Madam Speaker, during the 2019 election, I met with leaders of the Black community in Toronto, at a meeting in Scarborough.
They were univocal in asking us to support the kinds of programming they did. Around the table, there were ministers, in the religious sense, other community workers and ex-convicts who were working in their communities. They were developing programs that worked with kids, after-school programs that kept kids out of gangs.
They said that they wanted me to get these kinds of programs supported so that we would not send kids to jail, because when we send them to jail, they just end up becoming hardened criminals.
In the fall economic statement, we have supported community justice pilot projects in cities like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, precisely to target these cultural communities and to give police officers and prosecutors alternatives to divert people from the criminal justice system.