LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO Six Nations Chief Ava Hill and director of justice Barbara General present at the Ontario government's finance committee on May 7, 2019.

TORONTO — Ontario should see more Indigenous people sitting on juries after the Progressive Conservative government’s budget bill comes into effect.

Bill 100, which is in the final stages of being passed into law, includes a schedule that will change the way juries are selected. Jury source lists will come from the Ministry of Health’s records, instead of from government records of property owners.

The current process, which draws jurors through municipal property assessments, excludes everyone who lives on a First Nation.

The change is “one positive step forward” for the relationship between Indigenous people and the justice system, Six Nations Chief Ava Hill told the government’s finance committee last week.

“The result will be lists of potential jury members that are more inclusive, involving more Indigenous people, including those who live on reserve,” she said.

‘More reflective of Ontario’s diverse communities’

The change was recommended in a 2013 report on First Nations representation on juries, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Attorney General told HuffPost Canada.

“Using the OHIP [Ontario Health Insurance Plan] database will provide a more efficient process for creating jury rolls that are more reflective of Ontario’s diverse communities,” spokesman Brian Gray said in a statement by email.

Hill told the committee that Indigenous murder victims “have become the faces of a broken system that implicate the jury process.”

Her community and Indigenous communities across the country were devastated in 2018 when a Hamilton, Ont. jury acquitted a man who had admitted to killing one of her own Six Nations members, Hill told HuffPost Canada in an interview.

“It appears that a truck is worth more than a young man’s life,” she said.