Aboriginal Canada
The First Nations' Struggle for Rights, Health and Prosperity
A News, Reference and Resource Page

Source:
Attawapiskat: You Want to Be Shown the Money? Here it Is.
Chelsea Vowel BEd, LLB.
Métis from Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta.
Huffington Post Canada.
(6 December 2011) Link added.

Reading the news coverage on Attawapiskat doesn't feel very healthy sometimes. There are so many racist rants and outright ignorant responses that it can bog you down. Where do you even begin, when the people making these comments do not seem to understand even the bare minimum about the subject?

Well, you can try to answer questions with facts. Here are some of those facts, if you're interested.

Harper said Attawapiskat got $90 million, where did it all go!?

Yes, Prime Minister Harper is apparently scratching his head about where $90 million in federal funding to Attawapiskat has gone. Many commentators then go on to make claims about lack of accountability and no one knowing what happens to the money once it is 'handed over' by the federal government.

Let's start simple.

First, please note that $90 million is a deceptive number. It refers to federal funding received since Harper's government came into power in 2006. In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Attawapiskat received $17.6 million in federal funds (PDF). The document linked to shows the breakdown of federal funds in case you wanted to know how much is allocated to things like medical transportation, education, maternal health care and so on.

Thus, $90 million refers to the total of an average of about $18 million per year in federal funding since 2006.

[As an aside, you will often see the figure of $34 or $35 million in funding given to Attawapiskat a year. This actually refers to total revenues. As noted, federal funding was $17.6 million, and provincial funding was $4.4 million. The community brings in about $12 million of its own revenue, as shown here. So no, the "government" is not giving Attawapiskat $34 million a year.]

Okay fine, but where did it go?

Attawapiskat publishes its financial statements going back to 2005. If you want to know where the money was spent, you can look in the audited financial reports. This document (PDF), for example, provides a breakdown of all program funding.

Just getting to this stage alone proves false the claim that there is no accountability and no one knows where the money goes.

But $90 million could have built the community 360 brand new houses!

Assuming, as Grand Chief Stan Louttit of the Mushkegowuk Council has stated, that a new house costs $250,000 to build in Attawapiskat (with half of that being transportation costs), then yes, 360 new units could have been provided by $90 million.

However, this money was not just earmarked for the construction of new homes.

An important fact that many commentators forget (or are unaware of) is that section 91(24) of the Constitution Act of 1867 gives the Federal Crown exclusive powers over "Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians."

You see, for non-natives, the provinces are in charge of funding things like education, health care, social services and so on. For example, the Province of Ontario allocated $10,730 in education funding per non-native pupil in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. For most First Nations, particularly those on reserve, the federal government through INAC is responsible for providing funds for native education.

How is this relevant?

It helps explain why the entire $90 million was not allocated to the construction of new houses. That $90 million includes funding for things like:

• Education per pupil
• Education infrastructure (maintenance, repair, teacher salaries, etc)
• Health care per patient
• Health care, infrastructure (clinics, staff, access to services outside the community in the absence of facilities on reserve)
• Social services (facilities, staff, etc.)
• Infrastructure (maintenance and construction)
• A myriad of other services

These costs are often not taken into account when attempting to compare a First Nation reserve to a non-native municipality. In fact, many people forget that their own health care and education are heavily subsidised by tax dollars as well. [...] [Read More]

Source:
Third-party management can be cause for concern on reserves
Mary Agnes Welch and Mia Rabson, Winnipeg Free Press (10 December 2011)
Links added.

WINNIPEG — Roseau River is arguably the most tumultuous, dysfunctional First Nation in Manitoba, plagued by petty financial scandals, internal division and messy, confusing elections.

Lake St. Martin First Nation has 700 flood evacuees living in limbo, and its chief has been accused of stalling a relocation plan because the province wouldn't hire his company to build the temporary houses.

In remote Wasagamack First Nation, most homes don't have indoor toilets or running water, and the band needs about 450 more houses to alleviate chronic overcrowding.

All three bands have something in common: The chief and council aren't really in charge. An outside accountant handles all the money.

Third-party management — where the federal government forces a band to turn over control of its cash and day-to-day operations to an independent manager — was once an obscure bureaucratic manoeuvre Ottawa used to r eign in financially troubled First Nations.

Thanks to Attawapiskat, where an outside accountant appointed to deal with a housing crisis was politely punted off the reserve Monday, third-party management is now big news.

