Justice committee  In my view, yes, I think there is. I've worked with a number of nations, not just self-governing nations in B.C. but also those who are on the path toward that. I always call it a spectrum, so they're somewhere along that spectrum of self-government. Most of them are closer. Self

Justice committee  Oh, wow, I would say probably that we need an action plan for the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. There are many recommendations made in there that would probably be very helpful if they were implemented. I don't know. What did help me in the long

Justice committee  That's a tough one. On the gang issue and what could be done, I think something has to be done at the community level. I think there has to be buy-in of the political leadership, of our indigenous leadership—and I think at some level, there is. It's a challenge, no doubt, becaus

Justice committee  This is kind of a new phenomenon on Indian reserves. Well, at least it is in mine, just from seeing the growth of it over the last maybe 10 years. Yes, it's definitely an issue that needs to be dealt with. There are firearms involved. There are guys kidnapping each other. Some

Justice committee  You know, I sat at a lot of treaty negotiation tables and there was a lot of discussion about whether to take over some of these areas of jurisdiction. It would take a lot of political will and a lot of resources to do it, for the communities to have what they need to support the

Justice committee  I would honestly recommend using the.... I shouldn't, but because of the work I've done—I've worked with self-governing communities—I just think they have momentum to build new processes and systems and to address their issues. They often have the revenue as well. I think if you

Justice committee  I would say that, yes, I have confidence in the judges. I think the implementation of Gladue went pretty well. I think it's something that our community members and those who are facing the criminal justice system are very familiar with. We have lots of resources to support that

Justice committee  I don't know. I'm not familiar enough with them to know whether there are any for housing and jobs. Even in the work that I do, we've had someone we hired who had a criminal record, and then, interestingly, we had to let him go because of his criminal record, but it was the natur

Justice committee  We used to have a clinic. UBC had an indigenous legal clinic in the skids down in Vancouver. It was accessible for a lot of people. We often had clients come in asking us to help them fill out pardon papers and those kinds of things. It's just kind of manoeuvring around the sys

Justice committee  I can speak from direct experience on that. There were two situations in my family. It sounds like a lot to me, but then when you look at the statistics, you kind of understand how that statistic gets there. Like I said, my mother went into Oakalla. It had a severe effect on he

Justice committee  Yes. Like I said, in Canada, he was charged four or five times with drunk driving, and it had no effect. There was a cash penalty or weekends in jail or whatever. Then, when he got charged on the U.S.-Canada border, he had to appear in Blaine court, and they ordered him to go to

Justice committee  None that I'm aware of, and none when she got out. It had a real detrimental effect on her, I would say, on her mental health. She had physical health issues. She had been shot in the leg at one time and....

Justice committee  Like I said, some of these programs really are targeting high-risk youth, those living on the streets and those coming out of care. There are some really good programs. There's one called BladeRunners. I always described it as one that's run on the streets. It's really embraced b

Justice committee  I think it could, yes, for sure. I really like the alternative to jail time that is addressed in there, referring to the alternatives to jail time. If we could try to keep our people out of jail, but get them the help they need, because so much of the social issues that we face i

Justice committee  Yes, I think preventative support services or treatment programs would be well resourced. I read some background information on this bill, and I'm sorry if I can't remember from where, but it talked about there perhaps being the possibility of developing an action plan with indi