SCYR Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH AT RISK OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

SOUS-COMITÉ DES ENFANTS ET JEUNES À RISQUE DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, December 5, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.)): Well, dearly beloved, when two or three are gathered together, we're able to go—providing one is from the opposition. The opposition gets here faster than the chair. We apologize for our delay because of the vote.

I understand Mr. Pentney has to leave at 4:15 to attend another committee to deal with supplementary estimates. As I explained, I thought we just did that yesterday, but what do I know? I only work here.

Welcome to officials from Justice Canada—and also from Statistics Canada, because we've got a sort of dual show. I don't know whether you have worked out between you who is going to go first. I have a feeling Mr. Pentney might be there early. No? Is it Madame Begin?

Why don't we get into it. We will be, I hope, joined by others who will be drifting through the rain to join us. Welcome.

Ms. Patricia Begin (Director, Research and Evaluation, National Crime Prevention Centre, Department of Justice Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the members of this committee for their invitation to appear and to speak about the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention and some of the work the National Crime Prevention Centre is involved in respecting aboriginal children and youth and their families.

Before I begin, I would like to say to the committee that we were unable to arrange to bring to Ottawa for today front-line people who are delivering programs focusing on aboriginal children and their families at the community level. However, if the committee wishes, we could arrange with the researcher and with the clerk of the committee for community-based front-line practitioners to make an appearance in the new year.

The Chair: We'll accept that kind offer.

Ms. Patricia Begin: Okay.

What I would like to do at the outset is provide a context for some of the discussion about the interventions the Crime Prevention Centre is supporting in urban and rural on-reserve and off-reserve communities in Canada. I would like to provide a bit of context with respect to the work of the national strategy.

Since 1993 the government has sought to improve community safety and prevent crime through a balanced approach that focuses on prevention as well as reaction. To that end, in 1993 the government created a national crime prevention strategy for Canada to work on community solutions with the provinces, territories, and municipalities, to respond to the underlying causes of crime, delinquency, insecurity, and victimization.

The national strategy on community safety and crime prevention is part of the Government of Canada's action plan to reduce crime by addressing its root causes and by building stronger and healthier communities. The strategy is an interdepartmental initiative between the Department of Justice and the ministry of the Solicitor General. The Department of Justice is the lead department.

In this country we have traditionally responded to crime with reactive measures—namely with apprehension, sentencing, incarceration, and rehabilitation of offenders. Our governments spend about $10 billion per year responding to crime, with police, courts, and correctional services. These measures are certainly necessary, but they are mainly reactive and they don't stop crime before it happens.

If one considers the personal costs associated with the pain and suffering of victims or of lost productivity, then the cost of crime is estimated to be as much as $46 billion per year. This does not include the cost of fear that is experienced by those who are victimized by crime.

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The national strategy on community safety and crime prevention employs a proactive approach to crime reduction, an approach known as crime prevention through social development. Essentially, crime prevention through social development has the following characteristics: it focuses on root causes; it addresses risk factors; it takes a long-term and proactive approach. Crime prevention through social development addresses personal, social, and economic risk factors that lead some individuals to engage in criminal acts or to become victims of crime.

A risk factor is a condition that increases the likelihood that a person will come into contact with the law either as a victim or as an offender. Some key examples of risk factors associated with crime and victimization include inadequate living conditions, such as poor housing and residential instability; family factors, such as poor or inadequate parenting; witnessing violence in the home; abuse; single-parent households with children; parental criminality and substance abuse; individual personality and behavioural factors, such as a lack of problem-solving skills, lack of self-control, lack of critical reasoning, and lack of judgment; peer association, such as relationships with friends who follow a delinquent or criminal lifestyle; and school-related factors, such as poor educational achievement and truancy, leaving school early, and deficient school environments.

This list is meant to illustrate that a “crime prevention through social development” approach is truly cross-cutting and interdisciplinary. It has ties with a large number of social and legal issues and it involves the three levels of government in Canada.

The National Crime Prevention Centre, which administers the national strategy, works in partnership with provincial governments through health, education, social services, income security, sport, recreation, housing, and the administration of justice. It also works with municipal and community-level partners including school and parent associations, boys' and girls' clubs and other youth-serving agencies, business and professional associations, service clubs, recreation programs, women's organizations, seniors groups, people with disability, justice and court workers, and drug and alcohol treatment centres. This work is to support community-based crime and victimization-prevention activities.

The federal government's responsibility for criminal law and for peace, order, and good governance informs its significant role in crime prevention and community safety. This is reflected in the federal departmental policy and program mandates, such as family violence, victims, homelessness, the youth justice renewal strategy, the youth employment initiative, urban aboriginal youth centres, aboriginal justice, restorative justice, and health, just as some examples of the program and policy mandates resident in different departments and agencies at the federal level.

Mr. Chairman, there are colleagues from the Department of Justice here today with me with responsibility for some of these departmental policies or programs—specifically aboriginal justice and family violence. While their program activities may not be explicitly targeted to aboriginal children and their families, they are nonetheless the recipients of some of these activities. These officials would be pleased to respond to questions that might come up from committee members with respect to family violence or aboriginal justice. Bill Pentney is with the aboriginal justice program, as is another colleague of his, so if questions come after he's required to leave, we'll be okay.

The National Crime Prevention Centre is one of many players in the criminal justice and social development arena who make the approach to community safety work. Indeed, one of the factors that makes crime prevention through social development such a potentially successful approach—and I say potentially because we're still awaiting some of the evaluation results to confirm this—is that it makes connections that go far beyond the traditional criminal justice system.

Crime prevention through social development recognizes the important role that policies, programs, and services play in preventing crime. The strategy has four main priority groups. They include children, youth, the personal security of women and girls, and aboriginal people—on reserve, off reserve, rural, and urban.

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An objective of the strategy is to mobilize partners. Partnerships are absolutely critical to achieving the kinds of outcomes at the community level that the strategy seeks. The partners include governments, businesses, community groups, and individuals.

Another objective of the strategy is to help communities to find local solutions to local crime problems, as well as to promote public awareness of crime prevention, to begin to introduce into the policies, into the practices of people at the local level, a notion that community safety is everybody's responsibility, and finally, to conduct research on crime prevention and to establish model and best practices.

I'd now like to talk about some of the policy research and evaluation initiatives of the National Crime Prevention Centre that focus on at-risk children and their families in general, and aboriginal youth.

