Day 1 / Jour 1
Day 2 / Jour 2
Workshops/Ateliers
Workshop Session A / Séance d'atelier A
Nov. 16, 2026
RESENTED BY: Christine Ens
Many organizations deliver restorative justice programs, but far fewer intentionally apply restorative principles to their own leadership, governance, and organizational systems. This workshop explores what happens when restorative justice becomes more than a service model and instead serves as a framework for managing people, making decisions, navigating conflict, governing organizations, and building partnerships. Through practical examples and reflective discussion, participants will examine the opportunities and challenges of operationalizing restorative principles within human resources, organizational development, board governance, and community collaboration. The session will invite leaders to consider how organizational structures can either reinforce or undermine restorative values, and what it takes to build organizations that are restorative from the inside out.
PRESENTED BY: Christine Ens
De nombreuses organisations offrent des programmes de justice réparatrice, mais beaucoup moins appliquent intentionnellement les principes restauratifs à leur propre leadership, leur gouvernance et leurs systèmes organisationnels. Cet atelier explore ce qui se produit lorsque la justice réparatrice devient plus qu’un modèle de service et sert plutôt de cadre pour la gestion du personnel, la prise de décisions, la résolution de conflits, la gouvernance organisationnelle et l’établissement de partenariats. À travers des exemples pratiques et des discussions réflexives, les participant·e·s examineront les possibilités et les défis liés à l’opérationnalisation des principes restauratifs au sein des ressources humaines, du développement organisationnel, de la gouvernance des conseils d’administration et de la collaboration communautaire. La séance invitera les leaders à réfléchir à la manière dont les structures organisationnelles peuvent soit renforcer, soit miner les valeurs restauratives, ainsi qu’aux conditions nécessaires pour bâtir des organisations restauratives de l’intérieur vers l’extérieur.
PRESENTED BY: Lara Poellet, Megan Mitchell, Barbara Randall, Caiti Ferraro, Brittany McFadden
Drawing from frontline experience with the Saskatoon Restorative Action Program, this presentation will share practical examples of how restorative approaches are used within high schools to support students navigating interpersonal conflict, emotional distress, and mental health issues. Participants will gain insight into how restorative conversations, mediation, and relationship based support can help students build skills in self-awareness, empathy, accountability, and healthy conflict resolution.
PRESENTED BY: Jackie Gruber, Dr. Kellie Thiessen, Elder Deb Chaboyern and Debra Beach Ducharme
In health professions education, relational tensions are increasingly influenced by hierarchy, workload demands, and growing expectations for inclusive and equitable environments that support meaningful, active participation. While formal processes and workplace culture committees exist to address conflict and mistreatment, they often struggle to respond in real time or to create meaningful opportunities for dialogue. This underscores the need for proactive approaches that strengthen relationships, cultivate trust, and support more inclusive cultures. This work is situated within broader Faculty-level efforts to embed restorative justice principles into the Prevention of Learner Mistreatment Guideline and emerging Professional Unsuitability By-Laws, reflecting a commitment to aligning relational and formal accountability processes. This session, co-presented by the Dean of the College of Nursing and the Director of the Office of Professionalism, explores the implementation of restorative justice community-building initiatives within a College of Nursing. Drawing on real-world experience, the session will examine how structured community building circles, introduced through a faculty retreat and sustained through ongoing facilitated dialogues, created space for connection, reflection, voice, and relational accountability. In doing so, we consider the “tracks we leave”, how everyday interactions, leadership choices, and relational practices shape the cultures that future learners will inherit. Participants will explore how restorative approaches can surface power dynamics, support belonging, and contribute to more connected and accountable academic and clinical environments.
PRESENTED BY: Greg Nelson and Robin Fremont
Providing a historical overview of The Dispute Resolution Office and the delivery of Victim-Offender Mediation Training. The workshop would outline the evolution of the Victim-Offender Mediation Training and its expansion to include a 2-day workshop on Victim Engagement and a 3-day workshop on Train the Trainer. The workshop would also include how Victim-Offender Mediation has expanded to be delivered in other provinces and territories.