The practice is being widely criticized as, at best, paternalistic and, at worst, costly and ineffective.

Former federal auditor general Sheila Fraser repeatedly raised red flags about third-party management, and one former manager told the Winnipeg Free Press the practice does nothing to genuinely improve a band's financial operations.

Instead, it's more about cutting spending and services on reserves already underfunded — (former Alberta premier) "Ralph-Kleining a community back into the black," said the former third-party manager.

Stripping band councils of their signing authority is meant to be an extreme intervention, a last-ditch measure to yank a band out of financial catastrophe. But in Manitoba, it's become the norm.

There are 23 bands in Manitoba managed entirely by a third party or co-managed in partnership with the chief and council. That's more than one-third of all the bands in Manitoba. It's more than any other province.

And it's up from last year.

In 2010, 21 bands were in some form of third-party or co-management. Currently, an army of outside accountants are managing more than $300 million in federal funds and the fates of 30,000 people living on reserve.

In most cases, the third-party accountant is paid out of band funds, meaning already indebted and cash-strapped bands have to cut spending to come up with thousands to pay the accountants.

Last year, a financial management firm reportedly was paid nearly $200,000 to run the affairs of Little Saskatchewan First Nation, which went into third-party management in 2010 after the band ran up a $2.6-million debt and its financial paperwork became indecipherable.

In Attawapiskat, the new third-party manager will be paid $180,000 for seven months' work.

That amounts to about $1,300 a day. Attawapiskat is being forced to lay off education assistants to pay the bill.

After Attawapiskat's makeshift tents made national headlines, the Harper government immediately put the Northern Ontario band into third-party management while raising questions about how $90 million in funding for the reserve since 2006 has been spent.

The move was condemned by First Nations leaders as a cynical response to a human disaster. But it also sparked a national debate about the future of the country's reserve system and what accountability measures are in place for billions spent on First Nations.

A longtime third-party manager in Manitoba said the system is dysfunctional and doesn't actually improve things. The manager spoke on the condition of anonymity because going public would affect his livelihood.

He said the relationship between a band and an outside manager is always strained and can be volatile.

"There is, typically, push-back," he said. "At the end of the day, I'm just some white guy from (the city) going in and telling them what to do."

And, he said the system is not set up to improve conditions on a reserve. A third-party manager is not there to assess big-picture problems — housing needs, education gaps or economic problems — and then work with the band and the federal government to fix them.

Instead, it's about shoehorning spending back into acceptable limits, which often means cutting services. [...] [Read More]

Source:
Court victory for First Nations child welfare: Federal Court orders new Human Rights Tribunal hearing.
CBC News, The Canadian Press. (18.04.12)
[PDF] Links and images added.

The Federal Court has handed First Nations groups and child-welfare advocates a victory.

In a much-anticipated ruling Wednesday morning, the court has rejected the federal government's attempts to prevent First Nations groups from arguing for better funding for child welfare on reserves.

The ruling means First Nations and the federal government will have a full-blown hearing about whether Ottawa is treating native children unfairly.

"It's a real victory for all the children who have waited so long for this," said Cindy Blackstock, who heads the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and spearheaded the legal challenge.

First Nations groups say Ottawa is discriminating against native kids because the support the feds provide for child welfare on reserves is much lower than what kids off reserves get from provincial governments – even though the need is greater.

Blackstock figures the federal government should be spending about $200 million a year more, in order to just match the level of service the provinces deliver to non-aboriginal children.

But the federal government has tried to block the case on technicalities, saying it was not fair to compare federal services to provincial services.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal initially sided with the apples-and-oranges argument from the government, and rejected the case without hearing substantive arguments. But today, the Federal Court disagreed, and has ordered the tribunal to hold a new hearing, under a completely new panel of decision-makers.

"It's a real slap to the tribunal. They have to go back to the drawing board," said Carolyn Bennett, the Liberals' aboriginal affairs critic.

[...]
Officials in Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ruling opens the door to similar challenges on federal funding to First Nations for education, policing and health, according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. [...]

The ruling from the judge, Anne Mactavish, said that in day-to-day practice, the federal government frequently compares its own child welfare services to services delivered by provinces. "The tribunal erred in failing to consider the significance of the government's own adoption of provincial child welfare standards in its programming manual and funding policies," she writes.

The prevalence of First Nations children in child-welfare system across Canada is far higher than for non-aboriginal children. There are far more native children in care now than at the height of the residential school system.

