 In the front here, I have Tracy D'Argent Skinner and Jerry Morrison who are co-chairs of Voices and they helped us with their struggle. The reason this is different than a traditional public inquiry is that we are looking for healing, we are not looking for blaming. We settled with the government, we settled with the Colorn Home. Voices was found in 2012 when a former resident got together for the first time all across Canada at various ages. The others at the time was 86, the others 30, and we didn't know each other. There was a lot of stress and anxiety, a lot of guilt and shame. He was carrying through years and decades, privately, silently. It was a four day event and we started to find our voices. There was a lot of singing, crying, crying, laughing. But we realized that we're no longer victims we're survivors. So the others gave us their approval for Voices to continue on their behalf to advocate because they said today for them to get recognition and acknowledgement of the harms they were subjected to they'll never see that day and it's very fortunate that a year later they see that day and we're very proud of that. But we looked at your traditional public inquiry and it's one where you're being adversarial. It's more of a retired judge, listen to all the information, the lawyers patting you off for facts. You're not even to really tell your story. Then there's a report written based upon whatever the commissioner feels is important for you where they really don't have a connection with you as a group or a population or a community. So we want to do things differently. And that really is more of a spin off to what we did with the settlement. Because the settlement was our first part of how are we going to tell our stories and how are we going to do no further harm. Because that's what we came from, our first two thousand folks to do no further harm. So that being said we looked at the settlement part. There's two claims. One was a calm experience even though you weren't abusive or subjected to the abusive scene that was going on with the neglect. The other part was that there was further harm. And we wanted you to tell your story so it wasn't a traditional investigation where you're being interrogated and asked questions and you have facts about orientation. It was what harm did you suffer in the home and what kind of impact did it have on your life. And that meant a lot to a lot of people because they never got to tell their story. And in doing so, excuse me, in doing so they gave them an opportunity to speak their own voice and their own truth. It takes a little while to get going with the voice. So instead of just being interrogated by an investigator we want to have a facilitator and a evaluator. A facilitator is the person that was going to help you go through the process because by the way it's going to trigger a lot of bad memories. When you start talking about writing the forms of the harms that are done to you about harm. And then the evaluator will look at the levels of harm. And again you can't put a dollar sign on it. But in society that's a way of symbolizing that they apologize about harm today. You suffer. So with the restorative inquiry we wanted the same thing. We wanted to have no further harm. And we didn't want to be adversarial. We wanted to find out exactly what happened, why happened and what managed it and what we could land from the past to go ahead in the future. The colored home was put together in 1921 because the governor of the day didn't care what happened to black orphans. It was segregation and racism. It was underfunded. The redeem rate was only one-third that a white orphan would get. The staff was paid less than minimum wage. The conditions in the home wasn't great for us former residents. And that was just my own experience when I was there. I didn't know what to make of the abuse. When I went public in 1908 to talk about a friend of mine, Anthony Langford. And the next thing you know we had 330 people that came to be a part of this class action. And there was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. The government knew what was going on. They did nothing about it. The black community knew what was going on. And there was nothing done about it. The black government as well as the black community looked upon differently. And one of the ways that we wanted to do the healing was to start a department so we can connect and engage with the black community and end with government agencies. As well as trying to find the one voice throughout the various black communities to come together as one to address the bigger issue of systemic discrimination and institutional racism that plagues our problems. And when we see the apology from the colored home as a government, the government also not only apologized to us from the residents but apologized to the African American social community for the systemic discrimination that was plagued in our history. So we're looking to do something that has never been done before. And so if you're looking at your traditional public inquiry and you're not really getting full picture, you're not getting the full voice, you're not getting the full truth. So with this inquiry that we have now it's a council of parties but we have 10 voting people, I've been here for years, myself being one and we have subpoena power if we need be but we also identify certain partners like the RCMP, the chief of police, the African United Baptist Association, the colored home, various government departments, health, justice, education, community services. In other agencies that we find that are significant in making change that has some kind of connection with the colored home. So in order to do that we have this council together that's made up of government, former residents that's made up of people within the black community. And we try to look at what is the best way of moving forward. So we have an RIT, a restorative inquiry team that will go to the various communities that have already done that and they will get the information from the communities. The communities will dictate the information that we get as to what we do in the council of parties. The council of parties also, with the restorative inquiry we also have reflection and action team and that's made up of other parties that we identify that works in government, the deputy ministers of community services, education, justice, the African, what do you call it? Double Scotia fairs. And when we get the information we can then look at the government and look at what policies are in place that can be changed in real time. So that's the big difference about this inquiry that they're actually building relationships and we're making change in real time so you don't have to wait until the inquiry's over to make changes. And in doing so, we're doing something that we had never done before because we never really had a true relationship with government, meaning that of the black community. So the goal is that hopefully when this is all said and done that we have already built a foundation for us moving forward in the future in a very positive way of having real relationship with the black community in government and during these agencies. Relationship building is one of the most important part of this process. And Jerry and Tracy, in a test of that, that when we went public and we were advocating on behalf of the former residents there were so many people that came in line to help in hand that we didn't even know. They were very supportive and when we had a lot of adversity with the previous government they would come up with good work. And one of the leaders Jennifer Lowe, that's how we met Jennifer, what you're doing is restorative. I didn't think of restorative, but I just know what we respect. You respect people that respect you and you just try to move forward. But she's been very helpful and instrumental in getting us to move forward. And also facilitate us with the design team to come up with a reference. And again it's not being told this is what you have to do is what is it that you want. And I have two minutes. So I guess one of the biggest things that we're learning from here that the only reason that we had success is building those relationships and working together with others. And being open minded for anybody's uniqueness and not everybody fits inside the box. And the only way that we're going to be able to move forward and address the issues of systemic discrimination is to do racism because we have to have a safe place for people to express themselves the best way that they know how. I know for the year and eight months that we got the design team together a lot of people say it's the most positive experience they've ever had. At least I may say something that may have been you but I don't mean to. I just need to learn. So in order for us to really embrace this opportunity of accepting the people's uniqueness because everybody around this room today are here for a purpose. Restorative justice. You want to do things differently. The only way doesn't work. So it's an honor for us to be from here to be here and for our voices to be here. I'm really proud and honored to be able to speak a little bit about what the Restorative Inquiry is but if you want to know more RestorativeInquiry.ca we'll let you know what we're up to because we have a monthly newsletter and that's it as well. Thank you very much.