It's wonderful to have two former attorneys general around the table with me here this afternoon.
There is a mountain of evidence on conditional sentence orders and this kind of flexibility in sentencing, which shows a positive impact, not just for the rehabilitation and reintegration of the offender, but for victims and communities. Having conditional sentence orders allows us to attack the real problem, be it problematic addiction, intergenerational trauma in the case of racialized communities, poverty or a lack of housing. Those are the problems we need to attack.
What a conditional sentence order allows us to do, instead of sending a person to jail—and oftentimes, in the case of a woman, then having to take her kids into custody—is to keep that person at home and getting the treatments they need, perhaps keeping their job and staying around the community supports they have.
I would also add that it enables us to realize the potential of the investments we are making for indigenous people with Gladue reports, which allow a sentencing judge to craft a sentence based on what is in that Gladue report.
We have started a pilot project on IRCAs—impact of race and culture assessments—in Nova Scotia, in Montreal and in Toronto. An IRCA allows, in the sentencing of Black offenders, a similar kind of sentencing report to a Gladue report. Again, a conditional sentence order allows for the potential there—without a minimum mandatory penalty, with no harm and no public safety threat to the community—for the judge to actually craft a sentence that will be beneficial to everybody in the community: the victim, the offender and everyone around them. It also allows communities to take charge of sentencing and rehabilitation in a very positive and proactive way. This is something that expert groups, particularly across North America, are recommending.