Public Safety committee  They're your neighbours. They're often people who belong to a faith community. They're moms and dads. I have to tell you, when I looked at the folks sitting around the table at our retreat, there were 30-year-old people with new families, with young children, some of them churc

Public Safety committee  If you talk to a room full of people and say, “How about it? Let's provide the support and accountability network for sexual offenders,” they'll run you out of the room. And if you go back to your constituencies and say that, you're not going to get re-elected. But if you're talk

Public Safety committee  The committee has them.

Public Safety committee  The support that's provided to people coming out of jail, first of all, provides stability. One of the largest protective factors against reoffending that I can think of is stability in terms of housing, in terms of relationships, in terms of a place to go during the day to comba

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  The organizations I have just mentioned I would see as intermediaries and not as people who would actually invest. The organizations I've mentioned don't have any money to invest. But yes, absolutely, while we have ethical concerns and we see that there may be some ethical ques

Public Safety committee  I mentioned that the Correctional Service of Canada was the primary funder outside of the National Crime Prevention Centre. So prior to NCPC's involvement—and your summation of the involvement of NCPC is entirely correct——the other organizations that were involved in terms of fun

Public Safety committee  Thank you. That's a great question. It has occurred to us that if we were to have a corporate investor, along with government, in Circles of Support and Accountability, they might hesitate. Indeed, the comment in the last presentation was that perhaps there's the tendency to go

Public Safety committee  Yes. I was at a COSA retreat this week. We claim to be a community-based group and so we're now looking at our communities and our provinces to replace at least some of the funding. Some of our circles will fail. They don't have the backing in their communities and are unable to

Public Safety committee  I think the social justice and criminal justice areas are probably the places where you'd find the most immediate benefit. Certainly, I would recommend a program like ours, to be selfish about it, and say it's ready for that kind of investment. I don't know who would invest in it

Public Safety committee  Not particularly. We haven't gone after individual investors. We have been educating ourselves as much as possible in terms of what this is. The findings from Great Britain, I understand, are actually quite mixed in terms of success and effectiveness, so we're mindful of that. At

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and committee members. It's a pleasure to be here to address parliamentarians in my country and to talk to you about something that I'm very passionate about. Unfortunately, I don't have a formal presentation to make to you today. My call to the committe

Justice committee  I think what I want to say, and emphasize, is that, as Ms. Kennedy has just said, the safety of the victim is always paramount. They should not routinely be left in the home. I'm certainly not saying that. I'm not saying that at all. In fact, in part of my submission I said that

Justice committee  I have no specific comment on it that would not be subsumed under my comments to date.

Justice committee  I don't think I'm advocating that in all cases of an incest offence the perpetrator should be left in the home.