EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, June 6, 1996

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[English]

The Chair: We're very happy to be in Scarborough today. We're here for a lot of reasons, but primarily because we know that these issues are very important to your community and because, quite frankly, your local MPs drove me crazy until I caved in. That's why we're here and not in Windsor, which is my riding.

We are very happy to be here and to hear what Scarborough has to say. We are happy to do some good, hard listening today.

First on our agenda is a round table discussion with the following people: Mr. Faubert, who is not here; Mr. Duguid, who is councillor of ward 5; Detective Tom Archibald; Detective Sergeant Don Campbell; Gaye Dale; Milt Pearson; Frank Fernandes; Andrew Bedeau; Margaret Crosby; and Cheryl Gilbert.

Do you think the mayor will be terribly upset if we proceed, Councillor?

Mr. Brad Duguid (Councillor, City of Scarborough): I don't think he would be at all.

The Chair: I'm sure we'll know when he arrives.

Would you like to make some individual presentations or just fire away?

Mr. Duguid: About four of us will make individual presentations, including the mayor, and then maybe we can engage in some discussion.

The Chair: That's fine. We have a procedure we follow; you form your habits and then just hate to digress from them. Typically we ask a lot of questions so I would be grateful if you would leave some time for them, keeping in mind that we're here to learn from you. You may want to learn some things from us too, but we're in learning mode right now.

Mr. Duguid: I think we're all in learning mode on these issues. I think it's good.

To give you an idea of the broad amount of participation on the Scarborough Community Safety Council, Cheryl Gilbert is with the Victim's Support Network of Scarborough. Frank Fernandes is with the Metropolitan Toronto Auxiliary Police. Doreen Hare is a trustee with the separate school board. Milt Pearson is a community activist and businessman who's the chair of our committee. We know Gaye Dale as the chair of the Scarborough Board of Education. The two officers with us were already introduced. Margaret Crosby is with our recreation, parks and culture department, the youth services division. Andrew Bedeau is with the Scarborough Youth Council.

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This is a small part of the safety council, and the section that deals primarily with youth issues. That's why we wanted them around the table with us today. We're probably also joined by some other members of the council, although I can't see behind me right now.

The council is a very broad-based group, as I said, and our involvement includes most stakeholders from across the various areas that deal with community-based crime prevention. I want to stress at the outset that the views you may hear from us are as individuals. We as a group have never taken a formal position on the Young Offenders Act, and the reason is simply that we deal with community-based crime prevention issues. We're not really in the area of dealing with federal or provincial legislation. We wanted to appear before you today because there are some things we'd like to see happen that would probably open the door to even more community-based crime prevention programming.

To give you an idea of some of the positions we've taken as a group, we put out a report last June that was approved by council. You probably have copies; it's a 43-recommendation report. Some of the things that dealt with youth, some of the tenets that we included, were that we all believe that every community should take responsibility for its young people. Specialized community-based crime prevention is one of the most effective ways to prevent youth crime. Programs that send youth away from their local communities for treatment are often not as effective as local initiatives. At the same time, we believe that youth must be held accountable for their actions and there must be consequences for every negative action.

We concluded at the end of our hearings last year that no program or legislative reforms can replace the role of a responsible parent, and I think that's an important point. Governments, agencies and communities can assist in providing support through parenting skills education and counselling, but at the end of the day the parent has to do the job. Any measures that can be provided by any level of government to improve the availability of parenting skills education would be of great support and could have, in our view, a greater impact than any amendments you make to the Young Offenders Act.

There seems to be a perception, and we've seen it at many public meetings we've attended, that all we have to do is fix the Young Offenders Act and youth crime and deviance are going to disappear. The Young Offenders Act seems to be blamed for every youth crime and for all youth deviant behaviour.

Many members of our council here today, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Toronto Police, have held hearings across the city over the past couple of years. We've concluded a couple of things, and they're things I'm sure the committee has already seen in its hearings.

Number one is that adults perceive the Young Offenders Act as being too lenient and want to see it made stronger. Number two is that young people consider the Young Offenders Act to be a joke and have little respect for the effectiveness of the youth justice system.

Strangely enough, many of the concerns expressed to us were actually addressed in the first phase: stiffer penalties for murder; the reverse onus on 16- and 17-year-olds, that they have to prove they should not be in adult court for serious violent offences; the allowing of victim impact statements in cases involving young offenders. But we found in hearings even after phase one went through that the same questions were still coming up, which led us to believe that the phase one measures were really not effectively communicated to the public. The public still doesn't know that some of these things have been strengthened.

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While there's no question that the phase one reforms were a welcome step in the right direction, unfortunately it's not a step that's required but a giant leap, I think, if we're going to regain the confidence of the public in the youth justice system.

As a practitioner of politics for a number of years, I believe that in a democracy, when a law has lost its credibility and respect with the public, the law then becomes ineffective, regardless of its technical merits. I think that's one of the problems we're facing right now. When this occurs, the only way to regain public confidence in the law is to drastically change it or replace it altogether.

There's no question, in my view, that the Young Offenders Act rightly or wrongly has lost its credibility with the public. You need only to sit in on some of the public meetings. I'm sure you've seen some of the outrage this act seems to be generating - rightly or wrongly. Sometimes some of that outrage is admittedly misguided. Young people consider it a joke and adults seem to consider it too soft. In my view, these perceptions are too deeply ingrained to convince the public otherwise.

It doesn't really matter that the maximum dispensations under the Young Offenders Act are often softer than the public generally believes. In fact, I think in many cases adults committing the same offences get less penalty than sometimes the young offenders get for the same sentences. It doesn't matter that the problem is often not the maximum penalty allowed under the Young Offenders Act but the inconsistent and insufficient penalties dispensed by the courts. It also doesn't matter that provincial resources and Children's Aid young offender programs and alternative sentence programming is woefully inadequate. It doesn't matter that in reality most serious and violent young offenders are not motivated by an ineffective Young Offenders Act but by societal problems, from abuse at home to irresponsible parents to poverty, just to name a few.

But as long as the public is convinced that the Young Offenders Act is the root of all deviant behaviour, the political and public will to address the true root causes of crime may well be lacking. That's of concern to us as a group, trying to work toward community-based action and solutions.

I found it interesting earlier this week when the attorney and solicitor generals made a fairly big deal of their appearance before you. I think it's ironic that any in-depth look at youth crime and violence will conclude that provincial resources and programming for young offenders is where the biggest impact on youth crime can actually be made. As long as the provincial government can hide behind the Young Offenders Act and blame it for its problems - well, for our problems - the province will not be held accountable for the important role they play in administering the court system, administering the youth court judges who dole out the dispensations, and administering the treatment programs for young offenders as well as the custody programs, and the responsibility to promote preventative programming for youth.

While I can support some, though not all, of the assertions made before you earlier in the week, I'm a little bit concerned that the federal legislation is becoming the lightning rod for all blame in that it's being hid behind by other levels of government that should be looking at their own backyards.

I have a couple of specific recommendations to the justice committee. I'd like to see the name of the act changed. Cosmetic as that is, I think a change to give it a tougher name would send out a signal that the changes being made are significant. The changes you made in the first phase didn't seem to capture the public's imagination. It didn't seem to really resound very much with the public. So I think a name change might do that.

I've made a few suggestions here. I think the word ``criminal'' could probably be well placed in there - the Juvenile Criminals Act, or something like that. There are a thousand different things you could probably think of.

Secondly - and this is something I find we're getting more and more calls for - I'd like to see the age lowered in terms of the applicability to 10 years or under. That's not an attempt to throw10- and 11-year-olds in jail for what they're doing. It's simply an attempt to give the police a little bit more legal ability to intervene. I think that's the key - being able to intervene.

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I think that's the key, being able to intervene. I recognize that there is some ability to intervene now, but it appears to me that most of the intervention comes through holding somebody for psychological evaluation. I think that's almost bending another law to try to protect the public. Public safety in the interest of the children themselves, the young offenders themselves, demands more than that.

These are just two suggestions and I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of others. I hope the committee gives consideration to everything it hears.

I think the Young Offenders Act has to be significantly changed to the extent that it is no longer held in such disdain by the public. Then and only then do I believe the more prevalent root causes of crime will be exposed. I have a few suggestions that we as a committee have promoted in the past, which we believe are going to make a bigger impact on youth crime and violence. I'll list them for you.