PRESENTED BY: Tyla Olenchuk
The conventional criminal justice process emphasizes charges, trials, and sentencing—but these tools alone do not always deliver meaningful accountability, repair harm, or enhance long-term community safety. In Saskatchewan, Crown prosecutors are advancing a more comprehensive approach by embedding restorative justice (RJ) into the prosecution process as a complementary layer that strengthens outcomes across the system. This session will explore how the Saskatchewan Public Prosecutions office utilizes restorative justice within daily legal workflows: from pre-charge diversion, early file assessment and screening decisions to resolution discussions and post-charge processes. It will highlight practical strategies, decision points, and partnerships that allow prosecutors to uphold their obligations while creating space for victim voice, offender accountability, and community engagement. Designed for justice system professionals from across Canada, this presentation offers a grounded, practice-oriented look at how prosecutorial leadership can drive cultural and systemic change—moving restorative justice from the margins into the core of modern prosecution.
PRÉSENTÉ PAR: Luke Ffrench
Les praticiens de la justice réparatrice qui travaillent au sein du système pénal doivent souvent composer avec un ensemble complexe de facteurs : la responsabilité, les procédures judiciaires, la préparation des participants, les attentes institutionnelles et les dommages subis par les personnes concernées. Cet atelier examine les réalités de l'animation de processus réparateurs dans le contexte post-inculpation et pré-condamnation, où le dialogue réparateur se déroule parallèlement à des procédures judiciaires en cours et dans des environnements juridiques très structurés. En s'appuyant sur l'expérience de mise en œuvre acquise sur le terrain dans le cadre du programme de justice collaborative, les participants examineront les opportunités et les tensions particulières qui apparaissent lorsque les principes de la justice réparatrice sont intégrés aux procédures judiciaires formelles. Situé à la croisée de la pratique réparatrice communautaire et du système de justice pénale, le travail réparateur mené après la mise en accusation exige des praticiens qu'ils trouvent un équilibre entre l'intégrité réparatrice et les réalités juridiques, tout en restant à l'écoute des besoins des victimes, des auteurs d'infractions, des avocats et des tribunaux. À travers des études concrètes et des discussions guidées, les participants aborderont des aspects pratiques tels que la préparation des participants, le caractère volontaire de leur engagement, l'évaluation de leur état de préparation et de l'exploration de la responsabilisation, la gestion des déséquilibres de pouvoir, la collaboration avec le procureur et la défense, la prise en compte des besoins des victimes, la gestion des délais judiciaires, ainsi que la gestion des situations où l'authenticité, la portée ou les influences institutionnelles de l'approche réparatrice pourraient être remises en question. L'atelier examinera également comment un travail de justice réparatrice constructif peut être mené même lorsque le dialogue direct n'aboutit pas, et comment les processus de justice réparatrice post-inculpation peuvent contribuer à la responsabilisation, à la guérison, à la prise de décision éclairée et à la réparation des relations, tout en favorisant un changement culturel plus large au sein des institutions judiciaires. Cet atelier s'adresse aux animateurs en justice réparatrice, aux professionnels du droit, aux intervenants auprès des victimes, aux praticiens communautaires et à toute autre personne intéressée par les réalités pratiques de la mise en œuvre des processus de justice réparatrice dans le cadre de la justice pénale.
**La session est offerte en anglais et sera traduite simultanément (l'interprétation simultanée) en français
Workshop Session B / Séance d'atelier B
Nov. 16, 2026
**La session est offerte en anglais et sera traduite simultanément (l'interprétation simultanée) en français
PRESENTED BY: Jessica Laus, Nathaniel Genaille, Brandi Delaine, Summer Prince
During this skills-based workshop, presenters will begin with a grounding presentation about our understanding of restorative and transformative justice, as well as conflict transformation more broadly, and share our organizational behavioural model rooted in a restorative approach to work with primarily Indigenous and Newcomer youth in the inner-city of Winnipeg. We will then share our approach to leveraging these approaches among our frontline colleagues to help co-create a work environment that is rooted in curiosity, mutual care, and accountability by engaging in the very approaches and ways of showing that we practice daily. In this way, we build community safety by cultivating a sense of belonging among our colleagues and participants that is grounded in deep relationships and the courage to dismantle systemic harm and injustice within ourselves, our organization, and our city through a restorative lens so that all of us have a part in helping to keep each other safe and in community for generations to come.
