Status of Women committee  I think that's right.

Status of Women committee  That's a big question. I'm not an expert in answering that. I can tell you that in our social context education, we identify a number of groups, disadvantaged groups. I suppose it's fair to say that lists are always dangerous because you might not include everybody. In terms of the definition of intersectionality, though, I'm afraid I can't answer that.

Status of Women committee  You're absolutely right that 95% of the Criminal Code offences are tried in provincial court. I am not an expert on federalism, but there are a couple of things that I've thought about. The Criminal Code is a federal statute, so to the extent that there is funding for provincial court judges, I would argue that it would be in the interest of the federal government to give that funding because it's their statute that's being interpreted.

Status of Women committee  This is an additional tool. Judges get training at new judges school on sexual assault, as we discussed last time. There are other courses. They're court-based courses where gender-based violence is involved. I gave you an example this morning of the comings-and-goings exercise, so to suggest that the only thing will be some video learning....

Status of Women committee  Yes, that's right. What I referred to you was the document that I handed out at the last hearing. Again, on these sorts of questions, I have to take my lead from the CJC. They are the people who approve our funding, and it is their direction that we take in terms of the courses we put on, and the content.

Status of Women committee  Sure. As I said, I read the transcript of the hearings you had. There were six wonderful groups, and in fact I really champion the work they do. It's important work. Some of those groups are advocates, and we can't have advocates teaching our judges. We need the balance. So if we have a prosecutor—

Status of Women committee  Well, we have to be careful about balance for the judges. One example is that when we have a prosecutor come to talk about something involving criminal law, we will always have someone from the defence bar. There needs to be balance. I understand that some of these advocates that you've heard from appear before the courts.

Status of Women committee  The best I can say to that is that these statistics tend to show us that all federally appointed trial judges—except for some understandable exceptions such as family emergencies and so on and so forth—attend their two court-based programs each year. Those court-based programs tend to be two and a half to three days long, so that's six days right there.

Status of Women committee  I would point out that most courts also have some in-house education as well. We don't do all the training.

Status of Women committee  You could probably, if you added that in...you'd certainly err in the range of 10 days.

Status of Women committee  That is a very difficult question to answer because, as I've said before, when we put on a course dealing with mental illness, there may be elements of it that deal with gender-based violence and how those two intersect. It's a very difficult thing to do on a quantity basis as opposed to quality—

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Let me turn this over to Maître Sabourin, because I think that falls under his umbrella. The NJI does design and deliver the courses, but it is the chiefs and the judges who decide what courses to attend.

Status of Women committee  I can't be that specific, but I can tell you that requiring what we call “reserve reasons”, like written reasons, could possibly delay the outcome for litigants. Let's face it: litigants are first interested in being successful, but secondly, in finding out the results and not being left in limbo.

Status of Women committee  It's not something that I can talk about because I think it would fall within the administration of justice and what the provinces want to do. I will tell you my practice. If I know that the litigants lack funds, I will start my judgment with “Madam Clerk, would you please order the transcript of my reasons to be prepared and have them delivered to both sides at the cost of the provincial government?”