A recent study of maltreatment of First Nations children found that children on reserves are far more likely to be living in a problematic situation than non-aboriginal children. The national study found that First Nations children are eight times more likely to be subjected to neglect, and 4.7 times more likely to be exposed to violence.

For years, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada as well as the Assembly of First Nations have argued that the federal government would be better off funding prevention services and supports for families, rather than paying for foster care. [...]

Source:
First Nations pay steep price for rights abuses in Canada: Madahbee
News Release, Anishinabek Nation; Canadian Newswire [PDF](9 February 2012) Links and images added.

TORONTO, Feb. 9, 2012 /CNW/ - UOI Offices, Nipissing First Nation (February 9, 2012) - "If Stephen Harper wants to talk about human rights abuses, he didn't have to go all the way to China," says Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee, noting that First Nations in Canada pay a steep price for the Conservative government ignoring their rights.

"Treaty rights protect human rights, and his government doesn't want to pay any attention to them," said Madahbee, speaking on behalf of the 39 member communities of the Anishinabek Nation. "First Nations here at home have rights to share in Canada's resource wealth, and to be treated with at least the same respect as any foreign country.

"Instead of getting serious about helping First Nations become major contributors to Canada's economy, Mr. Harper's priority is to make trade deals with China. Instead of lecturing the Chinese about their human rights abuses, he could set a good example here at home by spending the same amount to educate First Nations students as is spent on other young people in this country."

The four Anishinabek Regional Chiefs shared Madahbee's concerns about the Harper government's lack of commitment to working on comprehensive solutions to First Nations issues, especially ones that could help end the chronic poverty faced by many of the 700,000 First Nations citizens in Canada.

"The very resources that are extracted from First Nations in Canada ultimately end up on the trade table in negotiations with other 'nations' like China," said Lake Huron Regional Chief Isadore Day. "It's as if Mr. Harper wasn't paying attention to all the discussions about treaty rights at the recent Crown-First Nations gathering he hosted in Ottawa."

Northern Superior Regional Chief Peter Collins said: "It's hypocritical for the prime minister to travel halfway around the world to talk about human rights when First Nations citizens are forced to accept lower living standards because Canada does everything it can to exclude us from meaningful participation in the national economy."

Southeast Regional Chief J. R. Marsden criticized the federal government for not living up to its commitment as a signatory to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. "The Harper government signed onto an international agreement that says First Nations have the right to engage freely in all their traditional and other economic activities."

Economic inequities also impose environmental penalties on First Nations, according to Southwest Regional Chief Chris Plain. "It's not safe for many of our citizens to drink the water or even breathe the air in their communities. We can't afford environmental assessments."

The Anishinabek Nation established the Union of Ontario Indians as its secretariat in 1949. The UOI is a political advocate for 39 member communities across Ontario, representing approximately 55,000 people. The Union of Ontario Indians is the oldest political organization in Ontario and can trace its roots back to the Confederacy of Three Fires, which existed long before European contact.

Source:
An Indian Industry has emerged amid the wreckage of many Canadian reserves
Brett Popplewell, Staff Reporter, thestar.com
(30 October 2010) Links added.

[...]
DISPARITY AND DESPAIR

By looking at government funding records and building a database of every contract and grant (valued at more than $10,000) that was awarded to the Indian Act bands, the Star has discovered massive disparities in funding among bands.

Example: the Toquaht First Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island has received $18 million over the past three years to support an on-reserve community of just 16 status Indians. That works out to $1.1 million per band member living on reserve. Meanwhile, the Pessamit First Nation in Quebec has received $23 million for 2,877 status Indians living on its reserve on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. That works out to roughly $8,000 per band member.

Despite $7 billion spent annually, there's an immense disparity on Canada's reserves. The Star's Brett Popplewell investigates.

But the disparity among First Nations tells only part of the story. Relying on census data, Indian Affairs researchers have developed a "Community Well-Being Index" — a spreadsheet that gives every community, native and non-native alike, scores on education, employment, housing and income.

Among the bottom 100 communities on that list, 96 are First Nations.

Yet senior executives within Indian Affairs are loath to acknowledge what their own statisticians have discovered: that the gap between well-being on reserves and in the rest of Canada has been growing since 1996. Gina Wilson, a senior assistant deputy minister at Indian Affairs who is responsible for 1,800 bureaucrats working in the department's regional offices, says: "There's a lot of progress being made. I wouldn't say that's the case in every community, but to overall say the situation is getting worse, that's probably a personal opinion."

