Thank you to the committee for the invitation to attend and provide testimony today.
Our organization works to address the persistent ways in which women and gender-diverse people impacted by criminalization are routinely denied their humanity and excluded from conversations of community. Even the use of the word “offender”, which is used throughout this legislation and in common parlance, serves to separate the people we work with from being considered part of the public in “public safety”. Our head office is located on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory.
The Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, which is known as LEAF, the Black Legal Action Centre, which is known as BLAC, and our organization have jointly submitted a brief to you. You will have already seen it, hopefully. It details our five areas of interest in this bill. As you are all very much aware, this bill seeks to reduce the structural racism, systemic discrimination and inequality that we know are a crisis in our justice system. This has been acknowledged at this committee by several witnesses and even by the Minister of Justice. We recognize this bill as a step toward that goal, though it does not go far enough, as Jonathan Rudin stated.
I also want to acknowledge Beth for sharing her story at the outset. It was really brave, and I thank her for that.
Today, we would like to offer context about the human and social impacts we see within this crisis.
I will turn it over to my colleague Nyki.