The Department of Justice is involved in an initiative focusing on children under the age of 12 who offend. It involves a partnership between the National Crime Prevention Centre and the youth justice policy unit and focuses on children and youth who are involved in serious or persistent behaviour for which, if they were of the age of criminal responsibility under the Young Offenders Act, they would be criminally charged.

The National Crime Prevention Centre has an interest in this under-12 population, as it's directly related to our priorities of children and youth, aboriginal people and communities. In order to prevent crime and victimization before it occurs, the National Crime Prevention Centre is looking to identify and test interventions for those youths whose behaviour has come to the attention of enforcement or school authorities. The objective is to keep them out of the youth justice system when they are of the age of criminal responsibility—i.e., when they turn 12 years old. So we're seeking to identify prevention initiatives and community-based interventions for at-risk children and their families.

I've provided a package of information to the committee. In it is a summary of some of the projects we are supporting for aboriginal youth and their families in different regions of the country. Some of the projects listed there would come into the under-12 initiative I'm referring to.

It's worthy of note that there is limited research on the subject of aboriginal children under the age of 12 who are exhibiting behaviour that would be subject to criminal processing if they were of the legal age of criminal responsibility. What we do know from the literature on children is the following. Early warning signs of children at risk of becoming involved in the criminal justice system include physical fighting; cruelty to people or animals; covert acts such as lying, fire-setting, or theft; not getting along with others; low motivation during elementary school; and substance abuse. Family risk factors include child-rearing practices such as inadequate supervision, parents' non-involvement with their children, aggressiveness, poor discipline, parental absence, parental socio-economic status, family violence, and parental criminality.

These factors are often associated with weak school performance, poor social skills, and cognitive problems that result in underdeveloped reading abilities and academic failure. One research study, for example, found that by second grade, 45% of the delinquents in the study were behind in reading and 36% in writing. This information is particularly significant when you consider that, on average, there's a 50% chance that an aboriginal child will not complete grade nine, compared to a 10% chance for a non-aboriginal child.

Family functioning also plays a significant role in whether or not an aggressive anti-social youth between eight and ten years of age will grow up to become a violent adult. A longtitudinal study of over 1,000 pre-school children found that while early anti-social behaviour is one of the best predictors of later anti-social behaviour in children, it is not an accurate predictor of anti-social outcomes once the child has reached adolescence.

So this finding lends support to calls for early interventions that focus on children and their families. In the case of aboriginal people, culturally appropriate early responses are called for.

A number of commentators have called for empirical research to explore the underpinnings of aboriginal child offending and ultimately of aboriginal youth crime. Aboriginal children and youth are indeed the most appropriate starting point for this research because this will be the population carrying the aboriginal community into the next millennium.

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The National Crime Prevention Centre provides support to communities through federal grants or contributions. All national strategy crime prevention projects are monitored and project outcomes or impacts are documented. The strategy has placed an emphasis on improving the body of evidence-based knowledge, developing results-based approaches to identifying promising crime prevention practices, informing local development of policies and programs, gathering and sharing international efforts, and replicating and evaluating crime prevention practices in different communities across the country.

This is in keeping with the requirement attached to the resources that the National Crime Prevention Centre receives from the federal Treasury Board to focus on results with a view to learning from experience. The government's results-based approach to program management is intended to ensure that it delivers programs that work, and to foster a management culture that is fact-based, results-oriented, and open and accountable.

At the level of projects, the National Crime Prevention Centre is working with community practitioners—aboriginal and non-aboriginal, urban and rural, on reserve and off reserve—to ensure that projects at their inception are informed by a needs assessment or a detailed community profile; that the projects make a link between the community needs and the project activities, plans, and partnerships; that the projects articulate clearly the assumptions or theory of change that's underlying the particular project; that they set out appropriate, realistic, and measurable project objectives and outcomes; and that they identify research questions and methods to monitor outcome and impact.

Clearly the intensity of an evaluation of crime prevention projects at the community level will depend upon the nature of the project. Short-term, relatively small-dollar mobilization grants will not allow for the same level of evaluation and rigour that multi-year pilot demonstration projects would.

One of the funds the National Crime Prevention Centre uses to support communities is the crime prevention investment fund, which is the research and development component of the strategy. The crime prevention investment fund supports projects for three to five years in communities across the country and rigorously evaluates them from their outset. We have a number of projects, and I will be speaking about two in a few moments, that were initiated shortly after phase two of the crime prevention strategy was launched in 1998. We'll be reporting on the outcomes and the impacts in early 2002, so we're quite excited about beginning to get in some impact data on some of our pilot demonstration projects.

In addition to project evaluations, we've developed a performance measurement and an evaluation plan for the overall national strategy that includes a comprehensive ongoing monitoring and performance measurement system. Furthermore, we have a comprehensive process and impact evaluation of the national strategy that was launched in 1998. There was a mid-term evaluation that focused on design and implementation of the strategy, and that was completed in January 2001. Among other things, the mid-term evaluation found that the strategy did not have significant reach into high-risk, high-needs, low-capacity communities, including inner-city, rural, remote, and aboriginal communities.

We've recently received expansion dollars from the federal Treasury Board and we will now be in a better position to do more outreach and capacity-building around crime prevention in these communities.

What I'd like to do now is talk briefly about the aboriginal population in Canada and its involvement with the criminal justice system, and then move to describing a couple of pilot demonstration projects that we've developed to support aboriginal youth and their families.

Given the focus of this hearing, it is worth noting that the age profile of Canada's aboriginal population is markedly different from that of the total Canadian population. From census data in 1996, we know that 35% of all aboriginal people in Canada were children of less than 15 years of age, compared to a figure of 20% for the total Canadian population. Moreover, there were 491 children under the age of five for every 1,000 aboriginal women of childbearing age in 1996, which is approximately 70% higher than the ratio for the general Canadian population.

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In addition to the aboriginal population being young, this population is also urban. Approximately 71% of aboriginal people in Canada now live off reserve. Nearly 28% of the aboriginal population lives in urban cores with a population of at least 100,000 people.

Given the percentage of aboriginal people who live off reserve and in cities, it's not surprising to find that the majority of offences for which aboriginal people are incarcerated are committed in urban areas. A one-day snapshot of aboriginal youth in custody in Canada—that is, youth who are aged 12 to 17 years—found that more than half, or 54% of these aboriginal youth, lived in a city during the two years prior to the current admission.

The Chair: I'll just ask a question of clarification if I may. Your use of the word “aboriginal” includes non-status, Métis, and status, does it?

Ms. Patricia Begin: Correct.

