The community courts project that I was referring to.... I believe the first one was in Vancouver. I'm on the Justice Sector Constellation, where we recently obtained approval for a small grant to start a project of our own in Calgary. What we're doing right now is figuring out how that's going to work logistically.
Even before sentencing, before it gets to the stage of incarceration and all those things, the key is to start tackling the issues that have caused the accused to end up in the court system in the first place. Right now in Calgary, for instance, they've created a mental health court. There's drug court in Edmonton. These courts are extremely effective, but they seem to just focus on one problem area. We're starting to realize more and more, as we look into it, that there's an array of issues: it's housing, it's income, it's displacement, and it's mental health issues. You need an all-encompassing court that can look at all those issues. You're in the mental health court, but you may have a drug problem. That's the problem: all these pilot projects are focusing on one area, when all of us know there are numerous areas that are problematic and that cause these people to end up in the justice system.
Community courts kind of aim to tackle that, and that's why I feel it's a better system. It looks at everything, rather than just focusing on one problem area.