Public Safety committee  I think it's extremely important. I think having adequate housing, and particularly supportive housing, for people coming out of prison is absolutely key. Ex-prisoners don't always understand that they have housing issues. If they feel they have a couch to sleep on in somebody's

Public Safety committee  It's a terribly serious problem. I have been on a journey to try to learn more about it. There are many who know way more about indigenous issues than I do, but I've been speaking to many Black prisoners about the experiences they've had. One in particular, when he was 19 or 20

Public Safety committee  Sorry, it was too long an answer.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Chair, and committee members. It's good to be here. There are very few words to describe the current state of corrections in Canada today. Crisis, lawless, unaccountable and tragic would be some of them. In my 30 years as a lawyer I have never seen failings of this m

Public Safety committee  Regarding violence, images are more powerful. I would encourage everyone to take a look at the recently released video of the Black prisoner who was assaulted at Millhaven institution. I'd be happy to answer any questions on that. In conclusion, the failure of the Correctional S

Public Safety committee  Yes. We found that access to legal services has diminished during COVID, mainly because there were extremely serious lockdowns. People were confined to their cells for excessive periods of time. They weren't getting the medical treatment that they needed for other underlying cond

Public Safety committee  I think a lot of things could have been improved if there had been goodwill and more of a creative way to approach these things. I mean, you can see this. I talked to a lot of prisoners during this period, and they kept asking, “Why are you putting the prisoners who are ill in th

Public Safety committee  Oh, I have a lot more, but that's okay.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the time.

Public Safety committee  I had an opportunity to visit the structured intervention units in January. They had been up and running for a couple of months anyway, and they were pretty disorganized. I went to the one at Millhaven. I'm happy to send you my notes. I'll send those to the clerk.

Public Safety committee  Right. I'd be happy to send my notes to you. You can see my initial observations.

Public Safety committee  Sure. I'd be happy to do that.

Justice committee  Thank you very much, Chair and committee members. It's a great pleasure to be here before you to share The John Howard Society's views on Bill C-5. For those of you who don't know about The John Howard Society, we are a not-for-profit that is committed to just, effective and hum

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I was talking about the benefits of conditional sentencing and how the two-year limit that is proposed in Bill C-5 seems unduly restrictive. The other thing I would suggest is that, if we're going to determine whether or not conditional sentences are havin

Justice committee  There is little doubt that having mandatory minimums actually slows down the court process. There are enormous backlogs now because of COVID-19, so removing as many mandatary minimums as you can should ease some of the pressure on the court system. The reason why it delays the c