PRESENTED BY: Matt Mirasty
New developments with the Saskatchewan First Nation Community Safety Officer program, the exploration of Regional Self- Administered First Nation's Policing services and changes to our broader policing landscape present exciting opportunities to tackle today's current crisis's and prepare our province for the future. Saskatchewan's public safety landscape is changing. While much-publicized challenges related to gang violence, criminality, mental health and addiction exist, there are also growing opportunities for First Nations, northern, isolated and rural communities to engage in discussions and share their insights into how our province adapts to them. We will be giving a presentation on the past, present and future of the Saskatchewan First Nations Community Safety Officer Program. The discussion will include efforts related to training, policy development, community engagement and enforcement service partnership efforts that have resulted.
PRESENTED BY: Brittany Rudyck, Caroline Gossling, Madison Clark
Since the 90s, the Alberta Ministry of Justice has supported the implementation of Youth Justice Committees, made up of volunteers who care deeply about the success of the youth in their communities. In partnership with the International Institute for Restorative Practices Canada, Alberta Justice, Alberta Law Foundation and the Calgary Youth Justice Society, a framework for guiding the use of restorative practices has been created to guide a shared language among youth, victims, families and the greater community. This workshop will introduce this framework within the context of the provincial youth justice expansion project, which aims to create equitable access to alternative justice measures for all youth in Alberta. Through efforts to build consistent restorative practices across the province, we hope to generate collective confidence and awareness of the power of restorative justice to strengthen our communities, leaving tracks for future generations to follow and adapt in the spirit of relational justice.
PRESENTED BY: Mitchell Frenette
This workshop (The Impact of Hope) will be a hybrid approach between a lecture-style information session, with opportunities for group discussion throughout. Our program is effectively looking to share our story of growth, challenges, successes, with hopes of not only inspiring programs who are early in their development, but engaging in a larger discussion about shared responsibility in the RJ arena in Canada. The Impact of Hope refers to both the hope that we work to instill into our direct client work, but also the hope that Restorative Justice practices can be expanded, better funded, and supported throughout the country. The primary purpose of the workshop is to share our knowledge and experience we have had over the course of 4 years in the Ontario criminal justice system, and to create a space where RJ programs and community organizations can have honest, real conversations about some of the challenges we face in the RJ field.
PRESENTED BY: Rochelle Moore and Trevor Ledoux
The path of community reintegration for Indigenous women leaving custody is often obstructed by systemic barriers, unaddressed intergenerational trauma, and the profound pain of family separation. In alignment with the theme of NRJS 2026, The Tracks We Leave, this session explores how the Saskatoon Tribal Council’s īkwēskīcik iskwēwak program delivers a holistic, Indigenous-led model for restorative reintegration that heals families and strengthens community connections. Translating from Cree to mean "women turning their lives around," the īkwēskīcik iskwēwak program provides comprehensive wrap-around supports to female relatives facing recurring incarcerations for lower-level offences. Once accepted, relatives find a stable foundation in our 18-unit transitional apartment complex. This safe housing is paired with an intensive case management framework spanning up to 18 months to actively break the cycle of re-incarceration. Led by Reintegration Case Worker Rochelle Moore and Wellness Worker Trevor Ledoux, this session breaks down the program model and showcases its real-world impact through three key areas: · Examining our purposeful intake process within the correctional environment, which shifts away from rigid institutional risk scoring. We assess the relative’s current stage of change, identifying their personal desire for transformation, sobriety, healing and family reunification. · Outlining the practical strategies, mental wellness partnerships, land-based healing, independent life skills development, and creative therapy sessions that empower women to express their inner narratives and actively choose a self-determined path of sobriety and stability. · Moving beyond theory, participants will hear firsthand from lived experience as a relative shares her personal journey through the program. Assisting relatives who have previously committed crimes can be a profoundly rewarding experience, particularly when witnessing their personal growth and successful reintegration into society. Through consistent support, encouragement, and access to opportunities, individuals are often able to rebuild their lives through family reunification, meaningful employment, and independent living. Observing their transition from past challenges to long-term stability and success demonstrates the positive impact that strong family support and effective rehabilitation can have on both personal development and community well-being.
