EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, April 25, 1996

.0705

[English]

The Chair: Order, please. We have with us from Nova Scotia Legal Aid, Mona Lynch; and from Pink Murray, Danny Graham. I want to welcome you first of all. This is the last day of our trip to the Maritimes.

We have an hour. Our usual drill is that we turn you loose and let you go, but we will have questions at the end. So if you would save some time for that, we would appreciate it.

Ms Mona Lynch (Lawyer, Nova Scotia Legal Aid): To start for Danny and me, I just want to let you know a little about what I do. I'm a staff lawyer at Nova Scotia Legal Aid. In Nova Scotia the system we have for legal aid is staff. Private lawyers don't do that much of the legal aid work.

So basically on a day-to-day basis my job is to represent young offenders who are charged before the court. In Nova Scotia as well there's a split in the courts as to 12- to 15-year-olds and 16- and 17-year-olds. I deal with the 12- to 15-year-olds in that court.

I submitted a brief in September and I'm sure you received that. I just want to highlight few things I've said in the brief and maybe change a few things, to word them differently in any event.

The first thing I want to say is that the criticism you hear on a daily basis or I hear on a daily basis of the Young Offenders Act from the ordinary public seems to me to be coming from people who have had limited exposure to the young offenders system, maybe based on one case or on no cases. They're listening to people who are critical in the media and politicians who are critical about the act.

I think the fear instilled by the politicians who talk about the act and by the media has the public at this point almost hysterical about the Young Offenders Act. I don't think the people who feel like that are looking at the overall picture.

As I said, I work on a daily basis in the young offenders system. Most of the young people who appear before the courts fit squarely into the reasons why the act was put in place. I think Canada is well served by both the Young Offenders Act and the system in place.

Most young people do impulsive teenage things that get them before the court. The judges I appear before are not saying they wish they could give more than the maximum. They're not saying the two or three years they're allowed to give is not enough. We're not up to the point where all of the sentences are there, which you would think we would be if those maximum had to be changed.

.0710

There's no offence a young offender can't get custody for under the Young Offenders Act. A summary conviction offence can give a young offender six months in custody. Not all of the offenders and the offences should be dealt with under the Young Offenders Act. That's why there's allowance for transfers in the act. The amendments have been made to make presumptive transfers for serious offences, but the most serious offences and the most serious offenders come from a very small percentage of the people who are before the court.

It's widely accepted, I think, that most young people growing up commit one offence or maybe more than one offence. It's for that reason we have the Young Offenders Act and why it's a good thing.

One of the areas I wanted to touch on is the family responsibility for youth crime and parental responsibility. Making the parents pay is one way of putting it. I think the focus of the Young Offenders Act is for the young person to take responsibility for having committed an offence. It seems to me that's the way it should be. To make the parents or the families responsible goes totally against our criminal law theory in making the person who committed the offence responsible for the act.

The criminal law or the Young Offenders Act is not the place to make better parents. That's not the job of the Young Offenders Act or the criminal justice system. It's for child welfare legislation. If you order a parent to pay, if you order a parent to get counselling or if you order a parent to be a better parent, under the criminal justice system the ultimate penalty is jail. Then we would be putting people in custody, the ones who didn't do what was ordered for having not committed an offence, which totally goes against what I believe the criminal justice system is about.

The child welfare system is the system that's designed to deal with parenting and to make better parents. The ultimate penalty there is removal, taking the children away from them. There is also the civil aspect of the law where, if parents are found negligent, they can be sued civilly for the actions of their children if they have a part in it, negligently.

One of the other areas I'd like to touch on is the knowledge youth and adults have about youth offending, the youth justice system and the Young Offenders Act. Some in the media make it sound like all children are taught their rights and the provisions of the Young Offenders Act along with the alphabet in a primary grade. But I find the parents and children whom I deal with don't know what to expect when they come before the court.

A lot of them buy into the public myth that nothing can happen to them. They are shocked when I say, no, that's not the truth, you can go to custody for this charge. They say that's not what they understand, that they're young offenders. They think their records disappear automatically when they become 18. They've bought into a lot of the public misconceptions.

There's a lot of misinformation out there about the Young Offenders Act. I deal with that in speaking to friends and when I watch the nightly news. I watched one evening as one of the local newscasters did a commentary on the Young Offenders Act and panned it. He said he couldn't believe Parliament hadn't yet abolished it and asked when they were going to do so. I don't know where he got his information. I've never seen him in a youth court. But he seems to have bought into what the public believes.

In my mind, it's the most misunderstood piece of legislation we have in Canada at the present time, and I hope that's not a reason to change it. It's a reason to inform the public and educate the public but not to change the act.

Another area I'd like to deal with is the minimum and the maximum ages. I believe the age of 12 is the correct age for criminal responsibility. People say 12-year-olds know more now than they used to, but if you look back, it hasn't been that long since people were working full-time at 16. It seems to me young people are under their parents' wings more than they ever used to be and are staying with their parents for a longer time. The major percentage of crimes are not committed by young people in that age group.

.0715

Age 12 is a very difficult age for me to explain, which I have to on some occasions, the legal concepts under the act. For under 12-year-olds we're told we should have babysitters. They're not responsible enough to be left alone. It worries me that people would think they can be criminally responsible. The proper system for under 12 is the child welfare system, and I believe that's where it should stay.

No matter what age somebody picked, if the age was lowered, if you lowered the age to 7, then people would be saying there are 6-year-olds out there conniving to beat the fifth. So I don't think you are going to satisfy all of the people, but I think the present age is the appropriate one.

The maximum age, 17, acknowledges that those young people aren't adults. We don't treat them like adults in any other aspects of their lives, and we shouldn't make them criminally responsible in the same degree as adults. It would give them all of the responsibilities and none of the rights.

Transfers of provisions are more than adequate at the present time to deal with the small percentage of young people in the youth court system who shouldn't be in the youth court system. I would suggest adult prisons are no place for 16- and 17-year-olds.

I'd ask you to consider the youth facilities. I know you went on a tour yesterday of the Nova Scotia Youth Centre in Waterville. My concern about the Nova Scotia Youth Centre and the Shelburne Youth Centre here, which is where the young people I deal with are sent for custody, is how far away they are from Halifax. Most of the parents of the young people I deal with don't have the resources to go and visit their young people when they're in custody. It makes it hard for family reconciliations and any kind of family counselling that could take place. It makes it difficult for legal representation, as well, because of the geographic distance between Halifax and the Waterville and Shelburne youth centres. It's not just Halifax; it's difficult for people in Antigonish, for the majority of the people in the province, to get to those places.

I think the youth centres we have here in Nova Scotia are not the same as the youth centres in other provinces in that the concept is not open custody to the same degree. There should be more in each area of an open custody group home-type facility rather than the big facilities we have at the present time.

Sometimes these facilities get presented in the media as summer camp-type places. I've never, in eight and a half years, had a young person ask me if I could get them a higher sentence, that they'd like to stay at Waterville or Shelburne for the summer. That's not what they consider them. Young people put up bravado and may say that sometimes, but they may be the same young people who are crying to me on the phone asking to get them out.

No matter what you have to say about the surroundings, you still have somebody waking you up in the morning and telling you what to do all day, structuring your life. It's not free time in the pool and free recreation. That's not the way the facilities work. The young people who are in there are receiving good programming, but it certainly is taking away their freedom.

I would like to deal also with the youth court system and the child welfare system and the link between them. Young people on a regular basis in our province get shuffled from one system to another. That's because of the lack of resources in the child welfare and mental health systems. Then people look to the justice system to try to deal with young people. The two are separate systems. The focus of each is different, and they should be different.

Incarceration because of lack of resources isn't the correct way to do things. The youth court is not designed to handle the fallout from the child welfare system. There should be more coordination between the youth court system and the child welfare system.

.0720

Having done this for a long time, I find that everybody points to somebody else. If you bring a young person to a mental health facility, they'll point to the child welfare system. Child welfare will point to mental health or to the youth court system and say that this is where the young person should be dealt with.

That's basically a product of lack of resources. The system should be better able to adapt to meet the needs of the young person.

We also need to catch the young people early. Teachers say they can tell at a young age whether or not somebody is going to end up before the youth court. I think we should be paying more attention to the teachers and putting resources in earlier for these young people.

Instead, what we're hearing is that the social programs are being cut back. I heard on the news the other day about Ontario looking to put money into a boot camp. I've also heard that they're taking money from child welfare systems, day care centres, and social assistance.

I think that's totally wrong thinking. We need to put the services in the front and help the young people so that they don't end up needing a boot camp. Instead, we're putting money in the back end to catch the most serious young people so we can incarcerate them. The easy answer is to build more and better jails, but that's also most expensive, both socially and economically.

I also want to deal with the link between youthful criminality and the Young Offenders Act. The Young Offenders Act is not a proactive piece of legislation; it's reactive. It only comes into play when a young person is accused of committing a crime, and not before.

The public perception seems to be that the Young Offenders Act in some way causes crime, and if the penalties were higher, the crime rate would be lower. I think that's the simplistic view. I don't think the evidence shows that increasing the penalty lowers the crime rate. I think the opposite is shown to be true in the United States.

Also, this assumes an irrational thought process, such that every young person or everybody who commits a crime weighs the options and makes a decision. This couldn't be further from the truth.

From what I deal with, most young people commit crimes on impulse or with the youthful view that they won't get caught, and the penalties don't mean anything to them. A majority of my clients have social problems, family problems, learning disabilities and addiction problems.

I think the major thing the public is talking about is the lack of respect they see in young people. I think again that's something we should be dealing with by putting money into social programs, not taking money out of them. I think the cause is the underlying social and poverty issues from which we're taking funding away. I believe we'll pay the price for doing that.

Consider one of the things they've done here in Nova Scotia in the age group I work with. They used to have youth corps workers or probation officers who had a low caseload and could deal with the young people. They were able to make a difference to a young person's health by helping to try to prevent something that was escalating in the home. Or the young person was maybe getting to the point at which they looked like they were going to break their probation.

But they've changed the system and doubled the caseloads for the youth corps workers, so that doesn't happen any more. That was a helpful, preventive tool that is now gone.

I'd like to deal for a second with the publishing of names. I think there's no evidence that this is a deterrent effect for young people. If it's necessary for the safety of the public, it can be done under section 38 of the Young Offenders Act. Most of the young people I deal with don't read the papers, and wouldn't know their names are in there. I don't think it's shown to be a deterrent. If it's a more serious crime, or a more serious offender who's transferred, then it is published.

In summary, I guess one of the major things I want to leave you with is resources and the need to put them in to implement the focus of the act. I know it's not all - the child welfare system is provincial - legislation, but the resources that are necessary to actually deal with young people and get the counselling and things that are necessary for young people should be part of the youth corps process as well.

.0725

These aren't adults. They don't think like adults. The time periods are different from those for adults. My young people complain about two months' wait for something, yet to me each year goes by in a blink. They don't think in the same timeframe as I do.

I've seen young people before the court whose parents have killed themselves in front of them. I've seen young people whose fathers have brutally raped their mothers in front of them. I've had young boys and girls 13 years of age prostituting themselves to support crack cocaine habits.

We need better services to protect these young people, and changing the Young Offenders Act won't do that. That's not the answer. Making further changes might pacify those in the public, who I believe are misinformed about the act. It might be the politically correct thing to do, but I don't think it's the right thing.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Graham.

Mr. Danny Graham (Lawyer, Pink Murray and Associates): Thank you. Five years ago, I was practising corporate law in, by Nova Scotia standards, a large law firm and holding middle-income, middle-class - if I can put it that way - values.

I had an interest in poverty law, and I left that firm. I became a staff lawyer at Nova Scotia Legal Aid. As it turns out, I was practising criminal law.

When I was practising corporate law, I think my views weren't dissimilar from most people's in the public, particularly about the Young Offenders Act. At Nova Scotia Legal Aid, there was really no such thing as poverty law, so I had to choose between family and criminal law, and I chose criminal law.

Since that time, I've been practising exclusively in that area. Two years ago I went back into private practice.

Now 30% of my work is concentrated in the area of youth crime. I've come to learn, during those five years, that my views on the youth justice system, prior to getting involved in the criminal justice system, was uninformed and lacking any insight into the root causes of youth crime. I was a typical member of the public.

As members of Parliament and as members of political parties, I'm sure you all appreciate the difficulty and frustration associated with trying to get your message out when you're trying to tell the truth about something, and the media, or some other type of organization or interest group, seem to be always distorting the message or frustrating it in one fashion or another when the truth is plain to you.

The truth about the Young Offenders Act, quite frankly, is plain to most of those who deal with the Young Offenders Act on a day-to-day basis. The frustration we feel is probably akin to the frustration you feel from time to time in trying to get the message out to the people you represent.

In a sense, the Young Offenders Act reminds me of the old fable about the emperor having no clothes. The story becomes so grand, big and notorious that everyone begins to believe it. It becomes part of the culture that the Young Offenders Act is bad.

I don't know how we got to this point, but we've reached that point. I guess simply the House of Commons having struck a committee such as yours to identify issues of the Young Offenders Act, the youth justice system and youth crime underlines the significance the government seems to attach to this particular issue. It almost presupposes that there is a problem with these issues.

But what if there isn't a big problem? What if you've been led down the garden path? What if you've been told that all these things are rotten and awful, but in fact the truth is that they're not so awful?

The truth is that your time and resources could be better spent in other areas if you're looking at addressing the real issue, which is youth crime and problems with youth.

Addressing specifically the Young Offenders Act is a misguided thing. Beyond tinkering, which the House of Commons did in 1992 and 1995 - perhaps some would suggest there was a lot more than tinkering - there's little more to be done. I would suggest it's time that people start addressing more fundamental issues than the simple legislation and the nuts and bolts of the youth justice system.