THE INDIAN INDUSTRY

The financial plight of Canada's First Nations has given rise to a brigade of consultants, lawyers and accountants who, the Star has found, collectively secure more than 1,500 contracts from Indian Affairs, valued at roughly $125 million a year.

As the disparity between the First Nations and the rest of Canada grows, so does this Indian industry built to combat it.

Take, for example, the federal department of Indian Affairs which, despite having had its funding to First Nations capped at a two per cent increase per year since 1996, has seen its full-time staff balloon from 3,300 employees in 1995 to 5,137 today.

Outside of Ottawa, the Indian industry can best be spotted on the ground in 83 of the country's most debt-laden First Nations, where consulting companies from across the country are being individually paid as much as $1 million a year — according to Marc Langlois, an Indian Affairs regional manager in Quebec — to either partially or completely take over the daily duties of the chiefs and councils.

Such firms include Lemieux Nolet of Quebec City, which — according to two former chiefs — gets about $600,000 a year to administer all government services for the 450 Algonquins living in Third World conditions on Barriere Lake reserve, 270 kilometres north of Ottawa.

Putting a band like Barriere Lake under third-party management is a controversial tactic which challenges the idea of self-governance on reserves, and which has placed more than 77,000 status Indians either completely or partially in the control of private consultants and accounting firms from across the country.

Cross-referencing data from the community well-being index with a list of bands currently struggling with debt issues, the Star found no evidence that the quality of life in communities governing themselves was worse than in those being controlled by consultants.

The process of putting a First Nation under third-party management has attracted the attention of Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada. Fraser criticized the department's intervention strategies in 2004, slamming Indian Affairs for not paying attention to the warning signs before several First Nations had spiralled deeper into "unmanageably high" debts.

Exactly how those communities managed to build up such debts while each filing an average of 160 reports to the government each year is hard to understand.

And for all the reports pouring into Indian Affairs' 28-storey headquarters in Gatineau, Que., the department seems unable to answer some of the simplest questions about the Indian file.

Like how much debt are First Nations actually in?

The official answer: "The department does not collect the total accumulated deficit (debt) of all First Nations in Canada."

It's an interesting answer, considering that internal documents released to the Star accidentally by Indian Affairs' staff in Winnipeg show the department does in fact collect the total "accumulated deficit" for individual First Nations in Canada.

It's from those internal documents that the Star is able to report that some First Nations are operating at more than $20 million in debt. [...] [Read the full story]

Source:
Aboriginal Issues
Centre for Social Justice. socialjustice.org.
Accessed 12 December 2011. Original links updated; new links added.

Poverty/Inequality
The roots of poverty for Aboriginal communities can be traced back to the forced relocation of Aboriginal peoples onto plots of land that are called Reserves. With no planning, infrastructure or economy set up, Aboriginal people were restricted to small tracts of land. The destruction of traditional ways of living, combined with the poorly organized set-up of reserves resulted in impoverishment for those on the reserves. Many Aboriginal people died due to lack of shelter, food, health care and money. To worsen the problem the Canadian government put tight restrictions on relief efforts to reserves, resulting in an even higher level of poverty.

Once Aboriginal people were allowed off reserves, many came to larger urban centres in an attempt to rid themselves of poverty. Instead of employment opportunities or even relief in the form of charity, many Aboriginal people were faced with racist attitudes that had already been long entrenched in Canadian society.

The legacy of poverty for Aboriginal people in urban centres continues today. In Urban Poverty in Canada: A Statistical Profile (CCSD, 2000), evidence from 1996 Census data showed that Aboriginal peoples in urban areas were more than twice as likely to live in poverty (as defined by the Low Income Cut-Off) as non-Aboriginal people.

• On average, 55.6% of Aboriginal people living in Canadian cities were poor in 1995.
• In cities like Regina where there is a larger Aboriginal population [8.3%], Aboriginal people accounted for 24% of the poor. This was more than three times their proportion of the total population in that city. Several factors can explain this high incidence of poverty among Aboriginal people, including significant barriers in education and employment opportunities.
• 52.1% of all aboriginal children were poor in 2003. (Ontario Fed. of Indian Friendship Centres).
• Shelter is a significant issue among First Nations communities, as only 56.9% of homes were considered adequate in 1999­/00. Adequate shelter is defined as not needing minor or major repairs or replacement (INAC 2002).

Similarly, many reserves still do not have the resources or money that it would take to raise the standard of living out of third-world conditions.

