 I'm not an expert, I'm not a researcher, I'm a sort of justice, I'm an academic, so like I asked myself when I was first invited to come, you're probably wondering what I'm doing here. Currently I work for Matt Canada, but I'm actually here as an individual, I'm representing the views of any organization. But my journey here has a little bit, took me a little bit while to figure out, I'm, as I mentioned, not an academic, I'm actually not getting that bright, but I'm making quite a little, and that's sort of what's gotta be here. A lot of people know that, the Prime Minister sent out his mandate letters to his ministers, the Minister of Justice, letter had an inclusion around the story of justice, which, knowing the RJ folks, not a lot, they were all very excited, the emails went out, but you see they mentioned the sort of justice, it's not a wonderful one, which is great. I was a bit concerned though by how the Prime Minister framed the notion of restorative justice and how he wanted the Minister of Justice to pursue restorative justice, because he framed it as a way to reduce incarceration for indigenous people. Now we've heard throughout the week, and you know this from your own work, the rates of incarceration of indigenous people are far too high, and that needs to be addressed. I'm not an expert on restorative justice, but I haven't yet to see anything in principles of restorative justice that talk about reducing incarceration. So I was a little concerned about the use of, the expanded use of restorative justice in that context. So I wrote the Prime Minister a letter as an individual, MICC, the Minister of Justice, and that was about 10 months ago, and I'd never written anything about it, so I had actually forgotten about it, I figured no one read it, and that was fine. And then I was invited to this forum, and I wasn't quite sure why, and Jennifer and I were going back and forth about, what is it you really want me to talk about, and she said, well, how about a national strategy? I thought, well, I don't like that I work on a national strategy, but sure. And then she reminded me, well, didn't you write a letter about a national strategy to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice, and so I actually had to dig it out in the pen. If I have a chance, I'll read it a little bit at the end, if I have time. But the letter was really about the concern about how the Prime Minister was framing restorative justice. And I have to say, with respect to the amazing atlas we've had during the discussions, I do get a little concerned as well when I hear about the use of restorative justice because the system was broken, and because there were so many delays in the criminal justice system, and because the reintegration of offenders is so difficult, those are all significant, serious issues. But restorative justice is not the means to fix those things. I'm a reintegrator in restorative justice because I've worked with victims of crime for my entire career, and I see the benefits that it brings to their lives, those people who've chosen to participate. And I hear from my friends and colleagues who do the sessions and work with communities and those who've broken the law about the benefits of those folks as well. When I read the research, and I see the benefits. And I think there's a lot of really good reasons that we should be doing more of restorative justice. But fixing the justice system and all of its problems is not wonderful. Because I don't think that's what the principle speaks to. As I mentioned, there's so many phenomenal speakers here and big thinkers, and I need to simplify things for myself because I'm a smaller thinker. So I look at the system and say, well, how is it that restorative justice can work in our current system? How do we make a system more restorative? And I see so much of the foundation is actually already there. If you look at our sentence and principles, they're consistent with restorative justice. In fact, two of the principles are based on any one of them, one of this. The two of the principles are actually based on the restorative justice principles. They're probably the least, the two least used and recognized parts of our sentence and principles to be accountable to the offenders or to any of the victims of recognition of harm. Years ago, beings were asked for the most important sentence and principles in their minds and they listed those two as the top. But I think that if people know something that I don't, I have yet to see anything in any consistent way that suggests the courts are actually applying those two principles in an meaningful way. But they exist and they're there. Restorative justice works. I used to be a very, I used to be a credit for restorative justice. I was very skeptical. I used to be sort of on a tough one crime ban. I just thought if we just punished the feathers more and gave victims more rights to the system, that things would get better. And when they did what we just needed to do, sort of about the punishments and give them more rights, and I'm trying to, it takes me a moment to catch on and none of that was working. I began to meet people who've been to restorative principles. They talked about healing. I remember at a first conference where I heard someone talk about it, I wrote that word down. I had never heard that in any of the people I've worked with in the nutritional remote justice system. Nobody talked about how the system healed them. And that was pretty amazing to me and the research and the side of it, the healing, the benefits people's mental health, the less fear that they feel, the less anxiety. Those are all positive things that work. And there's benefits for those who, you know, there's evidence of reduced precipitism. All those things, these are all positive things. So we know what works. It was mentioned earlier today that 90% of the crown cross here is gonna only go to trial for eight to 10% of cases. I mean, we gotta find a way to get rid of the other 92, 90% of cases. Most of those people that we charge the state will be killed around, but most of those people will plead guilty. So they're gonna accept responsibility for something, and they're gonna get a reduced sentence in doing that. That to me opens up the door for a restorative process because part of the restorative principles are the acceptance of responsibility. So I see the fact that 90% of cases don't go through a criminal trial process as a real potential for a restorative process. Restorative justice is consistent with the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and all of our provincial principles of rights. There is nothing inconsistent with the two. If you haven't worked in the Victims Movement for 20 years, the consistent messages have been victims who want voice, they want information, they want validation, they want accountability. Those things are all consistent with restorative justice. They're in our Victims Bill of Rights and