Public Safety committee  The bill is not primarily about the delivery of mental health care, although there are some pieces to it. In my view, the bill is flawed for the reasons I talked about at the beginning. I think it will actually expand rather than reduce the use of segregation. I do think it is flawed for that reason.

Public Safety committee  About indigenous women in particular, I was just out at the Fraser Valley Institution this week with my students here at the law school. We met with women in the minimum-security unit who should be ready for release, and they are entirely idle with their time. They talked to me about how they have absolutely virtually nothing.

Public Safety committee  I don't have specifics in front of me. That would be a good question for CSC. Maybe you've already asked it of them in terms of the demographics of the staffing. Certainly, I guess the way I see it is that it goes to issues of diversity in terms of staffing but also to training.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  Exactly. The decision-making and the review process are all entirely internal to Correctional Services. As far back as Justice Louise Arbour's report in 1996 to the task force on administrative segregation to the most recent court decisions, we've had all these years of recommendations saying we need external oversight.

Public Safety committee  Yes. Those data come from the Corrections itself and through the correctional investigator. They show a whole range of reasons. Some are mental health reasons. People are engaging in self-harm or are seen as a threat to themselves. It's essentially for their own safety. Sometimes they're in a dispute with another prisoner.

Public Safety committee  You may have already heard from Josh Paterson of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. I know that they will have significant submissions on that. The reality is that oversight needs to be independent of Corrections. In fact, without that, this bill is unconstitutional. I think it's very clear.

Public Safety committee  I'll just say one other thing about that. The other way that there's a failure to consider Gladue factors—or the misuse that I think Ms. Finestone was talking about—is in setting the correctional plan itself. If you are assessed as having all these needs and they translate into risks, that means you have to do all these additional things in your correctional plan to be able to get released.

Public Safety committee  [Technical difficulty—Editor]

Public Safety committee  You can hear me now. I was just calling my tech guy, but I didn't do anything. Should we let Jonathan go ahead?

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I've been researching issues associated with imprisonment in Canada for more than 20 years. My research focuses on charter rights issues in imprisonment, including solitary confinement, segregation, oversight and accountability of corrections, and on the imprisonment of women in particular.

Justice committee  I don't know that I understand the question.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  That is an interesting point. If anything, making these offences, which are otherwise pure indictable, summary convictions would maybe signal that there's a lower end that ought not to be receiving the high punishments. Yes, I am concerned that in this move to open up hybridization and to open up opportunities in provincial court for summary conviction and supposedly for the efficiency benefits that would come up with that, that we've also included all of the other offences, as you said, and raised the ceiling on those.

Justice committee  I'm not optimistic. I think if you're not satisfied, you should be concerned about this. It would be better than nothing to have that language in there, so I would support that. However, I do still worry, and the research from numerous jurisdictions shows, that when you start raising the ceiling this way, you do have that inflationary effect.