Registration and breakfast

Welcome Remarks and Introduction

• The Honourable Justice Richard D. Schneider, Ontario Court of Justice, past Chair of the Ontario Review Board (Toronto, ON)
• The Honourable Justice P. Colleen Suche, Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba, CIAJ’s past president (Winnipeg, MB)

Presentation

Guy Felicella is a harm reduction and recovery advocate who survived decades of addiction, gangs, criminal justice system, homelessness living in the downtown Eastside of Vancouver. We open our conference with his powerful story of how he overcame it all, providing a personal accounting of the challenges and solutions that will be explored throughout the conference.

Coffee Break

Beyond Punishment: Trauma-Informed Approaches to Mental Health and Criminal Justice Reform

Professor Benjamin Perrin, author of Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial (2023) and Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada’s Opioid Crisis (2020), explores how the justice system can evolve beyond punitive measures to embrace trauma-informed methodologies. He emphasizes understanding the deep-rooted psychological impacts of trauma, advocating for holistic, compassionate interventions that address the intersecting challenges of mental health, substance use, and systemic inequities, ultimately aiming to build a more just and healing-focused system.

Speaker

Addiction, Mental Health, and the Brain: Understanding Childhood Adversity and its Impact on Well-being

Modern brain science shows that the experiences we have in childhood change the brain in ways that make us more or less likely to succeed in school, at work, as parents, and in other social and family relationships. Childhood adversity affects more than just our academic and social outcomes: it also makes us more vulnerable to mental health and substance use problems. This session will describe how brains are built and how stress undermines healthy brain development. Applying these neuroscientific insights is a complex challenge that will require new ideas, concrete action, and system level collaboration.

Speaker

Lunch

Panel 1 | Addiction Unveiled: A Medical Perspective

To address the need of individuals and communities who are impacted by addiction, legal professionals, social workers, and policymakers require an understanding of addiction based in fact, not fiction. Panel 1 therefore grounds the conference’s discussions with an exploration of addiction from a medical perspective, dispelling myths
and misconception while setting the stage for future panels by clarifying the problems in need of addressing.

Moderator

The Honourable Justice Veronica L. Jackson, Supreme Court of British Columbia (Victoria, BC)

Speakers

• Dr. Tony George, Senior Scientist at Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, professor of psychiatry in the Institute of Medical Sciences (IMS) at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto (Toronto, ON)
• Dr. Charl Els (MBChB, FCPsych, MMedPsych, DipABAM, ACBOM, FIAIME), Clinical Professor: Dept. of Psychiatry, Dept. of Medicine,
  JDHEC
• Dr. Didier Jutras-Aswad (MD, MSc), Interim chief: Department of psychiatry, CHUM; Psychiatrist: Addiction psychiatry unit, CHUM; Full professor: Department of psychiatry, Université de Montréal

Coffee Break

Panel 2 | Substance Use Trends: Impacts on Users, Communities, and Law Enforcement

From courtrooms, to law enforcement agencies, to hospitals and frontline social work centres, shifting trends in substance (and particularly opioid) use continue to impact the safety of those experiencing addiction, the wellbeing of communities, and the ability of professionals to triage, sentence, and treat individuals in a way that reduces future substance use and recidivism. Panel 2 brings together a wide range of experts to describe the current state of substance use in Canada, as well as the ways in which actors are seeking to address new challenges and provide novel solutions.

Moderator

The Honourable Justice Brian Puddington, Ontario Court of Justice (Halton, ON)

Speakers

• Amanda Butler, Assistant Professor, School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC)
• Gerry St-Hilaire, Team Leader, “Centre d’intervention en dépendances Adrienne-Roy” (Shawinigan, QC)
• Jessyca Greenwood, Principal Lawyer at Greenwood Law
• Fiona Wilson, Deputy Chief, Vancouver Police Department (Vancouver, BC)

Cocktail Reception

Breakfast discussion

Panel 3 | Mental Disorders and Substance Dependence: Fundamental Principles of Criminal Responsibility

Navigating Challenges and Best Practices in Treatment Courts and Decriminalizing Mental Illness.

Etc.