OTTAWA - The Conservatives' contentious crime legislation stands to make Nunavut's jails, already teeming with inmates, unmanageable, the territory's justice minister told a Senate committee.
"Our facilities are bulging at the seams," Justice Minister Daniel Shewchuk said Thursday. "We can't take any more inmates."
The omnibus crime bill, a sweeping piece of legislation now being studied at a Senate committee, would introduce new mandatory minimum sentences, eliminate house arrest as an option for some offences, and toughen the youth justice system.
In Nunavut, where the violent crime rate is higher than in any other Canadian province or territory, Bill C-10 could bring the territory's corrections system to its tipping point, Shewchuk said.
"The emphasis on incarceration through its mandatory minimum sentencing provisions will guarantee an influx of prisoners in our territorial jails, which are already overcrowded," he told the Senate legislative and constitutional affairs committee.
Already, there are more than 15 outstanding murder and manslaughter cases sitting with the Nunavut Court of Justice.
And many provisions in C-10 will only exacerbate the problem, the minister said.
Shewchuk told the senators that the Baffin Correctional Centre, a minimum security facility, was built to house 48 men. It regularly holds upwards of 100 inmates.
In an attempt to combat the overcrowding, the territory shipped 55 offenders to jails in other provinces at a cost of $4.7 million.
Mandatory minimum sentences will see more people being sentenced to jail time, but the Nunavut government can't afford to continue sending inmates south, Shechuk said before demanding that Ottawa help foot the extra costs associated with implementing the bill.
Shewchuk 's concerns have been echoed by other provincial leaders, including Quebec's justice minister and the premier of Ontario.
Some of his counterparts have gone even further, vastly criticizing Bill C-10 for focusing on throwing offenders - especially young ones - into jail, rather than taking a rehabilitative approach.
Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier has said putting young offenders behind bars is nothing more than a short-term solution that ignored the roots and causes of the problem.
In Nunavut, the government and health workers have been able to identify some of the root causes; A majority of crime committed in the northern territory is fuelled by alcohol abuse, Shewchuk told the Senate committee. A recent pilot program, where the territory's Department of Health was paired with RCMP, demonstrated that inebriated people are often ready to seek help when told where to find it, he said.
In the first six months of Nunavut's program, 147 addicts were arrested at least twice. Seventy-eight of those agreed to get help. Sixty-seven of those have never been back in custody, the minister said.
Bill C-10 will divert the funds used for rehabilitative and preventative programs to support a punishment model that "will stress our already overburdened corrections infrastructure and our court," the minister said.
But the Nunavut government is taking issue with more than just the potential costs of the bill, the minister said.
"Some provisions conflict with the values and principles of the Nunavut justice system, which is based on traditional Inuit concepts of justice and rehabilitation," Shewchuk said. "Incarceration does not equate to the values of a people who have been living off the land for 1,000 years."
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