Justice committee  That was actually one of the questions that came up when we were asked to come and present. We started to realize that we don't know what other provinces do. I believe we're the only provincial professional association. There used to be one in British Columbia, but it doesn't loo

Justice committee  Absolutely.

Justice committee  Because I'm in a small community, we have contact directly with our judges, so we have those conversations often. There's a lack of resources in small communities, but I'm sure in larger centres, there's maybe not a lack of resources, but waiting lists and such so it's still diff

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  No. I know that's an ongoing concern for us. We can gather the released information, and the client could be willing to have us gather that information, but when you forward the information to the physician...there have been issues with having them send us a fee for service or fo

Justice committee  I think in Ontario, since we do it already, we will continue to do it. I think it may lead to more challenges, if we are compelled to do it legally, if we aren't able to follow through. With all the barriers in place, we—

Justice committee  Absolutely.

Justice committee  Absolutely. The resource problem is already an issue. I think where I would struggle, or where we would struggle, is if the legislation compelled us to do this, and we provided the information to the court. I would want to make sure that it's clear that there is not an expectatio

Justice committee  First and foremost, when we move forward, the gathering of information for a pre-sentence report is sort of the beginning piece. The guts of our work is working with the offenders and looking at their level of motivation to make changes. When you have a client with a mental heal

Justice committee  I do. However, my concern would be saying to a client, especially one with mental health issues, “You are compelled to give me the information.” I don't think I can say that to an offender who is in front of me. It's the offender's right to share information with me, or not. I wo

Justice committee  Absolutely. Each report is different, so if we have a first-time offender in front of us with no mental health issues, you could probably prepare a pre-sentence report in 10 hours. The average is about 15 hours. To clarify, we already include this information in our reports. Thi

Justice committee  Yes, exactly.

Justice committee  Probation and parole officers recommend conditions in a pre-sentence report that best suit the needs of the offender, with consideration, of course, to victim safety and the safety of the general public. One of the challenges faced by probation and parole officers is that commu