I think we have to get into better integration of health, education, policing, child protection and family services. We have to better target areas where the youths at higher risk are located. We need more intensive health, educational and social programs for families of young children and for prenatal couples. The creation of more effective alternative programs to divert less serious offenders away from the court system is essential. Involving the victims of some of the crimes in some of the dispensation may help as well in reducing repeat offences.

As well, when custody is necessary, and at times it is, we have to provide treatment. We can't just lock them away somewhere for two or three years or three months or six months and let them out and expect they're not going to reoffend. In fact, they may be even more hardened by the time they get out. I think we have to promote life skills and educational programs that can equip young offenders with an opportunity to change their lives and turn their lives around.

In the city of Scarborough, the Community Safety Council is working in partnership with others to attempt to find ways that we in the community can address some of the problems of youth crime and violence. We're looking for ways in our municipality to contribute to that effort. The job, we believe, can be made a lot easier if the federal government can take the actions needed to regain the public confidence in the youth justice system.

I thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I will now pass the floor to Mayor Faubert.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Duguid.

Your Worship, we're very pleased to have you here.

Mr. Frank Faubert (Mayor of Scarborough): Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Good morning and welcome to Scarborough. Thank you also for providing us with this opportunity to both host and participate in these hearings on the Young Offenders Act.

The phase one reforms to the act were welcome and indeed long overdue. However, despite these amendments it's clear that there is still widespread public dissatisfaction with the Young Offenders Act. This committee and others that have gone before it have undertaken a comprehensive examination of all the issues involved. What is needed now is not more study but a comprehensive revision of the act, along with the introduction or expansion of support services and counselling that address some of the root causes of crime. Unfortunately we all recognize that today's economic climate does not afford us the luxury of being able to do everything immediately. However, if we fail to act sooner rather than later, we may find ourselves in a position from which there is no return.

Some recent incidents of violence involving youths as young as 11 years of age have served to escalate the public's demand for action and have focused attention on the failings of a system whereby these acts are occurring with disturbing frequency. The question has often been asked: are these offences by children occurring more often, or is it simply a case of a few abhorrent acts generating media attention far beyond the scope of the problem?

Statistics tend to support the former. According to public sources from 1986 to 1994, violent crimes involving offenders from 12 to 17 years of age increased by 133.5%. Metro police respond to suggestions that this has levelled off by pointing out that between 1985 and 1995 all violent crimes, especially violent crimes by youth, rose dramatically.

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There seems to be no shortage of suggestions for change. The question we must ask is, do we have the political will and the financial resources to make these changes? Amending the act is not a panacea for curing a litany of ills, but changes need to be made in order to restore and enhance public confidence in the justice system, indeed in all justice systems, including the youth justice system itself.

The act needs to be strengthened. The minimum age should be eliminated. Unlike Councillor Duguid, who simply says lower it, I say eliminate it. No good cause can be made for whether it's ten or eight or whatever. Indeed, in certain situations - and we've seen circumstances such as in England, where young offenders as young as 6 years old somehow are not able to be held in any way accountable for their actions, either at the time of the action or indeed in the future - if you commit an adult crime, responsibility for protecting the offender should cease.

In a recent article The Toronto Star suggested that by lowering the age at which charges may be laid, we run the risk of sweeping a great number of children into the system. Well, it's true that we run the risk of further clogging an already overburdened system, but surely this is better than having offenders thumb their noses at the system itself, knowing full well that they can commit the most heinous acts with impunity. However, if we succeed in bringing more young offenders into the system, other changes must occur in order to achieve the desired result.

Crown attorneys must have the ability to introduce an offender's past history. Once an offender turns 18, no matter what their previous record is, it is not allowed to be used against them. In effect, they enter the court with a clean slate. I recommend that this must change. In some cases, a number of offences can be attributed to a relatively small number of repeat offenders. Until we stop allowing crime to pay, the problem will remain. The need for minimum sentences and some form of progressive discipline must be addressed. For example, if you commit an offence once, the penalty is whatever it's determined to be. If you do it again, the penalty must escalate, and so on.

What about the victims of crime? In our rush to respect and protect the rights of the accused, far too often the victims of these crimes are ignored and left to deal with the effects of crime on their own. Earlier this week the provincial Attorney General suggested that the act should be amended to give victims the right to sue the parents of young offenders in small claims court.

That's a strange recommendation. The largest award possible through this means is $10,000, not counting the moneys expended in the pursuit of this claim. In the case of a violent crime, particularly homicide or sexual assault, is $10,000 the value we place on a life taken, or one that is ruined?

Often the parents of these offenders may themselves be in a precarious financial position. Even if you win in court, how do you collect? Indeed, the fundamental question that needs to be asked is, can any amount of money replace or repair the damage that has been done?

I understand that in suggesting this type of action the Attorney General may be attempting to get at a problem in the current system - the lack of accountability and responsibility on behalf of the perpetrator and the family of the perpetrator. For first-time offenders, why not institute a mandatory sentence that involves restitution for the victim or the community? If a young offender kicks in a door during the course of a robbery or they vandalize a building or do any property damage at all, they should be required to fix it or clean it up or restore it.

For the first-time offender there should be a mandatory counselling program. Failure to attend and complete the session equals incarceration.

Government, including local government, responsible for such things as by-laws and curfews, schools with an anti-violence curriculum and families themselves must all share the responsibility, but it is the offender who ultimately must be accountable for their actions. Until we change the act to reflect the realities of the times in which we are living; until we give the crowns and the judges the necessary latitude to deal creatively with offenders; until parents take more responsibility for the actions of their children; and until we provide the counselling services and support networks for those who are attempting to deal with the problems, the status quo will remain in terms of offences. It appears that everyone thoroughly agrees this is not acceptable.

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Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Duguid, who would be next?

Mr. Duguid: Next would be the chair of the Scarborough Board of Education, Gaye Dale.

Ms Gaye Dale (Member, Scarborough Community Safety Council): Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to present on behalf of the Scarborough Board of Education.

Schools do not operate in isolation. They are merely a reflection of society. As violence increases in society, it shows up in the schools. A few years ago, this board, my board, recognized that violence in the schools was on the increase. This led to the development of the safe schools policy. This policy was quickly termed the ``zero tolerance'' policy.

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The policy clearly sets out consequences for students who jeopardize the safety of other students and staff. Violent or threatening behaviour by students in school or at school-sponsored or -supervised activities results in a suspension of 3 to 20 school days. More violent or dangerous behaviour results in an interim suspension of 20 days and a recommendation for expulsion.

Since this policy came into effect, assaults with weapons in our 168 schools have dropped dramatically from 5 per month to less than 1 per month. Other statistics are just as encouraging.

This experience has taught us that kids want and need clear limits and guidelines for their behaviour. They respond to them. We have also discovered that an expulsion is a serious and traumatic experience for students, and that when the consequences of their actions are serious it can have a very positive effect. Several of our students who were expelled under this policy have worked very hard with teachers, social workers and psychologists to change their behaviour. As a result, they've returned to school.

We're very pleased with the zero tolerance policy. It's worked very well. But once these students leave school property, they no longer are under our jurisdiction. They need the same kind of clear and serious guidelines and consequences when they're out in the community. The current Young Offenders Act does not provide these guidelines and consequences. How often do we read media reports of young people taunting the police when they're under arrest because their actions will have no serious repercussions? It's abundantly clear that young people know what's right and what's wrong, but there are very few deterrents to moderate their behaviour.

We at the Scarborough Board of Education have eight areas of concern regarding the Young Offenders Act. I'll touch on them very briefly. The first is the issue of age. Some youths less than12 years old openly flaunt their protection from any kind of sanctions under the Young Offenders Act. We need some form of control over younger children other than referring them to their parents. We suggest that the threshold age be lowered to 10 years of age and that some additional provisions be developed for children younger than 10 years.

The second area of concern is the law regarding serious crimes. Even though 16- and 17-year-olds are charged with murder, they're often transferred to adult courts. There still is a process in place that they can avoid transfer. Transfers should also be considered for other serious crimes such as armed robbery, aggravated assault and serious weapons offences. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds can and should be held more accountable for their actions. They should be held to more of an adult standard.

We also have a number of concerns regarding disclosure. Although recent amendments have made it easier for school officials to get information on bail or sentence conditions of young offenders in their schools, there is still no way for school officials to know whether they need to seek out this information in any particular case. We need a mechanism that automatically informs the principal of a school of any conditions imposed on a young offender that may affect the school.

