Public Safety committee  I think you were also asking if we need to have sufficient resources for assessment, diagnosis, and identification of people, who can then get access to services, because if you're not identified as needing those services, you're not going to get access to them. So, absolutely,

Public Safety committee  I think I did say there are human resource problems in the health system generally for everyone, and we know these are going to increase over the next five to ten years as a lot of people retire—or maybe fewer people are going to retire sooner now. But certainly building the capa

Public Safety committee  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would say that the primary barrier is still stigma. It's still whether people seek treatment or not, and whether people who are around them are willing to recognize it also. So you're hypothesizing that we have all of the capacity,

Public Safety committee  I'm not aware of what training they currently get, but in general it would certainly be a good idea to increase their capacity to deal with people who have problems and to manage behaviour in ways that are helpful rather than unhelpful to people.

Public Safety committee  I think that's really important. It's always important to give people better tools to do their jobs, and this would be one of them, both on the stigma front--the recognition front you're talking about--and sensitivity. And there's no question that increasing all of the Correction

Public Safety committee  I mean, we've established that I don't have the on-the-ground experience that some members of your committee do. The conditions in prisons, where you have a lot of people living together, you have isolation from support systems and so on—the hallmarks of large institutions—as wel

Public Safety committee  Partly, to the extent it's possible, change the culture, deal with the stigma of both correctional officers and other inmates about what it means to have a mental health problem. I think we're starting to address some of that issue in the society generally. It would be nice to se

Public Safety committee  I've heard that 80% have substance use issues and could well have some kind of underlying mental illness. I don't accept that they're always exactly the same together, but a very high percentage have substance use problems.

Public Safety committee  We offer aboriginal services. We work quite extensively in that area, and I agree with what my colleague Mr. Sirotich has said, which is that it's important to be culturally sensitive. Traditional teachings may well communicate with people we can't reach any other way, so I think

Public Safety committee  I've had experience, not in London but in Birmingham, visiting a prison there, where a unit was operated by the local mental health trust. Their experience was that they found it very difficult to deliver the services properly because the mental health treatment unit was located

Public Safety committee  The thing you're talking about is actually something that's the subject of the Ontario Mental Health Act. It's the mental health act that allows people to be committed to psychiatric treatment if they are a danger to themselves or others. We incarcerate people in correctional fac

Public Safety committee  No, I don't know the specific reception centres. I know that there are, I think, five of them across the country and so on, but I don't know specific ones, no.

Public Safety committee  No.

Public Safety committee  My understanding is that there is a great deal already provided, but that it's insufficient.

Public Safety committee  There are not enough of these services, and I understand that the testimony before this committee has been that about half of the people who are in serious need of services are not receiving them. So I'm not saying there's nothing happening, but from what others have told you who