PRESENTED BY: Saara Siddiqi and Stacey Alderwick
The tracks we leave are rarely just individual. They are made with the collective, historical and the future held together intentionally and informed by how we walked and what we wore. For Indigenous, Black, Brown and other communities of colour, restorative processes can become sites of continued marginalization when facilitators fail to recognize how unacknowledged colonialism and oppression permeate group dynamics and procedural norms. This workshop, especially for Indigenous, Black and racialized practitioners, will examine the: • Tracks inherited - What was already there? • Tracks survived - What did we navigate or carry? • Tracks interrupted - Where have we resisted or changed direction? • Tracks we intend to leave - What are we accountable for creating?
PRÉSENTÉ PAR: Saara Siddiqi and Stacey Alderwick
Les traces que nous laissons ne sont presque jamais uniquement individuelles. Elles sont façonnées avec le collectif, l’historique et le futur, tenues ensemble intentionnellement et influencées par la manière dont nous avons marché et ce que nous portions. Pour les communautés autochtones, noires, brunes et autres communautés racialisées, les processus restauratifs peuvent devenir des lieux de marginalisation continue lorsque les facilitateur·rice·s ne reconnaissent pas comment le colonialisme et l’oppression non reconnus imprègnent les dynamiques de groupe et les normes procédurales. Cet atelier, destiné particulièrement aux praticien·ne·s autochtones, noir·e·s et racialisé·e·s, examinera : • Traces héritées – Qu’est ce qui était déjà là? • Traces survivantes – Qu’avons nous dû naviguer ou porter? • Traces interrompues – Où avons nous résisté ou changé de direction? • Traces que nous voulons laisser – De quoi sommes nous responsables dans ce que nous créons?
Workshop Session C / Séance d'atelier C
Nov. 17, 2026
**La session est offerte en anglais et sera traduite simultanément (l'interprétation simultanée) en français
RESENTED BY: Shaina Lynden
Drawing from over 20 years of policing experience with the Saskatoon Police Service and a commitment to justice reform, this keynote challenges participants to critically examine the legacy of current justice practices and the pathways we are creating for future generations. Through the lens of restorative justice, Indigenous truth-telling, and systems transformation, this presentation explores how institutions, leaders, and frontline professionals can shift from reactive responses to relational accountability. As the current Director of Indigenous Services and Relations for Legal Aid Saskatchewan, Shaina holds a master’s in Organizational Leadership from Arizona State University, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership at the University of Saskatchewan. A member of Yellow Quill First Nation in Saskatchewan, Shaina brings a unique intersection of lived experience, operational policing, leadership education, and Indigenous justice advocacy. Her doctoral research is focused on developing a national framework for Indigenous cultural competency education for police recruits, offering a timely insight into the urgent need for meaningful capacity building and system preparedness. This workshop will explore how the enduring impacts of colonization continue to shape justice outcomes and contribute to the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples within the justice system. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own role in dismantling systemic barriers and strengthening relationships that foster healing, accountability, and belonging. Through practical examples and a forward-looking approach, attendees will leave inspired to consider not only the tracks they have inherited, but the ones they are actively creating.
PRÉSENTÉ PAR: Shaina Lynden
Quelles traces laissonsnous dans le système de justice, et qui sera forcé de les suivre longtemps après notre départ? S’appuyant sur plus de 20 ans d’expérience en maintien de l’ordre au sein du Service de police de Saskatoon et sur un engagement profond envers la réforme de la justice, cette allocution invite les participant·e·s à examiner de manière critique l’héritage des pratiques actuelles et les trajectoires que nous créons pour les générations futures. À travers la justice réparatrice, la vérité autochtone et la transformation des systèmes, cette présentation explore comment les institutions, les leaders et les professionnel·le·s de première ligne peuvent passer de réponses réactives à une responsabilité relationnelle. Directrice actuelle des Services et Relations autochtones pour Aide juridique Saskatchewan, Shaina détient une maîtrise en leadership organisationnel de l’Université d’État de l’Arizona et poursuit actuellement un doctorat en leadership éducatif à l’Université de la Saskatchewan. Membre de la Première Nation Yellow Quill en Saskatchewan, Shaina apporte une perspective unique alliant expérience vécue, travail policier opérationnel, formation en leadership et défense de la justice autochtone. Ses recherches doctorales portent sur l’élaboration d’un cadre national de formation en compétence culturelle autochtone destiné aux recrues policières, offrant un éclairage essentiel sur l’urgence de renforcer les capacités et la préparation des systèmes. Cet atelier explorera comment les impacts persistants de la colonisation continuent d’influencer les résultats en matière de justice et contribuent à la surreprésentation des peuples autochtones dans le système. Les participant·e·s seront invité·e·s à réfléchir à leur propre rôle dans le démantèlement des obstacles systémiques et dans le renforcement de relations favorisant la guérison, la responsabilité et l’appartenance. À travers des exemples concrets et une approche tournée vers l’avenir, les participant·e·s repartiront inspiré·e·s à considérer non seulement les traces qu’ils et elles ont héritées, mais aussi celles qu’ils et elles sont en train de créer activement.
