I can give you quite a bit of experience from my role as a justice of the peace in Saskatchewan. For example, Saskatchewan spends $600 million a year on justice, and the Canadian government spends $660 million. Those are huge numbers when you look at a small province like Saskatchewan spending that kind of money.
What I found is that the biggest issue is administrative justice. What I mean by that is, for example, the number of conditions that are put on people, particularly aboriginal people, who make up the largest majority in Saskatchewan, unfortunately. Those conditions are set up to fail. I mean, two jump out right away. Take the example of drinking. What they do in the court process is to attach 30 days to a condition. The court will add that condition, and then what happens with somebody who has a drinking problem, which we know is a disease or a health issue, is that there's a definite expectation that they're going to fail. That's a huge one.
The other issue is that a lot of our people have mental health issues and they, unfortunately, go through the system as well. Again, they're set up to fail with respect to those conditions that are put on. When I was working in the justice field there, you'd see upwards of 25 conditions put on somebody. A lot of times they would just sign on to get out. It's costing us millions and millions of dollars as taxpayers, when we could address that issue. There are certain ways we could do it. We just need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
I believe that we could save millions and millions of dollars. I'm concerned, for example, that Saskatchewan could hit a billion dollars in spending on justice within the next few years, and that's a lot of money.