.0730

You're going to hear from a broad cross-section of Canadians about their points of view on this particular issue. I think the most persuasive voices you'll hear will be telling you that there is a problem with youth crime. There is a problem with the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the hopeless, the crime-oriented youth in Canada. That is clear. Nobody is going to dispute that.

Youth crime is a problem and will remain a problem as long as it exists. I'm sure you will be loaded with statistical figures with respect to that by the time you return to Ottawa. From my reading of them, those statistics on the whole are malleable. They're generally neutral about the direction of crime with respect to youth. If there is an increase, it's not nearly as great as the public is suggesting right now.

You will hear persuasive voices that will mainly focus on the notion that your time, money, brains and resources will be better spent addressing the root causes, which are things related to poverty, family issues, social issues and educational issues. That may start to sound like psychosocial mumbo-jumbo, and that's not very tangible.

Perhaps you need the experience that Mona and I and many others in the youth justice system have had, of going down day after day, and prior to my getting involved in criminal law having had no exposure to the criminal justice system - we've interviewed hundreds of kids by now. For at least 80% of of these kids, their profiles come straight out of a cookie cutter. They come from dysfunctional families, have little education, their parents have little education, they have self-esteem and substance abuse problems, there is substance abuse among the parents, and other poverty problems.

These are the issues that are the causes of crime. These are the things that bring these kids to us in the first place. Once they are 12 or 14 or 16, most of their problems will be with them for the rest of their lives. The Young Offenders Act is a little mosquito in terms of the effort to stem the tide of the direction of their lives. Long before age 12, many of them have these problems. Mona has touched on that briefly.

I think the focus of the House of Commons and the public to a certain extent should be to focus on that little mosquito and fix the problem. You probably want something to sink your teeth in. So long as you keep focusing on these little bugs like the Young Offenders Act and the youth justice system, you are not going to address the root causes of crime.

The Young Offenders Act, Mona has suggested, is one of the most misunderstood pieces of legislation, I completely support that. I don't know where we got off track with respect to that. Perhaps it's because it is called the Young Offenders Act. It certainly sounds like something that would have a big bull's-eye on it for anybody who has frustrations about youth - not just youth crime, but about youth generally.

At this point I don't think changing the name will accomplish a great deal. Changing the image is clearly required at some point. I think people would see it as nothing more than cosmetic fluff to change the name and try to dress it up again. People will suggest that it's the same old thing, and hopefully it will essentially be the same old thing.

Who are these young offenders? Frankly, I think the public's perception of a young offender is a young person who offends them in a personal way. In their minds they're the cocky kids who don't hold the door. It's the saucy, disrespectful kid who no longer uses Mr. and Sir. The tremendous anger and discontent that has grown up about these people relates to the punks who are going to school with our kids.

.0735

I have kids. Some of the kids they hang around with are punky and saucy. I share that frustration, but let's not misdirect where we want to focus our lasers on this issue.

At times I have the frustrations that people in the public do about teenagers these days. I also want to wring their necks at times. Mona does. She has a teenage daughter.

We have to appreciate that when we grew up all we had to do was get a high school education. Get your high school diploma and you have hope. You're going to have a future, you're going to have a good job. Then it became a university education, then a business degree, then an MBA and now perhaps another professional designation or some such thing.

There are no guarantees for anyone in generation X. It is time that those of us who escaped generation X look back on these people and identify that this is a hopeless crowd. They don't have any of the expectations about life and going on into their thirties, forties and fifties that we once did. There isn't anything for them. There's a ceiling that is cramping their necks.

We can't allow the old-fashioned generation gap that we experienced when we were growing up to get in the way of dispassionate, measured responses to the problems of youth crime. Solving those problems is daunting. The way you do it is subtle. Sure it looks easier to tighten up the Young Offenders Act, but as Mona has pointed out and as I think you will find by the end of your hearings, this will have little or no effect and we'll still be left with the causes of the problem.

You might think these are sophisticated legal beagles who know a great deal about the law. We meet them all the time, and they're anything but sophisticated. They are street wise, but they are not knowledgeable about the law. They don't know the Young Offenders Act. You can change the Young Offenders Act to become the most draconian piece of legislation imaginable, but if you don't address the root causes of these problems, of the crime, these same kids will be coming back to you in ten, fifteen or twenty years.

We don't expect that all of you will agree with our points of view today or perhaps even by the end of the hearings. However, despite what the interest groups, including the police chiefs, and other groups may say, I expect that most of you, at some point and hopefully by the end of your deliberations, will generally support the views we're putting forward.

I think your problem will be partly legislative and partly political. It will be legislative in the sense that your focus will need to be on things other than the Young Offenders Act, including other types of legislation that will prevent youth crime. It will be political in the sense that you have a broad group of constituents who in general are misinformed about the Young Offenders Act, have been misled about the Young Offenders Act, and who now expect changes to the Young Offenders Act based on what you're going to do.

What are you going to do about that? You can try to educate these people. A rotten selling job has been done on the Young Offenders Act. Hopefully it wouldn't need a selling job, but it is certainly does now. It was just another piece of legislation at one time.

For example, tell Nova Scotians that there was a recent study done by the Department of Justice. This isn't a study by defence lawyers or others who may have an axe to grind on this particular issue. According to Department of Justice studies from 1993-94, youths as compared to adults in provincial institutions actually served double the time the adults served. The median amount of time a youth serves in custody for a sentence in Nova Scotia is 122 days, but it's 61 days for an adult. People don't know that. That's because kids don't get paroled but adults generally do.

.0740

Tell the people generally - and this is just from Nova Scotia studies that I'm familiar with - that youths do serve all their time. They're found guilty more often than adults, it would appear. They're more likely to go to jail in the first place. We have to get the message out. Yes, we have to deal with the issue of taking responsibility and also accountability amongst youth. But taking responsibility without giving them responsibility is something that we have to answer to.

There are a couple of tangible points I would like to touch on. First of all, there is a real problem ultimately with parenting issues in the Canadian public. Why are we not institutionalizing in a general sense the notion that as we have prenatal classes - and for some in certain religious groups, prenuptial classes - why not have pre-parenting classes? I recognize this is a provincial institution, but why don't we have parenting classes as a mandatory course in our junior highs and high school before teenagers become parents and this cycle continues itself at a later date? That would certainly appear to be the kind of thing that nips in the bud the problems associated with breakdowns in families and the lack of support that children involved in youth crimes ultimately have.

If we could just spend our time, resources and brains institutionalizing that - it's a pretty simple concept, but putting it into practice I think will require a lot of work: parenting classes before someone gets pregnant, parenting classes when somebody becomes pregnant, once they have children, courses perhaps through the family services system where parents are actually sent to parenting classes so that they understand what's involved.

The second point I would make is related to transfers. I know the legislation has already been changed with respect to transfers. It makes it easier to transfer youths to adult court for certain crimes. There's a presumption with respect to the most serious crimes.

On the whole, quite frankly, I don't have a great deal of difficulty in specific and isolated circumstances for older offenders, more serious crimes, repeated offences, that sort of thing, with the notion intellectually of having these youths dealt with in the adult system where they potentially would receive longer sentences. Notionally that's not a problem.

Realistically it's a huge problem, because the adult correction system in Canada is pernicious and abusive. It involves exploitation of the worst order. We cannot with one arm change the Young Offenders Act to make youths more likely to go up to adult court, and then with the other arm ignore them and allow them to be raped and abused in the adult system. If you're going to change the youth system to make it easier for them to be bumped into federal institutions, then you had surely better change the adult system to make sure their lives aren't completely ruined once they get up there.

There are some changes I would recommend with respect to the corrections system you have, but on the whole I would suggest that it is a far better system than the adult system. Perhaps we need more community-based and residential dispositions.

Those are my comments. I apologize for going on as long as as I did. Obviously we're prepared to answer whatever questions you have.

What Mona didn't indicate is that she has a publication contract with one of the national publishers on the Young Offenders Act. She's now in the final stages of completing a book that she has written on substantive legal issues with respect to the Young Offenders Act.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

We have 15 minutes for questions, so please so ahead, Mr. Ramsay.

.0745

Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): I want to thank you for your presentation.

I want to begin by just touching on some of the introductory remarks you made, Mona, that there is a hysteria and a fear instilled by the media and politicians, which indicates there's no basis for some of the concerns in this particular area.

If the only reliable statistics that we have are accurate with regards to youth crime, and that's the murder statistics - they're accurate because of the body count - we can anticipate approximately 42 innocent people to be murdered at the hands of young offenders in the next 12 months. I don't know if being concerned about this to the extent that the people do whom we talk to and who attend public meetings that I attend is hysteria. I don't think it is. I think there is a crying out across the land for greater safety for society.

The causative factors that lead to youth crime can be identified, and some of them at least have been identified to us as we began our meetings out here, including illiteracy within our schools.

When you say we need not take measures that will make parents more accountable and focus their attention upon the actions and behaviour of their children, in terms of their own accountability relating to what their children do, I cannot agree with that.

I have four children, young adults and adults. If one of my children breaks a window, smashes up a car after stealing it, steals a bike or whatever, I feel morally obligated to repay my neighbour as best I can for the damage that has been done.

To codify that sense of responsibility, I see nothing wrong with this. If we don't begin to provide the protection for our children that comes from the adults within their lives, including their parents, their teachers, the police and so on, if we don't make them accountable and responsible to ensure that rules are obeyed within the home, within the school, within the school yard and so on, then I say good luck, because we're not going to change very much. We're not attacking the cause of the problem.

The only people who have the authority to deal with children outside of the law are the parents. They have the greatest impact upon their children. So when we say to you, your child can do whatever he wants, or whatever she wants, and you are not accountable, I don't think that's right. I think that when we moved from the Juvenile Delinquents Act to the Young Offenders Act, we lost some of those tools.

You say that the 12-year minimum is okay and that the child welfare should look after those who commit offences. Well, who is to stop the 11-year-old in a stolen car? Is it the child welfare people? No, it's the police department who has no authority whatever after they stop the vehicle. In fact, under the old Juvenile Delinquents Act...and I and my party recommend the reduction of the age to 10, not because we want to see them in court but because we want to provide a means to society for protection against the criminal acts. And they need not appear in court. They may be turned over to a proper authority.

.0750

But we have heard witnesses appearing before this committee - and I've heard them when I've spoken to them personally - say that there is no.... In fact, Mr. McNamara of Victims of Violence in Ottawa appeared before our committee, and that's what he said.

Who is there in society to stop the 10-and 11-year-old from committing crimes?

We heard from the grandmother of Sylvain Leduc, who pointed out clearly that the adults who eventually murdered Sylvain used teenagers to kidnap him and bring him to them together with the two girls.

When you say to us that we, the legislators who are supposed to be making recommendations to the justice minister for amendments, should not initiate measures that will give the adults more power and responsibility to deal with their children, I don't think that's going in the right direction.

And yes, you have identified what we have heard, that we have to direct more resources to the front end keep the kids out of the system. I agree that we can identify those symptoms within the school. The Sydney Mines facility told us so clearly about the success they can have with kids who can't keep up in school and begin to act out and drop out. They've had phenomenal success with bringing those kids back on line and making them realize they can do and accomplish things beyond what they ever thought they could do and accomplish.

Yes, we have to start moving to the front end the $10 billion to $12 billion we spend at the back end of the justice system. But we have also heard that 5%, 6% or 8% of the young offenders do not and will not respond to that, and society must be protected from them.

Throughout your presentation I didn't hear - although I think the undertones of it were there - you speak about the safety of society as being the first responsibility of the justice system, and yet that's what it should be.

I have heard from both your presentations this morning that the YOA is primarily okay. Don't touch it, leave it alone. Well, you may be right. But I ask you -

The Chair: Mr. Ramsay, we're now at eight minutes, and I'm just going to have to ask you to stop.

Mr. Ramsay. Okay, I'll just finish off.

The Chair: No, Mr. Ramsay, it's eight minutes, and the other side has time as well. I'm sorry.

Mr. Ramsay: Okay.

The Chair: Mr. Gallaway.

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Good morning. Thank you for coming. It was very interesting.

There seem to be two philosophical spheres that are kind of spinning away in their own little orbits. In certain quarters in this country we're living in what I would refer to as an Old Testament world, where it's spare the rod, spoil the child.

You've heard of these 42 people, who Mr. Ramsay has referred to as 42 people who in all probability will be murdered by young offenders this year. If I were to say to you, go ahead, I'll give you all the legislative authority necessary, using only the Young Offenders Act, how would you prevent that?

Mr. Graham: I don't think realistically you will.

If I could just pick up on the statistics, if I could touch on it for a moment, you and Mr. Ramsay may be far more up to date than I am on the latest statistics with respect to murder. But the latest figures I have suggest that if there was anything between the period 1974-79 to the period 1986-92, the rate of homicides amongst youth, as reported by the police, in Canada in fact dropped. I'm quoting from a Department of Justice figure.

Now, if they've gone up recently, then perhaps that's a blip. I think it's important to look at trends over a period of time.

Maybe the most recent statistics suggest something different, but murder generally, as a behavioural thing, is a random blip and something that comes out of circumstances that don't have a whole lot to do with.... At this moment of passion, or whenever it is, am I thinking about what's happening with the Young Offenders Act?

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Mr. Gallaway: Do you believe the first objective of the Young Offenders Act is protection of the public, or are there other objectives that might rank equally with or higher than the protection of the public?

Ms Lynch: I'd like to go back to what Mr. Ramsay was saying, that nothing in our presentation talked about the protection or safety of the public.