they're in the principles. Is there any better source to get information from the person who caused the harm in the first place? Did you just say something? Is there any more validation than the person who caused the harm saying, I'm sorry for what I did. One of the things victims live with, many victims, is the guilt that somehow they caused this. And when the person who did the harm can actually accept responsibility for that and take responsibility for that. That's a healing process. So restorative justice is entirely consistent with our Victims Bill of Rights. And I would argue that the criminal code of return of this actually has the basics for a more restorative process already in it. Now I have recommended that the Prime Minister, I should have mentioned it as well. One of the things that I pointed out to the Prime Minister was I asked him to reconsider the approach and his understanding of restorative justice. Now I don't intend to take credit for this, but I did see a speech that the Minister of Justice recently gave where she talked about the use of restorative justice. There was a semi-colon, and then the need to reduce incarceration. So I'm hoping that wasn't a typo that actually there was sort of a shift in thinking that these are two separate issues. Now if I said that to my students in the use of a semi-colon, they probably wouldn't know what that meant. But you all do. I'm hoping it's not a typo. If I would, so I had asked the Minister, Prime Minister, to consider a national strategy. There's some amazing work being done across the country here in Nova Scotia, it's probably the leader. But I know I'm from Ontario, and quite frankly, there's not enough work being done. And I think it's time the federal government participated and led a national discussion on how to make the whole justice process more restorative. And if I was advising the Minister of Justice, I would, because it is politics is about selling your policies. And we just came from a decade where the notion of victims' rights as interests was about punishing the offender. But that victims were talked a lot about. And if I was the Minister of Justice, I would focus on the benefits of restorative justice from a victim of crime perspective. The healing, the validation, the less fear. Those are things I think the public could get behind. That's not to say that there are benefits from offender for offenders and for communities and those are important as these processes rule about. But from a public point of view, I think, if I was advising the government, that would be the role that I would take. Now we know that the provinces will take leave, we're gonna go through those very quickly. But what if a national strategy asks, what could I look at? What if the Canadian Victim's Bill of Rights said that every victim didn't just have a right to be told about restorative processes, but actually have a right to participate in them if they wanted to? What if every person who decided to do the guilty in a criminal court, that their victims were given a chance or the choice to participate in a restorative process? What if a parole hearing, instead of just reading a statement about the harm done, that victims were actually given a few minutes to ask the offender questions if they wanted to? And what if every woman who went to a hospital to get a rape kit and then went to the police to report the crime? And after going through those two excruciating processes, decided that this was not what she wanted to do, and I know so many women who've done that, and after talking to the police have said, I'm not gonna go down that road. I don't want to be a part of your system. What if they were offered an alternative to the justice system? Now Nova Scotia is still a lot of courage and leadership in the country, but I think if a federal government wanted to talk about the use of restorative justice on issues like sexual assault, that would take a lot of courage. I know that because I have friends who work in the sexual violence. We were talking once about restorative justice, and I said to you, what do you think? Did it be used? And have you ever seen the Harry Potter movie where the dementors come on the train and the temperature drops about 40 degrees and the windows crack? That was kind of what it's feeling. But it's not me saying that. You've all heard, I felt the Geon Gomeshi case. There were three women who, the first child was acquitted, but the second process had very many elements of a restorative process. The woman who agreed to the peace bond. She said, in the perfect world, people who commit sexual assault would be convicted. And when it was presented to me that the defense would offer an apology, I prepared to forego the trial. It seemed the clearest past the truth. Right, that wasn't a perfect process from a perspective, but given a choice, the apology was more important than the trial process. Brock Turner, another high-profile case from the state. The woman said, had Brock committed guilt and remorse and offered to settle early on. I would have considered a lighter sentence, respecting his honesty, and I'm grateful to be able to move on, move forward with our lives. So these are restorative elements, these are restorative principles. Someone's talking about the importance of an apology. But getting back to the strategy, why do I focus on victims? If we learn one thing from the American election, for me it was the facts don't matter. All the research that you've done, all the facts that you have, all the statistics, they don't matter much anymore. And that's a sad state, and we can all talk about that. But what matters is feelings. And with all due respect to the work that you do, and there's been wonderful conversations, Danny talked about it, about being part of relationships and all living restorative lives. The reality is that most people don't care much about victims. That's the reality that we live in. Would we like that to change? Yeah, of course, but we need to be realistic. People do care about how victims of crime feel. And if victims of crime are saying restorative justice works for me, then I think there's a much better chance of having the public accept that after having a decade of harsher punishment and more criminal justice. There's lots of work to do and there's a lot of opportunities with a government that at least is talking about restorative justice. There's a chance that makes significant change, but I think we also have to stick to the principles of restorative justice, which are not about a cheaper justice system, which are not necessarily about a more efficient justice system as we heard earlier, this takes resources and to do it properly with serious crimes, it takes time. These are not quick fixes that are gonna change the system in that sense, but I think it'll change the system in a lot of different ways because it'll heal communities, it'll heal communities that victims and it'll heal offenders. Thank you.