Thank you so much for appearing today in front of our committee.
Last week I was at a grade 10 civics class where we were discussing the reports and the fact that one in four young students has a sexual assault case in the first eight weeks of going to school. We started talking about the judges. I don't believe many Canadians know—I know that the teacher, who is very up on what goes on in Canadian law, could not believe it—that Canadian judges do not already have experience in understanding sexual violence when appointed to the bench. I explained that you could be a bankruptcy lawyer, or somebody who does real estate law—you could be any of those things—so I think it's really important.
But recently we have seen the Province of Ontario coming out—I think it was on March 15.... This is how the conversation continued with the students. They were concerned too: why would we see some provinces say they were not going to make this happen, when we know that we have had cases in which it's very obvious that because of a lack of training and a lack of understanding we aren't getting appointments that provide the best results for the judicial system?
What do we do when some provinces do not want to do this? I recognize that we're talking about specifically new judges here, which is great, but what about current judges who are sitting on the bench? Is there anything we would be able to do, or is that area going to be 100% within provincial jurisdiction?