38. Eliminate the overrepresentation of Aboriginal youth in custody

We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial and Aboriginal governments to commit to eliminating the overrepresentation of Aboriginal youth in custody over the next decade.

In 2019, Bill C-75 made amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act that were aimed at reducing incarceration for administration of justice offences (like breaching conditions or missing court appearances.)

But while the amendments were supposed to help reduce youth over-incarceration, critics say they did not address the root causes of over-incarceration. In 2020, a team of Canadian academic researchers said the revisions will not address the issues that cause youth to get involved in the criminal justice system, citing systemic racism and intergenerational trauma.

As of January 2020, the over-representation of Indigenous people in federal custody has reached a new historic high, according to a statement released by the Office of the Correctional Investigator.

Correctional Investigator of Canada Ivan Zinger said despite the findings of royal commissions and national inquiries, court interventions and political promises, over the last three decades, “no government of any stripe has managed to reverse the trend of Indigenous over-representation in Canadian jails and prisons.”

In 2020, the federal government announced $5 million would be committed to support restorative justice programs across the country, including those targeted to Indigenous youth. But that funding is a continuation of previously announced funds from 2017, which allocated $11.1 million per year to the Indigenous Justice Program.

In January 2017, Canada’s Research and Statistics Division showed “the proportion of Indigenous youth in provincial/territorial custody relative to their proportion in the population was about five times higher for Indigenous male youth and seven times higher for Indigenous female youth.”

Data released by Statistics Canada showed Indigenous youth made up 46 per cent of admissions to correctional services in 2016-17 while making up only eight per cent of the youth population.

In the 2017 federal budget, the government committed $120.7 million over five years “to address the over-representation of Indigenous Peoples in the criminal justice and corrections system,” according to the federal government website.

Of the $120.7 million, $55.5 million was committed, over five years, ($11.1 million per year) to the Indigenous Justice Program, which funds community-based programs that use restorative justice approaches as an alternative to the mainstream justice system.

But the Indigenous Justice Program is not new. It was formerly called the Aboriginal Justice Strategy. It too, since 2014, received approximately $11 million per annum to operate, under the previous federal government.