This leads to another issue - what should be done when those conditions are breached? When school officials know full well that one of their students has breached their conditions, there is no clear mechanism to bring this fact to the attention of the proper authorities. We need a simple mechanism for school officials to work with probation staff to ensure the enforcement of any conditions imposed on young offenders. This is the only way the school system and the probation and after-care system can be partners in ensuring compliance.

Another serious concern is the criminalization of youth. There still exists a concern that the Young Offenders Act is just a minor version of an adult judicial system, with all the trappings - bail, legal aid, photo identification, fingerprinting and so on. This sometimes has the effect of giving a young offender star status within a delinquent community, inhibiting any possibility, any chance, of rehabilitation. For first offenders involved in less serious crimes, we must revert to the premise that often the young offender is a misdirected child in need of supervision.

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We are also concerned about the issue of privacy. While most support the philosophical position of protecting the identity of young offenders, we believe the effect is often counter-productive. We would like to see protection of privacy limited to first-time offenders or to those charged with less serious offences. Raising children is a partnership that must involve the entire community - especially the parents.

People who work in youth courts will tell you that young offenders frequently appear in court without their parents. We would like to see some changes to the Young Offenders Act that compel parents to take on additional responsibility when their child becomes involved in criminal activity. Perhaps we should look at a requirement that when a child lives with a parent, the parent must come to court to answer to the charge on behalf of, or with, that youth.

Finally, there's the issue of legal aid. We all know the legal aid system is experiencing financial difficulties, which isn't helped by the fact that it is available to all youth, regardless of family income or resources. There is also the issue of young offenders delaying their court proceedings unreasonably, simply because they have not bothered to seek legal aid.

Therefore, we recommend that a time limit and some additional guidelines be imposed with regard to youth and legal aid. Only by working in partnership - schools, police, community agencies and the legal system - can we hope to make serious inroads toward solving the problem of youth crime. I'm here today to ask for the tools to make that partnership happen.

On behalf of the trustees, the senior officials and the staff of the Scarborough Board of Education, I thank you for your attention.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Duguid, is there another speaker?

Mr. Duguid: Yes. Next will be Detective Sergeant Don Campbell and DetectiveTom Archibald.

Detective Sergeant Don Campbell (Member, Scarborough Community Safety Council): Madam Chair, members of the parliamentary standing committee, your worship, members of council, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Deputy Chief Joe Hunter, commanding officer for East Field Command, we thank you for the opportunity to address our concerns to this committee.

Currently I'm the unit commander for East Field Command drug squad and street crime unit. Most of my 20-year career has been spent in the investigative field. I spent seven years in the hold-up squad, responsible for robbery investigations in Scarborough.

This morning we'll give you a joint paper. Detective Tom Archibald will address our position. Later during our discussions I may be able to assist you on actually what happens in court and give you some suggestions as to what changes could and should occur.

I can tell you today that the perception of the Young Offenders Act, an act made by lawyers, maintained by lawyers and adjudicated by lawyers, has been stigmatized by the media. Youths today believe they are special people and should get special treatment.

I would like now to call on Detective Archibald to give our position on the Young Offenders Act.

Detective Tom Archibald (Member, Scarborough Community Safety Council): Thank you very much.

In dealing with youth crime, there's a tendency for us just to look at the number of crimes being committed by youth, become frightened, blame the law and then quickly change that particular law, hoping it will actually correct the problem. However, changing the law is only part of the solution to this complex problem.

We have heard many times over that crime keeps going up and that ``things were sure different when I was a kid''. These two statements are absolutely correct. Today's youth are not only faced with the old problems we faced; they're also faced, unfortunately, with the added burden of being victims. This is confirmed by almost every youth I speak with, who say they have to have someone watching their back. They feel that out there they have to have somebody, some group or some gang, watching their back.

There are four major differences between the youths of yesterday and today. Today the offenders no longer have the word ``respect'' in their vocabulary. The offenders are getting younger and they're getting smarter - or so they think. The victims are becoming younger - or older, such as the elderly. There is very little fear among offenders about being prosecuted under the Young Offenders Act.

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The kids are the first to tell you they know their rights - and there is nothing you can do. What bothers me is that parents coming into the station after we've arrested their son or daughter ask me, always, who gave the kids these rights. They ask me what they can do as parents.

This poses a definite no-win situation. You have kids who know their rights and you have parents who don't know theirs. Almost everyone I speak with wants control brought back. They want it brought back in order to help them control their child. Like it or not, they're looking for our help to do just that.

Youths of today are constantly being bombarded with all kinds of information from the media, from television, music, educators, and even parents. They take this information and evaluate it with the tools they have, the tools we've supplied them with. Sometimes, however, the tools we give them, such as messages, aren't clear.

We tell them not to commit crime, yet we show them how to do it in the movies. We teach them how to do it on things such as the Internet.

We tell them that crime doesn't pay, yet in the movies we have criminals driving fancy cars and wearing gold worth thousands of dollars.

We tell them to report crimes, yet we don't give them the support or protection they require if they do report it. That causes a downward spiral effect. They don't want to report the crime.

We tell them if they commit a crime they'll go to jail, yet we don't send them there.

Somehow we must relay a consistent message that any unacceptable behaviour will not be tolerated, period, and that he or she will be held accountable. I'm not saying throw every young offender in jail, because I certainly believe every kid should have a so-called break considered when he or she makes a mistake. What I am saying is that some type of progression, discipline, penalty system is required in our system, which we don't seem to have right now.

When a youth commits a theft, an assault, an assault with a weapon or even a wounding and at the end of the day receives the same penalty as, or even less than, they received the very first time they committed an offence, it is wrong. We have had them get probation for having threatened another youth with a loaded gun. We have had youth sentenced to open custody, and while they're being sentenced in open custody, they leave. We rearrest them and charge them with escaped lawful custody. Once again they're sentenced to open custody. Something's wrong with that picture.

Having the offender think that next time they will go to jail - not ``may'' go to jail but ``will'' go to jail - may make them think twice. It may not, but it certainly doesn't make them think twice when they know they have five or six kicks at the can until they reach the age of an adult, when they get to start all over again. What message are we giving the accused youth, and what message are we giving victims?

The mayor mentioned victims, and that's a very important part of that. We tend to lose sight of it. A great deal of fear out there is being expressed by males, females, the elderly, as well as youths themselves. All of these groups have been targets of these offenders. As a community we must send a message loud and clear that we will do all we can to support and protect the victims of crime. We can't lose sight that these people are the majority. It's only a small group doing all this garbage.

Most of the youths today are good people, and are in fact valuable assets to our community. Only a few are using the protection of our present system to commit crimes. Usually these are the same youths who are reoffending on a regular basis. Not too often do we get new faces coming through the door. Reoffending and not being held accountable brings the whole thing down into a spiral effect, of course.

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I agree that the name should be changed from the Young Offenders Act. Let's lose that altogether. Change it to something else. Let's get a fresh start on it.

Because of our ever-changing society, we must look at lowering the age of offenders to at least 10 years of age. I agree with the mayor that perhaps we should lose the age altogether.

Youths who obtain the age of 16 must be treated like adults. They should be treated like adults because that's what they believe they are. Certainly we as adults believe a 16-year-old is an adult, so that goes without saying.

We must immediately - immediately - look at ways to educate parents. Give them the tools they require to solve the problem at home. It's going to be far too expensive for us to solve it for them. Let's give them the tools. That's much easier, and much more cost-efficient.

I sound like a politician.

The Chair: It's scary, isn't it?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Det Archibald: We should also look at educating everyone regarding becoming a parent. Perhaps we could start at the early age of elementary school and continue right through secondary school. Perhaps a follow-up course after a child is born would also assist new parents in handling problems.

Of course, we should have mandatory attendance for all parents and youths to attend the course if they are repeat offenders. That goes without saying.

I also agree that we should have some type of mandatory attendance of parents in the court system. Right now we've had cases where youths have been attending court because it's been demanded that they attend court. They've gone to court and spent five minutes in the court system, which has adjourned it or put it over to another date or something, and then they've taken the rest of the day off school, using court as their excuse. That has to stop. Having the parents there may in fact stop that.

Youths are literally killing themselves out there today. That's exhibited by the amount of weapons being used, the amount of stabbings we've had recently and the murders we've had. There's a drastic need for change, but it must be immediate. I can't say enough about that. If we spend some money now, it hopefully will stop the problem from getting worse.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much. I'm just going to take a minute to acknowledge the presence of John Cannis, one of the prime motivators in getting us here. Derek was difficult on this, but John was very difficult. I say that facetiously; we were happy to oblige them.

