A new report by British Columbia's Human Rights Commissioner, Kasari Govender, has shown Indigenous people are “grossly overrepresented” in arrests and chargeable incidents across unceded territories in the Canadian province.
Experts found that while Indigenous people make up only 2.2 % of Vancouver’s population, they were involved in 24.5 % of all arrests captured by the Vancouver Police Department’s data between 2011 and 2020.
On average, Indigenous people were arrested at a rate of 20,000 per 100,000 – ten times greater than the rate for white people.
Commissioner Govender says, quote, “the statistics represent real harm to real people, including mental health impacts, physical injuries or death and immediate long-term and intergenerational trauma.”