusive partners in self-defence, and that sort of thing.
You started to see that, because of the mandatory life sentence for murder, that is a very powerful tool in the hands of the prosecutors. Indigenous people are more likely—indigenous women in particular—to plead guilty to manslaughter or even to second-degree murder to take the lowest possible sentence that they can get with the plea bargain, even when they have very valid, strong defences. Professor Elizabeth Sheehy at the University of Ottawa has documented this in a number of cases.
It goes to lack of trust in the justice system. It goes to concerns about not wanting to put their kids on the stand in cases where it involves a spousal relationship and a homicide in that context. I've heard very many times from women who are incarcerated that they pleaded guilty because they didn't want to have their kids be witnesses in the trial. There are all kinds of reasons why mothers, women, have different pressures on them to plead guilty.
The evidence is pretty clear now that our mandatory sentencing regime for murder has a disproportionate impact on women in that way. I think the trust issue is part of it, and there are a number of other factors as well.