Status of Women committee  I'm not entirely sure about that. During that solitary confinement trial, I was surprised to learn that some of the statistics that corrections are keeping aren't the sorts of things I thought. I thought they would have a sense of the prevalence of mental health issues in people

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure. I think just as we are all different people with different aspirations and needs, the indigenous members of society who come out of prison are making choices about where they're going to live and where the best supports may be. For some of them, that may be back on

Status of Women committee  I do. I think if we look at some of the challenges that the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has experienced around that, they've managed to come up with some sort of process that might cut across those jurisdictional, ministerial, or departme

Status of Women committee  I'm from Grande Prairie so I'm familiar with some of this. Absolutely, I think there are ways to do it. As I said, I think the will is there but sometimes we just have difficulty thinking outside the traditional ways in which we work or the boxes we've put our work into. I think

Status of Women committee  You want me to comment on the disadvantages of mandatory minimum sentences. Yes, I think that mandatory minimum sentences strip away what the sentencing judge is supposed to do. They undermine the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code asks our sentencing judges to set a fit and propo

Status of Women committee  Ms. Metcalfe might be better positioned to answer this because she spends more time in prisons. I know they've made commitments to increasing the numbers of indigenous staff, elders, and those sorts of things. I think that's good. That certainly is better than not having those i

Status of Women committee  Yes, I'm happy to see that's happening. Again, I said that sort of cynical thing, that CSC doesn't often volunteer to change. I think this is another example of media attention to particularly egregious situations like those of Ashley Smith, Eddie Snowshoe, and others really shed

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. I am very pleased to table that 2017 CEDAW report card. We put that out every year. This one was just released last week. It's an assessment of how British Columbia is doing in terms of Canada's obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Status of Women committee  Do you want to go first, Jennifer?

Status of Women committee  No, and West Coast LEAF, in partnership with another legal organization called the B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre, brought a lawsuit challenging the way B.C. has underfunded family law legal aid. It's a case called Single Mothers' Alliance v. British Columbia, and it's real

Status of Women committee  No. I understand that in response to the Auditor General's report, CSC has adopted or accepted the recommendations made in that report. Maybe there will be something on the horizon, but what we see constantly is a huge disconnect between law and policy and between policy and prac

Status of Women committee  Oh, yes. There was a case that West Coast LEAF intervened in called Inglis a few years ago, which was about the cancellation of a mother and baby program at a provincial jail. If you read that decision, you find it's full of all of the evidence that shows how it's really so much

Status of Women committee  Sure, and I think that maybe dovetails nicely with what you were asking Ms. Metcalfe about, and I agree with her. I think, when we think of indigenous communities, we sometimes have this idea of this sort of idyllic community that exists in this pristine way that hasn't changed s

Status of Women committee  Yes, for me as well, and solitary confinement.

Status of Women committee  I am on that one. I mean, decarceration absolutely, but if we're going to look at something that's sort of before the courts right now, then I would say solitary confinement for everyone, but certainly for indigenous women and certainly for men and women with mental health concer