I'm absolutely not saying to scrap it. In fact, we should make it meaningful. The problem that has happened with respect to sentencing, bail, and all the correctional decision-making.... The question of risk—risk to reoffend and criminogenic risk—is the ultimate question that decision-makers are focusing on. When you pile up those social history factors in the way that.... The Gladue analysis is meant to do something different. It's meant to show the context and the person, and how we can do something different with this person, and how we can take a different path. But often it has this other impact.
What I think it means is reorienting our thinking. It goes to the question of community release options and correctional planning that for indigenous women to get access to parole in a timely way—as they are entitled to under the law—we need to have the training at the correctional level, the orientation, and essentially the incentives, encouragement, and focus in the staffing, to be really focused on how you can get this person to that place, instead of asking what the barriers are. There are lots of good people doing this work. It's not that. It's just that the resources and focus are not really there on community release. It is always an afterthought to asking, “What is the risk? What is the community? What is the public safety issue?”
Obviously we have to be balancing that, but if you look, for example, at how parole is operating in this country, it's not operating in the way the legislation has set out. The most recent study that I saw shows that you only get parole if Corrections is supporting your application. In the most recent study, only 2% of people got parole without explicit support from the CSC staff. That's why indigenous women are waiving it. They're not getting that support, and they don't get timely access to the programs to address all of the needs that have been identified. That's why parole is not operating to assist them, and that's why they're going all the way to statutory release or, in some cases, all the way to warrant expiry, which is not good for public safety or their reintegration.