In that one-day snapshot, 54% of youth in custody lived in a city prior to admission, 23% lived on a reserve, and 21% in a town. What's significant is that 56% of these youth indicated that they plan to relocate to a city upon release. Thus, it's important to know not only where offences were committed but also where offenders plan to locate upon release.

We also know that the aboriginal population in Canada, particularly in the prairies, is significantly overrepresented in the criminal justice system. The adult corrections survey, which was undertaken by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, reported that aboriginal people accounted for 2% of the population 18 years and over in 1996-1997, yet they made up 16% of the total provincial and territorial sentenced admissions and 14% of the total population of federal institutions in Canada.

When you look at Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, the over-representation is quite significant. In Saskatchewan, aboriginal people accounted for 74% of sentenced admissions to custody, yet they made up 12% of the population. That overrepresentation exists in Alberta and Manitoba as well.

For aboriginal youth, in 1998-1999 these youth accounted for 24% of the total admissions to youth custody although they accounted for only 5% of the total youth population in the jurisdictions that were examined.

We also know from research that the aboriginal population in Canada is disadvantaged. Some of the significant risk factors in the family backgrounds of aboriginal inmates who were interviewed in 1996 include the facts that during childhood, 60% had used drugs; 58% had used alcohol; 57% reported behavioural problems; 45% had been physically abused; 21% had been sexually abused; 35% reported severe poverty; and 41% reported parental absence.

Census data highlights additional risks aboriginal people experience that are greater than the rates among non-aboriginal people. For example, they're much more likely to have low levels of education, experience high unemployment rates, live in single-parent families, and be low-income earners.

The increasing growth rate of the aboriginal youth population, the growth of the aboriginal population in large urban cores, and the significant and many risk factors that are present in the lives of aboriginal people all increase their vulnerability to coming into contact with the criminal justice system, particularly for those in the prairie provinces.

In light of the types of risk factors that have been identified in the backgrounds of aboriginals, particularly those who are involved in the criminal justice system, the National Crime Prevention Centre is supporting a pilot demonstration project that is relevant to the topic of these hearings. It is the healthy families pilot project, which is currently operating in Edmonton and in Whitehorse. It's a three-year intervention that focuses on the needs of high-risk newborns and their parents. It's a focused, intensive home visitor program for these new parents, one that is intended to help their children have a healthy start and a healthy future.

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Essentially, the people are made aware of the program through an assessment carried out by public health nurses of families who have had their first child. The assessment looks at a number of risk factors we've identified, including violence in their background, family functioning, violence in the current relationship they may be involved in, lack of support, job skills or employment, educational attainment, and so forth.

It's a holistic approach that works with the whole family, and it involves more than providing support and counselling to parents to better parent their children. It also provides opportunities, avenues, and referrals for parents to upgrade their education as well as their job skills, to take job training, and to have access to employment opportunities in their community.

What I thought I would do to contextualize it is talk a bit about some of the community-level data that's been collected by Statistics Canada through a number of surveys: the national longitudinal survey of children and youth, the census, uniform crime reports, and so on. This should give you a profile of the socio-demographic, economic, and crime factors that exist in the city of Edmonton. I'll describe the risk profile, if you will, of Edmonton to illustrate the use of data and to inform you about the development of a community crime prevention project the Crime Prevention Centre is involved with.

We know from community profile data, for example, that the percentage of young mothers in Edmonton is higher than the national average: 2.6% of the population versus 2% nationally. We also know, using the Statistics Canada definition of low-income, that while 16% of Canadian families are low-income, in Edmonton the percentage of families with low income is 21% of all families. As well, 17% of families in Edmonton are lone-parent families, compared to 15% of families nationally, and the percentage of the population in Edmonton that is aboriginal is slightly higher than their percentage in the Canadian population.

Moreover, we know that of the registered Indian population in Edmonton, over half, 56.3%, are under the age of 25, that a little over half of the registered Indian population are employed, that less than a quarter have completed high school, and that 40% live in lone-parent families.

This data is significant because it identifies important indicators of risk for coming into conflict with the law, and the association between disadvantage and conflict with the law is illustrated by the following statistics. Edmonton youth are charged with robbery at a rate that is slightly more than two and a half times the rate for Canada as a whole, and they are charged with major assaults at almost twice the rate for Canada as a whole.

The community profile tells us that the percentage of Edmonton's population living in disadvantaged conditions is greater than the Canadian average and that the disadvantaged stay of Edmonton's aboriginal population exceeds that of the overall Edmonton population, and this has implications for conflict with the law.

The healthy families projects are being delivered by the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society in Edmonton and the Kwanlin Dun First Nation in Whitehorse. As I indicated, they support parents and their newborn children up to the age of six; they teach parenting skills to young, high-risk new parents who have been assessed by public health nurses; they also provide educational and job skills training; and they address issues such as substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect, which we know are significant risks.

One of the things the crime prevention strategy attempts to foster is partnerships, and we see in both Edmonton and in Whitehorse a broad range of partners in support of these programs. For example, in Edmonton it involves an intersectoral range of partners, including Health Canada, the Capital Health Authority of Edmonton, Success by Six, the Regional Children's Services Authority, the Edmonton Community Foundation, the Edmonton Police Service, federal and provincial correctional officials, and the University of Alberta.

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The Edmonton healthy families project is modelled on a model that was developed in the state of Hawaii. It involved early home visits for children at risk of abuse and neglect.

When we were approached by select communities in Canada to assist them in implementing, supporting, and evaluating this model, we wanted to take it a step further because of the crime prevention focus for us. So in addition to high-risk parents, who are identified through public health nurses, we've also formed partnerships with the local police and correctional officials, so families can be referred by either of these where there is domestic violence in the family.

If the police respond to a call for domestic violence and there's an infant in the family, there's a mechanism for that family to then be referred to the healthy families program. It's likewise for offenders who have been convicted of domestic violence or child abuse and will be coming back into their families. It ensures that there are sufficient supports for those families, as they attempt to reintegrate.

In Whitehorse—

The Chair: Ms. Begin, I'm a little bit concerned about losing Mr. Pentney to his other committee, so I might stop you there. I think these examples are extremely useful, but I'm also a little anxious that we have some time for questions.

Mr. Pentney, do you want to make a presentation before you go?

Mr. Bill Pentney (Deputy Head, Aboriginal Affairs Portfolio, Department of Justice Canada): No, Mr. Chairman. My intention was to answer questions.

I could speak about the aboriginal justice strategy, which is another program of the department. It does not primarily address children and the target population the committee is interested in, but there are a couple of programs we're supporting that do address children and families.

