 I work for the Nova Scotia Barrister Society, and so for those of you who are not from Nova Scotia or even from Canada, we are the regulatory body for lawyers in the province of Nova Scotia, and so we regulate the practice of law in the province. We are a self-regulating profession here, so we are lawyers regulating one another, and we operate under an elected council, an elected council of lawyers and some members of the public who are not lawyers. So our mandate is to regulate lawyers in the public interest, and we've grappled probably since the beginning of time with that concept of what is the public interest and what is regulation in the public interest and how do we define and understand the public interest. And I'll kind of come back to that as I talk about thinking about the public interest from a restorative perspective. Our primary role is things like admissions, so who comes into the profession, credentialing, and then of course what you probably most think of, and if you know anything about the Barrister Society, probably the only thing you may know about is the discipline of lawyers, but actually that's only a small part of what we do. Another, what I would say the most important part of what we do, this is what I do, is around working on access to justice and building an equitable profession. So I work in the, I am the equity and access office of the Nova Scotia Barrister Society, and so I have a wide broad mandate to improve access to legal services in this province and to make a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse legal profession. So just a small job, no problems, I've got it covered. But you know, we're working on it. So my office, again for those of you who are not from Nova Scotia, was born out of the Marshall Commission. And the Marshall Commission is extremely important in Nova Scotia. It was a royal commission into the wrongful conviction of Donald Marshall Jr., who was an Indigenous man convicted of murdering, wrongly convicted of murdering an African Nova Scotia man. So through the commission, I won't go into it, but I recommend that you would look at this. It's really been an important part of developing our understanding of equity and justice, I would say across Canada, but we found through the commission there was a finding of racism and discrimination at every level in our justice system. So from the lawyers, to the police, to the front level court staff, to the judges. And so my office was one of a number of recommendations that came into play to address racism and discrimination in our justice system. So the mandate of the office is quite broad. Addressing access to justice and the administration of justice through access to legal services in the court. Addressing issues of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in the legal profession. And trying, as best we can to ensure that the legal profession adequately reflects the public that it serves. We have a long way to go on every single one of those runs. And I think that has to be said at the outset. We still have so much more work to be done, but we're starting and we're talking about it. And I think that's the first step. In access to justice, in terms of access to justice, there's been a huge amount of conversation across Canada. Many of you would have heard of the access to justice crisis, being called a crisis. What's being said, so the research suggests that only those sort of very wealthy and very poor have any access to our justice system at all. We have in family court 60 to 80% of people being self-represented. It's a very significant crisis and our justice system is very much failing our public to adequately serve the needs of our public. One of the sort of cornerstones of access to justice and there's a mantra that we work within is put the public first. So again, like the public interest, put the public first. Well, what does that mean? How do you put the public first? What do we do? You know, really what it's talking about is sort of moving away from a justice system that has traditionally been based as being for lawyers and judges and making things easiest for lawyers and judges to a system that is really about the public and understanding and supporting and making space for the public to take justice back or perhaps to take ownership of justice for the first time. We who are working in this area continue to struggle to understand sort of what is it that the public really needs from our justice system. How do we know? What do we know? What do we need to know and how do we need to change and how do we need to do better? And one of the initiatives that we've recently taken on is called Tuck Justice and so we've done a sort of widespread community engagement strategy working with community to better understand what are the issues and most of you in this room could probably name them but it's probably no surprise that the issues are for the most part very much relational issues. They aren't just about money. It is actually about a justice system that doesn't discriminate, a justice system that recognizes the humanity in the people that come in front of it. A justice system that treats people with dignity, with respect, with mutual concern. A relational justice system and that was when we did our work in the area of Tuck Justice, that was what we heard over and over again. The problem of course is that we know these things now but we're quite ill-equipped to handle and address that in this current system that we have. So we've really begun, I've begun and others have begun to think about what is a restorative approach to access to justice. How can we begin to build a justice system premised on these concepts of dignity, respect and mutual concern? What does a relational justice system look like? And it has been in this thinking and we are still in this thinking that has really begun to shape our work in terms of our work as a regulator, in terms of our work as justice professionals and in the profession. Because we really need to understand this in our own house first and foremost. And so I give you this background because I think it's important for you to understand that this is the framework from which we're thinking about our restorative approach to regulation. It's starting in my office under equity and access, which is important. We could have started it sort of in the realm of discipline and only started thinking about it in that area in a much narrower way to think about what are the processes or the practices that we need. We could have just sort of said we could instead of using a more traditional hearing model, we're going to implement a circle. And it's very important that we are starting with the thinking, starting with well, we recognize that there's this dramatic culture change that is needed, not just within our own work and in our own disciplinary model, but also within how we approach justice in a much wider way. So, you know, I think what I guess sort of what we need to be where we're starting is to see a restorative approach. The legal regulation is centered in an improved understanding of discrimination and inequity and a lack of inclusion in our profession and in the justice system. And the reality that we continue to struggle to adequately address these issues both in relation to accessing the justice system and of course also internally within who is represented in our profession as a whole. So we've begun our work around sort of a principled approach to regulation. And so we've moved away from what is a more reactive, rules-based model to one that is proactive and principled and proportionate. And a restorative approach to me offers a very principled framework to work within and to shape our thinking as we sort of think about what does a relational model of legal regulation look like. So I'm going to be honest, we're really just the beginning. We started small. How do we start to, thank you, what is the change in thinking that's needed? What are the conversations that need to be had? Can we bring a small group of people together to start to dramatically change the culture, the way we think about our roles, the way we think about the system as a whole? It's big work and that's where we're starting. And I think, you know, what are we already doing that's working? Where are those sort of places that we can count on where we can grow our work in places where we are already being relational and how do we focus on that? So we're trying to build sort of a common understanding about restorative, what restorative approaches means. Having a common language, a place to talk about relational, you know, relational conceptions of justice. And to build these principles and then values into every aspect of our work. And some of that is my role in the equity and access office is looking at building this relational understanding and thinking into the everyday work that's happening through our regulatory model. So it can be anything from what are the questions that you're asking when someone calls on the complaint line? How do you start to think relationally about the way you approach at that first intake? Oh, okay. And I'm just going to have one line. Or not thinking of lawyer discipline as just the harm between a lawyer and a client, but really as a community-based harm. And that's been the sort of foundation to me is that we need to think about everything is in this very individualistic model of a harm lawyer to a client versus how do you reach out to say who else is being impacted. And we know that many, many other people are being impacted. And the very last thing I'll say is about lawyers is just that we are in all, everything that's being talked about today, there are lawyers present at every stage. And we need to be brought into all of those processes because otherwise we will be barriers. You've all seen it, lawyers as barriers in so many places. So this work is helping, I think, to kind of, in a number of other settings to, in our own house, thinking restoratively will help us move into that. Thank you. All right. Time to meet all the guys.