Status of Women committee  Is that for me? I don't have the statistics on that, but I've interviewed people myself—hundreds, probably thousands—and yes, a lot of times that is the case. They don't have a place to go to. They don't have an income. As I said, they're perpetual problems that are, you know...

Status of Women committee  This is why I mentioned the victims. Often the crown would take the position that they are advocates for the victims, not the accused. I think that in itself is a problematic outlook. This is why I was saying that it's really important to change the way we think about justice, be

Status of Women committee  That's right.

Status of Women committee  There are two things. With FASD, the biggest challenge we had on the network was assessments. To diagnose FASD is not as simple as some people may think. One of the other panel members mentioned that there are sometimes many complex issues. We found that it's very expensive to d

Status of Women committee  Yes. That's the biggest problem, I think. Much of it involves playing for votes. I'm not taking a shot at any government in particular, but that's part of it. The other part is that these community courts and such things are very costly on the front end. As you said, though, in

Status of Women committee  I don't feel at this point that institutions, both federal and provincial, do a good job of rehabilitating people. If there's any diversion that you can do.... There are many things, such as restorative justice, and I've already mentioned drug court, mental health court, and thin

Status of Women committee  I can comment on the crown side of it. When we were doing this community court project, just getting a crown, for instance, to agree to work with us in this way was tremendously difficult, which speaks volumes to the crown's willingness to actually make a positive impact. We had

Status of Women committee  The community courts project that I was referring to.... I believe the first one was in Vancouver. I'm on the Justice Sector Constellation, where we recently obtained approval for a small grant to start a project of our own in Calgary. What we're doing right now is figuring out h

Status of Women committee  Challenges such as....?

Status of Women committee  Honestly, I have a personal opinion concerning jury selection, but it's not a professional opinion. I wouldn't feel comfortable answering that.

Status of Women committee  Thank you. My name is Lowell Carroll, and I'm the Manager for the Legal Services Centres in Calgary, Red Deer, and Siksika Nation. I'm a former member of the FASD network in Red Deer, Alberta, and I'm also a current member of the Justice Sector Constellation, which is a committe