PRESENTED BY: Luke Ffrench
Restorative justice practitioners working within the criminal justice system often navigate a complex intersection of accountability, legal process, participant readiness, institutional expectations, and human harm. This workshop explores the realities of facilitating restorative processes in the post-charge, pre-sentencing context, where restorative dialogue unfolds alongside active court proceedings and within highly structured legal environments. Drawing from frontline facilitation experience within the Collaborative Justice Program: Restorative Justice Ottawa, participants will examine the unique opportunities and tensions that emerge when restorative principles are integrated into formal justice processes. Situated between community-based restorative practice and the criminal justice system, post-charge restorative work requires practitioners to balance restorative integrity with legal realities, while remaining responsive to the needs of victims, offenders, counsel, and the courts. Through case examples and guided discussion, participants will explore practical considerations including participant preparation, voluntariness, assessing readiness and accountability, addressing power imbalances, collaboration with Crown and Defence, responding to victim needs, managing court timelines, and navigating situations where restorative engagement may be questioned for its authenticity, scope, or institutional influences. The workshop will also consider how meaningful restorative work can occur even when a dialogue does not ultimately take place, and how post-charge restorative processes can contribute to accountability, healing, informed decision-making, and relationship repair while supporting broader cultural change within justice institutions. This workshop is intended for restorative justice facilitators, legal professionals, victim service workers, community practitioners, and others interested in the practical realities of implementing restorative processes within criminal justice settings.
PRESENTED BY: Tara Myuran and Dr. Jayson Stoffman
CPSM’s Restorative Practices Program is the first of its kind in Canada for Medical Regulatory Authorities. This Indigenous-led program uses the principle of restorative practices to uphold CPSM’s Standard of Practice – Practicing Medicine to Eliminate Anti-Indigenous Racism and commitment to action by engaging in meaningful, educational, and supportive conversations with registrants, members of the public, communities, families, and healthcare professionals to repair harm, restore trust, rebuild relationships, and prevent further harm through accountability, guidance, and healing. A key feature of our program is outreach and engagement with Indigenous communities and the public, in addition to physician registrants. Our work echoes the first tier of restorative justice: community building through facilitated sharing circles. Communities and healthcare providers can share challenges and opportunities that they have in common, experiencing a restorative community circle with a trained facilitator. This interactive workshop will explore how restorative processes can be adapted for implementation in a healthcare setting and according to the participants’ unique contexts.
PRESENTED BY: Nathan Renton and David McPhee
This session will explore the evolution of restorative justice practice within Wood’s Homes’ Therapeutic Campus-Based Care Continuum, with particular attention to how restorative approaches moved from responsive, incident-based conversations toward a more intentional framework for culture, community, accountability, and repair. Grounded in the realities of live-in treatment with children and young people impacted by complex trauma, mental health needs, relational disruption, and systems involvement, the session will highlight both the opportunities and tensions of implementing restorative justice in a high-acuity care environment. A central focus will be the development and use of the Three Step Process, a practical relational repair tool designed to support children and young people after harm has occurred. The process invites young people to consider a kind thing for themselves, a kind thing for the person harmed, and a kind thing for the broader community. Rather than treating accountability as punishment or compliance, the Three Step Process creates a pathway for repair that is relational, developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed, and connected to community belonging. The session will also consider what it means to build restorative justice as a living practice within an organization: not only as a response to harm, but as a shared language, staff practice, community-building approach, and framework for healing in hard places.
PRESENTED BY: Kriz Cruzado
Mediation Services continually seeks innovative ways to center the voices of those who have experienced harm. Over the last ten years, we have seen a decline in the number of complainants participating in these processes. Victim participation is crucial as it offers a unique opportunity to understand the crime and find ways to repair the damage done. This presentation aims at sharing our findings, challenges and experience in piloting a victim surrogacy program, which is designed to address the problem of declining number of direct victim participation. It highlights how surrogacy provides creative, safe avenues for victim representation in the justice process.
