QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Justice
Overrepresentation of Black Canadians in Prisons
November 19, 2025
Welcome to the Senate, Minister Fraser.
In your role as Attorney General of Canada, you oversee the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. In terms of the overrepresentation of Black people, they are overrepresented in federal custody to an extent much greater than their actual numbers within the Canadian population. You talked a bit about some of the steps that the Government of Canada will be taking to try to change and reverse this trend.
Can you tell us what specific steps you are taking with federal prosecutors to receive mandatory anti-Black racism training, review prosecutorial discretion practices and identify disparities in charge selection and plea bargaining that disproportionately impact Black Canadians?
This is a conversation that is clearly of importance to the Senate. I’m starting to think, as I’m receiving these questions, about the potential to benefit from a proper parliamentary study that digs into what the systemic solutions to overrepresentation may be.
Additional training for those in the Public Prosecution Service must be part of the solution. It is a little bit challenging sometimes to predict what the long-term strategies will be because many of the operational decisions, including training, are properly made by those who run the Public Prosecution Service, which is independent of my office.
We can put resources on the table for certain kinds of themes, but the exact nature of that training will likely vary, based on the nature of the challenges that people face in different parts of the country in the communities that they serve. From Ottawa it’s difficult to say very distinctly what exactly can be done to solve challenges that differ between regions and between communities.
Suffice it to say that making resources available to better train not only prosecutors but police officers, judges and those who work within the justice system has to be part of the long-term solution, but I would invite a more fulsome conversation with all those concerned with overrepresentation, certainly.
Thank you. Black offenders are also overrepresented at the provincial level in correctional services. Can you tell us in what ways you’ve engaged provincial attorneys general to discuss similar reforms to prosecutorial training, discretion within their jurisdiction, so that Black Canadians experience equal justice across the country and not only at the federal level?
Thank you. With limited exceptions, due to the very recent nature of certain provincial elections, I’ve had the opportunity to engage in depth with all of my counterparts from across Canada on a series of issues, not just the criminal justice reforms that we’ve advanced through legislation, but, importantly, the need for provincial governments that have carriage of the administration of these systems, to make the investments that protect against overrepresentation.
Of course, the decisions that each of them take will vary by jurisdiction. My sense is that they do understand with changes — which, by the way, the provincial governments have been requesting — that there is likely to be an impact that will trigger a need for more provincial resources. Some of these will be specifically on training. Others will be process-oriented, but I want to respect the time I’ve been given, now that the table officer is standing.