Despite the fact that there is rampant poverty among Aboriginal peoples in Canada, many Aboriginal people and communities are attempting to make poverty a part of the past. The Seabird Island community of British Columbia serves as an excellent example. They have launched a Seabird Sustainable Community Project [2004] in which their aim is to "provide an information transfer opportunity to assist First Nations and other communities through-out Canada to solve housing challenges in a sustainable, environmentally sensitive, healthy, energy-efficient and affordable way" (Broadway Architects). Similarly, many Aboriginal communities are beginning to analyse their communities through the framework of Community Economic Development (Women & The Economy - Community Economic Development).

In some instances Aboriginal peoples are finally being offered opportunities out of poverty. Non-Aboriginal Canadians can support this process by linking with others who are working to support Native/non-Native reconciliation, lending financial or other forms of support to indigenous organizations, lobbying the government for Native self-government, or advocating for greater funding for specific programs related to inequality and Aboriginal peoples.

And See: Innovative Housing Project Will Benefit First Nations Communities Across Canada
Tiffany Kask, CMHC-SCHL. (July 2004)

Source: Remote reserves say Ottawa's response to OxyContin crisis inadequate
Elizabeth Payne, Postmedia News, Ottawa Citizen. (30 December 2011) Links and inset content added.

[...]
Tiny, fly-in reserves in northwestern Ontario have become Ground Zero for addiction to the synthetic opioid OxyContin. The drug is a growing public health problem across Canada, but the scale of abuse and addiction on northern Ontario reserves is like nowhere else, according to a growing body of health research. These communities do not have the extreme housing situation of Attawapiskat, but by southern Canadian standards, their housing is substandard, in some cases much worse, and they face numerous other challenges. The drug crisis is a tipping point in many communities.

"In northern Ontario, narcotic abuse (in particular oxycodone in long-acting OxyContin or short-acting Percocet) has become an increasing problem" says a study recently published in the journal Canadian Family Physician. "Remote First Nations communities with high rates of unemployment, poverty and overcrowding bear the additional social and economic burden of narcotic abuse and addiction, with profound narcotic abuse in some of these communities."

The pills arrive sewn into baby blankets, hidden behind false bottoms of pop cans and mixed in with meat, say First Nation health officials. In the summer, when the only way in is by plane, prices go up. But once winter roads are built, the market is wide open, despite treacherous 12-hour-plus drives through northern wilderness to deliver the drugs. The addictions have created an economy that leaders say is killing the communities.

In places like Eabametoong First Nation, sometimes known as Fort Hope, 350 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, as many as 75 per cent of adults in the community of 1,200 are addicted to the prescription painkillers, including pregnant women and, more worrisome, their newborn babies. It is a similar story at many of the small reserve communities throughout northern Ontario.

If Attawapiskat is Haiti at 40 below zero, as it has been called, Fort Hope is closer to the Afghanistan of the frozen North — with drug addiction hollowing out an already struggling community.

The drugs sell for as much as $600 for an 80-mg pill, which some addicts swallow and others inject. The signs of mass addiction are visible everywhere, from increased crime (which has nearly doubled in the region since 2005) and suicides, to brimming shelves at grocery stores — because money is being used instead to buy drugs — to eerily empty streets as growing numbers of residents spend their days in a cycle of drug addiction, sleep and withdrawal. Grandparents have taken over child-rearing duties from addicted children.

And when addicts like Doris Slipperjack — who told her story in the moving documentary The Life You Want: A Young Woman's Struggle Through Addictions — want to quit, things get really difficult. Slipperjack, a young mother of three from Fort Hope, waited months to get drug treatment, finally leaving her young children behind to move to Kenora, Ont., where there was a methadone clinic.

She was so desperate for the treatment she was prepared to put her children in foster care. She has become an outspoken advocate for the need for better treatment and support.

"It's mind-boggling," said Mike Metatawabin, Deputy Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, the political organization that represents 49 First Nations communities in northwestern Ontario. "They thought alcohol was bad, but OxyContin is the worst thing that has hit these communities."

Three years ago, the situation led the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, known as NAN, to declare a state of emergency.

Last year, the community of Fort Hope also declared a state of emergency after a series of assaults, arsons and three murders. Sharon Johnston, the wife of Gov.-Gen. David Johnston and Ruth Ann Onley, wife of Ontario's Lt-Gov. David Onley were reduced to tears when they visited Fort Hope in an attempt to draw attention to the situation last year.