Workshop Session D / Séance d'atelier D
Nov. 17, 2026
**La session est offerte en anglais et sera traduite simultanément (l'interprétation simultanée) en français
RESENTED BY: Jo Phillips
There is a youth sitting in a restorative circle. The referral says possession of cannabis and assault of a parent. The process has been prepared. The questions are ready. The agreement form is on the table. But who is this kid, really? Their parents have both been incarcerated. Custody has shifted more than once. There are new siblings, a new community, a home where no one modeled regulation or set a clear boundary -- not because anyone stopped caring, but because no one ever showed them how. This youth has never had a stable floor. And the system now asking them to take accountability is the same system that has taken the people they love. When we look at this young person through the eyes of a practitioner managing a process, we see a referral. When we look through the eyes of that kid, we see something that started long before the incident, and something that will continue long after the conference, with or without us. This workshop is an invitation to sit in a different chair. Drawing on the practice of Regional Red Deer Restorative Justice -- a community-based youth diversion program in Central Alberta -- this session challenges some of the assumptions that even experienced restorative practitioners carry into the circle. That there is a clear harmed person and a clear responsible person. That the incident is the starting point. That accountability is something a young person either has or doesn't. That our job begins at referral. In reality, the youth we work with are rarely one thing. They are often both harmed and harming -- sometimes in the same incident, sometimes in the same relationship. A conference between two youth with a shared history, or between a youth and a parent who are both carrying unresolved harm, is not a traditional restorative process with younger participants. It is a fundamentally different kind of work, and it asks something different of us as facilitators. It asks us to go deeper than the incident. It asks us to start earlier -- at the first expression of harm, not the first interaction with courts. And it asks us to see the young person in front of us not as a responsible party to be processed through accountability, but as a whole human being whose actions make complete sense when you understand the tracks that were laid before we ever arrived. Participants will leave this session with a sharper understanding of the youth lens in restorative practice -- not as a framework to apply from a distance, but as a genuine shift in perspective. What does this circle look like through their eyes? What does accountability feel like when you've never seen it modeled? What are we actually building when we get this right -- and what tracks are we leaving when we don't? The young people who pass through our circles are watching us closely. They are trying to figure out if we see them -- really see them -- or if this is just another room where adults decide what happens next. This session is about learning to look through their eyes. And letting that change everything about how we work.
PRESENTED BY: Myrna LaPlante and Brian Gallagher
**Preventing Re‑victimization of MMIWG2S+ Families / Prévenir la revictimisation des familles de femmes, de filles et de personnes bispirituelles autochtones disparues ou assassinées (MMIWG2S+) - PRESENTED BY: Myrna LaPlante and Brian Gallagher
Family Members of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls will share their stories of attempting to find justice for their loved ones. Through a process of deduction the ways in which family members feel they have experienced victimization will be named and finally the participants will join in naming how the families could feel more like there had been justice for their loved ones.
PRÉSENTÉ PAR: Myrna LaPlante and Brian Gallagher
Des membres de familles de femmes et de filles autochtones disparues ou assassinées partageront leurs histoires et leurs démarches pour tenter d’obtenir justice pour leurs proches. À travers un processus de déduction, les formes de victimisation vécues par les familles seront nommées, et les participant·e·s seront ensuite invité·e·s à identifier collectivement ce qui pourrait permettre aux familles de ressentir davantage qu’une véritable justice a été rendue à leurs êtres chers.
PRESENTED BY: Chantell Barker
The Peacemaking System is workshop designed to introduce participants to an Indigenous-led approach to justice that is grounded in healing, accountability, restoration, and community wellness. The workshop explained that peacemaking differs from conventional justice systems because it focuses on restoring balance rather than relying primarily on punishment or incarceration. Participants were introduced to the foundational teachings of the Treaty 2 Peacemaking Framework, including the Natural Laws of Peace, Balance, Harmony, and Natural Order. The workshop described how the Peacemaking System incorporates traditional Indigenous knowledge, community participation, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and families into justice and healing processes. The workshop also explained the structure of the Seven Peacemaking Circles, each with specialized roles that support prevention, mediation, wellness planning, peacekeeping, tribunals, appeals, and law-making functions. Through discussions and examples, participants learned how the circles work collaboratively to address the root causes of harm, including trauma, addictions, family violence, lateral violence, and disconnection from culture and community. A key focus of the workshop was the hybrid tribunal model, which combines Indigenous peacemaking processes with aspects of the contemporary court system. Participants learned how judges, peacemakers, and community members work together to review healing and wellness plans, hear from circle participants, and support meaningful accountability through healing orders rather than solely punitive measures. The workshop emphasized that peacemaking is not simply an alternative program, but a transformative justice approach that seeks to rebuild relationships, strengthen communities, and create safer and healthier futures for the next seven generations.