I think our whole presentation is about the protection and safety of the public, because if we can get resources to these young people to keep them from committing crime, that's what's going to happen. I think rehabilitation is always considered one of the primary purposes, but it's considered rehabilitation in the sense that rehabilitating the young person is going to end up being protection and safety of the public. That's my view on that. Everything we're talking about and the resources needed are going to end up protecting the public.

Mr. Gallaway: I would suggest to you that there are those in this country who would clearly state that whatever you have to say about the Young Offenders Act ought to be rejected because you're part of the so-called criminal justice industry, that in one sense you're in fact insiders trading on the travails of young people. There are those who say the public should dictate what it wants with respect to treatment of young people.

If you were to make any changes to the Young Offenders Act, what would they be? I'm talking now about the legislation; I'm not talking about going off into these provincial spheres, because there's not a thing we can do about those.

Ms Lynch: I wouldn't make any.

Mr. Gallaway: Okay.

Mr. Graham: On the whole, I think that's the case. My pitch has been that, man oh man, we're spending so much money and resources on focusing on this little bug called the Young Offenders Act, when the real problems are there long before you get to the Young Offenders Act. It's -

Ms Clancy (Halifax): Bravo!

Mr. Graham: You could tinker, Mary.

An hon. member: Oh, she's a wry....

Ms Clancy: [Inaudible - Editor]

Mr. Graham: You might like to tinker, and I'm sure that if Mona and I put our heads together, we could find things. But we might change what you did in December 1995.

Mr. Gallaway: Now, if you follow the logic of lowering the age to 10, what would prevent us then from lowering it to 8? What's the rationale for having that at 12 - or 2, yes, for that matter.

Ms Lynch: I think we're going to get in vitro.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Ms Lynch: As I said, I don't think that if you change it to 10, people will be talking about conniving 9-year-olds who are beating the system.

I'm the one - and Danny doesn't deal with people as young as I do - who sits 12-year-olds down and tries to explain to them what the charge is, what a party to an offence is, the criminal concepts. They don't understand those.

I've had 10-year-old witnesses before the court and tried to get the information out of them. Although they've seen it, they can't remember what happened last week. It's just not....

Mr. Graham: There are teeth in other forms of legislation. It's provincial, family and children services teeth, and to say that police can't do anything just isn't so. Now, they can't do it in the same manner as they would be able to do it under the Young Offenders Act, but the truth is they can do things. Perhaps if we were a little bit more diligent in the way some of those things are followed through, it might satisfy those who want more accountability amongst those young children.

Mona talks about dealing with 12-year-olds. Quite frankly, I have trouble getting instructions from youths who are 14 and 15 years old, even those who are repeat offenders. They truly don't seem to understand the system.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable in some way. There is an accountability, and if I can underline what Mona was saying, public safety is what we're driving at. We're just saying that you generally point it in the wrong direction.

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Mr. Wells (South Shore): I know our time is up. Can I just ask a short question?

The Chair: There's no hurry. You have almost a minute.

Mr. Wells: Almost a minute!

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Wells: The brief you prepared was excellent, but we were at Waterville yesterday, and they tell us now that in fact they do have a teacher on staff, whereas maybe when you wrote this they didn't. So I think they may have addressed part of that.

Under the system as it is now - and I should know the answer to this, but I don't - if a young offender, say a 16- or 17-year-old, is tried and convicted in adult court, can they be sentenced to a young offenders facility?

Mr. Graham: Yes, there's an intermediate step that -

Mr. Wells: Okay, because you suggested that they would automatically go. I got the impression that they would automatically go to the adult prison.

Mr. Graham: I don't know of any situation where it has been.... They are sentenced to the youth facility. There have been some occasions. Most of the time we're dealing with situations where somebody receives a live sentence. There is no eligibility for parole now under the new legislation until period X.

Generally in the youth facilities they are not going to house anybody beyond the age of 19 or 20. At some point they're going to go on to the adult system. It's a question of when, and sometimes I've known.... There are 16-year-olds in the Atlantic institutions right now who are no doubt being abused in the worst way.

Mr. Wells: Is that the rule? Basically at 20 they take them out of the youth facility?

Ms Lynch: At the time they sentence them under the Criminal Code, the judge gets to say whether or not they go to an adult institution or a young offender facility. So it's completely up to the judge at the sentencing process.

The Chair: Our time is up.

Mr. Wells: Thank you.

The Chair: I want to thank you very much for appearing before us at such an early hour. We appreciate your contributions.

Mr. Graham: Thank you.

Ms Lynch: Thank you.

The Chair: We will now just take a minute to regroup. We'll be back at the table, I'd say, in three minutes.

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.0809

The Chair: We are with Yvonne Hanson and Mark Moffett of the Youth Alternative Society.

I want to welcome you. Our drill is that the more you talk, the less time we have for questions. But you go first. You know how best to get your message across.

Ms Yvonne Hanson (Executive Director, Youth Alternative Society): First of all, thanks for allowing us to be part of this group. The fact that we could actually sit down and meet around the table with you folks has been a long time in coming, and here we are at last.

.0810

I just wanted to talk a little about the history of the Youth Alternative Society. In regard to the administration of alternative measures, section 4 of the Young Offenders Act, we have been administering that program for well over 15 years.

We were incorporated in 1981, but prior to that we actually ran a three-year pilot project put together for the federal Department of the Solicitor General as well as for the provincial Department of Community Services in 1978. This is, of course, a precursor to the Young Offenders Act, before it was actually drawn up. The project was extremely successful, and I just wrote in my brief how it came about, where we went with this.

On September 25, 1981, Youth Alternative Program became incorporated under the Societies Act of Nova Scotia and changed its name to Youth Alternative Society. It was therefore accorded non-profit status. After the three-year pilot project it was felt that was probably the best route to go for people wanting to keep that program running for young offenders aged 12 to 15. That was where it worked initially.

In 1994 we took on the age group of 16- and 17-year-olds. Prior to that the Department of Community Services had worked with the age group of 12- to 15-year-olds separately and distinctly from 16- and 17-year-olds.

In that year everyone involved with the criminal justice system came under the wing of the provincial Department of Justice. So on a contractual basis, we started to get into negotiations with the Department of Justice. So we went from Community Services to the Department of Justice, and took on the 16- and 17-year-old age group as well.

Our society works in the area now called the Halifax Regional Municipality, which of course is Dartmouth, Halifax and the surrounding county. It's a very large area, very diverse in the kinds of people who live throughout the county, and includes as well Lunenburg and Queens counties. We have an office in Halifax, which does the bulk of the administrative work, as well as a social coordinator based in Bridgewater.

Funding to operate the program is again by the Department of Justice now as well as by the United Way. We also receive grants from the municipalities, and we do some fund-raising donations, that kind of thing.

Through the years of incorporation, the society has worked with over 5,000 youth. Last year alone we worked with well over 1,000 youth. That is taking into consideration working with that new age group, the 16- and 17-year-olds.

We train volunteers, who basically deliver the programs of alternative measures and community service order. We do other programs, for example, a ``stoplifting'' program. The majority of offences we work with in our agency are property offences - 84.9% - and the majority of those are shoplifting.

All the offences the Youth Alternative Society works on are in nature considered minor offences. We're governed by a volunteer board of directors, and Mark Moffett is on the board.

The agency also delivers information to the public on youth in conflict with the law, issues surrounding the Young Offenders Act, as well as our society's function to the public in university, high school, junior high, etc. We try to provide an advocacy role in these areas as well.

With regard to issues of concern we would like to address today, I might like to pretty much read word for word what I have down in the brief, because I know people haven't had a chance to go through it prior to today.

With regard to alternative measures, as outlined in section 4 of the Young Offenders Act, the Youth Alternative Society has come to recognize a number of inconsistencies as they relate to the administration of such justice provisions.

As the YOA stipulates, the province's Attorney General has responsibility for the establishment of criteria and the administration of alternative measures.

In Nova Scotia the Department of Justice, which recently acquired responsibility for all young offenders, has established, in consultation with the young offenders community program, criteria and guidelines for the administration of that program. However, as one of those community agencies, Youth Alternative Society works with a number of areas - police departments, crown attorneys and judges - to endorse both pre- and post-charge referrals and judges.

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The interpretations amongst these individuals vary greatly. While many of these individuals and departments recognize and in fact endorse the work our agency provides young offenders involved with minor offences, the selection of youth involved with the program is very open to individual discretion. This may or may not be in the best interests of that young person.

For example, some of the cases going to court of which we are aware could more easily come through a program such as ours, where eventually the young person would be aware of their offence and make amends to the victim and the community in a way the court doesn't allow for, and that would alleviate the harm a criminal record may have on their future.

As well, the opinions of some security personnel representing corporate victims' concerns often have great influence on whether you should be referred to the Youth Alternative Society for alternative measures, or not. While it's realized that the majority of offences dealt with in alternative measures are property offences - 84.9% in 1995 - mainly shoplifting offences, one would assume that these security personnel have quite an impact on who and who does not get alternative measures. Many of these offences are for items under $5.

Furthermore, there exists a second set of legal proceedings on the part of the corporate victim, even after the young person has attended an alternative measures discussion. In the media very recently a number of local organizations have voiced concern over that.

Many stores pursue civil action against the parents of the young offender, asking for settlements of up to $325. This procedure, which has now become commonplace for national stores such as The Bay, Zellers and K Mart, contradicts the messages expressed in an alternative measures discussion, where the young person assumes responsibility and then makes apologies to the victims, doing community service work to pay back the community for the damages, as part of their agreement.

The intention of the YOA in working with young people is rehabilitative and considerate of the youth's circumstances. Criminal proceedings are paid for by the taxpayers, and to have civil action pursued above and beyond the work already accomplished to make amends to the victim and community seems a redundancy and defeating act, in our opinion.

Innovations within the criminal justice system seem particularly appropriate with regard to working with young offenders. Alternative measures are an excellent model for having the youth take responsibility for their actions, allowing the victim to voice their concerns, and having the community involved with delivering justice.

Youth Alternative Society strives to maintain the connection between the youth's involvement with the law and the fact that they have individual responsibility toward the community in which they reside. It has worked very effectively in reducing crime among youth and discussing the accountability the whole community has with regard to youth and criminal behaviour.

In working with the community service order program, YAS receives referrals from the court system as it applies to youth ages 12 to 17-plus. Volunteer supervisors, such as volunteer probation officers who work in that kind of capacity, set up a youth to work at a community placement to complete court-ordered hours. For many youths this seems to be a conciliatory way of involving them in their community after they have been involved in damaging a member of that same community.

The courts working with young offenders do, however, tend to overuse this type of disposition with youth because of a lack of other innovations within the system, and we'd perhaps like to talk a little about that later.

Programs that explore potential employment skills, community development schemes, youth-based businesses, recreation/creative programs and applied education are some of the options not utilized within a disposition itself. It's felt that the courts working with young offenders use dispositions very similar in nature to dispositions for adults, and in some cases they're applied more harshly, such as the amount of hours a youth has to perform community work.

The Youth Alternative Society works with the community to deliver programs where we are at arm's length from the courts and the police. While we realize that our efforts hinge on the appropriation of the referral sent by the police and courts, our society does not perform its duties in isolation.

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The agency works with volunteers to create a foundation in the community for our work with youths, families and victims, where the approach is a combined social work, correctional and educational model. Benefits to all parties involved, be they youths, volunteers or police officers, have been noted in detail in an evaluation that perhaps could be forwarded to you if you are interested.

The Chair: Yes, please.

Ms Hanson: That's our brief.

The Chair: Do you have anything to add, Mr. Moffett?

Mr. Mark Moffett (Member, Board of Directors, Youth Alternative Society): No, that's fine.

The Chair: Thank you.

We'll start with ten-minute rounds.

Madame Venne.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne (Saint-Hubert): Madam Chair, you will not need to time me, because I have just one question. I simply want to take note that, as far as I can see, the act suits you, as we are here to analyze it. So I will ask you that straight out.

From what I have also understood, it is enforcement which, in some cases, is questionable.

You made one or two suggestions. Apart from them, do you have any others, and if yes, what are they?

[English]

Mr. Moffett: I heard a couple of things. One, I heard it said that the act itself is fine, and from our standpoint I think that's correct; it's fine to some extent.

One of the concerns we have is the way the act is meant to respond to young offenders. A lot of the offences these young people commit are minor in nature. The act seems to be getting closer to dealing with adults, in terms of being more harsh and more punitive in nature. That's a direction we'd like the act to steer clear of to some degree, because the crimes most young people commit are not major offences.

If the act can get away from that and go in a direction that includes some kind of creative, community-based response that has to do with education and trying to get that point across to young people, we would favour that more than something that's highly punitive, which is the direction society as a whole seems to want to take the Young Offenders Act.

Most of the cases you hear in the media seem to deal with murder or those types of offences, and they're a very small portion of the offences that young offenders commit, nationally as well as here in Nova Scotia. That punitive aspect or direction of the act, which some people in society seem to want to take, is not something we would embrace, based on the amount of experience we've had dealing with young people.

As Yvonne mentioned, we've been going since about 1982, so we've been involved with young people for quite a few years.

I'm not sure if Yvonne has anything to add or not. Hopefully that answers your question.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: In Quebec, we have a program called ``C'est la faute aux médias''. This expression means that if people perceive youth crime badly, its because of the information we receive.

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I'm in favour of freedom of speech, but it may perhaps be necessary to establish a code of ethics for the media to ensure that they impart information correctly and do not blow isolated cases out of proportion.

I will certainly include that comment somewhere in the report. Thank you.

[English]

Ms Hanson: I very much agree with what you're saying.

A very commonly asked question that I respond to when I'm doing public presentations is: how effective are your programs; how do you think they actually work to reduce crime among youths? I very much try to bring out the fact that we work with the community to revise and work with our programs in every sense. In that way it's as good as the community is in taking care of youths themselves and the issues on which we work.

