Bill No. 44 - Mental Health Court Expansion Act. - Second Reading
MS. CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Madam Speaker, both the member for Pictou West and Chester-St. Margaret's covered a lot of ground in their comments, particularly as to the functioning and history of the Mental Health Courts. I won't repeat that here. I think it's readily available and it's fascinating, but what I'd like to speak a little bit more to begin with is just the purpose of a court like this.
I had the chance to speak with the Justice Minister at length during Budget Estimates about the need to seek the least intrusive ways of achieving a sentence in our justice system. I think this court is a wonderful example of a way to do that. The purpose of our justice system as a whole, although it's often hard to see that when you're right on the ground, is and ought to be rehabilitation. We want to treat people fairly and we want people when they have served any kind of sentence, to return to the community in better shape than when they went in. Unfortunately, this is not normally the case and not just in Nova Scotia, but around the world. I think we have a lot of issues in our corrections facilities. I think, to the extent that we can find other ways that people can take responsibility for creating harm, and can come out the other side better than when they went in, then by all means, we should do that.
My colleague from Pictou West spent time emphasizing, and no doubt this is a concern, that this approach doesn't let offenders off easy. And that's true, and it's important to acknowledge, but I think, again, I would return to, what are the principles of our justice system. I think it's, in fact, more important to say that we're healing a harm.
So not only through this process do we heal a harm that is caused to a person upon whom a crime is committed, and these are all provincial court offences, but we're healing a challenge that the offender themselves is going through. We know that many of the offenders, throughout our criminal justice system, but particularly those with mental health issues, are victims themselves in many ways, if only just victims of their own demons.
So, I think that that is a rare situation, that I think we can look at a project or an institution that really embodies all of the highest principles that we think of when we think of an area that we deal with here in this House. In this case, I think, specialized courts, and in this case a Mental Health Court, it achieves that. It really is true to the basic values of how, from my perspective, we would like to be dealing with justice.
To speak to the bill itself, just for a moment, the only - I appreciate the comments of the member for Chester-St. Margaret's, that we don't need legislation, that we could create specialty courts without them. My response to that would be, great, I look forward to the member opposite, or another member of the House, bringing forward plans to introduce those courts across the province, that would be great. If they do that, terrific. In the absence of hearing any kinds of those plans, I would applaud and support the member for Pictou West for bringing this issue forward in this way.
I would say that the bill itself is short and the language is a bit broad, so I'm not sure what regions means, in terms of provincial regions, but, I think we do support the principle. We know that mental health care is in crisis. We know we have a mental health care crisis in Nova Scotia, it goes without saying.
We hear about it on the floor of this House every day, we hear about it in the media every day, we all see it in our constituencies, I'm sure we all see it in our constituency offices. We also know that the incidents of addictions, for those with mental health issues, is rising. So, as has been mentioned before, in the review done in 2014, this court has also been shown to be much more successful in helping offenders deal with addiction problems that arise coincident with their mental health issues. I'll say that we also know that we have an issue with controlled substances entering our corrections facilities.
I would say that that makes this doubly important, because for many folks who are experiencing mental health issues, who might not have the advantage of a court like this, who find themselves in a correctional facility, they're going to have access to those substances, which, in an ideal world, if we really are looking to rehabilitate people, looking to let people move on with their lives, that's not going to help anybody.
Corrections should be the very last resort in our justice system, as I've said before. I think, when being in a correctional facility exacerbates the root causes, of the offender and the reason that they did the offence, it seems very clear, just on the face of it, that it's not an appropriate choice. So, I think for that reason as well, it makes eminent sense that we would spread this system of Mental Health Courts throughout Nova Scotia.
I will say that the NDP was proud to be the ones to put forth the first Mental Health Court in 2009, and I'll also say that I'm personally proud that as MLA for Dartmouth South, I currently am the only district with a Mental Health Court in my district. Because, as we know, the Nova Scotia Mental Health Court is at 277 Pleasant Street, and I'm especially glad of that, on a constituency level, given the dearth of supports that we see for mental health in our district.
As my colleague for Dartmouth North mentioned in Question Period today, just on a constituency level, we certainly see a mental health crisis. So I'm very lucky that, at least as a last resort, should people find themselves in a great deal of trouble and in trouble with the law, there is a path through that darkness for them other than a correctional facility which likely would just land them back in the same place. Given the positive reviews and the good work being done by this board, I would just say that we are ready to support this bill, and I'm very happy to speak to it.
I would also like to urge this government to invest in community-based supports for those living with mental health. The reality is that many, many people who find themselves in a Mental Health Court or in a court if they have mental health issues - it's a long path before they get there. The member for Chester-St. Margaret's spoke about his nephew. I myself can probably count on more than one hand the number of people in my life who might have availed themselves of a mental health court at one time. People fall through the cracks all the time.
I think to the extent that we can start to address these issues in schools and address these issues in our community and weave that net where people don't get to the point where they're involved in criminality, the better off we'll all be. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Yes, we support this bill, but we know this current court is very busy. I'm sure that any further courts that open would also be very busy. I guess I would say the best case scenario would be that we could open all of those courts, and then we could work as hard as we can to keep people out of them. Those are my submissions.
Published by Order of the Legislature by Hansard Reporting Services and printed by the Queen's Printer.
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