Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think I'll start with the last question and then I'll forget the first question, I'm sure.
I've had the opportunity to visit the Youth Mental Health Court, which is right here in Ottawa. I strongly recommend it to members of the committee, because its approach is totally different. It is funded by Justice Canada, and I have met with the presiding judge. It's just across the street from the Lord Elgin Hotel. It's not far from here at all.
The approach is multi-disciplinary and very similar to Judge Green's court in Saint John, New Brunswick, which is still a pilot project after ten years. I have regretted that publicly, that it is still a pilot project. The approach of a mental health court is of course to identify offenders who suffer from mental illness or severe behaviour disorders. They're treated in a much different way. The tendency is to divert them away from the formal criminal justice system towards treatment and support.
In Judge Green's court, for instance, 85% of those who appear before that court do not reoffend. It would be interesting to see numbers on reoffenders who are treated differently in our justice system, our more formal justice system. I would think the numbers would be much, much higher. So I think there are really, really good models out there. They're still quite new. The legislation is new, as I have said. As a former elected official myself, I've sat on several similar committees. I think it is really crucial for the members to get as much information as they can get. I sat during the consultation in Moncton. I can't say that I know what was said across the country, but certainly in Moncton, including from law enforcement officials, the idea was that what we have in place is not working. They're often at a loss. Judges have told us in our research for Connecting the Dots and the Ashley Smith report that they often have few options. I've expressed the concern over the fact that our New Brunswick Youth Centre has more adults than youth as prisoners, as we speak, on this day.
We're building two new jails in New Brunswick, and if you adopt these amendments I suppose we'll be building more jails. The cost will be passed on to the provinces, so in tough economic and fiscal times, provincially and federally, we'll be spending more resources in building more jails and hiring more guards to get the opposite results of what we want. I think that was expressed at the round table in Moncton. I don't know if Bilodeau wrote the report. He was acting as the facilitator, but certainly I have been told that there is a report in the hands of Justice Canada. I would think you would want to get it, to be as informed as you can be before voting on these amendments.