So here's how it works. We start with ten-minute rounds of questions, where members notify me. We're not rigid about it here. If anyone in your group, a question having been asked, wants to respond to it, then we want to hear from you.

I will say this. These MPs have been working on this for awhile. They're pretty knowledgeable, and they're respectful, but some of their questions can be pretty tough. So if you've come to talk to us, you have to answer the questions.

The first round, then, is ten minutes. Mr. Langlois.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): My question is for anyone who would like to respond.

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In the presentation that was made, I do not see any continuity between the first ten years of a person's life and the administration of the Young Offenders Act. I would like those of you who work with young people to tell me about the state of the legislation in Ontario as it relates to young people under the age of 12, for example, who are in situations that are not covered by criminal law and who are in difficulty.

Mr. Archibald clearly pointed out earlier in his presentation that at some point the common thread seems to disappear. A person is left on his or her own until age 12, and suddenly, that person faces the justice system. It seems to me that there are some gap more or less everywhere. I would like to know what prevails in Ontario for young people between the age where they're old enough to know and age 12. How are problematic people dealt with? Is there a constructive approach? What resources do you have available to you?

[English]

Det Archibald: At the present time if a youth under the age of 12 commits a crime, there is a perception in the public that there is nothing the police can do. That is not entirely correct, because we can in fact arrest. We can arrest a 6-year-old. We can arrest a 4-year-old. That can be done. But what can we do with them after we arrest them? Nothing.

We have the Children's Law Reform Act, which can assist us as far as taking the child after the arrest is concerned. We can't put him before the court system, but we can involve the Children's Aid Society and have the child's behaviour reviewed by that group to determine whether or not the parenting skills...and that gets into all kinds of psychologists and support to the parents for the young offender under the age of 12. But there is nothing the police can do with regard to charges or taking that youth before the court.

Their mentality has changed drastically from when the act was written. They are a lot tougher now. They are a lot more streetwise. They've had to be. Some of them want to be, but a lot of them have to be because of the fear of being a victim. It's either get on-board or fall behind them and you'll be guaranteed to be a victim. That's the biggest fear out there.

So in answer to your question, there is nothing the law can do with regard to them, but there are support groups that can assist the family and the children. How effective they are, I don't know.

Ms Dale: Within the Scarborough board we are developing what we call our bullying policy. It's being implemented in the classrooms and in the 158 schools I represent. It empowers children to say they're not going to take it any more, it's unacceptable, and take actual control of their lives. If someone is bullying them, they go directly to the teacher who assists them.

That's how we're trying within the school system to assist these children and maybe have them turn themselves around before they become young offenders. We want to teach them skills for coping with what's going on.

I'll give a copy of the bullying policy and our safe schools policy to you.

The Chair: We'd appreciate that. Thank you very much.

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[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: In my private practice, before I became a member of the House of Commons, one of the things that always struck me was watching parents during court hearings. Even when there was no doubt that the young accused was guilty, they took their child's side as far as they could in the system, showing the child that through their support, they were defending him from the system and from society itself.

It seems to me that the child must have felt somebody of family breakdown well before ending up in court. If I had committed a criminal offence, my parents wouldn't have waited until I was in court to get involved. I would have felt my parents' auger at home. It seems to me that this attitude is deteriorating and that parents should be reeducated to some extent.

To get a job in society, you have to take courses; while biological rules are quite simple, people should have to be trained to become effective parents in this society where everything is breaking down and traditional values no longer exist. You have probably had to intervene in cases of domestic violence, which may involve the groups that are the most affected by delinquency.

I'd like to hear your point of view. When parents do not get along, are the children more inclined to be more delinquent? There seems to be a serious problem with respect to parents. This is something I reflect upon regularly.

[English]

Det Archibald: First, I couldn't agree more with you, but that in itself would be almost a whole different topic that we could spend a whole month on.

In terms of family problems, now, even as far as sitting around the kitchen table at dinner and talking is concerned - that just doesn't happen. A lot of these kids have parents who are not there, first of all, to support them. The kids are going home to an empty house. The parents are working. Both of them are working at full-time jobs just to keep the family going. Sometimes I've heard from kids that when they go home and try to sit around the table, all they hear about is money problems, and parents fighting. So that's a whole different thing altogether.

As for what you're saying with regard to the parents going to court and being supportive of their child, I'm not saying all parents aren't there. I'm saying that with most of the kids I deal with the parents aren't there. They're not appearing in court. They may be there during sentencing, but what about all of the other court dates our system has prior to sentencing? What about all those other dates? They're not there.

Perhaps what we should look at - and I know I've brought this up with our safety council - is that educating parents is fine, but how do you do that? That's a good one. You can call a community meeting and try to get the parents all you want, but you know there will be 10 or 12 parents there, and that's it.

One of the initiatives we're looking at, even with the Solicitor General's office, is getting into the workplace where the parents are. Get to them. Let's take our message to them where they have to listen. That might even save the employers some money, too, if parents don't have to take off work because of their child being tied up in the court system, which could be months and months.

So that would be just a whole separate topic about the family structure, the standards of life today and the problems these kids are facing with their parents in terms of respect and everything. That's a good one.

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D/Sgt Campbell: I'll add just one thing to that. In the Greater Metropolitan Toronto area especially we have a lot of new Canadians moving in. A lot of new parents don't know what actually goes on here in Canada. When a daughter or son comes home from school and says they know their rights, that they can put a lock on their door downstairs and no one can go into their room, the parents believe that's gospel. So now we have children locking the door on their parents. We have kids bringing home stereo equipment, clothing and all these other goods. The parents aren't asking questions about where they come from; they figure they don't have the right to do it.

Maybe a simple solution would be sending home a grade 9 orientation package to parents. We could work together, as a partnership, to tell them their rights, to tell them what things they should be looking for in their son or daughter, to ask if their kids are bringing home this or that kind of equipment. We should ask those questions, and tell them, no, kids don't lock doors in their home.

We're seeing that more and more. I'm had more search warrants where the doors of kids rooms are locked. Their closets are locked. And parents feel that's the child's right. We have to educate the parents, the ones who aren't coming to court and listening to the judge or the defence counsel.

Det Archibald: There are parents like that. I've had suicidal kids, and I've done exactly what he said. I found over $30,000 worth of stolen property in one small bedroom. There were tires from a car. How do you do that without your parents noticing it? It's beyond me.

Seriously, when you deal with suicide, there'll be in a locked bedroom suicide notes, suicide songs, signs of cult activity. When you question the parents, the parents say, well, it's their child's room, and they don't infringe upon it. I'm not talking about 17-year-olds, I'm talking about 14-year-olds. Something's wrong.

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Ms Dale: I just feel that people don't realize that parenting is actually changing. I grew up in the Scarborough system. When I was in trouble at school, my parents came and defended the school system. They were right to stop the child. We find now that a parent comes in and asks what we've done to their child to make him do this. I think that's the whole crux of it all. That's where it starts.

What we have to do is work on the parents in existence, but we also have to work on these young adults, because they're our future parents. We're working on parenting classes within the board, and we really want all the information possible to make these young adults the best parents of the future.

The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Gallaway.

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, everyone, for coming this morning. It's been a very interesting presentation.

One of the common elements in everyone's presentation concerns lowering the age, some said to 10, others said to open the age and lower it.

I'd like to start by asking you, Detective Archibald, about a comment you made that the Children's Aid Society actually is out there. If someone 10 years old commits an act that is otherwise criminal, you can in fact call them. So there are other tools for the police.

Det Archibald: That's correct.

Mr. Gallaway: So you would agree that there is something you can do.

Det Archibald: Absolutely.

Mr. Gallaway: Okay. So your suggestion that there's nothing the police can do with a 10-year-old is not quite correct.

Det Archibald: No, it isn't. You're absolutely right. I said there is something the police can do; we can arrest. What we can't do is take them before the courts. We can take them to other agencies.

Mr. Gallaway: All right.

We have also heard some degree of consensus here this morning that the system isn't working. I want to ask you, why would you want to take a 10-year-old into a system that doesn't work?

Det Archibald: Into the court system?

Mr. Gallaway: Yes. Let me rephrase it for you. Knowing that there's a Children's Aid Society - and you noted that a number of support services, psychologists and other community services exist - why would you want to take that child into the court, where those things apparently don't exist, and deprive them of that?

Det Archibald: The court system does work, and the court system can work - it's just that it's not working right now. That's the perception from the kids, not just from us. They're all laughing at the whole system.

