Hon. Mary Jane McCallum: Senator Gold, I was invited to attend a brunch with the police association and the premiers on bail reform this summer, and I raised a concern at that time. One of the panellists gave an example of an offender who had stolen a bottle of liquor and, 10 years later, he is a hardened criminal is what she said. Because of the way the system is set up, at that time, we were told that 70% of the people in the provincial jails were Indigenous and the majority had not even been to court.

Indigenous relationship with police administration, police officers and the justice system is already precarious. How will racial profiling and racism be addressed? If they are not, there will be a continuous flow of new criminals, and no law will be able to handle the load, even if additional resources are given. An example I’ll use is 80% of the Indigenous prisoners who are in the pen were children who were apprehended. So we need to look at reducing the flow of child apprehension so we don’t have that flow going in, because we’re not going to change the penitentiary system. How will this be addressed?

One comment that came up was people were so upset in there that they said, “Throw them in jail and throw away the key,” which caused me great concern. Thank you.