In that way it's very successful. We see that when we look at statistics of how many youths have gone through the system of YAS, for example our programs of alternative measures, and how many actually reoffend after they've gone through such a program as that. They're very successful. The police, the courts and everyone will say it's a very strong part of what we do.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ramsay, you have ten minutes for the questions and the answers.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank you for your presentation and for the work you've been doing for the last fifteen years. I have three or four questions to ask, and if you could make notes of them I'll leave it at that.

What percentage of the young offenders you deal with are repeat offenders? What percentage of the young offenders you deal with have an alcohol or drug addiction as a contributing cause to their involvement in crime? What percentage of the young offenders you deal with have an illiteracy problem - in other words, had difficulties in school and either dropped out or acted up in school and were not doing well in school?

Finally, what, if anything, would you recommend we do with the 5% of young offenders who do not respond to rehabilitative programs? I remind you that before Bill C-37 was brought in the penalty for murder was approximately three years. Do you feel that's an appropriate penalty? It's been raised to ten years at maximum. Do you feel that's more appropriate, or should it have been left where it was?

Please respond to those questions, and if I have time I may have some follow-up comments to make.

Mr. Moffett: I'll address the first questions about the specific statistics in terms of repeat offenders and alcoholism and illiteracy.

All of those issues are wrapped up. You'll find that for most young people who are committing these types of crimes, or most young offenders actually, the problems of alcoholism and illiteracy are secondary in nature. The initial problems have to do with a sense of community, a sense of home, a sense of belonging to a group and all of that. Most of the young people try to get that. If they're not getting it at home, they get it from a group that is involved in drugs, alcohol and the rest of it.

I don't want to say alcohol, drugs and illiteracy are the result of it. But I think these young people are looking for something they're not getting elsewhere and they're ultimately getting it from a group that's tied up and associated with drugs and alcohol. Those types of things ultimately lead to illiteracy and the rest of it, because the value system is slightly different. I think that's how I would want to respond to your question.

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In terms of specific percentages, I'll leave that for Yvonne. But I'll just give you an overview. What these young people are looking for they're not getting from a value system that says alcohol abuse is not the appropriate way to go and the rest of it. I'm not sure if that makes a bit of sense, but I wanted to start with that before we get into the specific stats.

Ms Hanson: If you're looking for just clear numbers, just the numbers thing, with all of the drug offences that came to alternative measures last year from the province, 19 were drug-related, which is 1.4% of all the offences looked at within alternative measures.

I know from having worked with youth over the past few years within YAS that, yes, there is an issue where for some youths, a small percentage, alcohol will be a catalyst for their actions in some ways. But going back to Mark's point, I think a number of factors contribute to that actually existing for them.

Home life is a big part of it, what kind of stability exists in the home and what kind of role models they have within the home, etc. In a lot of ways the social environment for youth these days is quite a hostile one. A lot of youths act in the best defences they can. I think if they're given proper instructions, if they're given a really stable home life, that will help them to respond. If they don't have that, it's very unfortunate for them, because I think they act out in inappropriate ways.

Some of the youths we work with are quite amazing in terms of how they respond according to social norms and ethics and all those sorts of things despite the fact that they have a very unsupportive home life. They're quite brave young people for acting in the ways they do in their social work.

Mr. Ramsay: I'd like to bring you back to the point I wanted you to address.

We have visited some of the facilities for young offenders. The incidence of alcohol and drug cases was - they might not have committed crimes if they hadn't been involved in alcohol or drugs. That was quite high.

The point I make is that I have two sons who are 18. They are good boys. But if their peer group was able - and they do try - to get them involved in alcohol or drugs, those young boys would eventually come into contact with the criminal justice system. They'd commit crimes.

So the family life, a negative family atmosphere, does contribute probably to a large degree to the young offenders. But there are young offenders entering the system simply because they have been induced or enticed into the drug and alcohol culture, and the crimes flow from that.

It is very important to me to know from the young offenders you deal with the numbers who are involved in crimes where alcohol and drugs are a contributing factor. I recognize what you've said about the factors in the home contributing mainly to their offensive behaviour.

Also I would like you to deal with the 5% who create all the news in the media and so on, the violent offenders. Do you feel the recent amendment to the Young Offenders Act that raised the penalty for murder from three to ten years was adequate, or should it have stayed where it was?

.0835

Mr. Moffett: In terms of the drugs and alcohol, I think we mentioned about 1.4%. So it's a very small number of young offenders who come to us and have drug problems. I think the stats just have drugs. So alcohol may or may not be included in that. The 1.4% is from the drugs, and I think that's very low, a very small percent.

Mr. Ramsay: Yes, that's very small.

Mr. Moffett: In terms of the 5% of young offenders and of extending the period from three to ten years, I think something needed to be done with those offenders, especially keeping in mind the victims of a lot of those offences. Personally I don't have a clear sense of whether or not ten or five is appropriate. So I'm not sure on that point.

What I am concerned about, however, is the fact that again I think the Young Offenders Act needs to focus not only on punitive ways of dealing with offenders. These people come back into society. If they don't get the guidance and the rest of it that give them the tools to function effectively when they come back into society, quite often they're going back into the same sort of culture they're coming from.

I think you were at the Waterville institution. Quite often those people will tell you they leave the young offenders when the period is up, get on the bus, and it's back into the same sort of environment they're coming from.

So for me the Young Offenders Act not only needs to respond to the needs of victims in terms of expanding the length of the incarceration period, but it also has to have something that equips young people so that when they come back into society, they can do the things a little differently from how they were doing them before. That to me is where the focus needs to be in the Young Offenders Act.

Again we're dealing with 5%. So that's why I'm saying the Young Offenders Act need not be so punitive when we're talking about 5% of the overall offenders nationally.

The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Gallaway.

Mr. Gallaway: Thank you and good morning. One of the themes we sometimes hear from certain groups is protection of the public. Protection of the public is sometimes translated to mean that notwithstanding the crime, the act committed, the young person should be punished severely, i.e., locked up.

In terms of protection of the public, you talk on the first page of your brief about minimizing the labelling aspect of the system. There are those who would suggest we should be printing names of young offenders, that they should be printed in the newspaper like adult criminals. If we are going to engage in protection of the public, do you see the printing of names, the naming of offenders publicly, as a way of doing that?

Mr. Moffett: I guess the simple answer is no. I'll tell you why I say no. For me protection of the public doesn't mean letting society as a whole know who the young person is who has committed the crime. Protection of the public means making sure these types of offences are not committed. The way of making sure those types of offences are not committed has to do with allowing young people to grow out of those types of behaviour. Publicizing these types of offences prevents that growing out or prevents that opportunity for young people to grow out of the behaviour.

If you look at a lot of the research actually in criminology, it will tell you most young people commit those types of offences between 12 to 18, 19 or whatever and when they get into their twenties, it diminishes a little. Also the research and labelling would tell you that once you're being thought of as a criminal, eventually you tend to assume that behaviour.

So from those two points I would say publicizing those names may have some effect in the short term. But in the long-term sense of protecting society, I don't see that as a viable option at all. From my standpoint, it's a quick fix.

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Mr. Gallaway: Mr. Moffett, do you then see that as a means of protection to the public when we are dealing with these what I would call very high-end, really terrible crimes...the murderers, the 15-year-old who goes out for whatever reason and kills someone? Do you see that as a factor?

Mr. Moffett: Yes, I would see that differently in the same way that the Young Offenders Act has provisions for these young people to be tried in adult court. In that same manner of thinking I would say that yes, there are some circumstances when it may be possible, but I'm speaking in terms of the numbers. For most young offenders, I don't see that as a viable option and I think that's where we're coming from.

Mr. Gallaway: You also talked about the family, the value system, the community, and the feeling of belonging to a family or community. One of the points you raised in your brief is that it's important for the young person to be aware of the event and to make amends - and to make amends could be interpreted to mean to make restitution. Yet you appear to object to companies such as The Bay and Zellers and large corporations pursuing civil remedies. How do you equate those two?

Ms Hanson: I can speak to that one actually because I've been quite involved in airing angry parents' phone calls for the mere fact that when their young person committed the shoplifting offence, they had initiallly asked the stores whether or not they could pay back for the article lost or damaged, or what have you, which in some ways is a restitution payment of sorts. The stores flatly denied the fact they had to do that.

I think what our program tried to do is deal with the offence up front, have the young person take very much responsibility for that offence right out front and deal with it in that kind of way. We talked about how it impacted the stores, how it impacted the community, what kinds of feelings it created within their family, which were very disruptive. So in many ways it had been dealt with.

So alternative measures is a very restorative process in that kind of way for the young offender, for the family. We invite the victim to attend. All parties are allowed to come to the table and talk about it.

The fact is that six months, a year, a year and a half down the road letters have been sent out that brought up a lot of regurgitated things for this family that they thought they had dealt with.

In many respects the $325 settlement amount is also quite a far cry from what would actually be, in my understanding, awarded in civil court for that same offence. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the letters that have been sent out to the parents, but it's incredibly strong language, very demeaning to the young person.

I think what we have happening here is that there really seems to be a second level of justice that's taking place without anyone being aware that it's happening. So for families that we deal with, in many respects we have to think about why are we working with the young person in this kind of way to make them responsible for their actions when in fact it circumvents what is taught here in an alternative measures session. It has the parents actually responsible for that young person's actions. In many ways it's a contravention to what the YOA talks about, and I think there's a double message happening for that young person.

.0845

I've had parents who have been very upset because of course now they're going to have to deal with it. Their young person gets very cynical and looks at the system wondering what the point is. They dealt with it, so what's the point of dealing with it in that same kind of way? They're doing it as a deterrent, but I think there are other ways they could go about it.

The Chair: We have a couple more minutes. Ms Clancy also has a question.

Ms Clancy: I was going to follow up on that because when that was first announced, down here certainly we had a strong response. You might know that from the Advisory Council on the Status of Women vis-à-vis the impact on women certainly there's a very strong school of thought that says their participation in that kind of offence has a different basis altogether from what most people would think, and that it was counterproductive there as well.

I'm in and out of town. Did you people make a similar storm?

Ms Hanson: When the Council on the Status of Women announced that they were going to boycott these stores, promoting a national boycott, we were actually on the tube. We had a parent call up CBC, and the early morning show interviewed myself as well as the claim manager from Toronto.

Ms Clancy: That's good.

Ms Hanson: His words were to the effect that they recognize that alternative measures is a good program, but because it's not offered in every city across Canada we can't be local-specific. This is a national policy.

Ms Clancy: They can be local-specific on prices. It's interesting.

I wanted to ask you particularly about the participation of young women in your program. Yesterday in Waterville my colleague, Madame Venne, brought up the fact that because young male offenders have problems with women, Waterville is strictly an institution for young men. The answer was that participation of young women in the criminal justice system was just so much smaller that there weren't enough to go around to make it worthwhile having them in Waterville.

What would be the participation of young women in your program?

Ms Hanson: I don't have a complete breakdown for you, Mary, but in my estimation in the alternative measures program it would be pretty close to 50-50.

Ms Clancy: Really?

Ms Hanson: Yes. In the community service order program it's much lower. In fact, what that indicates to me in many ways is that the program perhaps has a greater impact on girls than on boys.

The Chair: Your time is up, but we'll come back.

Madame Venne.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: I would like to begin by raising the issue of parental responsibility. In Charlottetown, we were asked to make parents more responsible for the actions of their children. In Quebec, in the civil code, we already have a section to that effect. Parents are responsible for their children and their children's actions, but if we want to hold parents responsible, there has to be proof that they were negligent. Earlier, the researchers told me that the same was true in common law. Parents are also responsible in civil court for their children's actions.

So I think people are probably asking us to hold them criminally responsible, and I have some trouble with that. I would like to hear what you think.

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You must also have seen in the newspapers and on TV that recently, in the United States, they decided to physically handcuff parents to their children, to get them to understand their responsibilities. I think that's going quite far.

I would like to hear your view on parental responsibility.

[English]

Ms Hanson: My reaction to hearing that kind of action being taken is really out there. I think what we're after is to have parents play a part in child rearing, setting standards, setting behavioural patterns, etc., but again what we're looking at is that the young person does have actions that are accountable within the community in which they reside. Having the young person looked upon as an individual with individual responsibilities towards that community, apart and aside from the parent, promotes them to be a responsible person.

I think that to promote the idea that parents are constantly responsible for the actions of their child or their youth does not allow for a world where youths are accountable. What we will always say to those families is that despite what you try to promote in your child, the minute they are away from you you're still held responsible, and that doesn't promote a sense of self for that young person.

In the teachings of how we rear children and what we do to try to promote a sense of self-esteem in trying to get them to have an awareness of the community around them, certainly having parents responsible for their children at all times doesn't take into account the fact that there are other influences on their children.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: We were also told that there is too much time between the commission of the offense and the young person's court appearance. Is that the case here as well? I'm referring to periods of time that last several months.

[English]

Mr. Moffett: There are two routes: the young offenders can come to us after going to court or they can come to us before they go to court. There is a delay in terms of the period it takes for young people to get to court and come to us afterward, if that's the route that's been taken. I don't see that as a major problem. I just see that as a symptom of the number of cases and the personnel that the courts have to deal with in these offences. From my standpoint, it's not a major problem. Obviously minimizing that time period would make things a lot easier, but there are some administrative things we need to take into account.

In terms of responding and reacting to young offenders, I don't see that as a major problem unless it extends to a year or more. Then what happens is the young offender cannot really remember what has happened that clearly and they find it may be a little difficult to associate what's happening right now with the commission of the offence. That's the only concern I would have, but I think most of the time it's somewhere within the six-month period, and I think most young people can still remember and relate and take themselves back to the events at that point in time.

