Justice committee  Yes. I've worked as a forensic psychologist throughout part of my career, and I know that probation officers and others spend a lot of time putting these pre-sentence reports together. It's just about having standards of what they bring into that. It's not a lot of extra work, if

Justice committee  That's correct, yes.

Justice committee  Absolutely, yes. There's a bit of a gap in what you're saying, and that's why. Yes, I get it.

Justice committee  That there is variability, yes.

Justice committee  In my experience, it's more likely that they have the information. I've been in the field for a number of years, and the nuances about what we call “mental illness” or “mental disorder” have been here for the last 20 to 30 years. However, it doesn't change the way we work on the

Justice committee  It would very simply not be applicable. The probation officer would say if it's not an applicable field. We're just asking them to—

Justice committee  Because this isn't a new practice, my understanding of jurisdictions where they do it is that it's based on the evidence available. The probation officers already have to make those decisions every day when they're writing pre-sentence reports about what is pertinent information.

Justice committee  My understanding is that if it's at pre-sentencing, they haven't met with a physician within the correctional facility yet. These pre-sentencing reports would be based on information the probation officers have, and the diagnosis or the background information they have could come

Justice committee  I think it's our understanding that it would positively impact marginalized communities more than anyone else, because I think they are also disproportionately experiencing many negative outcomes because of social and health inequities. For example, in B.C., while only 3.4% of th

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Well, that's a very, very good point, and I think that's the point we're making when we talk about our historic investment of about 7.2% of our health care budget in comparison to others that are doing 13% and 14%. It's a good question. The judge at least has the option. We kno

Justice committee  Absolutely. One of the things our field is great at is debating language. We debate what we think about the words “mental disorder”. It come from a DSM diagnostic category that physicians are taught, which is to put things into a disorder—substance use disorder, depressive disord

Justice committee  I enjoyed hearing that conversation, because I kind of understood where you were coming from. Again, we have the same debates. The word “treatment” in the field of mental health has historically been equated to beds, especially with substance use disorder: “Oh, to go to treatme

Justice committee  I would probably prefer the latter. Instead of “mental condition” even, we would say “mental health condition”, or—

Justice committee  I think because “disorder” is such a charged word, even though I grew up in the medical world and understand that it comes from the diagnostic manual [Technical difficulty—Editor], others aren't.