The Chair: Perhaps we can take advantage of your presence before you have to fly.

Mr. Bill Pentney: Let me begin by apologizing. I accepted to appear at another committee dealing with the supplementary estimates. They were to begin their hearing after this one concluded. They have decided to begin earlier, so I apologize.

The aboriginal justice strategy is a five-year initiative of the federal government that seeks to increase aboriginal people's involvement in the justice system, and particularly the criminal justice system. It also seeks to work with the criminal justice system to make it more able to accommodate the needs of aboriginal people and their particular circumstances.

[Translation]

We are now supporting 90 programs and 280 aboriginal communities, either on reserves or in towns in the North. Most programs do not affect children and youth. We started with communities and provinces and territories. We are supporting cost-shared programs on a fifty-fifty basis.

We started working with young offenders and the criminal system in particular. We now have two programs dealing with an aspect that is new for us, youth protection.

[English]

There are two programs we have worked with communities and provinces to support that deal with child protection matters, which is really the area within our domain that is of interest. The first is a unique program in northern Manitoba, which is run by the Awasis First Nation. It's called the Awasis First Nation Family Justice Initiative. It serves a group of northern Manitoba reserve communities, and is working to create an alternative model for family justice and child protection.

The unique thing about it is that a child protection officer has been appointed to deal, on the reserve, with matters that would normally fall within child protection. They work with a great number of community supports, elders and a community council, to try to find alternative ways than the usual child protection enforcement model, to deal with families.

As we did consultations around the needs of communities and went through a renewal process of the aboriginal justice strategy, we found that more and more communities were dealing with young offenders and adults who had committed crimes. They were seeking to divert them out of the ordinary criminal system and find ways of healing them and preventing them from reoffending, while at the same time helping them reconcile with their communities and with the victims they had harmed.

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Almost all of these communities are also saying it's not enough now to deal with the young offenders. They need to back this up and deal more with children before they become young offenders. Ms. Begin was speaking about a program in Edmonton and in the Yukon that seeks to do that. We've heard that from many communities.

The Awasis agency has already begun to implement such a program. It involves, as I've said, community support for families and children in need, as a way of trying to intervene with these families before a child gets to a situation where they need to be removed from the family. It involves the application of traditional approaches of mediation through circles and family group conferences. It involves elders in the community and community organizations, particularly health and social service organizations, coming together to try to work with the family to help them through their crisis and address their longer term needs.

[Translation]

We also created a similar program with the Conseil Attikamek-Montagnais in Northern Quebec. It is a unique program in Quebec I think. The Attikamek community includes around 5,000 people. There are three communities where we created tripartite committees made up of representatives from the government of Quebec, the federal government and the Attikamek community.

We are starting to deal with youth who have the same problems the same way. We are trying to find a way to intervene that is relevant to the culture of those people. It is a family support program. We are not talking here about traditional law enforcement.

[English]

We are at the end of a five-year mandate and awaiting anxiously news of renewal. The government committed to fund the program for five years. Over the past year, extension funding was given. Frankly, we're waiting for news on Monday about what decisions the government will be making about renewal of the program.

Through this process of renewal, we conducted a fairly wide-ranging consultation with 280 aboriginal communities and provincial and territorial officials. There is a strongly identified need for more focus at a pre-young offender stage. So the focus is on children and family.

There's also a recognition, as Patricia said, that this is really about social development. It involves seeing the justice system not as a separate arm or branch of government, but as a component of social service delivery.

One of the challenges for us is to find ways of integrating more closely, as with crime prevention, into a much broader range of government officials and social service agencies at the provincial and territorial levels, as well as the municipal level because we also deal with urban-based programs.

So that's the introduction and background to the strategy. I will be happy to answer questions.

The Chair: Thank you.

I'm now torn by the fact that I know

[Translation]

Ms. Guay has to leave at 4:30 and we have not heard Mr. Jones yet. I might do something a bit irregular here if you all agree. Ms. Guay could ask her questions right away if she has some, then we could come back to Mr. Jones.

[English]

Ms. Skelton, are you okay if we... Okay.

[Translation]

Yes, we could mix the interventions a bit.

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): Thank you very much for your consideration, Mr. Chairman. I truly appreciate it.

I have questions to ask you, Mr. Pentney, before you leave as well. Today is a very busy day. Before the budget, we all try to sit on our committee.

You were talking about a program with Quebec. I am very interested. You say that it is a tripartite program of the Quebec government, the aboriginals and the federal government. Does it also include tripartite financing?

Mr. Bill Pentney: Yes. It is not really a cost-shared program. It is not really tripartite except for the fact that the Attikameks are providing the service in kind.

Ms. Monique Guay: Yes, they are providing services.

Mr. Bill Pentney: They are providing the services and the governments are cost-sharing the program on a fifty-fifty basis.

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Ms. Monique Guay: You also mentioned youth protection. You know that we do things a bit differently in the province of Quebec. First of all, we have had a youth protection service for several years now. We even have a juvenile court. We truly believe in reintegration as opposed to punishment because we think that while they are still very young we can rehabilitate children and give them a second chance or even a third chance if need be.

I don't know if this works in aboriginal circles but did you try similar programs to the ones we already have in Quebec?

Mr. Bill Pentney: Yes, it is exactly the approach we took with aboriginals in general. For example, in Quebec as well as in other provinces and territories, we try to deal with adults or young offenders after their first or second offence. Instead of taking them to court and following the normal process, we try to send them to a community native committee which understands the victim. We turn to families and elders to get their help. We resort to the reconciliation process. We try to help people in order to reintegrate them and change their life.

It is not a very simple process. There are people who perpetrated very minor offences according to criminal law and who take part in a healing program for many many years because the elders and the committee believe that there is something to be done.

Ms. Monique Guay: Are you not afraid that the new young offenders act could cause damage at that level? We see a lot of aboriginal youth committing a first offence but the legislation is now much tighter. Are you not afraid that this might go against some programs that were put into place to help young people?

Mr. Bill Pentney: It is not my field but if I understood you well, the legislation aims at helping youth, especially aboriginal youth, to reintegrate and to establish a support process.

Ms. Monique Guay: Not quite but this is another matter.

Mr. Bill Pentney: Yes, it is another matter.

Ms. Monique Guay: It is another discussion.

Are there specific programs for children from 0 to 5 years old? In the province of Quebec, we put a lot of emphasis on what can be done from birth to the age of five, because it is at that stage that the child develops and learns all the necessary skills to become a human being equal to others, strong and healthy. We put as much emphasis on training as we do on health and nutrition. Do you have specific programs of that kind?

