First and foremost, I do want to thank the committee again for having us. We really appreciate being here.
In terms of crown prosecutors, I'll just speak from my own personal experience when I went to trial with my case. The crown prosecutor indicated that they didn't have enough time to even talk to me. For me that was the most heartbreaking part of the experience. I had to deal with the Ottawa Police and detectives. They collected my testimony, and then even before it went to trial it was pleaded out of court. I begged the crown prosecutor to take five minutes and meet with me, but they indicated that they were just too busy.
Then after doing some research into it, I found out that a lot of crown prosecutors are overworked and there are just not enough resources for them to do their jobs. Even before we talk about training for crown prosecutors, I think it's really important that we recognize that the system is rather burdened. They have high caseloads and high turnover, and the development of expertise is tough.
I think, as we move forward, that the federal government needs to reach out to provincial governments, and as lawyers are trained provincially in the schools of education, they definitely look at this being a mandatory part of training. A number of our staff and volunteers, who have just finished their law degrees or are lawyers with our team, have never even talked about LGBTQ issues, let alone disability, race, or intersectionality.
The notion that you can go from kindergarten to the end of a law degree without talking about these really critical issues is shocking. Also, while I understand that this now becomes a provincial and territorial issue, I do think that leadership from folks at your table has the power to reach out to ministers of education about this problem you are seeing at the federal level and...how they might address it even before it becomes a problem moving forward. There's a long-term thing to address there, but also a short-term thing.
I also do recognize that the training—and I'll be very brief, because I know those folks want to speak—