 And it's looked like I'm a token male. Yeah. It's quite amazing that I think that what I'm going to talk to you about today is about five years ago, ten years ago, I started looking at all the communities that initiated community-based restorative justice approaches in the United States. That I had either been a part of or a friend to mine had been a part of in all places other than Nova Scotia. And so I'm going to share with you in ten minutes or less. I think just some of the key markers of what made some of those communities sustained and some of those communities to fall by the wayside. I could speak and I'm sure many of you in this room could speak for hours about that. But these are the lessons that we have to learn because you all are pioneers. This is a brand new thing. What we represent is hundreds of years old. Hundreds of years old. And I have an answer for you about the 90 percent. Just give 90 percent of the funding to the communities. They'll look after the problems. It's a serious thing because funding is one of the key things and I have to take responsibility when we started in the 80s of saying to the communities that I work with, this isn't about money. This isn't about a new way to get money. This is about a new way for you to stand up and do what you need to do as citizens of your country. I was wrong. Because if you're going to take on the difficult work that the professional system has taken over from you, you need to be funded. You need to have people just like this chief judge and I had that prepare me to go into the battle in the courtroom every single day. You need to have funding that will look after you and keep you doing this work so you don't burn out. Because the biggest problem that these new initiatives face is burning out. So while I'm thinking Nova Fuchsia for blazing this new trail, a new trail which I'm hoping will show us how in communities we can take the conflicts, the resolutions and even the crimes as opportunities to build new connections. As opportunities to build our communities. As opportunities to turn lives and build relationships that make difference. I also want to thank Mr. Trump. I want to thank Mr. Trump for reminding us in Canada what happens when we don't get up every day and do the work of citizenship. Because if we need a very good example of what's going to happen to us, if we don't work in our communities and don't engage our communities, it's America today. So here's some of the lessons that I've learned from these communities that have succeeded and those that have. First of all, you have to start in a good way. You can't get through a good place and start in a bad way. And so that requires those communities that have succeeded to go slow, to go a long way. You can't jump in and change the system that's been around for 200 years. You have to be very careful about how you do that. Very careful about how you build the relationships that's going to take you a long way. And once you start, I think there are five things that have to change fundamentally from the adversarial system. You know, I often say that my experience is when the justice system takes community issues into the justice system, you're taking the community system into the values of the justice system and don't think that we don't represent values. The criminal justice system has fundamentally different values than community processes. So I look at those communities that are really taking the justice system into their community. And that we need to play by their values and by their rules. That's a fundamental thing that seems to mark some of the successes from some of the failure. The part of that is, and the first part of that is to start with identifying personal shared values. The most hopeful thing that I have found in doing this work all over the world now is that no matter where you've been, whether it's in the shanty towns in South Africa or the boardrooms in downtown Toronto or downtown American cities with corporations, I do a little exercise that tries to bring out what people's shared values are. They're all bloody well the same. Personally, we want to respect others, we want to connect to others, we want to love, we want to forgive, we want to be compassionate, we want to share it. Those are our personal values. Do we carry them into the workplace? No. Do we carry them into our community? No. Because in our families and in our schools and in our workplace, we've learned the skills of adversarial approaches. So once we share our values and do that work before we get out and do any work, it really begins to wake us up to the fact that, my gosh, we have a lot to share. So the first thing is learning how and learning what are shared values. The second thing is we need a self-design. You can't take what works in old pro to downtown Winnipeg and you can't take what works in downtown Winnipeg to downtown Toronto. You have to build processes that encourage us, encourage us to act on our values. Do you think the core of that's that? Love, forgiveness, compassion, empathy? No. Those are not the values. Do you think that's in our parliament? No. What are we doing for designing processes, for dealing with the major problems we have in society through processes that don't reflect our personal values? So it's really important. The second thing for success is that we design processes that really encourage us to act on our values. The third thing that's really important for change is the skill base we have personally works really well if you're buying a second-hand car from some used car dealer. It doesn't work in building connections and new relationships. We have to learn new skills. The skill I would use in our courtroom is not the skill I'm going to use in a certain way. We have to learn new skills. The fourth thing is whether or not we create space for building collaborative partnerships, for sharing power, for sharing responsibility. So those communities that really did that and welcomed in everybody that were inclusive and respectful of every person's voice, of every person's gift that were sustainable. The fifth thing is to figure out the funding problem. That's a really important thing. I don't have time today, but I just came back from Roga in Boston where my brother Mark question, and I'm a Virgil guy, and I went down there 18 years ago to teach some circles. And by the way, that's one of the most successful initiatives because they certainly, Molly Baldwin certainly understood about going slow before they did one single circle on a crime. She said we're first going to train 200 people in our community in circles. Right? We're going to shift the culture of how we deal with these problems before we're going to get out there and do anything. And secondly, really important, we want to do circles inside our institution. We want to decide who we're going to hire and what our priorities are going to be based on circles. We can't simply say that circles are just for conflict. Circles are a way in which we're going to live in this institution. You can't run your community initiatives on Robert's rules of order and expect to be able to sustain that. So, I know I got 10 minutes. Two more minutes. Oh, look at that. Holy smokes. Renew, renew. You constantly have to renew the energy in the process. You constantly have to renew the relationship. You constantly have to be training people. There are many initiatives that basically we're doing extremely well. Success after success after success. And so, they kept looking forward at new cases. Hey folks, the people you're going to deal with have a lifetime of difficulty. There's no matching experience that you're going to give them that suddenly is going to change their life. If you don't look behind you and deal with a follow-up. So, I went down to one of the communities that I looked at. Only focus is on spousal assault. That's all they did. They're doing that for 15 years. After they've been in place and we trained in that community and got them going on spousal assault in Minnesota. I went back and looked at what they were doing. I had looked at what they were doing on the first case they did. Five or six years later, I went back to see how they were doing. The same man in their first circle was in that circle six or seven years later. He wasn't going to change overnight. He wanted to change overnight. But if you don't follow up and deal with a kind of case we don't do that in the criminal justice system, right? Next, next. You have another docket. Next, next. There can be no next, next. You really need to stay with the people you've changed. They have to feel for the first time the day told their story to somebody that they're going to be stuck with. It's not a new probation officer, a new defense counselor, a new parole officer. It has to be. You need to stay connected. You have to do the follow-up work. You can't just kiss them on the forehead and say, this is great. Go ahead and do what you're going to do. So, and the other thing I want to say is, ceremonies of celebration. Have some fun. Share food. Kwanlin Dunn, which is one of the first nations that works right in the middle of White Horse, they used to have celebration dinners every month. They celebrate Joe, who had not been on the street for a month, who had not had a drink for a month. You know, they celebrate Emily, who went home to a home where they knew when those kids came home and there was going to be no add-up there and she was there. They celebrated people who did many little things. This is not, restoring justice should never be about super volunteers. We're going to do big things. It needs to be about a whole bunch of people doing little things. That's what it's about. I think we are wrapping up. It's really weird. I think we are the custom change. I mean, I don't ever remember a chief judge and I was one of those chief judges. I don't ever remember a chief judge giving a talk like this. Ever. Okay, ever. Now, there are lots of chief judges I think across this country that are starting to talk like that. So, I'm hoping all of you will keep hope a lot. You know, I really hope you do. You know, I hope you will make relationships that make changes. Good luck.