Mr. Bill Pentney: Both programs affect children but are not aimed at them specifically. Both programs can also include young offenders.

Ms. Monique Guay: So you do not have specific programs for very young children. Do you intend to establish such programs one day?

Mr. Bill Pentney: We intend to talk with the communities and the provinces to find out about their essential needs. We know that one of their very important needs is to be able to deal with the problems before the children become young offenders. Right now, we don't know if they want to focus on the problems of children from 0 to 5 or from 5 to 12 years old.

Ms. Monique Guay: Great. Thank you.

Mr. Bill Pentney: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Jones, you've given us some very nice slides here. If you wouldn't mind moving fairly briskly through them, we will be able to turn back to the members of the committee for questions. Thank you for coming.

Mr. Roy Jones (Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be here this afternoon.

I have distributed a series of five slides, and I'll speak to each one of them. I've prepared material for eight to ten minutes, so I shouldn't take long to get through it.

This is a limited series of data, primarily because we have a very limited series of data available that specifically identify aboriginals in the justice system.

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I won't be covering the socio-economic information that's been referenced in the presentation of the other witness today. That material was presented to you, I think about a month ago, by Mr. Doug Norris from Statistics Canada, so you do have that as background information.

Most of the data I'll be using in the presentation today come out of the corrections sector of the system, and that again is purely a reflection of the availability of information that allows us to distinguish between aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth in the system.

In addition to this, I have a limited bit of information in the slides from the 1999 general social survey. This provides estimates for youth and young adults aged 15 to 24, as well as a bit of information from our homicide survey. I'll go through each of those in turn as we speak to the slides.

Unfortunately, I need to preface my presentation with a short explanation for the absence of information in the policing sector.

As you know, we have a number of information collection activities on the go with the police, primarily through aggregate and micro-data collection, with the support of all the police communities in the country. Unfortunately, the information being provided by the policing sector specifically identifying aboriginals is very inconsistent because of high levels of non-reporting, and it's virtually impossible for us to make a general statement about prevalence, incidence, and comparisons between jurisdictions as a result.

The Chair: Can I just ask whether that has something to do with people's rights, such as racial stereotyping or that sort of thing?

Mr. Roy Jones: There are a number of explanations for it. There are some policies in place with some departments where they will not collect that information. In other cases, it's due to the sensitivities involved and the nature of the case being investigated. In some instances, it's not thought to be particularly germane to the investigation and the officers on the front line aren't interested in collecting it. There are also methodological issues with regard to what methodology is in place to make the designation and classification if it's not self-reported information.

So we are working with our policing colleagues and the federal-provincial agencies through our committee structures to try to come up with methodologies that allow us to make estimates about aboriginal involvement on first contact with the formal system, but we're very early on in those discussions.

Just by way of preface, I wanted to explain the absence of that information before I got into the presentation itself.

With that, I'd like to now turn to the first slide. This graphic speaks to the general estimates of differential victimization rates between aboriginal youth and young adults aged 15 to 24 for selected violent offences. These estimates, again, are based on the 1999 general social survey from a representative sample of the Canadian population aged 15 and older in the ten provinces.

You can see clearly from the chart that aboriginal youth aged 15 to 24 have a higher risk of victimization of violent crimes. The rate on the chart is 393 per 1,000, which is roughly 50% higher than the 252 per 1,000 for the non-aboriginal Canadian population of that age.

That makes the general incidence case up front, in terms of contact with criminal incidence, and it's important to have those types of estimates from victimization surveys because they do provide a different perspective from official statistics, and some of these contacts and victimization experiences certainly wouldn't have been reported to the authorities. That, as we all know, varies depending on the nature of the incident, with some reporting rates to police being as low as 10%.

So it is important for us to have these types of estimates and we do get them periodically through that General Social Survey program.

Now in the next slide we're looking at victims and accused for homicides over the last decade—1991 through 2000. The figures are presented separately for children under the age of 12 and for the 12 to 17 years age group. You'll see the aboriginal children represent 5% of the Canadian population—these are 1996 census figures—and that roughly 4% of the Canadian population is aboriginal youth between 12 and 17 years of age.

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The accused percentages and victim percentages are calculated on decennial median distributions. As you know, there are very few homicides committed against, and certainly involving, accused under the age of 12, so it was necessary to do some aggregations over time and to use more robust measures for these distributions.

I should also note in these slides there are varying proportions—9% to 13%—that don't have the indicator of aboriginal status on them. That indicates that these are conservative estimates of the aboriginal involvement as accused and victims of homicide in each of these groups. They certainly would be slightly higher if we had full information on that variable.

Looking at victims, among the roughly 500 child victims of homicide over this last decade, about one in ten was an aboriginal child. That's at least double the representation of aboriginal children in the general population.

Aboriginal youth aged 12 to 17 account for at least one-quarter of the roughly 280 youth homicide victims over the decade. That proportion is about five times the share they have of the Canadian youth population.

Among the accused, the overrepresentation of aboriginal youth is even more pronounced. Roughly one-third of all youth accused of the some 520 homicides committed by youth over the decade were aboriginal youth—a fairly significant disproportion.

The next graphic, relating to alternative measures, shows admissions statistics. Again we're looking at the representation of aboriginal youth by jurisdiction. This is restricted to the jurisdictions that are providing this information to us with the aboriginal indicator information available.

I should also mention the program scope and eligibility for entry vary considerably among the jurisdictions, as many of you would be aware. It is somewhat difficult to make comparisons across jurisdictions, certainly about case load, but this profiling is acceptable from a statistical perspective.

You can certainly see there's a higher proportion of aboriginal involvement in alternative measures programs in each of these jurisdictions. This is particularly pronounced in the western provinces.

Nearly half of the intake in Saskatchewan is aboriginal. That's roughly three times their share of the provincial youth population. Similarly, the overrepresentation of aboriginal youth on admission in Alberta is approximately double their share of the population. This is true also in British Columbia. The levels are higher in the Yukon, but not quite as disproportionate as they are in the jurisdictions I just mentioned. Roughly 38% of the admissions in the Yukon are aboriginal, and they have about a 24% share of the youth population.

In terms of admissions to probation, again, the overrepresentation is most pronounced in the western provinces. On average, we're looking at roughly four times difference between their admissions to probation and their share of the provincial populations.

