A/HRC/27/52/Add.2 mortality, suicide, injuries, and communicable and chronic diseases such as diabetes. The health situation is exacerbated by overcrowded housing, high population growth rates, high poverty rates and the geographic remoteness of many communities, especially Inuit communities in the north. 30. Health care for aboriginal people in Canada is delivered through a complex array of federal, provincial and aboriginal services, and concerns have been raised about the adequacy of coordination among them. A recent positive development in British Columbia, which could provide a model for other areas, is the 2013 implementation of a tripartite agreement to achieve a more responsive health-care system. The oversight and delivery of federally funded health services in British Columbia have been transferred to First Nations, while the three levels of government (First Nations, provincial and federal) work collaboratively to support integration and accountability. 31. With respect to other issues affecting the well-being of indigenous peoples in Canada, among the results of the residential school and “sixties scoop” eras and associated cultural dislocation has been a lack of intergenerational transmission of child-raising skills and high rates of substance abuse. Aboriginal children continue to be taken into the care of child services at a rate eight times higher than non-indigenous Canadians. Further, the Auditor General identified funding and service level disparities in child and family services for indigenous children compared to non-indigenous children,18 an issue highlighted by a formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations. In a positive development, in 2000 the Province of Manitoba and the Manitoba Métis Federation, which represents Métis rights and interests in the province, signed a memorandum of understanding for the delivery of community-based and culturally appropriate child and family services, which has demonstrated important successes. B. Administration of justice 1. Overrepresentation in the justice system 32. Given these dire social and economic circumstances, it may not come as a surprise that, although indigenous people comprise around 4 per cent of the Canadian population, they make up 25 per cent of the prison population. This proportion appears to be increasing. Aboriginal women, at 33 per cent of the total female inmate population, are even more disproportionately incarcerated than indigenous individuals generally and have been the fastest growing population in federal prisons. 33. This situation exists despite notable efforts, such as the Aboriginal Courtwork Program (which provides funds to assist aboriginal people in the criminal justice system to obtain equitable and culturally appropriate treatment); the Aboriginal Justice Strategy (which provides aboriginal people with alternatives to the mainstream justice system, where appropriate); the “Gladue principle” (which requires courts to consider reasonable alternatives to incarceration in sentencing aboriginal people); and the efforts of the Canadian Human Rights Commission to facilitate aboriginal communities’ development of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. However, more recently, the Government has enacted legislation19 that limits the judicial discretion upon which these programmes rely, raising concerns about the potential for such efforts to reduce the overrepresentation of aboriginal men, women and children in detention. 18 19 10 Auditor General 2011 report (see footnote 11 above), paras. 4.49–4.50. Safe Streets and Communities Act, 2012.