Ms Hanson: I also want to say that with regard to court time, very serious offences are taken up inside the court system quite quickly, whereas minor offences, things that could be dealt with in a diversion or mediation program, for example, oftentimes are given less attention. When it comes to looking at the majority of offences that are committed by young people, I think the concentrated efforts, the concentrated discussion, should be towards the majority of those offences.

Granted, there is a serious nature that needs to be taken into consideration. At the federal level I think you have dealt with that quite effectively in terms of concentrating your time and discussion around serious offences. What I would like to see now, from the standpoint of where youth alternative society sits, is for you to look at the majority of young people's crimes and misdemeanours and take those seriously in trying to provide some sense of community programming.

.0855

Mrs. Venne: Merci

The Chair: Thank you, Madam Venne.

Ms Clancy: I want to go back to the question about the participation of young women, because I'm fascinated by your 50-50 statistic.

Many years ago, when I prosecuted under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, the participation was minimal. In the two or three years I did it I cannot think of a single instance of a young woman who came before the court. This was in the late 1970s. My anecdotal experience is that it's increased. Could you tell us to what degree you think it's increased and what kinds of offences young women are getting involved in?

Ms Hanson: The most common offence young women get involved in is shoplifting. Because 85% of our cases are shoplifting or property offences, that's why -

Ms Clancy: That's why you've got that 50-50.

Ms Hanson: Exactly.

In terms of minor assaults, which we also work with, it is much less so. Many more boys than girls are involved with minor offences. Alcohol-related offences, driving offences, motor vehicle act offences, things of that nature - it's more boys. Again, looking at that 85%, we see a pretty even split.

Ms Clancy: Would you like to hazard a guess as to why they are not involved in some of the other offences to the same degree? Or just put it down to vive la différence?

Ms Hanson: Socialization is part of it. I think girls are still not looked upon by the system as violent, and in a lot of cases I think they are not as violent as boys are. When you look at policing trends and that kind of thing, often when the police officers or the investigating officers go to the scene of a crime, if boys are involved they get picked up, but if girls are involved it's ``let's talk about it''.

Ms Clancy: So there's more on-the-spot diversion when it involves girls.

Ms Hanson: Yes.

Ms Clancy: That's fine, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Mr. Wells.

Mr. Wells: I have a few short questions on the agreements you have with young offenders. Do you actually have written agreements with the young offenders?

Ms Hanson: Yes, we do.

Mr. Wells: What would be the typical provisions in these agreements? I'm sure you must have a typical one that you adjust for each offender.

Ms Hanson: Yes. The majority - probably 85% - of all of our agreements include some kind of apology, either written or verbal. It's common to see an essay where the young person talks about what they've learned through the process.

We also have more creative agreements where, for example, the young person is doing community service work. If they're involved in a program they will make something and donate it to a charity. They'll work in their community and donate the money to a charity. Those kinds of things are what we strive to do. We're also looking at working with artists and craftspeople in the community to make the city a better looking place, and have young offenders involved in that process.

Mr. Moffett: A lot of the agreements are meant to educate, as opposed to simply punish. So you often have young people doing things they enjoy, but doing them in such a way that they learn something about the offence and the victims of the offences.

Mr. Wells: Could we get a copy of a standard agreement - obviously with the names not on it - to get a sense of it?

Ms Hanson: Sure, I'll dig something up.

The Chair: That would be great.

.0900

Mr. Wells: You mentioned essays. We've heard criticism about that type of approach, that it is totally ineffective. Some of the witnesses told us they felt that was a.... Others who were involved with alternative measures.... We have heard negative evidence on that. How effective do you feel that is?

Ms Hanson: I think it would depend on what that person has to write about. We've had youths who interviewed a member of their community - an elderly person, for example - about social norms during their time, and it came back through an essay that in fact that person had learned a lot.

If it is a complete regurgitation of the kind of things they talked about in their session, it could have less of an impact because they are simply writing down what they already learned. If they have to do research or an investigation with other people, I think they'd learn more.

Mr. Moffett: With some of the posters and essays that young people have done, there's an opportunity for self-examination and for them to examine what they've done. I think that's useful because it's a major part of the educational process we've been talking about. Most of these young people are looking at writing about what they did, why they did it, who it affected and what the result was, and I think that's definitely useful.

When they go to court, most of them don't have anything to say, so in terms of learning from the process.... But when you have to sit down and write an essay, pour something of yourself into that essay and come out on paper saying I did this and I was responsible for that, I think it has a major impact on young people.

Mr. Wells: I have another quick question or two. Is restitution normally part of your agreements? Second, what is the normal timespan? You said less than a year, but is it between committing the offence and dealing with the young offender under your system? What's the normal timespan?

Ms Hanson: It depends how quickly the police can get a referral to us.

Mr. Wells: What is typical?

Ms Hanson: Typical in terms of the actual offence happening to the police getting a crown attorney to endorse what they have referred, to us sitting down and doing the actual alternative measures and it being completed - I think it would be somewhere in the range of six months, lock, stock and barrel.

Mr. Wells: Is restitution usually part of your agreement?

Ms Hanson: It may or may not be. It depends on the nature of the offence and whether the victim is present to talk about the restitution.

Mr. Wells: Okay, thank you.

The Chair: Thank you for your attendance here. We appreciate it. As you can see, we have four groups this morning, so we're running a tight ship. If you could get those extra materials to us, that would be great.

Ms Hanson: And in line with the agreements, I think it's a good time to review what kind of things can come out of a court. One of the comments that often comes back to me from crown attorneys and judges, etc., is that there really is a lack of options out there. They'll do a pretty standard community service order referral to us because they don't have any other options available to them.

The Chair: In the community?

Ms Hanson: Yes, but on the part of the courts themselves. Our agreements can be as creative as possible, but I think the mandate of the court system is much stricter.

The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much.

We'll pause for two or three minutes to let Professor Carrigan get situated and to take a little break.

.0904

.0914

The Chair: We're back. Professor Carrigan, welcome. We've met before. I'm very pleased you have taken the time to give us the benefit of your wisdom in this area.

I think you can see the pattern. I hold everybody to their few minutes and then I dawdle in the break. So I apologize for that. While in Halifax I was trying to raise myself beyond Ms Clancy, which is not an easy task.

We'd like to hear from you. Then we will all have an opportunity to ask a few questions, I hope. Please proceed.

Professor Owen Carrigan (Department of History, St. Mary's University): First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity of making a presentation.

I'm a social historian. I teach the history of social problems and my special area of research is crime and punishment. I published a book on the history of crime and punishment in Canada in 1991 and I've just finished a manuscript for a book on the history of juvenile delinquency and its treatment in Canada. My brief, which I think you have in front of you, contains some excerpts from that manuscript. What I would like to touch on today is probably not the entire brief, but I want to address the material from about page 74 on.

.0915

History will show that a century and half of experimentation with laws, with courts, with facilities and programs has fallen far short of achieving any of the desired objectives of treating juvenile delinquents. In other words, the general judgment I think of history is that the entire package has failed to achieve what we wanted to achieve.

Over the period, especially since the Second World War, juvenile crime has gone up at a steady pace. In more recent years, within the statistics an escalation has taken place in violent crimes and the recidivism rates remain unacceptably high. In other words, little has really been accomplished. Obviously then it suggests that simply more of the same is not likely to achieve very much improvement. So what I would like to talk about is a shift in emphasis, i.e., I'm not suggesting we abandon treatment but shift the emphasis to prevention.

Most of our dollars, our time and our efforts over the years have been in treatment, not in prevention. Very little has been done and still today very little is being done by way of prevention. So that's what I would like to talk about briefly this morning.

I certainly would be glad to discuss the Young Offenders Act and any other issues. I don't mean to exclude that but I just want to touch on some ideas that have come out of my studies pertaining to prevention.

Prevention is not a new message. I'm sure an awful lot, just a couple, of the interventions this morning talk about prevention. Unfortunately, however, the dialogue on prevention that is starting to take place across the country is taking place within theoretical parameters, very similar to those that have guided policy on treatment.

The thrust seems to be more in the direction of economic solutions, for example, and environmental solutions. If you look at treatment theories, treatment programs and treatment policies, exactly the same parameters over the years have guided that direction.

So I would like to look at a few things that step outside of that tendency. They're not new ideas. In some cases, as you'll see, they're rather simple approaches, but they try to address the basic problem.

One of the things I try to develop with my students in examining social problems is that if you don't understand the nature of the problem, then whatever solutions you come up with are not going to work. You have to understand thoroughly what the problem is in the first place to get at the solutions.

One of the things you've heard about and I'd like to talk about briefly is parental nurturing. More and more studies of course are showing indisputably that the heart of the problem lies with parenting. The problem is in the home; that's where it starts. The key years are years one to ten, and in that the first five years are the key. Now this is not something new. In my brief you'll find quotations starting back in 1836 and going on and on that identify the home as the basic problem.

I want to distinguish right there that what I'm talking about is the home and nurturing rather than the economic conditions of the home. In my historical evidence and from my own studies, I do not share some of the theoretical analyses of criminologists and sociologists, who by the way have been the primary influences in the setting of social policy. The historical record does not support many of their theories. If you would like to discuss that, I'd be glad to touch on it later.

.0920

Parental nurturing, love, discipline, stability, ethics and values. Many of the homes that are problem homes are lacking in these things. You have parents who are not spending time with their children. You have parents who don't show love for their children. You have parents who don't discipline their children.

What is needed is a positive program to emphasize to parents the importance of these things and of their role and to help those parents who don't have those skills to get them.

We use all kinds of things, from the schools to the media, to run campaigns against smoking, against drug abuse. You name it. We use all kinds of modern approaches. The one thing very little time is spent on is education for good parenting. I think that's one of the starting points for a preventive program.

I'm touching on these, obviously, very briefly because of the time, but we can explore them as we want to go on.

Values education: you can go through the criminology literature and the sociology literature and you will not find any mention of ethics education and values education as a means of either prevention or rehabilitation because you can't quantify them. Social scientists concentrate on presentism and quantification analysis based on statistics. Consequently, this is a whole area that has been neglected.

It's very interesting if you look at the history of values education. In an earlier day values education was carried on in the schools. The school books were filled with values education content. The churches were very influential. They were focal points for a lot of community life and a lot of children's activities. The community itself reinforced values. The government reinforced values. If you look at many of the laws, they reflect values.

What's interesting historically is that values education was pretty well sanitized from the textbooks by the 1940s. The first generation that came through the system when values education had been pushed out of the schools is the generation that sparked the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. There's an awful lot of evidence that will tell you - and indeed you hear this from the people who intervene - that many of the misbehaving young people and the criminal young people do not have any sense of ethics or values.

If you look at our own individual experience, that's basically why we function the way we do. It's ethics and values. Why is it that five people will pass by an unattended bicycle and not do anything and the sixth person will steal it? So values and ethics and morals are an integral part of how we behave and why we behave the way we do.

Yet I think you'll find a very high percentage of juvenile delinquents are lacking substantially in that area because they are the products of neglect. They are products of homes that do not teach ethics or values or morals, and therefore they grow up being anti-social.

One of the very disturbing parts of contemporary delinquency is that they do not understand the damage they have done. In many cases they show absolutely no remorse because they don't understand they have done something wrong.

You have all kinds of examples of young kids committing the unimaginable crimes, and yet going off and playing in a gym a few minutes after they have committed the crime, and not having any sense they have done anything wrong - beating up old ladies and no sense they have done anything wrong.

The reintroduction of values education in the schools is a very simple thing to do. It doesn't cost anything and yet it's not being done because there's substantial opposition. The argument today is about whose values you're going to teach.

There are universal values. If you have no religious beliefs whatsoever, there are universal values such as honesty, respect, compromise, appreciating the value of work, self-discipline, tolerance and reliability. Those are all values that are independent of whether you go to church on Sunday or you don't. They're universal community values and they can be very easily put back into the school system.

.0925

There are organizations in the United States, for example, that have been very successful. They've put together values education packages for the school systems, and for the school systems that have introduced them the results have been very positive.

Another area that I think would make a very positive contribution to both prevention and, in this case, reform are public boarding schools. One of the big problems that young people in trouble are exposed to is what I call the yo-yo effect. It starts with very young kids who are pulled in and out of troubled homes by social agencies. Just think of the result of that. You're home, and then you're in some other neighbourhood in a foster home, for two or three months in another school, then you're back home again, and then you're back out again. It goes on year after year.

Ultimately some of these children end up in detention centres, where exactly the same thing happens. They're pulled out of their neighbourhoods, they're put in detention for a few weeks to a few months. The average time in detention right now in Canada, for juvenile delinquents incarcerated, is under six months. That is a totally useless experience. You can't do anything with anybody in that period of time other than warehouse them. And when their time is up, what happens to them? They go right back where they came from. In the meantime, depending on what time of the year it is, they might have been out of their local school for a period of time or into some kind of a program or no program at a detention centre. It goes on and on.

There is an interesting quote from a Time magazine article on juvenile delinquency...not that long ago. The young person said: ``The house is dirty when you leave it, and it's dirty when you come back.'' That's exactly the problem.

The boarding school would address both of those issues. Rich people have always sent their kids to boarding school, given them a good, solid education, discipline, and stability. Now that's what a boarding school would do.

Kids who have to be removed from a bad home situation could be moved into an ongoing, permanent opportunity. The relationship with the parents would not be broken. The parent and the child could still be in touch with each other. There would be visiting. The child could still go home at vacation time. Then other social agencies could be working to try to deal with the problems back at the home.

If and when those problems are solved, the child could go back, providing that the problems seem to be solved permanently. If they're not, the child could stay in that boarding school environment as long as was necessary.