The visit briefly shone a light on the community, but First Nations leaders say they aren't getting enough government support to cope with the public health crisis.

Recently, leaders in the area said they will launch a human rights complaint against both the federal and provincial governments for inadequate responses to the situation which, they say, demands more nurses, physicians, mental health and addictions workers and community-based training for treatment, security and counselling. They also plan to take their case for more help to the United Nations. [...] [Read More}

Source: New aboriginal database highlights health, poverty issues
Stacey Escott, thespec.com (8 December 2011) Links added.

Almost 80 per cent of First Nations people living in Hamilton earn less than $20,000 per year and 63 per cent admit to giving up important things, such as groceries, to meet the costs of shelter.

These are some of the findings in a hospital-led study released on Thursday. Our Health Counts began three years ago and documents what experts say many people have known all along.

Hamilton was chosen as the site for the study due to its large aboriginal population and strong infrastructure of aboriginal community health and social services — 790 self-identified First Nations people — 554 adults and 236 children — took part in an anonymous survey that included questions about their children.

"My intention is to honour the people's experience," said Dr. Janet Smylie, who led the research team based at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. "There is nothing wrong with the people in this community; there is a problem with the system."

The goal was to develop a health database for urban aboriginals in Ontario. They were originally looking for health care status and usage information but the team also uncovered shocking statistics about poverty, food security, employment and residential instability, Smylie said. [...]

"We all know that if you don't have a balanced diet and if you are not meeting all of your basic needs, it's very difficult to go to school," said Constance McKnight, executive director of Hamilton's Aboriginal Centre, where many of the surveys were done.

Smylie said that before the study, there was a significant absence of population-based health status information for aboriginals living in Ontario cities. The study found rates among respondents for almost every chronic disease was higher than in Hamilton's general population. For example, asthma rates in children were twice as high and 15 per cent of the adult respondents had diabetes, about three times higher than in the general population.

"These issues are unnecessary and potentially reversible — there is no reason this has to happen in the City of Hamilton," said Smylie.

There has been a lot of recent media coverage about inequitable conditions for Canada's aboriginal people. Now that there are measurable statistics, Smylie hopes people will get sick of hearing this same story and work on solutions.

Source:
The Fear Factor: Stephen Harper's "Tough on Crime" Agenda
Paula Mallea, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (November 2010) Links added.

Aboriginal People and [Mandatory Minimum Sentences] MMSs
CSC says that the new federal legislation will hit Aboriginal people the hardest.⁴⁰ The over-incarceration of Aboriginal people has been described by the Supreme Court of Canada as a "staggering injustice."⁴¹ At 4% of the population, Aboriginal people comprised fully 24% of those admitted to provincial and federal prisons in 2006–2007. 42 In Ontario, twice as many Aboriginal youth are being sent to jail as non-Aboriginal youth who commit the same offence.⁴³ Aboriginal women comprised 30% of all federal women inmates in 2007, despite the fact that they comprise only 2% of the general population.⁴⁴ Jonathan Rudin, Program Director of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, says that Aboriginal people also have less access to parole and rehabilitation programs than other inmates.⁴⁵

The Supreme Court decision in Gladue provided an opportunity for courts to turn these statistics around, but unaccountably, sentencing has become harsher. Alternatives to jail such as substance-abuse treatment, Aboriginal spirituality centres, and community sentencing circles have all begun to disappear as funding dries up. As in so many other areas of criminal justice today, there is a terrible disconnect between what actually works and where the government is applying resources. The Saskatchewan government, particularly, has expressed its concerns about the effect of "tough on crime" laws upon Aboriginal people. The province uses restorative justice as a model which keeps people out of jail and provides assistance to victims and the community. To do this, it uses conditional sentencing liberally. Under new federal laws, the ability to use "house arrest" in this way will be severely curtailed. [...]

40. Corrections Service Canada, analysis of strategic policy division, reported in Tonda MacCharles, Jailers fear PM's justice overhaul, The Toronto Star, January 11, 2007.
41. R. v. Gladue, [1999] 1 S.C.R. 688.42 Kirk Makin, Courts falling short on effort to keep natives out of jail, The Globe and Mail, December 27, 2009.
42. Ibid.
43. Native Women's Association of Canada, Federally Sentenced Aboriginal Women Offenders, An Issue Paper prepared for the National Aboriginal Women's Summit, June 20–22, 2007, Cornerbrook NL.
44. Makin, December 27, 2009, op. cit.