Nearly two-thirds of the 2,000 admissions to probation in Saskatchewan are aboriginal. They have a 15% share of the population. The figures for Alberta are 25% of admissions, and they have a 6% share of the population. Similarly, in British Columbia that ratio of 4:1 holds true. They're 19% of the more than 4,000 admissions, and they have a 5% share of the population. You can see the pattern is fairly consistent across the different services on the corrections end.

The last graphic is admissions to sentence custody. This includes both open and secure facility. We're again seeing the pronounced differential in representation. At this point, it's even more severe.

Roughly three-quarters of the youth admissions to either open or secure custody in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were aboriginal. That's five times the representation of the population they account for. This differential is also observed in Ontario and British Columbia, even though the aboriginal youth comprise a smaller overall percentage of admissions to custody in each of these provinces—roughly one in ten and one in four, respectively.

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So you can see in summary, overall, aboriginal youth over-representation grows from about two or three to one at the stage of admission to alternative measures, to four to one when we get to probation, and to five to one when we get to custody, both open and secure.

I also have a profile of general youth justice that I recently presented to another committee, but it does not provide breakdowns by aboriginal indicators. So this is more or less exploiting the full extent of the information we have from the administrative sources supporting the national statistical program.

The Chair: Thank you very much. This gives us a very sharp definition of the challenge we face and what can go wrong if we don't get it right earlier.

Ms. Skelton.

Ms. Carol Skelton (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, Canadian Alliance): This blows my mind away, because I knew what kind of a problem we had in Saskatchewan, but these graphs are very graphis, shall we say. They show you in black and white.

I have a question arising from when we were talking about how you can't get information from police forces. Is this because they are saying they're underfunded and don't have the resources to add extra people to their force to provide you with this? What kinds of things are they telling you? Why are they not giving you the statistics?

Mr. Roy Jones: I think if you asked them directly, they might give you that answer. It's not the answer they're giving us.

In the case of Saskatchewan, certain forces just aren't going to. It's policy. They're not going to collect it right now. And the RCMP is one of them. In Saskatchewan some of the forces are providing it, but there are very high levels of “not known” and “unknown”. And even where there is indication on this field, they're not comfortable with the veracity of the information.

Saskatchewan in participating in a working group with us right now, with the Department of Justice, looking at best practices for strategies for the collection of this information. So it's not so much a fiscal issue as it is a methodological and a principle issue.

Ms. Carol Skelton: I know the city of Regina has the highest rate of car thefts across Canada. It's young aboriginal people who are being charged, basically. Seeing numbers like this concerns me, because our police officers cannot do what they need to do. Their hands are tied in a lot of cases, and these young people are looking for help.

I look at the city of Edmonton's program. Do we not have programs we could put into the city of Regina to work with the young people there and with the police officers?

The Chair: Can I also invite anybody who may be a Pentney substitute, so to speak, somebody who collaborates with Mr. Pentney and who's at the table, to assist us if possible?

Ms. Carol Skelton: I'd appreciate this, too, please.

The Chair: Yes, go ahead, Ms. Begin.

I didn't know whether it would be helpful to have somebody else. Anybody else who feels they have something to add, wave a hand and we'll bring you up.

Ms. Patricia Begin: Yes, indeed, we have projects through any one of our four funding programs in every region and major city in Canada. One of our challenges right now is the remote and rural locations, particularly in the north.

The strategy works with community partners and provincial governments and agencies, either at the provincial or the municipal level, in order to identify where there are significant needs and where a particular type of intervention could be developed and implemented and monitored.

So yes, indeed, we do have a number of projects. They may not be identified in some of the documentation I provided today, because this is specific to aboriginal youth under the age of 12. And with respect to the city of Regina, we would probably be looking at a higher-age population for some of the interventions being supported under the national strategy.

Ms. Carol Skelton: I was there on the weekend, and the youngest one they caught was 11.

The Chair: Was he stealing cars?

Ms. Carol Skelton: Yes, stealing cars. He was driving around all night, supposedly, in the one car.

Anyway, on the website, the Community Accountability Conference, some of your programs are crime prevention initiatives, child and youth community crime prevention initiatives. Is this what you are doing?

Ms. Patricia Begin: It could be one of them. I don't have at my fingertips all of the projects being funded. If it was on the National Crime Prevention Centre website—

Ms. Carol Skelton: It was “Community Mobilization Programs for Saskatchewan”.

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Ms. Patricia Begin: Then it would have been a project supported under this particular program, the mobilization program, which really tries to... It's almost like the first step at getting communities to come together and begin to talk about crime and victimization issues in their community and to mobilize partners to start to address some of those issues.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Does your ministry look at the reduction of police officers in areas like rural Saskatchewan? Do you consider this to be of concern? Are you considering it to be a problem that's going to be coming up?

Ms. Patricia Begin: We haven't taken a position on it yet. It may come up as part of a proposal that would come to the strategy to look at how a community can better support community safety, better deal with issues of crime and victimization in the face of cutbacks. But because it's a crime prevention through social development orientation... Certainly we do work with our provincial partners to develop research projects where we can gather information that can better support communities in their attempts at reducing crime and victimization. This could come up as one of those.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Supposedly we're losing 25 police officers out of rural Saskatchewan. With the amount of reserve land and the number of aboriginal communities we have in rural Saskatchewan, this is of great concern—for our young people especially, because a lot of these officers are very involved in their communities, working with the young people. It is a great concern for us, and it bothers me greatly.

Now for somebody else. I'm going to stop.

The Chair: Ms. Johnston, I'll ask you to identify yourself. Welcome. Of course if you have anything you want to add, just wave a finger. But go ahead and introduce yourself, please.

Ms. Odette Johnston (Senior Policy and Program Adviser, Aboriginal Justice Directorate, Department of Justice Canada): My name's Odette Johnston and I'm with the Aboriginal Justice Directorate. I mainly deal with Manitoba, but I am familiar with the other programs we have.

Out of all of the programs we fund, the jurisdiction that probably has the highest number of projects is in Saskatchewan. They deal with a lot of youth diversions, but not for youth under the age of 12. However, some of the jurisdictions—I think the Prince Albert Grand Council is one—are interested in adopting some of the models we have for child protection, like the one we have in Awasis, Manitoba.

Ms. Carol Skelton: There are some excellent programs you have, and I've been looking at them extensively. We do have some excellent drivers. I think it's because the country's so flat and the young people learn to drive early.

The Chair: Coming from a place where the drivers aren't so excellent, Mr. Tonks, would you like to...

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.): You have to be really fast when you're not a driver.