For the children, it stops the yo-yo experience. It gives them a first-class education. It gives them opportunity. If they have personality problems, psychological problems, or educational problems at that time, the problems can be worked on in a stable, ongoing environment. The child can grow up with the kinds of experiences that are needed - music, art, culture, solid education in a first-class environment - and, if necessary, go right through.

Student who are yanked out of school for some offence and put in a detention centre, instead of going back to their environment, can go back into a private school operation. Here again, there are all kinds of advantages to that. It's not any more and probably much less expensive than the costs of the social welfare agencies dealing with the children on the one end and the criminal justice system trying to deal with them after they're out on the other.

Another area I think has terrific potential, and is not even touched on, is the use of schools for leisure time. Every community has a school, practically every neighbourhood has a school, and yet the school is shut down when classes are over.

Here's a facility that's readily available. You could run after-school and weekend programs. These programs could run the whole gamut: feeder, music, sports, remedial academic help outside the classroom situation, hobbies, crafts, and all of these things. This would give that huge population of children today who have nobody home until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. a place to stay, a place to have fun.

.0930

Kids like to hang out. What they do now is go to the shopping mall, because that's the only place they can hang out. If the schools were open and these programs were run, the kids could stay at the school. It would create, for many of them, a much more positive attitude. Especially for the kids who get into delinquency and truancy, it would give them a much more positive attitude toward the school. It would help them with many of their problems. They could hang out with their friends in a protective, good environment in which they're not going to get into trouble.

And on the weekends, it's an opportunity for the parents and the students to recreate together, because the parents could come to the schools and get involved together in sports, theatre, music, etc.

One of the big objections you get is that it's just a costly program, you can't expect the teachers to stay and do it, and the schools can't hire people. So how are you going to do it? There's a simple solution. Every community has a whole pool these days of retired people who are 55 years old and up. They have all kinds of skills and backgrounds, such as music. Some of them are teachers and hobbyists. These people are right now, in most of our communities, being warehoused. That's all. They're put in these senior citizens homes and they're left there. They're bored and have nothing to do. They would love an opportunity to get involved with young people on a sporadic basis. So there's a pool out there. You put schools, young people and retired people together, and a program could go.

Finally, there are curfews. In an earlier day, most communities had curfews. One of the big problems in any community.... I'm sure if you were out at any restaurants last night in Halifax, you could go down almost any street and find 9-, 10-, and 11-year-old children on the streets at 11 p.m. or midnight, and even later than that. That's poor parental guidance and supervision, obviously.

The point is that at least if there was a community curfew that could be adjusted according to age, the kids could not hang around on the streets. Even if the parents weren't home or were neglecting them, at least the kids would be taken off the street. A lot of the problems, especially drug dealing and prostitution, stem from that late-night street experience of the kids hanging out.

I just wanted to touch on some of these ideas to show you that there are some very simple programs that could be instituted to come to grips with the real roots of the problem. They can be done to serve both a preventive function and also a reformative, rehabilitation function. As I said, that's not to suggest that treatment can be abandoned, but the emphasis needs to be shifted.

I'll stop there and be glad to discuss some of these things.

The Chair: Thank you, Professor Carrigan.

Madame Venne, for a ten-minute round.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: Professor Carrigan, you are suggesting new means. In my view, you were referring to things that are quite archaic. You talk about a curfew, which is certainly not new. You mention boarding schools; that's not new either. You also talk about compulsory counselling programs in which young people could not refuse to participate. I know that this was written before the adoption of Bill C-37, since now, attendance for young people would be compulsory.

You also say that these are simple solutions, but in my view, they are very costly. Regarding the enforcement of a curfew, you say that it would undoubtedly require additional personnel. Putting young people in public boarding schools would also involve additional costs, etc.

It would be an ideal society, but unfortunately, it's not realistic. I admit that this my honest opinion. Philosophically, I agree, but practically speaking, I do not.

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You also say that young people do not benefit from rehabilitation programs because the are not in custody long enough. We know very well that it's not how long they remain in custody that counts, but much more so what awaits on the outside when they return home. You say it yourself, but there is a certain dichotomy in your view in that respect.

Those are my comments. I wanted to share them with you. If you'd like to make any comments, I would be more than happy to hear them.

[English]

Prof. Carrigan: Yes, I do have a few comments. As I pointed out in my opening remarks and in my brief, no, these are not new ideas. The difference is in terms of reintroducing concepts that have been around for a long time. They would be reintroduced in a way that would remedy the problems when they were run in the first place.

A boarding school, to start with, is entirely different from the old industrial schools, which is the only model. There never were boarding schools. There were industrial schools, which were tantamount to custodial institutions. The boarding school experiment has never been tried with juvenile delinquents.

It will work because it works with rich people's kids. I know in my home town I saw some children sent to boarding school because they had problems. Their parents were rich enough to send them off to boarding school. A boarding school with the right staff can in fact be a very positive experience. I'm sure it's much superior to a child being yanked in and out of foster homes, bad home situations, and being moved back and forth like a yo-yo. Surely the boarding experience would be good.

What's wrong with a curfew? Yes, we had curfews in the past. They worked, and they still do. There have been some experiments taking place in the U.S. with curfews and truancy, and they work. They have substantially cut down on juvenile delinquency in those communities - the evidence is there - because the kids are off the streets and are not getting into trouble.

When I said young people don't benefit from incarceration, the evidence is overwhelming that this is the case. The problem is not so much incarceration; it's that by the time you have a 14-, 15- or 16-year-old delinquent who commits a serious enough offence to be put in detention, the statistics will tell you that they already have a long history of being in trouble. So you can't expect to take a child, by the time they're of the age at which they can be incarcerated, who has gone through that type of experience for so long and then, all of a sudden, in two or three months, turn them around.

Now reformers for over a hundred years argued that incarceration should be a sentence to a program, not necessarily a sentence to time or an institution. You put them in a program appropriate for the identified needs. You try to reform the behavioural problem. You can't put a time on that. You don't know if that can be done. With some children, the experience of just being put in will reform them. They'll go out and won't do anything more. With others, you may never.... One thing I think we're all realistic about is that it's not going to eliminate juvenile crime. You're not going to eliminate social problems.

So I would take issue with your evaluation. In a more lengthy opportunity, I think I could provide you with overwhelming historical evidence that simply doesn't support your conclusions.

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Mrs. Venne: For the boarding schools for young offenders, you said that it didn't exist before. I have to tell you that it existed in Quebec. The name for that was écoles de réforme. I don't know how to translate that, but -

A voice: Reform schools.

Mrs. Venne: Reform schools. Yes. So we had that, which is exactly what you were talking about. They are both the same. It was in Boscoville, Quebec. Maybe you didn't have that elsewhere.

[Translation]

As for the curfew issue, you say what's wrong with it. Well, what's wrong with it is the enforcement. How would it be enforced? Unless you have truly exceptional resources here that I am unaware of, I do not see how it can be enforced. It requires a lot of people. That's why I'm not in favour of the curfew.

[English]

Prof. Carrigan: Here again, I'm familiar with Boscoville and the detention centres in the province of Quebec.

The boarding school - keep in mind that I'm talking about the concept - is a preventive thing for children who are in dysfunctional, abusive and problem homes. The concept is prevention, not treatment.

Boscoville was a re-education experiment that dealt with juvenile delinquents. It was not a preventive operation. It was a custody, detention and reform operation. If you read the history of it, you'll discover that.

The other institutions were the same. The industrial schools that operated in Quebec, which were run by religious orders, for example, were not, in substance and in program, any different from the industrial schools that were operated in the province of Ontario and other provinces across the country. They dealt primarily, and in some cases exclusively, with juvenile delinquents.

I'm talking primarily about the emphasis being not on juvenile delinquents, but children who need some kind of a temporary, better environment, which could also be juvenile delinquents coming out of incarceration.

As for the curfew issue, we are getting more and more back into community policing. The police now are patrolling the streets. We used to have what were called truant officers, for example. So there are resources there. In most communities it's not a major problem for police, as they're patrolling, to spot groups of young kids out on the street at night. Even if the police are in their patrol cars, it's not a difficult situation.

One of the points you're making - it's a point well taken - and one to which you keep coming back concerns resources. The whole idea is where would you rather spend your money: do you want to spend it after the fact - this is what we have been doing for a century and a half with treatment - or do you want to spend your money on prevention? I'll guarantee you that prevention is a lot cheaper and a lot more rewarding in all kinds of different ways than treatment.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: I agree with prevention, but perhaps not with your way of seeing it.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Ramsay, ten minutes.

Mr. Ramsay: I have an awful lot of time for many of the things you've said this morning. I think you're dead on. I think until such time as we begin to attack the real root cause of the problem.... You talk about reinstituting ethics and values, not only within in the home, but in having what's taught in the home reinforced within our schools, churches, and cubs and scouts, and so on.

I've seen those children who have missed that within the home catch it within the school, the church or within an organization, such as scouting and girl guides, and so on. Those values and ethics have been taught if missed in the home. There's always the chance it was caught by the local policeman on the corner, the teacher or the minister of the church.

I spent 14 years as a police officer. Some of the communities in which I worked had curfews. The curfew stands as a symbol of concern for the children whose parents know the curfew is there to help them deal with their children and to bring those children up in a rather disciplined way that allows values and ethics to be taught.

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So there is no question that we have to begin to direct our resources into the preventive area more than what we're doing now. The question is, how are we going to do it? What you have suggested here is the idea of boarding school.

We have two daughters and two sons. Our two daughters went to university. One chose the boarding school environment. She lived on campus, where there are set rules. Those rules are enforced on that campus. There was nothing but a positive effect from that. She willingly accepted those rules and regulations. In fact she's been there two years, she's going into the third year, and she wants to stay on campus.

So consider the whole concept of boarding schools. When you say boarding schools, that might raise some red flags in the minds of some people, but the concept as you explain it is supportable.

I want to read what you've presented us here. I hope what you have said to us is contained within your brief, because to me it's very important.

The manager of the Sydney Mines facility said to us, I think it was on Monday or Tuesday, that what turns their children around - these are drop-outs, as they don't have that many young offenders - is the tender loving care. They want to come back. There is a waiting list for kids who are asking to get on the list.

One fellow apparently had phoned 116 times to get into that system where they had people who were teaching them values and ethics that they didn't get at home. They said that when they woke up in the morning, they couldn't wait to get to the facility.

So I imagine I have questions, but in a ten-minute period I couldn't formulate any that would challenge what you're saying. I say to you that you have my support and that of my caucus behind the basic outline you've given this morning. I want to thank you for that. I appreciate that.

Prof. Carrigan: I have just a quick comment on the boarding school. You're quite right that when you say boarding school, the concept of the old-fashioned institution immediately comes to people's minds. That's not what we're talking about here.

Mr. Ramsay: Maybe you should use a different word to describe it.

Prof. Carrigan: Opportunity College.

A voices: Oh, oh.

Prof. Carrigan: So it's a different concept altogether, and you're dealing with different people. One of the problems, as I'm sure you've seen right across the board, is that for much of our history and still today, criminal justice institutions are highly politicized. A lot of the people, over the years, who have gotten into them, got into them not because of the qualifications they had.

Mr. Ramsay: I do have a question. I put it to the manager and staff of Sydney Mines just before I got on the bus.

We have a $10-billion criminal justice industry. There is a lot of money directed to the various components of that justice system. I have an apprehension that as programs such as the Sydney Mines one, which contains aspects of what you're talking about, and other programs click into gear and we keep more and more of the young people out of the system, you're going to see the very strong vested interests within the criminal justice system resist it. In fact, when I placed that proposition or suggestion to the Sydney Mines people, they said they're already seeing that kind of resistance beginning to emerge.

I'd like you to comment on it. Where will the resistance come from this type of a common-sense approach you're suggesting that worked in the past?

You see, what you're suggesting worked. What you're saying to this committee is that we ought to get back to what worked. I think that's good common sense and good advice.

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Nevertheless, there is to be resistance to what you're saying about the idea of the curfew and putting values back in the textbooks. I know what you're taking about, because I can remember when they were there. I can remember some of the books that we used in school had those values and taught those ethics. Do you see resistance to this, and if you do, from what source?

Prof. Carrigan: There's a definite resistance, because all the parameters in which the system exists are geared to a fundamentally different analysis and philosophy.

One of my proposals would be to put more historians onto the commissions and the policy-making bodies, as opposed to criminologists and sociologists. At the policy level, that's part of the problem.

You heard the gentleman earlier this morning refer to labelling. The criminology explanations for crime have been the capitalistic system, labelling, anomie, and class conflict. All of these wonderful things really, historically, have absolutely nothing to do with the problem, but public policy is reflecting those attitudes.

If you read the documents that you're going to be exposed to during your exercise across this country, you'll find that most of them are coming out of that milieu, sociologists and criminologists. There's some philosophy there, there's an ideology, and it reflects in the kinds of analysis you get.

The other point that might start the ball rolling would be to propose pilot projects. Surely you know this system. If a good proposal was packaged, the government would be willing to finance a pilot project. You could go into a few communities and try curfews. Some of the places still have the old whistles still working. It would be interesting to start a few pilot projects. They're already going in the States, and the results are in, but I don't know if we're trying them in Canada anywhere.

It would be interesting to try a boarding school. In many communities right here in Halifax just over the past year or so, there have been a couple of major institutional buildings, for example, freed up that would have made lovely boarding schools. That would mean first-class accommodation for kids now who are in troubled, dysfunctional homes, or what we call street kids.

So that's not a very costly thing. The concept of a pilot project usually doesn't get too much opposition, because people can't put up too many legitimate arguments against it. But you're absolutely right that if you tried to move the whole system all at once in a different direction, with so many vested interests, there would be a lot of opposition. That's what happened in the school systems. The value content got completely sanitized because everybody started arguing about whose values were being taught. The answer now is that there are universal values, state values.

