Mr. Chair, I want to thank the minister for being here tonight. I am thankful that this institution can be used to tackle an issue that has shocked our nation.
We have heard from people, urban and rural, indigenous and non-indigenous, who feel that our system failed Colten Boushie's family. I thank the minister for her comments. When the system fails an individual, there is recourse through appeals, and there is legal precedence, but we are talking about a system that has failed a people. This is a moment of reckoning.
I want to talk about what I did not hear from the minister. I want to get to specifics. I would love to think that great visionary ideas could change the world, but I have come to think that it is changed on the ground.
One of the issues that came out in the Boushie trial was the treatment of the Boushie family by the RCMP; the way it was investigated; the way that, from the beginning, the seeming criminal was the boy who was dead on the ground; and the way his family was considered criminal and his friends were considered criminal. Every step of the way, in the way the RCMP handled it, set a tone that we see across social media now with some really ugly racist trolls misrepresenting what happened.
What the family has asked for is some form of oversight and investigation of the RCMP's actions in the Boushie killing and also an oversight process in Saskatchewan, where the RCMP are not subject to outside, independent review, as exists in other jurisdictions.
Would the minister talk to the Minister of Public Safety and admit to this House and to indigenous people in Saskatchewan that out of this there will be a process and that an independent review of police actions will be a priority? Whether it is in Thunder Bay or Val-d'Or or anyplace else where these actions happen, we need to have this indigenous lens to make sure that justice is done and done fairly by the police.