Akwesasne leaders worry about contraband tobacco bill

A proposed law setting mandatory minimum prison sentences for trafficking contraband tobacco has some Mohawk leaders worried that more of their young people will end up behind bars.

The Harper government bill, introduced last week in the Senate, creates a new Criminal Code offence for trafficking in contraband tobacco.

It sets a maximum penalty for a first offence of six months imprisonment for a summary conviction and five years in jail for an indictable offence.

Repeat offenders would also receive mandatory minimum penalties when a "high volume" defined as 10,000 cigarettes or 10 kg of other tobacco products is involved in the crime.

Mandatory 90 days jail for 2nd offence

The specified minimum jail times in the new bill are 90 days incarceration for a second conviction, 180 days incarceration on a third conviction and two years less a day for subsequent convictions.

Mohawk leaders with Akwesasne First Nation near Cornwall, Ont., say they are concerned about the impact of mandatory minimums.

Akwesasne has long been a centre of tobacco smuggling partly because of its geography. The reserve straddles Ontario, Quebec and New York and includes numerous coves and islands along the Saint Lawrence.

Brian David, the chief of the Ontario portion of Akwesasne, said recruiterssome from outside organized crime groupswork hard to pull young people on the reserve into smuggling. Many of the youth have been hit with huge fines, which only pull them in deeper, said David.

"A lot of the youngsters I see, they want to get out of the system, but they don't have a job. At the same time, they've got to pay the bill back to Ontario, and they can't afford it. The only way to make money is to go back on the river," said David.

David is concerned youth who go to jail as naive bit-players in the smuggling rackets will come back to the community afterwards as hardened criminals.

'That's part of our future that's taken away'

"Every time our youth is taken, every time he's convicted, every time he's sent away, that's a part of our future that's taken away," he said.

The minimum sentences laid out in the bill don't apply until a second offence has been committed.

Keith Gordon, who works with the Akwesasne department of justice, said people may have contested their first offence more vigorously if they thought it might count towards jail time.

"When it was just a fine, people may have pleaded guilty just to get it over with," said Gordon. "Now it has the potential to come back as a second or third conviction and lead to jail time," he said.

While aboriginal people comprise just four per cent of Canada's population, they make up 23 per cent of the nation's federal prison inmate population, accordingto a report tabled last weekfrom Howard Sapers, the correctional investigator for Canada.

The report found there was nearly a 40 per cent increase in the incarcerated aboriginal population between 2001-02 and 2010-11.