Thank you, Chair.
It is an absolute pleasure to join this committee today.
Mr. Brown, you mentioned record suspensions, and I couldn't agree with you more. It's something I was really pleased to see in the budget in terms of dealing with those mean-spirited increases in the record suspension fee, which meant that people couldn't apply. It is in the budget. There are 700 pages there, so I am not surprised if you may have missed that, but it is something that we're committed to changing.
I want to thank all the witnesses today for your testimony. You've been talking a lot about indigenous peoples, Black Canadians and racialized Canadians who are disproportionately impacted by their being touched by the criminal justice system. It costs us $330 a day to put someone into prison, and that's not the place where most of them need to be.
Because you've brought up those issues, I want to focus on Bill C-22, because that bill does include reducing mandatory minimum sentences, drug diversion and conditional sentences. It's dealing with a number of issues that you've all touched on as being of concern.
There was a study that was done of 44 indigenous women—the fastest-growing prison population in Canada—who received conditional sentences prior to 2012. It was found that 36 of them would have been ineligible to receive a conditional sentence under the Harper government restrictions. I met two of them when I visited the Edmonton Institute for Women. They were women who should not have been in jail, and because they were in jail, it was going to impact the rest of their lives.
I'm just wondering if each of you could maybe talk a bit about how important it is to get Bill C-22 passed—and passed quickly.