PRESENTED BY: Alyssa Gennrich, Cherysse Mackechnie, Cheyenne McDonald, Krystle Johnstone
The NRJS theme Tracks We Leave asks us to consider what pathways our systems create and what pathways we can build instead. For many criminalized women and gender-diverse people in Saskatchewan, the inherited path moves through poverty, violence, colonization, child welfare involvement, housing instability, unmet health needs, remand, incarceration, and release without support. The Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan (EFSK) works to create a different path grounded in accountability, healing, housing stability, culture, and community. EFSK is a community-based non-profit serving women and gender-diverse adults who are criminalized or at risk of criminalization through diversion, legal navigation, housing, reintegration, advocacy, and culturally grounded wraparound support. This work is urgent and necessary. In 2024–2025, Pine Grove Correctional Centre, designed to hold 166 women, operated between 241 and 334 individuals. EFSK observed that more than three-quarters of women were held on remand, with more than 90% identifying as Indigenous. Statistics Canada continues to report the significant overrepresentation of Indigenous women in custody, reflecting the ongoing impacts of colonialism, poverty, housing instability, violence, and systemic inequities. These realities demonstrate how systems continue to respond to unmet needs through punitive interventions rather than prevention, stability, and coordinated community support. This presentation will explore EFSK’s continuum of restorative diversion, beginning at first contact with the justice system and continuing through reintegration and long-term community stability. Participants will learn how EFSK connects first appearance court support, comprehensive bail planning, Gladue-informed advocacy, institutional in-reach, early release advocacy, provincial and federal reintegration planning, after-care, Homes Not Handcuffs, Wikowin Transitional Supportive Housing, and an emerging second-stage permanent supportive housing initiative to create coordinated, community-based pathways away from incarceration and toward healing, accountability, and stability. We will ground this model in measurable outcomes. During the 2024–2025 fiscal year, EFSK Court Services supported 256 court appearances and 495 client meetings. EFSK’s Release Systems program provided comprehensive pre-release support to 129 women. Wikowin, EFSK’s 10-bed transitional home, opened in November 2024 and provided housing to 18 women and a total of 1,230 nights of safe, stable housing by July 2025. Residents accessed one-on-one support, addiction programming, cultural connection, life-skills development, transportation, and family reunification support. Updated 2025–2026 outcomes, including current housing, court support, release planning, reintegration, and Homes Not Handcuffs impact data, will be shared during the November presentation following EFSK’s August AGM. Co-presented by EFSK staff, including staff with lived/living experience, this session will also create space for people supported by EFSK to share their experiences were safe, voluntary, and fully consented. Participants will leave with practical tools for building housing-focused bail and release plans, strengthening warm referral networks, and developing culturally grounded, community-based diversion pathways that reduce system cycling and support long-term stability. Ultimately, this session challenges participants to consider the tracks we leave behind through our systems, policies, and practices and to reflect on how housing, diversion, accountability, and community support can build stronger communities than punitive responses, including incarceration.
PRESENTED BY: Aurra Startup and Jason Spencer
This workshop explores key findings from Community Justice Initiatives’ literature review, Positioning Victims in Restorative Justice: Conceptual Foundations and Practice Considerations, a project funded by the Department of Justice. The session examines how victims are conceptualized within restorative justice frameworks and what practices support more accessible, informed and victim-centered referral pathways. Drawing from research on public awareness, referral barriers, informed consent, decision-making support and inter-agency collaboration, participants will consider how restorative justice can be offered in ways that prioritize victim agency, choice and dignity. Through brief presentation, guided discussion and small-group reflection, participants will identify practical strategies for improving how restorative justice is explained, offered and supported across justice, community and victim-serving contexts.