Elizabeth May
Mr. Chair, I completely agree with my hon. colleague and neighbour from Nanaimo—Ladysmith that we need to move to remove mandatory minimums from our criminal justice legislation.
Almost two years ago I introduced a private member’s bill, Bill C-269. It was a lot of work actually to cull all the individual mandatory minimums that had been brought in under the Harper era and put them in one private member’s bill to make it easy to get rid of all of them, except for those for the most serious of crimes where we would not want to remove them.
I also note that the situation on Vancouver Island for indigenous women is particularly egregious. I want to offer my colleague the opportunity to speak to the lack of remand centres for indigenous women on Vancouver Island, and the additional specific discriminatory treatment that they face due to this lack of facilities. I ask if she would like to comment further on the systemic discrimination in criminal justice, particularly as it applies to us locally on Vancouver Island.
Sheila Malcolmson – Member for Ladysmith-Nanaimo
Mr. Chair, the separation of indigenous women from their communities and families when they have to leave our region to be incarcerated in other facilities compounds the problems that got them into the justice system in the first place. They become increasingly isolated.
We heard a very interesting circularity from a number of the witnesses. Gladue reports are supposed to bring into sentencing additional considerations around the impact of residential schools or of children being in foster care. The indigenous women at committee are telling us that the Gladue reports are having the opposite effect. They are identifying them as a higher-risk inmate. They are putting them into more isolation and more segregation, which makes them unable to participate in the programming that happens within the jails, which makes them ineligible for the nice earlier parole, the controlled release from prison. This means that they are even more likely to be dislocated from their families, dislocated from their culture, and maybe more likely to reoffend. It is a mess and the government has work to do. We want to work with the government.
Good Sunday Morning – January 24
January 24th, 2021
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January 10th, 2021
Good Sunday Morning – Jan 3
January 3rd, 2021
Good Sunday Morning – December 13
December 13th, 2020
Good Sunday Morning – December 6
December 6th, 2020
Good Sunday Morning – November 29
November 29th, 2020
Green Party calls on government to declare housing and homelessness national crises, clamp down on commodification of housing market
February 10th, 2021
Greens raising alarm on rapid erosion of public transportation across Canada
January 25th, 2021
Green Party urges focus and collaboration as MPs return to Parliament
January 24th, 2021
Greens join in multi-party press conference to mark the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons coming into force
January 21st, 2021
Green MPs Elizabeth May and Jenica Atwin recognized in Maclean’s 12th annual Parliamentarians of the Year awards
January 13th, 2021
Green Party condemns steady erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong
January 6th, 2021
‘Twas just weeks before Christmas…
December 9th, 2020
Elizabeth asks Environment Minister to close Basel Convention loophole
December 9th, 2020
Elizabeth’s statement on the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women
December 7th, 2020
Green Caucus letter to Mins. Bains and O’Regan re: Small Modular Reactors
November 9th, 2020
Green Caucus stands in solidarity with pro-democracy protests in Bulgaria
September 14th, 2020
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