Under the court system we can force a 12-year-old to seek psychological assistance, to get help, to do community work, whatever the case may be. The judge can force anyone before the court to do that. Under the other system, we can't force. How do you force? How do you force psychology courses on parents and youths when the parent doesn't want it to take place or could care less?

Mr. Gallaway: Let me suggest to you this, then. Under the child welfare legislation, if the parent refuses to cooperate the child can be removed from their custody. Do you think that is not a threat, that is not a sanction?

Det Archibald: Boy oh boy, I don't know. How often does it happen? That I don't know.

Mr. Gallaway: Well, you don't know, but you do know a lot about the criminal court system. All right. I would suggest to you that if it does happen on a frequent basis, perhaps that system, too, isn't working. You don't know.

Det Archibald: No, I do not know.

Mr. Gallaway: All right, fine.

You also talked about children's rights. Are you suggesting that we take away the rights of young people? Are you saying they should have no rights before the courts?

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Det Archibald: Not at all. What I am saying is, no matter where you draw the line in that sand, they're going to go right to it. You know something? Their toes are going to cross it, guaranteed. That's what I'm saying. We've let that line get so far that now we're having murders.

Mr. Gallaway: Okay. You said to treat them as adults, because they believe they are. His Worship wants to lower the age. I'm going to ask you, if we're going to treat 10-year-olds as adults, then what other rights are you going to give them? If they're going to be adults, should they not also have concurrent rights that go with adulthood?

Det Archibald: Not at all, because I said 16-year-olds. They are a lot more streetwise and a lot tougher than they were 10 years ago. Our system has created that. Everything, from television to the media, has made them a lot tougher than anyone around this room.

Mr. Gallaway: Then would you not agree that as a society we're sending conflicting messages to young people? For example, in the province of Ontario we have restricted drivers' licences, which didn't exist before, but if you're a 16-year-old we have a different set of rules. Yet you're suggesting we make them adults for the purposes of criminal law.

Det Archibald: At 16, yes, because you're letting them drive, putting them behind the wheel of a vehicle that is how many tonnes, and you're giving them that responsibility as an adult. All I'm saying is that by our leaving it at 18, they're laughing at it. They're way tougher than that now. They are adults at 16 as far as I'm concerned. When you talk to them, when you listen to them, when you see what crimes are involved, they're adults.

Mr. Gallaway: So we're going to put 10-year-olds into a system that appears to be starved for resources. In your recommendation we'll treat 16-year-olds as adults. So would you recommend, then, a 16-year-old convicted of some crime that deserves a penitentiary term...? You know a lot about the criminal justice system. Are you aware that in federal penitentiaries the lower end of the age scale is 35? Do you want to put these 16-year-olds in with 35-year-olds?

Det Archibald: Not at all.

Mr. Gallaway: Where are we going to put them? Are we going to build new jails?

Det Archibald: That I don't know. I'm saying there has to be some system built in for accountability that isn't there now. Putting a 10-year-old into the jail system or into the court system? I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying bring the 10-year-old before the court system so at least the progressive disciplinary stages can take place. There's a system for it - but right now there isn't.

Mr. Gallaway: You're not aware of the child welfare system, then. You're not aware of what the progressive system is there.

Det Archibald: Let me put it to you this way. I have not had direct input into that system, because I'm not a youth bureau officer. I deal with crimes of robbery and extortion, and with weapons. Those are the crimes I deal with.

When you look at the younger people who are committing those crimes, and the mentality...we have to do something. That's all I'm saying.

Mr. Gallaway: So your suggestion is to put them in court.

Det Archibald: Yes.

Mr. Gallaway: Okay.

Your Worship, you also recommended that we lower the age.

Mr. Faubert: Eliminate it.

Mr. Gallaway: Okay. I don't want to be flippant, but if we're going to make them adults, do you want 12-year-olds voting for you?

Mr. Faubert: Mr. Gallaway, I think you understand clearly why someone would recommend it. Where do you draw the line? Everyone has an arbitrary line they want to establish. There's no magic in making it ten or nine or eight or seven, so take it away. If you commit an adult crime - and I'm not saying you throw them into the adult court or sentence them to a penitentiary hearing - surely there has to be some punishment for the crime. That's the society in which we live. We live by rule of law. If we want to simply disregard that in certain circumstances - and we clearly are under certain aspects of the Young Offenders Act - then we're abandoning something. This may be one of the problems.

We seem to think we should treat youth and some young offenders... Believe me, I've come in contact with them. I don't know what your personal experience is with youths, but I've seen youths as young as 8 and 9 years old who are seasoned drug runners. It isn't that they've been brought into it by someone as an adult; they're initiators of the action. I think they must be held accountable for their actions. Society must hold them accountable. We have a thin veneer of civilization, yet we insist in poking holes in it.

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Mr. Gallaway: If we take the 8-year-old drug-runner, what do you think the purpose of the system is? Is it to rehabilitate them or to punish them?

Mr. Faubert: To rehabilitate them. At that age you may have some better opportunity of rehabilitating them than you do with a real seasoned criminal.

Mr. Gallaway: Are you aware that in fact Canada has the third-highest rate of incarceration in the world for young people? Are you aware that if you are a young person in conflict with the law there's a very high probability, compared with for an adult, of going to jail, of going to some sort of custody situation? Are you aware of that?

Mr. Faubert: No.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. Now that you are aware of that -

Mr. Faubert: Tell me where you're going with that.

Mr. Gallaway: - why do you think putting an 8-year-old into the court system is going to change their life?

Mr. Faubert: We're not always saying custody.

Mr. Gallaway: I'm saying the courts.

Mr. Faubert: The courts are the device by which someone is judged and sentenced. Then the sentencing or the system into which you put them isn't always incarceration, as you're well aware. There are many opportunities in which a young offender or someone in that category can be put into counselling. The great problem is now if they don't want to take it, it's not indeed insisted on that they continue in those programs. There's escape and there are loopholes within it. That's what we're saying.

The Chair: Mr. Gallaway, your time has expired. I told you it's not always easy.

Just by way of explanation, and to members of the committee, normally we rotate. We go back and forth between opposition and government. However, on this topic we find often the lines between opposition and government are not clear and there is lots of common ground. Mr. Langlois has indicated to me in a note that with members' consent he would give up his time on this round to Mr. Cannis. So Mr. Cannis has five minutes.

Mr. Cannis (Scarborough Centre): Thank you, Madam Chair. I might not take five minutes, but I appreciate the opportunity.

I just want to respond to some of the comments I've heard from the panel. One thing that struck me was that officer Archibald indicated that young kids today are closing their doors, closing their closets. Is it the Young Offenders Act that causes them to behave in that way? I don't know. Maybe you can respond to that.

Also, I think the system, provincially speaking, has an obligation. You kept referring to partnership and cooperation. I agree with you wholeheartedly. It has to start in the household and the school system, to the CRTC, etc. But when we look at a system here provincially that gives the child the opportunity to respond in the way you outlined earlier - well, if you like it, Mom and Dad, fine, if not, I have an alternative source to go to that will support me, that will fund me - of course that's the exit and the entire process unfolds from there on.

In getting to the root of the problem, each government, at municipal, provincial, and federal levels, is obviously going through restructuring programs. I know your organizations are often referring to the cuts and saying, well, we can't do our job, we can't do our job. The schools are complaining. But I think we all have to work with that and do the best we can. Do you see that happening, from your side?

Det Archibald: Everybody's stretching to the nth degree in dealing with budgets. Even in the police service we're stretched right to the max, as far as that goes.

In your response on youth I think you mentioned there was no respect for the system, and why. It's because they have no fear. There's no fear out there. There's no fear of the police. There's no fear of the parents. There's no fear of educators. This year alone I think I've arrested four or five people for assaulting teachers.

There is no fear level out there; and the only reason why there is no fear is that they feel - and a lot of it is perception - there is no system that's going to harm them. There is no system at all. ``You can't do anything to me. There is nothing you can do. What are you going to do?''

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Mr. Cannis: Would you say also the court system, if I may quote you, does work?

Det Archibald: I've seen the court system work. I've seen it work on numerous occasions, whereas I've had a first offender come in and get alternative measures rather than their being put into the system and that's the last you see of them. It's like that old thing about eating Brussels sprouts. Some kids will eat them and that's the end of that; they're never eating them again. Some kids do that with crime. It's the repeat offenders, it's the ones who are using the system to their advantage, who know...