The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Wells, ten minutes.

Mr. Wells: Dr. Carrigan, thank you for your presentation. As Mr. Ramsay said, we did have it in advance. I've read part of it, but I have to admit that I haven't read all of it.

A question I want to direct to you is with respect to the Young Offenders Act itself. Most of the programs and suggestions you're referring to would be outside of the Young Offenders Act. They would be either early intervention programs, which we've heard a lot about, or change in the focus of the money, etc.

What about the Young Offenders Act itself? Are there any particular changes you would like to see in the act that would help in some of the things to which you're referring?

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Prof. Carrigan: The problem with legislation per se is that it's only as good as its implementation. There's not really that much difference between the Juvenile Delinquents Act and the Young Offenders Act, and there's not that much difference in the results.

The only improvements I could see would be if the act itself also addressed the issue of implementation, which it too often doesn't. For example, it does not even set any kinds of parameters for the programs in the detention centres.

It's interesting to talk to the staff people who work in places like Waterville. My daughter and my son-in-law both worked in Shelburne, for example. I think you're familiar with Shelburne. It's very interesting to get the perspective when you talk to those people on why things are not working inside, why no appreciable reform is being achieved and what's going on in some of the institutions.

It's very interesting to talk to a friend of mine whose daughter works at Waterville, and the insights you get. I think most of the staff people, as opposed to the young offenders on the one end and the management on the other, will tell you the programs are not well organized, they are not effective, they're not thorough, and that's consistently the problem. If you think about it, it doesn't make any difference what you do in your legislation if there's no jurisdiction over implementation. From my studies, the problem boils down to the fact that legislation per se probably doesn't make much difference one way or the other.

I think the biggest criticism that has come from the public about the Young Offenders Act is that it is too lenient in the sense that the message that's given is that major offences are not much different from minor offences and therefore the punishment, for all intents and purposes, is pretty much the same. I think that's probably a legitimate criticism.

The message the young people get on the punishment level.... As I told you earlier, the average time in custody right now is under six months. You can't do anything in that period of time one way or the other, good, bad, or indifferent. Many of the studies of the results of incarceration suggest the results wouldn't be any different if the young offenders were incarcerated or they weren't. The results at the other end, recidivism rates, etc., would not be that much different.

So it's a tough one to answer and to deal with exclusively in the context of the legislation itself. The only thing about legislation is that the sanctions obviously can be written into the legislation. I don't think there's any question, and I guess this touches once again on values and ethics, that for some people sanctions are a deterrent. There would have to be no question about that. We would be denying our own personal experience if we suggested sanctions were not a deterrent. But to what extent they are a deterrent is a question mark. I don't think there's any amount of research available yet that can answer this question. I'm sorry that's not much help.

Mr. Wells: No, I think it has been. I think it reinforces a lot of what we heard today about implementation being more the problem than the act itself, although the act may need some fine-tuning. The focus of the legislation is probably the right focus, but it's also not going to be what's going to solve our problems in the young offenders field. It goes much beyond the act itself. I think that's perhaps what you were saying, and I agree with it.

Mr. Gallaway: Professor Carrigan, I'm from Ontario, and when you start talking about a common-sense approach, it really starts to frighten me, because you may realize we're undergoing this so-called ``common sense revolution'' in Ontario.

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Prof. Carrigan: In Nova Scotia too.

Mr. Gallaway: You started out to paint a broad theme about prevention versus the treatment aspects of this. But the common-sense approach, if I can characterize it this way, within the general public - and this is painting with a terribly broad brush - appears to be that prevention is created by treatment. In other words, treat the young offender in a particular way, word spreads, and that's preventative.

Is there any historical evidence to suggest that the more harshly you treat young offenders - I don't mean flogging them, I don't mean locking them up for indeterminate periods of time - for example, meting out substantive sentences and publishing their names, has any effect whatsoever?

Prof. Carrigan: Not really. There's not much evidence to suggest that harsher treatment is going to achieve anything, on the one hand, or that more lenient treatment, on the other hand, is going to achieve anything. I think there you almost simply have to use your own judgment. I come back to what I was saying to Derek about the concept of deterrence. There is such a thing as deterrence, and deterrence works.

How it works and to what extent is what the evidence doesn't show. It's like growing up in your home. If your father says, if you do this, you're going to get a spanking, well, you might test the water the first time, and if you don't get a spanking then you have a message. But if you get a spanking, you might not test the water the second time. So the deterrent is into it.

But coming back to the public, though, here again I think we're looking at a rather general analysis. When the public is surveyed you get the answers to the question you ask, and it's interesting that if you get beyond what should you do about the Young Offenders Act and should young offenders be dealt with more harshly, if you get beyond some of the areas I've talked about, there's an awful lot of support.

Surveys have shown, for example, that there's a lot of support for the reintroduction of values education in the school system. I'm not talking about religious education. I'm talking about universal values. There's a lot of support for parenting education. I'm sure there would be support, for example, for opening up the schools for activities. In fact, I think there would be a lot of support for that because working parents and single parents will tell you that one of the biggest concerns they have is that period of time when their kids are out pretty much on their own.

The libraries across the country are filled after school, not necessarily with students who are there to do assignments and research, but with those who are there for a safe environment until their parents get home. The shopping malls, unfortunately, are also filled after school for pretty much the same reasons.

So I think that if you started to survey public opinion and the support for more money being spent on prevention, I think you would find very broad-base, substantial support for it.

Mr. Gallaway: I have one very quick question. In Nova Scotia.... I'm assuming your familiarity is greater here.

Prof. Carrigan: Yes.

Mr. Gallaway: What would prevent a municipality from passing a by-law saying that the curfew for all people under the age of 16 is 9 p.m.?

Prof. Carrigan: Nothing. There is probably in fact such legislation still on the books in many communities, but it's fallen into disuse.

Mr. Gallaway: So as far as you know, a municipality could refresh, update their by-law and say that after 9 p.m. everybody under the age of 16 -

Prof. Carrigan: You get challenges to that concept.

Mr. Gallaway: I understand that.

Prof. Carrigan: You get people saying that you're interfering with the rights of young people. But I don't know. Does an 8-year-old child have the right to be out on the street at 1 a.m.? So those kinds of issues will come up.

The Chair: Professor Carrigan, thank you very much. You've given us a lot to think about. Again, we appreciate your giving us your time.

Prof. Carrigan: I much appreciate your time.

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Ms Clancy: Just before Professor Carrigan goes, Madam Chair, can I make a suggestion? Yesterday we heard Mr. Lutes, the chief crown, who is a member of the Minister of Justice's working group in this area. It might be an idea that as well as this committee looking at Dr. Carrigan's brief, it be passed on to Mr. Lutes in his capacity as a member of that group.

The Chair: Sure. Thank you very much, Professor Carrigan.

We'll rise for a couple of minutes until our next witness joins us.

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.1016

The Chair: We are back, and we have Joyce McCardle from the Prince Edward Island Teachers Federation. Welcome, Joyce. We're a little giddy - well, some of us are never giddy, but with others it happens once in a while.

Ms Joyce McCardle (President, Prince Edward Island Teachers Federation): First of all, I would like to thank you for allowing me to present in Nova Scotia, both in February and this time. I was in Ottawa at the time of the presentations made on P.E.I., so I'm very grateful that the committee allowed me to do my brief during the Nova Scotia schedule.

You needn't worry, because what I'm about to say will be exactly what you have in the brief that was presented to you. I don't deviate from the norm.

The Prince Edward Island Teachers Federation represents approximately 1,600 teachers who work in the public school system in Prince Edward Island. These teachers care very much about children who are experiencing difficulty in their lives. The youth who become subject to the application of the provisions of the Young Offenders Act are of particular concern to us.

On behalf of island teachers, I express appreciation for this brief opportunity to speak to you today and share our concerns with you.

When considering the issue of youth who are experiencing difficulty with their behaviour in our society, we must keep in mind that their behaviour has been influenced greatly by the environment in which they have lived. A variety of factors have affected their behaviour. They alone cannot be blamed for or held accountable for their actions that brought them in contact with the justice system of the country. Had there been more real justice in their lives, they may never have become a justice system statistic.

It also must be recognized that the youth alone cannot easily turn around a pattern of unacceptable behaviour. It is critical that the community resources combine to help create a new, supportive environment in which the youth can learn to change the behaviour patterns that are unacceptable.

The essential combining of community resources will be forthcoming only if the community accepts a communal responsibility for the rehabilitation of the youth. It is only through the acceptance of such a responsibility that the necessary sharing of information and resources will occur to enable the troubled youth to receive essential support. The acceptance of shared responsibility enables a wide variety of potential avenues to open, and could well reduce the number of youth who require incarceration or become repeat offenders.

Teachers in Prince Edward Island have been in the past, and continue to be, prepared to accept our share of the responsibility. I think a big part of this is in prevention. I know you're talking about the Young Offenders Act, but I don't think you can talk about it in isolation without talking about some prevention.

The issue of youth crime prevention is a complex one. There are no simple solutions. The primary emphasis in the past has been on the treatment and rehabilitation of young offenders after they have been incarcerated. Much more emphasis must be placed on addressing the root causes of youth crime. Efforts must be made to reduce the influence and impact of those factors that drive youth to crime.

.1020

We cannot continue to have children and youths living in poverty, subjected to abuse, and allowed to grow up with little or no parenting and adult support and expect the issue of youth crime to be effectively addressed. We can no longer simply say our children are our most precious resource. We must demonstrate that they are.

It will not be enough to have people in the justice system, the educational system and the social services system share information and resources to better respond to children and youths in difficulty. Serious efforts must be made to eradicate child poverty and abuse in our society. This requires the development of strategies to create meaningful jobs for the citizens of this country and a serious consideration of the manner in which the wealth of our country is distributed.

The economic and social policy directions of governments at all levels in Canada are doing more to ensure the growth of youth crime rather than its eradication. If youth crime prevention is to become a serious objective in this country, it will not be sufficient to simply move the pieces of the pie around. The reality is that the pie is not big enough to feed the needs of a meaningful prevention program. This is not to say that pieces of the existing pie cannot be used more effectively. We believe they can.

Improvements can be made in the manner in which information is shared and resources are allocated, but this will not resolve the problem. Such changes will not be able to meet the ever-increasing need for family and youth counselling.

I want to apologize, because there's a killer sentence on this page that I didn't intend. It runs on and on and on. Having been a language arts teacher, I'm embarrassed to death. So just correct it.

The Chair: Would you pass me my red pen, please?

Ms McCardle: Exactly.

It will not provide the support children and youths need who are in family environments they cannot cope with. It will not provide adult supervision for children and youths who are homeless or in unsupervised home environments. It will not provide alternate learning environments for children and youths who are unable to participate in a meaningful way in a school environment. Nor will it meet the needs felt by children who are in absolute poverty and who see crime as the only means available to them to obtain those things more affluent children have. A crime prevention program made up mostly of rhetoric will have little impact over the long term.

Teachers have two major concerns with respect to young offenders. The first is providing help and support to the young offender, and the second is ensuring the safety and integrity of the school environment.

If teachers are to be active in the prevention of crime by children and youths and are to contribute to the rehabilitation of young offenders, the school system must have access to information, on a need-to-know basis, on the children and youths in need of assistance.

As well, if schools are to be safe places for children and youths, teachers and others, information on children and youths who have the potential to violate that safety must be made available to the school system. Without this sharing of information in a professional manner, it is not possible for the school system to effectively respond to the needs of the child in difficulty or the other people in the school environment. Thus, we strongly support the amendments to the act that ensure the availability of such information to the appropriate individuals in the educational system.

The school report of a student is an important element in the determination of the manner in which a young person is coping within the community. Too often, little or no contact is made with the school system with respect to predisposition reports. It is our view that the judicial system is missing a very significant piece of information about the youth when a report from the school system is not considered. We urge that such reports be made a mandatory consideration at the predisposition stage.

We see this over and over again. The school sometimes is the last to even be consulted when we have a wealth of information we could share. Sometimes the classroom teacher is the first one to notice a change in behaviour of a student. That classroom teacher may know that the student is beginning to act up, that the student has been caught out on the street because there's been a family break-up, or because there's been a very traumatic experience in his or her life. We feel we do have some valuable information.

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One of the elements of the sentencing of young offenders that has been confusing, annoying, misunderstood and a cause of negativism has been the establishing of compulsory school attendance as a condition of probation. This is often referred to as being ``sentenced to school''. The use of this phrase has resulted in many negative reactions, such as, ``Schools are not jails, and these people should not be here.'' That's not often something you will hear from teachers. You'll hear it from parents of other children in the child's class.

Others believe they must endure very inappropriate behaviour because the courts have sentenced the person to school, and the school can do nothing but endure. No matter how many times we tell our people that the courts will indeed support them, they still feel if a child is sent there they have to put up with whatever is dished out.

In other cases, teachers become very angry when they learn after the fact that a student who has been found guilty of a violent crime is in their classes and they were not made aware of the matter. Many times teachers feel this condition is not being enforced. They report absenteeism and little is done about it by probation officers. If a partnership is going to be established, it should be one that has open communication and commitment.

I realize that probation officers have loads they are really tied to. However, if the child is supposed to be in school, and if there's a list of things that should be done, then there has to be open communication.

The appropriate individuals in schools must be made aware that attendance at school has been made a condition of probation of a young offender. As well, teachers must be provided with a clear understanding of what this part of the order contemplates so that they are aware when a breach of that order has been made by the young offender.