Last week the Aboriginal Head Start people were with us. Their integrated programs were more effective if they could involve families, and if we're talking about preventative programs in terms of safety and criminal activity and so on, it would seem to me the same thing would follow. Recognizing that these programs for our young people are more learning and education oriented, do you work with the Aboriginal Head Start programs and CAPC, if you will, to try to develop an integrated program?

Ms. Patricia Begin: When we were launched as a crime prevention through social development initiative, and with the priority groups we have, it became very apparent to us, both across the federal government as well as between levels of government, that there was a lot of activity around child and youth, women's personal security, and aboriginal people.

Post-launch, one of the things we tried to do was to identify who's doing what, and also whose mandate it is to do what, and to determine ways in which we could work horizontally, which may mean being kept informed, knowing what Aboriginal Head Start and the aboriginal prenatal nutrition programs are doing from Health Canada, knowing what CAPC is doing, but trying not to trip over them or duplicate their mandates.

• 1640

When we go into communities or when we're presented with a proposal for a particular type of intervention, we look at it through the crime prevention lens, but it doesn't end there. We also have to look at it through the health lens and through the aboriginal justice lens and sometimes through the homelessness lens and so forth.

I think we devote a fair amount of important energy to ensuring that we keep everybody informed and form strategic partnerships wherever the opportunity arises. This may be through actually having other funding partners come on stream with us from other federal departments. It may be sharing research and evaluation resources and things of that nature. So I think the short answer is yes, but the longer answer is that it's a bit more nuanced in terms of the partnership development.

Mr. Alan Tonks: The nature of crime... When you compare on-reserve aboriginals and those off reserve, is there any sort of differential that you use in terms of analysis for a strategy or prognosis for action as between off reserve and on reserve?

Ms. Patricia Begin: That's a very good question. To date, we haven't done that prognosis.

The Chair: Can Statistics Canada help us on this?

Mr. Roy Jones: That's another limitation we have right now, but we are addressing it. Effective January 1, this year will be the first time we'll be getting police-reported information that will allow us to discriminate between on-reserve incidents and off-reserve incidents. As it stands right now, up until the end of 2000, our information did not allow us to do that, unfortunately.

Mr. Alan Tonks: When we were in Winnipeg with the task force on urban issues, that was creating a huge schism between the chiefs with respect to strategies to deal with reserve-type issues—more of a social nature, in that case, than of a criminal nature—but I would take it that if you questioned them closely you would find that information probably would be very helpful.

Mr. Roy Jones: One of the major challenges is to ensure that we have consistent support from the diverse aboriginal communities across the country in terms of defining the nature of the information requirement and its usage. This challenge does go well beyond a methodological collection issue. We really need to ensure we've got everybody on board.

What we have right now is about 49 different first nations policing services reporting to our surveys in varying levels of detail. That is growing, but we have to make sure at each step along the way that we can demonstrate the utility and the honest-broker application of that information to the programs we're supplying information to.

Mr. Alan Tonks: One last question, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Sure.

Mr. Alan Tonks: There's absolutely no argument that community-based programs will be more effective, whether with respect to aboriginal peoples, first nation peoples, or, in an urban context, dealing with youth at risk from any particular sociological grouping.

Patricia, with respect to a strategic plan for a particular area, be it on reserve or off reserve, who do you involve from the ground up and identify as stakeholders? I think you did relate to that to some extent when we talked about the Aboriginal Head Start program, but I guess I'm looking for some assurance that it isn't a top down type of thing, that it's involving elders and so on and so forth.

Ms. Patricia Begin: That is correct.

We have regional liaison consultants who work for the National Crime Prevention Centre who reside in all of the provinces and territories in the country. They also have community co-ordinators supporting them, and those people work in the communities.

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They will get the message out about the national strategy, about the opportunities for support around crime and victimization issues through a variety of means, including town hall meetings; the distribution of pamphlets; appearing at some type of public forum; working with the local police and in some respects responding to calls that may come to them from teachers, from principals, from police, from mayors, from community-based organizations who recognize there's an issue in their community and are determined to do something about it at the community level.

As much as possible, it's not Ottawa top down. It's responding and facilitating the response through the community profile work that we're doing with the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. What we want to make sure is that because resources are limited and it's easy... It's easy to try to tackle a crime and victimization problem that's not deeply rooted, that doesn't involve very high-risk populations, but you don't get the kinds of results that I think we would all like to see.

Identifying and working with high-risk communities has a lot of challenges, because it requires a fair amount of capacity-building, everything from preparing a proposal to actually implementing and sustaining an intervention over a specific period of time.

Mr. Alan Tonks: Thank you.

Ms. Patricia Begin: You're welcome.

The Chair: Ms. Skelton.

Ms. Carol Skelton: What assurance can you two ladies give me that the communities and families that are most in need of this help are aware of these programs and are receiving the support for their projects that they need?

Ms. Patricia Begin: I guess the assurance would come from the fact that we do have people from the provinces, territories, and communities on the ground identifying projects or interventions or mobilization strategies that will address high-risk, high-needs populations. The assurance, I think, comes from knowing that there is a connection between the people who are bringing proposals forward for funding support, identifying the various partners in the community who would also be part of that support either through in-kind or actual financial support, and then delivering it at that community level.

Ms. Odette Johnston: In terms of the aboriginal justice strategy, we do have three sections to our strategy. One of them is the community-based cost-shared programs. We also have an aboriginal justice learning network that goes out and provides training to community workers and also to stakeholders on providing more culturally appropriate types of services for aboriginal communities. It is through that mechanism that some capacity-building is being provided, if you will, to some of the areas that don't have projects in place right now.

Unfortunately, we're limited, because our strategy does end in March, though we're hoping for another five years. Whether we'll get that is another thing. But we're planning to put in place a training and development fund to further help develop those communities that lack the capacity.

It's definitely an issue. I just joined the Aboriginal Justice Directorate and was previously the Aboriginal Head Start national manager for on reserve. One of the reasons I was brought in was to try to establish the linkages among the programs, because there is a definite linkage. I know that with the Aboriginal Head Start on-reserve program, that's also an issue. Those who develop the proposals are those who have the greater capacity. Whether they are actually those who are in need... I mean, they are, but we also know it's harder to reach those who don't have the capacity.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Since the federal government's current policy is that the provinces and territories are responsible for aboriginal children off reserve, how are the federal activities coordinated with the provinces in the area of crime prevention, especially in light of the statistics that show a majority of aboriginal crimes are committed off reserve, in urban areas?