It's just like gangs. We're getting pulled into a gang mentality here; and the reason we are is that the victims themselves are joining up with the gangs because they feel there is nothing out there to protect them. There is no other system. They're getting sucked into that. That's why we have so many kids with this idea that they have to have somebody watch their back and therefore they get sucked into joining a gang. Therefore you start committing groups and you're getting fights and things happening amongst 200 or 300 people at once. It's ridiculous.

That's what happens even with the murders. The murders aren't one on one. It's usually a group or a gang around and some person from the outside decides to do something.

It's another topic altogether, but we have to do something to concentrate on the gang activity. If we just leave everything the way it is, they're going to go to those groups for the support and protection they perceive they require. They'll get it from them. Once that happens we're in big caca.

Mr. Cannis: Would you agree the provincial court system also has to go through a review on passing sentences? It's one thing to have the Young Offenders Act, it's another administering it. I'm not referring just to the province of Ontario but generally right across our country.

I have often heard that they come in, they get this light penalty, off they go; so where is the scare, where is the message? I think if there's neglect, there's neglect on the part of all of us, federally and provincially. I've seen and I've heard that the federal system isn't doing anything. I think that message has to be given very clearly out to our constituents, to our country, at the provincial level.

Det Archibald: Absolutely.

Mr. Cannis: They have a responsibility maybe to readdress that and revisit it and maybe upgrade it or review it.

D/Sgt Campbell: You forgot one main part there. The young offenders today, even if they do get a severe penalty, a year down the road make application to the court to come back and review it, and if they've been a good boy or a good girl for the last six months or a year the judge will reduce the sentence. So you can scare them, you can put them away, but then they say, I know the system and a year down the road I'm going to be out; I'm going to make a new application, I'm going to come before this panel and this judge, I'm going to say yes, I've been a good boy - and out he goes. Even if you do it with review, with the current act the way it is...

The Chair: As a point of information, you'd be interested to know that yesterday we heard that section is not used enough; it's seldom used. We heard that from the institutions.

D/Sgt Campbell: I can tell you in Scarborough it's used a lot.

The Chair: I suspect it's used. It depends on the community.

D/Sgt Campbell: In the Metro Toronto West Detention Centre it gets around very, very quickly: oh, just plead guilty, get the sentence, you'll be back next year and you'll get it reduced. All our young offenders in Metropolitan Toronto are housed at the West Detention Centre, so it's a big community out there.

Ms Dale: With clear guidelines and serious consequences, children understand that. I dealt with a young man this week who said to me, I didn't realize if I started a fight on school property and I took it somewhere else I would still be under the school authority; I thought once I took it off the school property I was safe. That indicates to me he made a judgment call. He thought he was safe off school property. But we knew he started within the school with an altercation with another lad and we could prove, with witnesses, he went somewhere else just to escape us. But we're telling him no, you are responsible for your actions. We know if these children know they're responsible, they listen. He thought he'd escaped it.

So I think that's what the important part is. We have to have serious consequences and make them stick.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Dale.

Ms Torsney.

Ms Torsney (Burlington): Thank you.

First of all, I really commend you for putting together this special committee on crime prevention. It's been good to hear some of the issues you've raised. Some of them I'm very interested in hearing more about.

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One of the things I'm really concerned about is that you are all leaders, you're on this committee, you're spokespeople for some of the work that's being done to try to prevent crime, and yet I've heard some of the most common myths about the current system and the changes we've made to it repeated by the individuals who have presented.

I think what would be really neat is that if, beyond this hour and a half we're spending with you, you actually got some of the people who are experts in this field to spend a longer period of time with you. We've heard you say that the records are eliminated at 18. They are not. We can get you some great people to talk about things like the incidence of youth crime, the predictors of youth crime, who's going to get into conflict. I'd suggest that Mary Anne Kirvan from the Department of Justice, who's been working on these issues for years, would be a great resource person and that you should set up a really intense time period on this.

One of the things we've heard over the last couple of days - we actually heard this from a judge who was involved with youth as a lawyer beforehand - is that one of the most disappointing things we've done is saying and repeating that it's a joke. Kids think it's a joke and it's all a joke. By saying that, we're doing a real disservice to our young people.

We heard a specific incident where a young person in jail was saying, nothing's going to happen to me; it's a joke, it's a joke. We actually had to point out to her that she was in jail; something had happened to her. She'd bought the line that all of us keep repeating and that the media keeps allowing us to repeat that it's a joke.

I think you may have even identified that kids know their rights intensely, yet you just told me about a kid who got into trouble in the school. It's a smaller board, these are very hands-on. Everybody in the country knows what's going on with zero tolerance. Your kids know about it, but they still misunderstand what the current system is in your school. Think what's happening nationally. I'd suggest that there's a lot more work that has to be done.

I'd like to ask Doreen and Gaye very specifically if they can provide us with the policy document teachers have for kindergarten and junior kindergarten, if you still have that, and for grade 1 and grade 2, when these kids are presenting themselves as problems in need of extra help somewhere. I'd like to see the document that tells those teachers who they are to call immediately, if there is a policy document saying Dr. Leschied, a number of other people have proof. If you have these kinds of behaviours and these kids are at risk, those teachers should have that.

I'd like to see the documents if you wouldn't mind providing those to us, because these kids are not just showing up at 12 or 16; they've shown up at 3, 4, 5 and 6 years old and people aren't paying attention. I'd love to see those documents.

To both of you and to Detective Archibald, how many kids did you refer from your school board and from contact with the police department here to the Earlscourt project?

Ms Dale: I have no idea.

Ms Doreen Hare (Separate School Trustee, Ward 1, Scarborough Community Safety Council): I have not heard of that. I'll have to investigate.

Ms Torsney: You have in Metro Toronto the best program in the country for under-12-year-olds to teach the parents the skills to deal with their kids. It is the best program in the country. It costs $4,000 a year for any kid and family. They work with the schools, they work with the children. They teach them tools to get themselves out and not to get into conflict with others.

They're not getting the referrals to keep the program going. Those are supposed to be coming from the schools and from the police, and these are the people who can help kids become better adults. You guys who are in the front line don't even know about the program in your own city. Well, it's not your city but it's part of your board. We'll get you some information on them, too.

Andrew, you work with the kids in your school and elsewhere. Are you still at school?

Mr. Andrew Bedeau (Scarborough Youth Council, Scarborough Community Safety Council): Yes, I am.

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Ms Torsney: We've heard today some people want 16- and 17-year-olds prosecuted in adult court. They want them to be treated as adults. Do you think the graduated licensing system, the voting age, the drinking age, should be changed because 16-year-olds are adults now?

Mr. Bedeau: Personally, I think the only thing that should be changed is the age in the Young Offenders Act.

Ms Torsney: Why is that?

Mr. Bedeau: Because once you're 16 and 17 you're able to think consciously. They teach you that in school. They teach not only how to regurgitate information but also how to change that and develop your own thinking pattern for it. Everything you have is geared toward after you're 15. That's a relative age for some people. But after you turn 16 and 17 and 18 you are considered, for all intents and purposes, an adult when you're dealing with crime. You know exactly what you're doing and what you're getting into.

The only problem is, as some of the detectives were talking about, with fear and everything, since the Young Offenders Act is a zero tolerance policy, they are so promoted. Everybody knows what they're talking about. Everybody knows what they're going to get into. So this decreases the ignorance and therefore decreases the fear. So there is not a lot of fear dealing with the Young Offenders Act.

Back to what you're talking about, the drinking and driving age and everything, no, they should not be decreased. Personally, I don't drink.

Ms Torsney: Why?

Mr. Bedeau: The drinking age revolves around a different type of mentality, I feel, from the Young Offenders Act.

Ms Torsney: Like what?

Mr. Bedeau: For a young person to commit a crime, all they have to know is two things. I'm not a lawyer, so... They have to know what they're doing and they have to be capable of doing it, I think. You can correct me if I'm wrong.

As for drinking, a lot is unknown. It's just promoted too much in the media. People drink to have a good time. People drink to get drunk. People drink for partying purposes. I don't condone that. I don't recommend that in any way.

Ms Torsney: What about voting? That's a responsible thing.

Mr. Bedeau: I would like to have some sort of test to lower the voting age for some people, because I do feel there are some young people who are knowledgeable enough about the political system that they could vote.

Ms Torsney: What about the adults who are over 18?

Mr. Bedeau: I'd like a test for some of them too.

