Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to say that I fully support this motion and I am very happy to second it on behalf of the MLA for Weledeh.

I think that anything we can do to keep our residents out of jail is a good thing.

We’ve had some recent court changes. The Family Violence Court is starting to prove, it’s fairly new, but it’s starting to prove extremely successful. We are far better off if we can keep people out of jail rather than putting them in, releasing them, and we find that once we release them, the recidivism rate is extremely high. Anyone that goes to jail once is quite likely to go back there again.

This motion really only asks the government to get things going. We’re asking that the government start looking at this program, to investigate it a bit, find out how valuable it’s been in other parts of the country, and make sure that we can afford it, that it is going to be positive for us.

I want to also say that it is specifically referring to people that are dealing with mental health issues. I think it’s probably pretty well known that we don’t make people better, we don’t make them healthier by putting them in jail. All people do not get better if we incarcerate them.

Apart from that, I really don’t have anything else to add. I would urge all Members to vote to support this motion. It’s going to only do good things for our residents.