Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
And thank you very much to the committee for inviting our organization to appear and to present testimony before this committee with respect to Bill C-10. I'm here, as you've indicated, representing the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. I'm joined by one of my board members, who is also the co-chair of our social action committee, Professor Debra Parkes. She's also a law professor at the University of Manitoba. So I'm very pleased that she was able to join us as well, and thank you very much for inviting her.
I will skip over who our organization is because it was just a few weeks ago I was here when we were speaking about Bill C-9. But suffice it to say that our organization works with both victimized and criminalized and imprisoned women within the criminal justice system. Our agencies, our 25 members across the country, provide services that range from working with those who have been victimized to those who have ended up in the prison system. It's in this context that we offer our testimony.
Our testimony primarily focuses around a couple of areas, as you'll see from our brief. I won't repeat everything that's in our brief. I'll merely summarize to say that we do have concerns about Bill C-10. Our main concerns have to do with the extent to which we see much of what is being presented as contrary to the principles of sentencing that exist.