Justice committee  Think about sentences for aggravated assault, for example. These are circumstances where somebody beats the living tar out of somebody. It's not to the level of an attempted murder, but it's really bad. It's maiming and injuring. In that circumstance, we have a dialogue and stories within the justice system that ensure that there are jail responses to serious offences.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Fortin. I could keep you all day with thoughts about victims. What if we had a criminal justice system that responded to victims by saying, “That never should have happened to you”? What if there were a measure of accountability when recidivism happened, and offenders who had been to jail and had been through this system had not been helped?

Justice committee  It's “yes but”. Yes, we should follow Gladue, but it is broadly misunderstood. Gladue was the second case in time that formed a bridge between the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the history of colonization and the breakdown of the relationship between Canada and indigenous people.

Justice committee  Thank you so much for your question. I appreciate it. I want to say a couple of things. If you bring a plumber to your house and ask for input on a renovation, she's going to point to your pipes. I understand that the chief of police thinks about the types of solutions to underlying problems that might be available to criminal law.

Justice committee  Good afternoon. Thank you so much for inviting me to come to present. It feels today a little bit like I've crawled up from the grit and grime of the front line of the criminal justice system and am now sitting in polite company and not quite sure what fork to use. On any day in those frontline criminal courts, you are going to encounter a parade of people who suffer from mental health and addiction issues, poverty and racialization.