Mr. Chair, I thank the hon. member for the question, which is sincere in its intent. I hope to offer him a sincere response.
I visited the Edmonton women's penitentiary, the largest penitentiary for women across Canada's Prairies, and what I found in that place after hosting a round table was that the majority of people there are indigenous women. I met a grandmother who, when I asked why she was there, simply said that she was looking for her granddaughter. She was in a desperate situation where she came from in Manitoba. She had lost her granddaughter and had no idea where she was. She was forced to take on the pursuit of justice herself and found herself in Saskatchewan living in poor and rough conditions. She ultimately committed acts of desperation to feed herself while looking for her grandchild.
In addressing the condition of overrepresentation in prisons, we must understand the people we incarcerate and why they are there. If the government were to take the approach in its justice strategy to ask why people are there, it would find that poverty, discrimination and racism are the root causes of the overrepresentation we see in our prisons. These are good people. They have been cast out by a society that has told them they are not enough, that even though they are breathing, they are not alive and that even though they may stand, they will stand in a prison.
It is time we truly understand that what we are experiencing in Canada is a genocide. When we speak of that, we speak about the loss of those who are incarcerated today. They have lost something. They have had something stolen from them. The original sin cast upon them has manifested into their own harm and that harm is reproducing and duplicating itself. We must address the core issue, which is the harm that has been done to them.