This is not the first of Harper’s initiatives that greatly affects Aboriginals who are already facing high rates of incarceration within Canada’s federal prison system. Harper’s “Truth in Sentencing Act” which proposed limits on the amount of credit a judge could give to an individual who spent time in pre-sentencing custody. According to the article,

Aboriginal offenders tend to be released later in their sentences (lower parole grant rates), are overrepresented in segregation populations, are more likely to have served previous youth and/or adult sentences, are more often held to the expiry of their sentence, are classified as more likely to reoffend and have their conditional release revoked more often and are classified as higher risk and higher need.

Read the entire article titled here: “The National Shame of Aboriginal Incarceration.

That means more Aboriginals spend more time sitting in remand (that means still sitting institutions locked up) and because of the Truth in Sentencing Act, they will not receive credit for the time spent before sentencing. No more 2 for 1. This piece of legislation came into effect last year on February 23, 2011.

And according to AFN’s statement THIS YEAR, Harper’s Tough-on-Crime Bill will hurt First Nations. Yeah, let’s state the obvious. With this previous bill (now legislation), Harper was warned that this would hurt Aboriginals and yet even when he didn’t have majority, it still went through.

In the mean time, welcome to Canada…Canada! Repeated layers of oppression right on top of each other for the already oppressed! Yay for Harper! **enter sarcasm** Thank you, you are earning brownie points with the Aboriginals…