Justice committee  Thank you. I would like to begin by acknowledging that we have the honour and privilege today of meeting on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin nation. Thank you for inviting our organization to speak today on Bill C-375. I'm the director of advocacy and legal

Status of Women committee  International tools are there, actually—

Status of Women committee  —to assist in that as well.

Status of Women committee  There are a number of ways. I think the importance here is to start engaging and asking those questions and finding answers. We don't have all of the solutions worked out. What we know is what's not working. Absolutely, we're trying to work with systems that aren't working.

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure, actually, that I'm comfortable speaking on a classification tool because that operates under the presumption that—

Status of Women committee  —people will be in prisons, and we are, as you know, prison abolitionists. As I said, Moira Law wrote a great report. The CSC didn't publish it. I do have a copy of that report. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send it out. As I suggested, she recommends that all women

Status of Women committee  Okay.

Status of Women committee  I think there are two mental health beds currently for women—two.

Status of Women committee  Yes, under section 29. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, CSC has had requests and has just have not acted on them. CSC will tell you that there isn't an interest and that it's not possible. In fact, I heard from a member of CSC in a meeting that they're not looking at section 29

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely: women need more vocational options than sewing.

Status of Women committee  No, I'm not familiar with the program, but it's not surprising to me that the healing lodges run by CSC wouldn't allow certain programming like that. Unfortunately, the CSC-run healing lodges have become increasingly more secure environments. In fact, section 81 doesn't require t

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  To do away with a judge's discretion means that you cannot consider the context of a woman's crime, and women's crimes absolutely need to be placed in their context. If it's a violent crime, there's often resistive violence. Often, there's abuse that has led to the crime.

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. We would be of the opinion that it absolutely needs to be reinstated. It was a very big hit to women in prison that they couldn't benefit from accelerated parole. There are a few women who still qualify because of the dates of the investigations for their crime,