Earlier you mentioned Bill C-5. We know that bill was adopted on the pretext that federal penitentiaries were overpopulated and certain groups, mainly indigenous people, were overrepresented. That's true, particularly in western Canada. Between 17% and 20% of penitentiary inmates are indigenous, whereas indigenous people represent only 7% of the total population.
In its judgment in Gladue, in 1999, the Supreme Court urged judges to find alternatives to incarceration. When it revisited the issue in 2004 and 2012, it told judges that it had ordered them to find alternatives to incarceration but that they hadn't done their work.
Consequently, Bill C-5, which was assented to in 2022, won't reduce the indigenous population in our penitentiaries. Proof of that is that 40% of inmates convicted of sexual assault have been sent home and that of that 40%, only three percentage points were indigenous, while the remaining 37% were from the white community.
The Criminal Code thus already contains provisions for limiting the incarceration of indigenous inmates as far as possible.