QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
Parole Board of Canada
September 22, 2022
Welcome, minister. Minister, 10 people were brutally murdered and another 18 injured in a series of stabbings in the vicinity of the James Smith Cree Nation. The individual in question had a long criminal history. In fact, he had 59 criminal convictions. Despite this record, he was serving a sentence of only 53 months for an additional series of violent offences, and he was at large despite having violated the conditions of his statutory release.
We were told that the Parole Board of Canada is conducting a review of this horrific case, but the problem in our Canadian justice system is a systemic one which exposes the deep flaws in our revolving-door justice system. What we need now is transparency so Canadians know that your government is actually doing something.
Minister, in that regard, how specifically is your department engaged in this review, which not only involves an Indigenous offender but also had a horrific impact on a vulnerable community that was effectively left unprotected?
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, senator, for the question. First, I think it is important to acknowledge the pain and hurt the community is going through. This is the largest mass casualty event in an Indigenous community since the North-West Resistance. You highlighted as well that no Indigenous community is immune to this — no community in Canada. This does not begin and end with one or two individuals. There are systemic natures to the violence and the response needs to be a systemic one that cannot be limited to policing our way out of the problem or locking people in jail and throwing away the key.
That is not notwithstanding my own views on how the Parole Board acted, but again, it is not necessarily my place to be judge, jury and executioner in a role that the Parole Board properly plays in determining whether people’s lives should be in an incarcerated scenario or free to go or free under certain conditions. Certainly, there was a failure here. Certainly, it is a systemic one. Certainly, it is one that involves policing and the criminal justice system, but it is much more than that. It is one where there is violence that is far too frequent in Indigenous communities because of systemic reasons, socio-economic barriers and ones that are the legacy of colonization.
In that respect, my department is intimately involved in the response.
Minister, your answer to the question about how your department is engaged in the Parole Board’s review of the murders was not specific. I also tried to get an answer on this issue yesterday from Senator Gold, the Leader of the Government in the Senate.
The terrible crimes in Saskatchewan clearly demonstrate that the way we are approaching criminal justice matters in our Indigenous communities is failing to protect them. Indigenous leaders in Saskatchewan have said that their communities are not equipped to develop programs that might help better address criminality in their communities.
Minister, Canadians need to understand how you are working with the communities in the face of this. How are you working with the Parole Board in its review of this specific case to better balance Gladue factors and risks?
As regards specifically my department, it should not have a direct role in the Parole Board review. This is something that the Minister of Public Safety has spoken to. I can direct you to the answers he has provided publicly. It perhaps isn’t the place necessarily on this floor to go into a detail of that nature where the Parole Board and the review has to be done in a way that is devoid of a political lens of this nature. However, it is certainly one we are deeply concerned with because it appears there were failures at a level.
At the same time, again, you highlighted the systemic nature of it. There are socio-economic underpinnings to the reality that Indigenous communities face that make them vulnerable and susceptible to this type of crime. It is not an Indigenous issue; it is a societal issue that has its deep roots in colonization, in dispossession and ones that are not fixed with simple solutions.
That said, there is a crying need to reform, as we have said as a government, First Nations policing to make it an essential service in communities and to reform the way policing itself is done. That is a much greater conversation where I welcome your advocacy.