Right now, since we are dealing with the Young Offenders Act, you could go on and talk about the different areas within the government we could change or we could ameliorate, but drinking, no, keep it as it is; voting, maybe lower it; driving, keep it as it is; Young Offenders Act, lower it.

The Chair: Mr. Lee.

Mr. Lee (Scarborough - Rouge River): Let the record show that the last portion of that remark wasn't Mr. Lee - not that I want to disassociate myself at all from your remarks, but...

Over the last number of years I have tried to rework the purposes of the Young Offenders Act in my own head, in my own language, without using the legal language. Some time ago I came to the conclusion that the whole purpose of this statute is to allow societal intervention, enforced intervention, into the life of a young person. We'll get to the definition of what a young person is later, I guess. That is the purpose. It's not to throw them into jail but to provide an appropriate intervention. If the intervention never happens, the process is a failure. If the intervention isn't appropriate, the process is a failure. So the feds make the laws, but the provinces and the municipalities do the intervention.

We've had examples of intervention, some formal, some informal. The school board has a program of intervention. It's not based on the Young Offenders Act. They have another tool they can use. We've heard the under-twelves are left out. There is no enforced intervention. That's arguably regrettable, because the kind of intervention you'd want for a 13-year-old or a 12-year-old is probably just about the same kind as you'd want to have for an 11-year-old for the same kind of crime in the same context, or arguably for an 8-year-old. In any event, that's the goal.

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Can you give the committee examples of appropriate interventions that are out there, formal or informal, other than the ones we've mentioned as being there or the ones we've mentioned as not being there? We've heard about the Earlscourt project. Are there examples that any of you would care to offer of interventions that you believe would be appropriate within the context of the Young Offenders Act where you have closed or open custody or other types of interventions?

D/Sgt Campbell: I was interested in the part about the Young Offenders Act having hampered other organizations in having that opportunity for intervention.

Mr. Gallaway brought up the rights. He said that now, for a police officer to deal with any offender or person whom he suspects or even believes to have committed an offence, he must give him his rights. As soon as you give a person his rights, he is quiet. If it's a serious enough offence, you can also give him his rights that he may be transferred to an adult court.

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So I really believe the Young Offenders Act has caused more charges to be brought before the courts, because the young person is not going to talk to you and he's not going to give you a statement. Whereas the police officer used to intervene and maybe apply these different programs, now he's not getting the dialogue from the offender who is the suspect. So what is now created as a prima facie case is taken before the courts to let them deal with it. It's not giving our agency or the other agencies the opportunity to place that person in a different program, because he doesn't have to speak to you.

This is what we're getting. The young offenders I've dealt with say, ``I'm not going to speak to you. I'm not going to give you the time of day''. I say, ``I'm here to help you. I want to put you in a program''.

There are a lot of good programs out there. There are a lot of good alternatives. There are good places, but they're not giving us the opportunity to put them there.

Even Mr. Justice Doherty writes that section 57 and section 16 in the Young Offenders Act are very cumbersome. It's hampering the people who want to help the kids.

So we have no alternative but to bring them before the courts. There are good agencies, but we can't do it. I really believe the inflated numbers of young offenders before the courts are because of the Young Offenders Act.

Mr. Duguid: Further to that, one of the things that this council will be doing over the next year will be holding our own local hearings on youth crime and violence, which will actually begin this month.

The question Mr. Lee asked is the million-dollar question: what kinds of things can we do? That's what we're going to be looking at: what can we do as a community in terms of different kinds of alternative interventions? We don't have the answer to that now, because we're really just getting going. We're hoping that 12 months from now we'll have received some more creative solutions.

The mayor mentioned restitution as being one part of a possible alternative.

We'd like to see more community-based involvement. We're a little bit concerned when a community turns its youth over, especially in the first phases of the committing of offences, to send them off to another community to be dealt with, because it's like saying that we're not responsible for our kids. We may have kids in our community who have gone bad, but we want to send them somewhere else. We'd like to see if there is anything that we can do as a local community, but at this point we're not at a stage where we really have got into it enough to be able to give you a definitive answer.

That's the million-dollar question.

The Chair: Regretfully, I'm going to have to bring this to an end. One of the things that we're doing today in listening to your community is that we have brought in other experts from other communities and from some other professions. I should have introduced them earlier. Mary Anne Kirvan is here. She is a senior counsel on the Young Offenders Act from the Department of Justice. You might take a moment to talk to her and she can give you her card.

With the committee you have, which is a great idea and a very good plan, you may find that there are resources that can assist you in the work you're doing, through the federal government or through other avenues, including charitable organizations that exist, very close to here, that can be of assistance to you. So if we can help you in that way, we will be happy to - any of us at the table. We're starting to find out that there are all sorts of little treasures available that can assist communities.

Thank you very much. Not everybody got a chance to speak, but you were here to be counted and we're glad to have had you. I hope that you'll continue to stay with us throughout the day.

Your Worship, you have a beautiful facility and we're very pleased to be here. Thank you very much.

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We'll rise for about two minutes while Heather Kinnear, the director of policy and planning from the Probation Officers Association of Ontario, prepares to speak.

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The Chair: We're back. I'm a bit of a taskmaster so we just let them catch up to us.

I think people should also be aware that there is a record being taken, so if somebody appears to be missing something they can pick it up on the Hansard afterward.

On behalf of the Probation Officers Association of Ontario, we have Heather Kinnear, who is the director of policy and planning for the association; Bob Eaton, who is vice-president; and Judi Curtis, who is treasurer. Welcome.

Mr. Bob Eaton (Vice-President, Probation Officers Association of Ontario): Thank you.

First of all, I'd like to point out the mandate of the association. We were established in 1954 and we represent some 900 probation officers and probation parole officers across the province. The association has a number of stated objectives, the first two being to speak with credibility on issues in the criminal justice system and to provide representative perspectives on legislative issues to policymakers.

We're a volunteer organization. As I said, we're made up of probation officers and probation and parole officers working in both ministries, those being the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Ministry of Solicitor General and Correctional Services in Ontario.

Does everybody have a copy of the brief?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Eaton: Instead of walking you through the brief, which you can read at your own leisure, our preference would be to perhaps refer to the table of contents first of all and then to page 7, where we have some recommendations. They're contained midway through the page.

We'd like to initiate discussion by referring to the role and the position of what is referred to as a youth worker. It's the association's position that the title of ``youth worker'' in the act should be changed to that of ``probation officer''. ``Youth worker'' is a generic term utilized by various agencies in a variety of related fields, and we think that causes a lot of confusion, not only for families and for the kids but sometimes for service providers themselves. The title of probation officer would clearly reflect an individual who is responsible for holding young people accountable to the orders of the court.

It's always been the position of this association that probation officers are members of a distinct profession and are experts in the area of correctional treatment. It is therefore the position of the association that probation officers should hold a university degree in terms of credentials. If the act were to reflect this position, the association feels that would lend credibility to the professional aspect of our careers. The association also feels that youth workers and probation officers should be named as officers of the court to further lend credibility to our role.

Secondly, we would like to move on and refer to the recommendations to strengthen and clarify certain terms of probation orders. It should be noted that caseloads are extremely high in Ontario and in fact in some cases are either at the limit of or beyond manageable levels. Increased workload without increased resources adversely affects levels of service and puts the public at further risk. Therefore, we believe that in this area of finite resources we need to enhance services, use resources effectively, and target the appropriate population for service. We can no longer be all things to all people, especially relative to the fields of child welfare and children's mental health.

In terms of enforcement, many probation officers express concerns that breaches of probation charges are not viewed seriously by the court, as they are frequently plea bargained away or the young person is given a light sentence. In our view, consequences need to be significant when a young person is convicted of breaching their probation order or the justice system will not be seen as serious about its own disposition.

We therefore would recommend that the committee give some consideration to making a failure to comply charge a hybrid or indictable offence. This would lend some credence to the notion that this is a serious charge and should be dealt with accordingly.

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We also feel that statutory conditions of probation orders should be enhanced. In practical terms we would recommend that the term ``keep the peace and be on good behaviour'' be explained in language that young people understand. Furthermore, we recommend that probation orders include a term that requires the offender to inform the youth worker or probation officer supervising his or her case of any change of address, school, or employment circumstances. This would allow for more effective supervision of the offender and the ability for us to track them.

In terms of information gathering, we'd like to point out that information flow is critical. We must remove barriers to collect information. We as POs can only be as effective as the information we have access to.

