Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the Queen's Prison Law Clinic for your work. It's good to have your testimony today.
This committee received a referral on a bill about sexual assault training for judges. I was really happy that the NDP was able to get the committee's support to amend the bill to include in the development of training for judges a mandatory requirement to have women's groups consulted, those that have on-the-ground experience, and to have survivors of sexual assault consulted. Some really high-profile and terrible examples suggested that the bench needed more training in this area.
We had one particular quote from Nneka MacGregor, who is the executive director of the Women's Centre for Social Justice. She said that we “must include the voices of those individuals who have lived” through the justice system “because it's [their] experience that's actually going to change the perception and the understanding”.
This bill is stuck in the Senate right now, so it hasn't actually been implemented. Can you talk a bit about the importance of those voices on the ground to influence how judges understand their responsibility and do their work, and then to have that training influence their sentencing?