Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, you're not. I'm going to ask Mr. McIsaac to give you more detail, but the issue of classification, particularly as addressed to aboriginal women, was responded to in previous reports and also led to the commitment to develop a new tool by the fiscal year 2009-10.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There are some exchange of service agreements in place between the Correctional Service of Canada and provincial and territorial governments for the housing of inmates, but more importantly, there are two sections in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that allow for the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The simple answer is yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I believe the service is sincere in its desire to develop a new tool and a new set of tools by fiscal year 2009-10.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can tell you that in the past, the service on this file has missed many of its targets.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I believe the timeframe was determined based on what they projected as all of the steps they'll be required to take to validate a new tool, and that's subject to some debate. As far as the resources go, it is my conclusion that the service does not have the resources it needs to

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. The profile would suggest that an aboriginal offender convicted of a violent crime is much more likely to be initially placed in maximum security and held in maximum security for a longer period of time. In most of the federal maximum security institutions, there are no core

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Corrections identified aboriginal programs many years ago as a priority. The frustration is that as a result of things like over-classification, you see security needs being used, rightly or wrongly, as the reason for maintaining a population at a high security level. The highes

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have not done our own academic analysis of the tools. We have referred to and relied upon the external work that's been done by academics at Canadian universities, by the department's own research branch, and by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. We work with that tool all

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Our conclusion is that the initial classification tools inappropriately place aboriginal offenders in disproportionate numbers in higher security levels than necessary. You have more people at initial placement going into higher security levels and finding it harder to cascade do

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, I think there are a number of ways to answer the question. One way would certainly be to say there's been a lack of integration and coordination across federal government programs in relation to federal-provincial-territorial initiatives and initiatives involving first nati

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm sorry, I guess the English copy was missing a page. We'll get some additional copies made and circulated. The over-classification for aboriginal women is even worse. For example, at the end of September native women made up 45% of maximum security federally sentenced women,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, you should have the full set of copies.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be making the formal opening statements on behalf of the Office of the Correctional Investigator. My name is Howard Sapers, and I'm the correctional investigator for Canada, appointed about two and a half years ago. I'll go as quickly as I can thro