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Ms. Patricia Begin: The federal government entered into protocol agreements with each of the provincial governments in Canada to deliver the national strategy. Currently there are joint management committees in every province in the country, which are made up of representatives from the province, from the federal government—typically it's our regional liaison consultants who are the federal representatives—and from the community around crime prevention, community safety, and victimization reduction.

The arrangements are relatively flexible between the federal government and each of the provinces. There is a mechanism for identifying priorities and then working together to ensure that the province's priorities, as well as the priorities of the national strategy, are met. To date we've been quite successful with that. It is used mainly for the delivery of the community mobilization program, which is the largest of the funding programs under the strategy.

The Chair: I'd like to ask just a couple of questions.

One question is to Ms. Begin. I just want to make sure that where the crime prevention program actually puts programs in geographic communities... The two I'm looking at are the community mobilization program and the crime prevention investment fund. Those can take place on reserve. There is no restriction?

Ms. Patricia Begin: That's correct.

The Chair: Yes, and you have a number that are on reserve. That would be at the request of a first nation that wants it.

I guess the larger philosophical issue, if I can put it that way, is that I know the original work of the National Crime Prevention Council started focusing on the zero to six picture with all the early literature. To be honest, I haven't followed through the subsequent development of research.

As your presentation indicated and as the statistics indicate, at a certain moment the difference between the determinants of health and the health care system, what we might call the repair shop function... When you get to the repair shop function, you have the sign of criminal behaviour or potentially criminal behaviour and you're trying to prevent it from getting worse or you're trying to slow it down or something. But in the theology, if I could put it that way, of the Department of Justice, when it looks at crime prevention, is it still the view—and this is sort of suggested by your emphasis on social development—that the best investments are the earliest ones, that you have to head it off at the pass? Is that really where the bulk of the efforts of this program should go?

Ms. Patricia Begin: The strategy in terms of this relationship to the department I think could be looked at as part of a continuum. Certainly with respect to the national strategy, the focus is on reducing risk and preventing crime before it happens. That can cover a fairly broad terrain. The policy development work of the council specifically focused on children and youth, and you're absolutely right; they did those wonderful reports on zero to six, six to twelve, and twelve to eighteen.

At the end of the council's mandate in 1998, the second phase of the crime prevention strategy for Canada was launched, and that's when the National Crime Prevention Centre was established. When the centre was established, because of the incredible amount of effort and activity and work that was going on in other federal departments around early intervention, the mandate and the priorities of the strategy were expanded to include women's and girls' personal security, aboriginal people, children and youth, and focusing on communities.

Early intervention is clearly seen as very important. It may not be that we would involve ourselves in significant financial investments that would duplicate the work that's being done by CAPC or by Aboriginal Head Start, but we would certainly want to get the message out that if you're thinking about promoting community safety, you need to look at the kinds of supports that communities can provide to produce healthier and safer communities.

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The Chair: There's a big conference going on across town, sponsored by the Policy Research Initiative, on this very subject today, tomorrow, and the next day. It deals with trying to better understand the dynamics of communities, in terms of when they produce better or worse social outcomes of all sorts, whether it's health or behaviour or crime reduction or whatever else.

This is sort of a question also for StatsCan. Though you all have these different parts of the program, is there a sharing of the latest theories about how community development works?

A good investment for crime prevention and crime reduction is also a good investment for learning and for a healthier population. The benefits are multiple. There are a whole bunch of understandings about what causes what and where the first dollars go and all that sort of thing. Is there a sort of cross-town, cross-departmental, horizontal sharing of the theories of social development? You always seem to link social development with crime reduction. It's sort of like a Homeric epithet; it seems to travel around with it.

Equally—and this is where Mr. Jones comes in—is there a fairly robust understanding of how we measure outcomes and what sorts of indicators we can get that may all point in the same direction? The explanatory information talks about risk factors, which will have a whole variety of bad outcomes, depending on what they are. Is there both a sharing of the theory about how this stuff works, community development, and a sharing of how we develop the indicators and the outcome measures?

Mr. Roy Jones: That's a very good question, and it's a very big question. The sharing of the theories, and the sharing of information on how to measure and monitor and evaluate outcomes of programs and policies that are put in place, is a major preoccupation of the work we are now doing in partnership with many of the federal departments—Human Resources Canada, Health Canada, Justice Canada—and with our provincial partners.

Through mechanisms such as the national longitudinal survey of children and youth, we are now beginning to partner the research and make available the longitudinal databases to researchers and policy analysts to allow them to look at determinants and consequences of certain environmental factors, certain behavioural patterns, experiences, and certain contextual information, whether it's social, home and domestic, or academic.

With these types of dimensions of the problem, there are many theories about what are the root causes of delinquency and problem behaviour, or lack of success in making the transition into a successful economic position for families and family dynamics. There are lots of glimpses and perhaps silo perspectives on how that should be approached, but the information is now becoming much more multi-disciplinary and also is being looked at through many different types of lenses with the aid of external academics in the university communities and policy groups, for example, who have the horsepower to allow them to do that type of work.

Statistics Canada is, with all modesty, perhaps a bit of a world leader in trying to make some of this information available to those groups through our data liberation initiative and our research data centre initiative, which have begun to put these data in the hands of researchers who are really expert in terms of causation and multivaried analysis. We're very good about producing information and trying to put aggregates together, but there are many ways to approach trying to determine underlying causes and determinants of certain phenomena, certainly the way the mains come together, with social, health, justice, and education. It's a very difficult thing to do, and we are looking for diversity of input on that type of activity.

So the short answer to your question is yes, there is a significant and a substantive push now to try to look horizontally at these things from many perspectives. A melding of the theory with the development of indicators and measures, both federally and provincially, is a major priority.

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The Chair: Thank you.

Are there any further comments or questions?

You've obviously opened up a fascinating realm for us. The purpose of this committee, if I can summarize it in thanking you, is precisely to help our allies in the horizontal business try to develop that unified field theory, if you like, and to work towards indicators that will be useful not only for the communities but also for the federal government. The challenge, as we start to layer in more and more causalities, is to understand the synergies between the causalities, to understand the weightings. It reflects in policy. Where does your first extra dollar go? Does it just go to Aboriginal Head Start, does it go to prenatal nutrition?

So thank you very much for helping us understand the justice part of the puzzle. We look forward to having some of your on-the-ground folk come and talk to us in the new year. That would be very helpful. Thank you for your presentations, and good afternoon.

The meeting is adjourned.