Justice committee  One reason, as I said, that I like the proposal is that within the legislative proposal, vulnerability is mentioned without necessarily enumerating it specifically. There is, as has been indicated before this committee, a disproportionate overrepresentation of indigenous people at all phases in our criminal justice system as well as in our correctional system.

Justice committee  The extent to which administration of justice offences have been used and continue to be used in the youth courts, in particular against girls, is problematic. We need an overhaul, a serious look at those provisions, and the reinstitution of the Law Commission—I like to say that whenever I can—so there can be a systematic study of the way the criminal justice system is operating, the way the law is operating, and it should be done not on this incremental basis, but by looking at the Criminal Code as a whole.

Justice committee  If I might, with respect to Ashley Smith, it's my own findings of my Ph.D. research that she had no mental health diagnoses before entering corrections custody and specifically before spending long years in solitary confinement. I really take exception, and my own conclusion is in fact, with respect, that this analysis is incorrect.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Honourable members of this committee, I want to begin not with numbers, but by reading an excerpt from a letter to the editor published in the Moncton Times & Transcript on November 2 of the year 2005. It reads: Dear Editor: I’m writing this letter because I believe the community should know.