Such information would also enable the school system to give serious consideration to the nature of the school environment in which the young offender should be placed and the support systems that may be made available to help the student. If a student who was a young offender is a threat to the safety of other students or the school staff, the school personnel must be made aware of the threat so that they can take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of students and staff. There should be no compromise on this safety issue.

Every effort must be made by all involved with young offenders to ensure that these young offenders receive appropriate support. It is not enough to simply send the individual home and tell him to go to school. Very serious consideration must be given to the determination of where the most appropriate learning environment is for the student and any special support services the student will need.

It may not be a conventional school setting. In P.E.I., as, I suspect, in many other provinces, we have alternate programs for students where they're pulled out of the regular schools and put into an alternate program with the hope that after a year or two they will be able to come back into the regular setting. The most appropriate setting may be an alternative learning environment. To enable such flexibility in decisions, school boards must have the resources to provide the alternate learning environments and support services. They must also be viewed as a critical part in the decision-making processes.

The concerns, fears, uncertainty, misinformation and negativism that may exist at times within the school system with respect to dealing with young offenders can be removed to a very great extent through the appropriate sharing of information.

If teachers are to be able to make effective contribution to the prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of young offenders, we must be allowed to know what is going on. We cannot help with prevention if we are not informed that a child or youth is at risk. We cannot help with treatment if we are not informed of the problem. We cannot help with rehabilitation if we are not made aware of the needs to be addressed by the rehabilitation process.

In closing, having said all of the above things, I wish to note that our federation endorses amendments that enable youth to be tried in adult court for certain crimes.

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I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you on behalf of the teachers in Prince Edward Island. We care very much about the children and youth with whom we work each day and we urge that every effort be made to help them have success and safety within our society.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

A ten-minute round, Madam Venne.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: Ms McCardle, in your presentation, you say that teachers become very angry when they learn after the fact that a student who has been found guilty of a violent crime is in their class and they are not made aware of the matter.

I would like one of the researchers to give us the new section of the Young Offenders Act to that effect. As you know, Bill C-37 slightly changed the information that can be provided to schools. It would be interesting to know whether what has been enforced since last December 1 is satisfactory. Would it be possible to ask the researchers to provide that?

[English]

Mr. Philip Rosen (Committee Researcher): Thank you, Madam Chair, for recognizing me.

Rather than reading the section, because it's too complex, what I'll do is give a brief explanation.

Bill C-37 amended section 38 of the act by adding some provisions which would appear to allow identification of a young offender to school boards or the representatives of schools in a number of circumstances, involving, among others, where a young offender subject to a probation order is released under temporary absence to go to school, or in circumstances where there's some concern about the security or safety of the school personnel. It clearly allows for the notification of school boards and the representatives of schools. I don't know how far that goes, but that's been in effect now since December 1 - in essence the last four or five months.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: I would like one more clarification, Mr. Rosen. Could that mean that the teacher may not always be aware of it, even with the changes to the Act?

[English]

Mr. Rosen: It would be up to, I guess, the school board or the school administration to determine with whom it would share the information. So at best I think you could say that's unclear. Certainly the school board and the school representatives would be advised of the information.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: Ms McCardle, is the new section on information in the Young Offenders Act satisfactory, or would you like it to go even farther and specifically say that teachers must be made aware of the record? Are the changes that have been made sufficient?

[English]

Ms McCardle: As far as it has gone, it's very well done. The act itself cannot decide what information is passed down. So maybe it's something we in turn will have to deal with from our particular boards or our administrators in a particular school or whatever. From the act itself, that amendment should take care of it, because the information obviously can be released. I understand this would not be done on a wholesale method, but often you will have many teachers involved with the same student, and those people should be aware of the fact.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: That is all for now. Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Ramsay.

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Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Joyce, for your presentation this morning.

We heard this morning from Professor Carrigan that he advocates the teaching of values and ethics in school. To what extent are values and ethics taught in school in your system, and to the extent that they're not, how do you favour that suggestion?

Ms McCardle: The golden rule is still in vogue, but in many cases we have had to be very careful, because what I value may be something different from your values. As teachers, we cannot be seen as imposing our values on others. For the same reason, it cannot be written into the curriculum. Leading a good life and things like that, what is morally acceptable in society, all these things are talked about and taught in the family living program, in economics, in history. In any of our subjects they come across; and especially in our English programs, where all these kinds of things are discussed. There are many different ways of looking at values.

Mr. Ramsay: Did you hear Professor Carrigan? What do you feel about the manner in which he presented his argument for that?

Ms McCardle: He had some very good points. Sometimes we tend to look back at everything that happened in the past as being good. Many were. Some of them have been improved upon, and that's good.

I couldn't argue with talking about values and all those kinds of things. However, these days it's not as simple in the classroom as it might seem to some parents. In P.E.I. we don't even begin the day with prayer any more, because not everybody goes with that prayer. We're very careful about our Christmas concerts, that kind of thing.

Mr. Ramsay: Yes, right. I guess I should have couched my question like this. Do you feel there has been an inducement within the system to depart from the teaching of values and ethics? It seems to me your response so far has indicated that may be the case; you're not allowed to.... The prayers have been eliminated. The same thing with whatever Christmas participation your schools might engage in. Do you think there has been a lessening of that over your experience and your career?

Ms McCardle: I wouldn't say a lessening. It's more a recognition of the different cultures in our society, that they may have different values from what we do. That doesn't make their values wrong. There are cultural differences -

Mr. Ramsay: No, that's not the question. The question is that inasmuch as prayers of any kind are being eliminated, inasmuch as values, in the Christmas pageant or whatever, are being reduced, that touches on the values I think the professor was referring to. From your answer so far, it seems to me there has been a reluctance to continue at least with the prayers and at least with some of the Christmas messages that are contained within a school.

I'm satisfied with your response to that. Before my time runs out, I would like to ask you about one other issue.

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I don't have the Criminal Code in front of me, but I think it's section 42 or 43 that authorizes teachers and parents to use reasonable force to maintain order. Some people are expressing the opinion that it should be removed from the Criminal Code. As a teacher, how do you feel about that and addressing that issue from the viewpoint of the problems teachers would have and do have now within those goals? What would you feel about the elimination of the Criminal Code authority for teachers to intervene physically if something begins to occur within the class, a scuffle or whatever? How do you feel about that?

Ms McCardle: I don't see how it could be removed. When I look at that particular section, I see that only being invoked if there's a scuffle, a downright fight sometimes, where you may have to physically take hold of a child to remove him or her from hurting the other child.

Mr. Ramsay: It can be easily removed from the Criminal Code.

Ms McCardle: Oh, criminal.

Mr. Ramsay: All you have to do is amend the Criminal Code and it's gone. Then the protection provided you under the Criminal Code would be gone. In fact I believe a United Nations resolution touches upon that very issue. So you would not be in favour of that, if I understand what you're saying.

Ms McCardle: No. That's a necessary part, and I don't think it would be misused. If it were, then I think that would be taken up. You would have to interpret it.

Mr. Ramsay: It's there now, your authority, the protection. Is it not there?

Ms Clancy: The Criminal Code is different.

Mr. Ramsay: They're in the Criminal Code.

Ms Clancy: Yes, there are some in the Criminal Code, but that would be if she had asked one of the students....

The Chair: Just a minute, Ms Clancy, perhaps I can help.

Various education acts do authorize teachers to use reasonable force. The Criminal Code does not. The Criminal Code provides a defence in the event that a teacher is....

Mr. Ramsay: Do we have a Criminal Code here?

The Chair: We have one. But I'm telling you that I've been a teacher for a great many years.

Mr. Ramsay: I would sooner have the Criminal Code myself, Madam Chair. I think it's section 42, isn't it?

The Chair: Section 43. Mr. Ramsay, just let me make this clear. The federal legislation does not authorize teachers to put their hands on students.

You're running out of time.

Mr. Ramsay: Do I have time?

The Chair: Yes, you have two and a half minutes.

Mr. Ramsay: This is section 43:

Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances.

I think that's pretty clear.

The Chair: That is not an authorization, it's not a positive thing; it's a defence. That's all I'm saying.

Perhaps you should get on with your question, because you only have two minutes left.

Mr. Ramsay: Yes, and I'll use that time as I see fit, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Let's go.

Mr. Ramsay: There's some discussion about removing that section. How would you feel about that? Do you think it should be removed?

Ms McCardle: What does it say, correction? Read that line again. I see very fine print coming: ``in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child''. Correction is not - I don't see it as a correction if I say you're doing something and I would spank you or something. That's not something we would use.

Mr. Ramsay: A scuffle.

Ms McCardle: A scuffle. That means I would be able to pick one child from another to keep them from pummelling themselves, if you will.

Mr. Ramsay: That's fine. Thank you. I guess my time is up.

The Chair: Yes, it is. Ms Clancy.

Ms Clancy: Ms McCardle, you'll be happy to know that, contrary to some people's opinion, not everyone who can read can practise law.

I want to go back to this business about values vis-à-vis religion in the classroom. Again, in my own personal experience, I've gone to public schools, to private schools, even to private boarding schools, as our chair has as well. Some of those were religious schools. It has certainly been my experience that teachers do by example. When you're teaching math, grammar, history, social studies or whatever, there are values put across, and there is no religion that I know of that doesn't effectively follow what we could boil down to what you call the golden rule: that stealing is wrong, hitting other people is wrong. These are basic core values that I think you adhere to whether you're Muslim or Catholic or Jewish or Protestant or Rastafarian.

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So I think the theory that we've lost a sense of values in the classroom is wrong. I think the classroom cannot make up for the home. It can assist and help and reinforce, but it's not meant to replace. I'd like your comment on that.

Ms McCardle: I think you're dead on, because when I say the golden rule is in vogue, that pretty well covers it all: you're not going to steal; you're not going to be violent; you're not going to murder someone; you're not going to invade someone's personal rights. Those re all covered under the golden rule as far as I'm concerned, and that is still being taught by example, by the material in books, and whatever. Now if you get into ``value'' meaning religious things, no.

Ms Clancy: I think you're right. If I were sending my child to a public school here in Halifax, in P.E.I., or wherever, I would not necessarily want my child to be instructed in a specific religion.

Let's go to an icon in Atlantic culture, if you will. Certainly if you're teaching a reading class or a literature class in Prince Edward Island, and you're teaching Anne of Green Gables and Anne breaks her slate over Gilbert's head, the teacher will by implication, if not explicitly, say it was not right for her to do that. These are the subtleties that bring on this kind of thing. It's not whether you're teaching the Ten Commandments according to the Douay version or the King James version. Wouldn't you agree?

Ms McCardle: I would agree. Also, when we come to different religions and different ways of life, we deal with those and teach others to respect other religions and cultures.

Ms Clancy: So saying to you, Joyce McCardle, that you all of a sudden have to teach the Koran would not be an answer to young offenders?

Ms McCardle: No, it certainly wouldn't be.

Ms Clancy: Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Mr. Gallaway.

Mr. Gallaway: Ms McCardle, you have raised a very interesting point. We all know that teachers are very influential and powerful individuals. I know, I'm married to one.

With the whole idea of knowledge in the school, of identification by school teachers of children who are at risk or who probably are on the verge of a problem - and I have no doubt that teachers can identify these children, I think it's a given and I'll certainly accept it - what sort of authority would you give to teachers? To go further, with the identification of a child who is at risk or who may already be in trouble, what would you authorize them to do in terms of notifying others? What sort of process would you put in place so that he could be dealt with before he is in conflict with the law, but when you've identified him as being on a crash course with the law?

Ms McCardle: You're talking how we could identify them to the court.

Mr. Gallaway: Identifying them to someone.

Ms McCardle: Usually they're identified -

Mr. Gallaway: Sorry, excuse me. We can't identify them to the courts if they haven't committed an act.

Ms McCardle: No. With at-risk students, we know about them. We see them in terms of whether they're absent from school, whether they're playing truant, whether they're acting out in class, or if we know of drugs. These are all things that put our students at risk.

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Before they ever get to the court we usually will have gone the route of the teacher talking to them, the principal being brought in, the guidance counsellor in many cases being brought in, trying out resource room help to get their grades up to scratch. We will have done a whole gamut of things. If the family is under a social assistance program and we know it, then we may even talk to the caseworker dealing with that family. All these things would be done.

What we see sometimes is that we work at cross purposes. We have our information, social services has its information, and we're sharing in a way. But then it comes down to a judge to make a decision on something.

Mr. Gallaway: Maybe I could be a little more specific. If you were able to instruct the Premier of Prince Edward Island in the sense that you wanted some structure put together so that as a teacher, you could say that a child is at risk so you're going to feed them into this system, what would that system be?

Ms McCardle: Actually, there is a new protocol for sexual abuse victims; we're working through that one.

The first thing I would say is that if a child is in trouble with the law, before it gets to a major thing like incarceration, but even on their first brush with the law, come and talk to the classroom teacher. Often we come to school on a Monday and hear that Johnny has been apprehended by the law, that he was in the young offenders facility or whatever over the weekend and he's going to court. Before he goes to court he should come and talk to the classroom teacher, the guidance counsellor, people like that, who build a really good profile on the person.

Mr. Gallaway: I have one final question. On page 1 of your brief you state: ``They'' - referring to young offenders - ``alone cannot be `blamed' for or be held `accountable' for their actions that brought them in contact with the justice system of the country.'' Who are the others we're going to blame and how do we punish them?

Ms McCardle: Well, I don't know how you'd punish them. How do you punish poverty?

Mr. Gallaway: Okay. Thank you.

The Chair: Madam Venne, did you have any other questions?

Mrs. Venne: Non, merci.

The Chair: Is there anything else on the government side?

Well, thank you very much.

Ms McCardle: There's something to be said for presenting just before dinner.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: There's something to be said for having a good sense of humour. You're great. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.

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