The member opposite tries to argue for Balkanization and race based sentencing in our system. She will have the opportunity to make her arguments. I invite her to do that. I encourage this debate.
Perhaps what is even more egregious than what the government has done here is the expansion of these differential sentencing provisions to the new Youth Criminal Justice Act. This is the youngest, fastest growing population in Canada and it is imperative that aboriginal youth feel that they can become significant contributors to Canada's economic, social and political life. By offering sentencing discounts based on race, the government is sending a message to aboriginal young people and it is not a good message. It is a message that they are incapable of fulfilling the same duties and the same responsibilities as all other Canadians. We have to stand up and say no to this policy of stigmatization and restore the fundamental principle of equality to our justice system now and for future generations.
Ethnicity should never be a factor in the sentencing determination of any convicted criminal, but that is not to say that socio-economic conditions should not be considered. Sentencing judges already do so. Sentencing judges have to take into consideration background factors such as lack of education, poverty, substance abuse and child abuse, but not all aboriginal Canadians suffer from these afflictions nor are they solely the possession of aboriginal Canadians.
To stipulate that aboriginal status should be considered and specifically targeted by judges is a mistake. The overrepresentation problem cuts across different racial minorities and it requires a response that does not focus exclusively on one group, however historically disadvantaged. To single out a particular group encourages judges to treat aboriginals as a category rather than as individuals. Categorical assumptions are inappropriate in a sentencing system that is supposed to be based on the culpability of the offender. The sentence must relate to that culpability and the factors should be individual, never collective.
The solution lies beyond the purview of the sentencing judge. It is not the mandate of a sentencing judge to try to correct society's historical wrongs. That is antithetical to the purpose of our justice system. If judges begin to make sentencing determinations on the basis of collective identity they are no longer serving as the safeguards of equality in our justice system but rather as social engineers.
The conditions which contribute to the likelihood of criminal involvement, such as poverty, lack of education, drug and alcohol dependency and lack of economic opportunity, should be the priorities of any government. Yet after 10 years of this government's rule, little progress has been made. The barriers to aboriginal equality have not come down because the government seems to believe that aboriginal Canadians do not merit the full equality that other Canadians take for granted. The price of this philosophy is that the federal government has been allowed to escape its leadership role in all aboriginal issues.
For example, the government has ignored well documented problems such as lack of matrimonial property rules on reserve, economic and consumer equality for aboriginal people, women's rights, and property rights. The federal government's ambivalence toward these inequities has directly resulted in the third world conditions that we see on Canadian reserves.
The Canadian Alliance believes that the re-establishment of these individual rights, which most Canadians take for granted, is central to building that foundation of equality of opportunity for aboriginal Canadians, and the establishment of these individual rights is central to crime prevention.
The Liberal government's approach is to stave off problems with community-based band-aids, while the Canadian Alliance believes that prevention requires individualized solutions, starting with equal rights and duties for everyone and equal justice.
While the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in Canadian prisons is an undeniable and important problem, there is little evidence that the problem has arisen as a result of discriminatory sentencing. To explain the high incarceration rate as a byproduct of failed sentencing practices is to miss the problem altogether and therefore miss finding the solution to the problem.
Those nine words in the Criminal Code offer little more than an empty promise to aboriginal people, a bitter pill for sentencing judges who struggle to do the right thing but become daily more aware of the powerlessness they have in the face of a situation far beyond their control. It would have been better if these nine words had never been included in the Criminal Code.
My bill has been given a great deal of support across Canada already. The Edmonton Journal stated on April 29 of this year, “The reasons for the high rates of incarceration, poverty, substance abuse, family breakdown and the like are not and cannot be adequately addressed at the sentencing stage”.
We have been supported by the first nations mothers' association of Canada, which has said in a press release that it believes all Canadians should be treated equally before the courts and there is only one brand of justice for Canadians.
The Windsor Star said on May 5 of this year that the government's approach “smacks of two-tier system. A truly just justice system would expect judges to remain blind to an offender's ethnicity”.
In closing, let me say that it is long overdue that this unjust provision in our Criminal Code which stands in the way of true equality for all Canadians be removed. I urge all members of the House and I urge all Canadians following these proceedings to support this bill and to encourage their members of Parliament to support the bill when it comes back to the House. The bill will accomplish several things. It will restore fairness and equality to our justice system. It will end the stigmatizing of aboriginal Canadians. It will reinstate the rights of the victims of crime and their full and equal protection under the law.