The CSJR is proud to introduce you to our ambassadors club created for our tenth anniversary in 2011. A big thank you to each of the following ambassadors for their faithful commitment at our sides as well as Céline Bonnier who has accepted the role of spokesperson of CSJR in 2016.
Pierre Allard
After his
brother André was murdered, Pierre found in restorative justice a vision that was strong enough to keep him working at the Correctional Service of Canada.
Since 2006, he has been the president of Just.Equipping, a charity committed to promoting restorative justice and training prison chaplains, mainly in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Goma), and Burundi.
Lorraine Berzins
While working at the Federal Penal Administration, Lorraine Berzins survived a kidnapping, an experience that opened her eyes to the need for a different approach to justice. She left her post of 14 years in the prison system to pursue this discovery, joining the Church Council on Justice and Corrections. With her help, the Council earned the first National Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award. For the past 40 years she has been participating in experiments in restorative and collaborative justice in Ottawa.
Brian Bronfman
In 2006, Brian Bronfman created the Brian Bronfman Family Foundation to support peace-building and conflict resolution initiatives. He also built a network of peace-supporting donors and the Outils de Paix (Tools for Peace) project, of which the CSJR is a member. He has taught conflict resolution and has worked as a professional mediator. In 2010, he received an Award of Excellence from the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution.
Arlène Gaudreault
Arlène Gaudreault has been the president of the Quebec-based association Plaidoyer-Victimes since 1988. She was a victimology professor at the Université de Montréal and has contributed to developing many activities to improve the support offered to victims of crime. In 1997, she received a Justice Award from the Quebec Ministry of Justice. That same year, the newspaper La Presse nominated her for “Personality of the year” in the category “Courage, humanism and personal achievement”. In 2003, the Canadian Criminal Justice Association gave her an Award of Excellence. In 2007, the Legal Service Commission handed her the Robert-Sauvé Award for her commitment to the cause of victims.
Pierre Noreau
Pierre Noreau is a full professor at the Université de Montréal’s Centre de recherche en droit public (Centre for Research in Public Law). His main field of work is in sociology of the law. Pierre Noreau was the president for the Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS) from 2008 to 2012 and vice-chancellor for the programmation and development of the Agence universtaire de la Francophonie (AUF) from 2011 to 2014). As a trained political scientist and legal scholar, his interests lie with mediation, non-litigious conflict resolution, and community justice.
Johanne Vallée
Until recently, Johanne Vallée was the deputy commissioner for Quebec for the Correctional Service Canada. Previously, she was directing the Correctional Services of Quebec. For more than 20 years, she worked for the Association des services de réhabilitation sociale du Québec as the CEO. Throughout her career, she was particularly interested in the role played by members of the society in the criminal justice system. She was also interested in community solutions for problems of delinquency. The partnership among the different actors in the justice system is one of her main concerns, along with the concepts of “Satisfactory Justice” and Restorative Justice. She was also the vice-president of the National Crime Prevention Center. In 2005, she received the Médaille de la faculté des Arts et Sciences of the Université de Montréal as a graduate of the School of Criminology for her exceptional career. Then, in November 2012, she received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her career.
Céline Bonnier, spokesperson of CSJR
I support the CSJR because it is necessary to have in our society such an organization that believes in encountering reality.
I believe, like the CSJR, that communication between people who have suffered, and who are still suffering from certain events, is essential.
One of the surest ways of understanding a criminal act of which one has been a victim is to hear the words of the one who committed it.
The CSJR, by organizing meetings between victims and criminals who are not in direct contact with each other, allows for the healing of both parties.
Having witnessed one of these encounters myself, I know for a fact that they bring about the recognition of the suffering of the other. And it is only in this way that true healing can emerge.
I believe that listening and real encounter is one of the surest solutions to lessen the solitude caused by certain kinds of suffering.