Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to try to get to everyone, but in my limited time, I'm going to start with Ms. Dover when I get to a question.
I just want to go over this. One of our last witnesses was the Six Nations chief. He was talking about the escalation in offences. We're talking about eliminating mandatory prison time for things like weapons trafficking, discharging firearm with intent, robbery and extortion, and adding to that eliminating mandatory prison time for drug dealers, trafficking and production of fentanyl, crystal meth and cocaine. The chief was saying that those are what's common now where he's policing and that to eliminate the mandatory prison time would actually have an adverse effect.
To add to that, we're talking about conditional sentencing where people could get conditional sentences for sexual assault, trafficking in persons, abduction of a person under 14 and assault causing bodily harm with a weapon. These people are put back into the community to live and now there's retaliation happening from the victims.
Sometimes it appears to some of the people we've talked to that the victims' rights are kind of being undermined a bit by trying to maybe help or do something more with the offenders. I think we really have to look at how we got to this point.
Ms. Dover, you really had a good story with the prison art. I've got quite a career in law enforcement, so I do understand that. When we look at how we can actually—forget this—talk about if there is some way that we could actually go back.... I think restorative justice is great for after the fact, but how do we get into, say, a crime reduction or prevention program, where we actually prevent crime from happening?
We did have one witness quite awhile ago who talked about a 15-year program that they were involved in. They started off with four-, five- and six-year-old children and worked all the way through to give them choices and to show them what was right and what was wrong. They had huge success. The problem with those crime prevention programs is they're long term and they're very expensive. I know you've also had some dealings with the indigenous peoples' court in Ontario, which could be expanded as well.
I wonder if you can maybe just comment a bit with your expertise and help us go further with a long-term solution that you might have in mind.