It's a very important issue and it's a subset of a much broader set of issues. The criminal justice system, from policing to prosecutions to courts, has become, if you like, the catcher's mitt for many other issues in society that are not being dealt with, many of them involving mental health, addictions, other things with which the justice system is, as with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, very ill-equipped.
You'll hear from police and you'll hear from others over the course of your mandate about the extent to which much of their time is taken up trying to deal with issues for which the criminal justice system.... It's not in that sense a legal problem that lawyers, judges, or police are equipped or enabled to deal with.
There is no particular money in these supplementary estimates that address this issue. There is ongoing work. This has been an ongoing topic of discussion with the provinces and territories. For example, Yukon, Saskatchewan, and other jurisdictions have been real leaders in trying to work through the issues associated with what happens when someone with FASD comes into contact with the justice system, as to what is the best response and how do we prevent them from coming into contact with the justice system.
That work demonstrates what an intractable problem this is. It is not something where a pill or a treatment is easy to identify. It represents a range of issues. A part of what the justice system asks of people is to show up to court on time and then follow the rules that are set if they're released. All of those things cause a collision with the system as it's structured now.
There is ongoing FPT work through some of our programming. Don Piragoff can speak more about it if you would like.
We are trying to help work through some of those issues, and find more restorative and alternative ways of addressing them, but this is an area like others where the health system and the difficulties associated with all of the choices that are made in the health system are reflected in an abundance of cases and difficulties that now are reflected in the criminal justice system. This is one. Addictions, mental health issues, and other kinds of issues are not ones that lawyers, judges, or police officers were ever or are ever going to be equipped to fix.