Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Halifax West for his question. He is a member of the Halifax community. He was there, and he knows how important this is to the folks at home.
I cannot answer his first question about my experience because I am not a lawyer. Everybody forgets that. I have a law degree and I worked as a community legal worker at Dalhousie Legal Aid, but I did not practise criminal law, so I cannot share any experiences of mens rea.
However, it certainly is a big topic in the study of law, whether or not a person actually knows what they are doing and has that awareness. That is the key thing when a person is found to be not criminally responsible. If a person did not know what they were doing, how could they take responsibility?
If we look at the criminal law, what is the purpose of it? It is to deter, to punish and to send the message to communities that this is what is acceptable and not acceptable. However, if we have someone whose mental health is in a state where they are barely even cognizant of being a member of that community, and they do not understand what is right and wrong, or even what they are doing, how do we address that? That is a mental health issue. I think we could certainly put more resources into that system.
Raymond Taavel did not have to die. That is a failure of our community, on lots of levels. I am not saying it was the failure of the East Coast Forensic Hospital, but it is a failure of our community and our mental health system overall.
Raymond's death could have been prevented if we could have had the political will to look the issue in the eye.