The recent amendments to the YOA, which expand the areas covering predisposition reports, are of great assistance to the youth worker or probation officer in giving the mandate to explore areas pertinent to this kind of assessment. It is, however, the recommendation of the association that the YOA clearly give the youth worker or probation officer the right to obtain this information in the courts for preparing predisposition reports in order that information flow is not limited.

Lastly, we'd like to refer to the need for the continued development of relevant correctional programming. The causes of criminal activity are eclectic and manifold, and therefore we suggest that there is no easy solution to the problem. We must not only look at criminogenic risk factors but also target and provide appropriate resources.

Now that I've provided an overview, Heather and Judi would like to provide some specifics in certain areas.

Ms Judi Curtis (Treasurer, Probation Officers Association of Ontario): I was going to give you a little bit of an overview of how the system actually works in Ontario.

We do have a two-tier system here. Back in the days when the YOA was originally proclaimed, there was considerable controversy about the ages. If anybody was around at that time, as I was, you will know that Ontario did not agree with the age going to 18. Therefore we've developed a two-tier system. Basically, the reason Ontario didn't agree with it is that they feel that in working with children there is a big difference between a 13-year-old and an 18-year-old. They felt that mixing populations and the philosophy of dealing with those kids in that large age group wasn't going to work.

Basically, we have a two-tier system. I'm a probation officer and I deal with children between the ages of 12 and 16 who are found guilty of an offence. Heather is a probation and parole officer. She would deal with youngsters between the ages of 16 and 18 who are found guilty of offences. So we have a two-tier system. We have a bit of a different philosophy in how we deal with them.

Obviously a 13- or 14-year-old comes with a lot of people attached to that body: schools, parents, counselling agencies they may be involved with. They may be a child welfare kid and they may have a lot of children's aid people attached to them. We have somewhat smaller caseloads than the phase two officers have because we're dealing with a great deal of collateral people.

Interestingly enough, in Ontario and the north, because of travel problems, there was recently an experiment where there was kind of a blending and sharing of systems. A phase two officer went into one reserve and dealt with all the kids in that reserve, regardless of their age. That officer really noticed that the kids who are younger take a lot more time to deal with and need a lot more intervention than older kids. There is a quote in our brief from that study.

In the system for the 12- to 16-year-olds, the probation officer basically carries the case throughout the whole disposition. We attempt to keep the same probation officer in most areas to provide some continuity. I would have a youngster who comes on probation, who maybe gets into further trouble and goes into open custody, and who maybe gets into further trouble and goes into pure custody. I would follow that youngster throughout the system. I would case manage for that youngster as long he is in the phase one part of the young offenders system.

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The phase two system works slightly differently from that. If a youngster goes on probation, they may get a provisional parole officer, but when he goes into a custodial setting, usually that person changes. In the case of open custody it changes to what's called a residential liaison officer, and in the case of secure custody to an institutional liaison officer. That person would then work with the institution to reintegrate that person back into their home community.

These are a little different. There is a little difference in the philosophy in how we deal with kids. The 16- and 17-year-olds are dealt with a lot more like adults. It's the same officer dealing with adults as deals with those kids. Maybe it's a little more black and white in enforcement, in how they're actually dealt with. With the younger kids, we tend to deal with the whole system that kid comes from and we tend maybe to - oh, shudder - ``do a little social work''.

That's how the system works. Yes, there are variations among various jurisdictions within Ontario in what resources are available, etc.

The other topic I was going to go into in a little more detail was what's happening with alternative measures in Ontario and what our recommendation is about how this program is working and not working. We're finding the means test to get into the alternative measures program in a lot of courts has become offence driven and offence based. It's the decision of the crown attorneys and duty counsels to introduce the kids to the program, and they're the ones who manoeuvre it through the court system. What they're doing nowadays in most jurisdictions is staying the charge at court. So we get an alternative measures application, then someone actually does some looking into whether or not this kid was actually appropriate for that particular program.

What we're finding as a result is that kids are slipping through, kids who aren't appropriate for the program. Of course a kid can come into the system for a theft under. He looks appropriate for the program. His offence is appropriate for the program. But as a criminal justice professional, I sit down with that kid and within half an hour the bells are going off and I'm saying, oh, this is high risk; this kid should not be anywhere in this system. He's saying to me, you've given me a slap on the wrist here and you're not really taking me seriously, because you're giving me a little alternative measure.

Conversely, I can have a kid come in on an alternative measure, charged with an assault. It's a school yard fight. He's never been in fights before. He's under the control of his parents. He's basically a good kid. He's probably appropriate for that alternative measures program. He may or may not get accepted for that program, because it's an assault.

Our Probation Officers Association recommendation is that before these alternative measures are granted there needs to be some type of screening of these kids on the basis of their appropriateness for the program, not the offence they've committed, to indicate that they are in fact appropriate for the program or if they should have further intervention by the justice system. That's spelt out on pages 2 and 3 of the brief.

I think Heather's going to go into some other areas here.

Ms Heather Kinnear (Director, Policy and Planning, Probation Officers Association of Ontario): I would like to speak a little further on the enforcement provisions of the Young Offenders Act. As Bob mentioned, members of our association have expressed concern over the years with some of what they see as inadequacies of the present provisions of the enforcement of probation orders. I think it should be noted that we do recognize that some of these difficulties may well be a result of the implementation, but we would like to offer some suggestions on how some amendments could be considered that might assist with these problems.

One of the recommendations of our association to the committee would be to review the recent amendments to the breach of probation sections in the Criminal Code prompted by Bill C-41. One of the specific recommendations we've noted is that perhaps consideration could be given to making breach of probation or section 26 charges either a hybrid offence or an indictable offence.

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Let me emphasize that when we're dealing with a range of young people from 12 years to17 years of age, there may well be times when, if it's a young person who's 12 years or 13 years old, the nature of the breach itself may be very serious. Or it may be less serious. Of course there's always a range in sentencing, but if there were a range for highlighting whether it is a summary offence or an indictable offence, I think it would reflect the ages.

Conversely, when you are dealing with a 17-year-old, like I do, or with one who may very soon be 18, we may be dealing with people who are on their second or third breach of probation charge. It would be very effective to have it indicated as an indictable offence. I think it would be one way of showing that the act could reflect the range of consequences.

As for other modifications, perhaps one modification is replacing the ``wilfully fails or refuses to comply'' wording with ``without reasonable excuse, fails or refuses to comply''.

Perhaps another modification, similar to what they're going to be doing under Bill C-41, is to allow for a simplified hearing rather than a formal trial, more so for conditional sentences. We're certainly not recommending that due process be tossed aside, but there might be some room to consider that. Quite often the defence of forgetfulness or technicalities in establishing the identity of young people can lead to people escaping conviction.

I think that with some of the concern from the public and with the public's perception that maybe the act needs to be toughened - for lack of a better word - perhaps an area like this is where some of that perception could be changed. I think it would lend more credence to the act.

Some of the frustration of the front-line youth workers is that in the sentencing practices, it's sometimes not uncommon to see a breach of probation charge result in a new sentence of probation with similar terms.

I think it needs to be recognized, bearing in mind the principles of the act, that a young person is not charged with a breach of probation unless every other opportunity and every other type of intervention is used. It's used as a last resort, but when it does come in front of the youth court judge we would like to see something to ensure that there is a significant sentence - that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be a tough sentence, but it has to be significant - because there are an awful lot of steps taken well before we ever bring a young person back into the criminal justice system. As we all know, our job is to get that young person out of the system. It's very disheartening to have to bring a young person back to court.

We see another concern sometimes: the intervention needs to occur quickly after the commission of the probation violation, particularly with young people. We've all had experience with young people. Their sense of consequences and of what's appropriate needs to be spelled out to them very quickly. We have made some recommendations in our brief as to how that could possibly change.

In some jurisdictions throughout the province, the police are refusing to charge offenders who do not comply with the terms of the custodial pass. We have concerns about that type of situation. The association believes that this again holds the Young Offenders Act up to disrepute, and we recommend that section 26 includes a charge to cover this eventuality.

Those are some of the concerns under enforcement.

Maybe I can open it at this point if you'd like to ask questions and if there is anything further that you would like us to elaborate on.

The Chair: Thank you. I will start with Mr. Langlois.

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[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: Ms. Curtis, earlier on, you mentioned two different stages for young offenders, you made a clear cut distinction between the 12 to 16 year-olds and the 16 to 18 year-olds, who are dealt with differently.

In furthering this reflexion, would you be in favour of a system which would incorporate young 16 and 17 year-olds in the adult system as we know it today, and which would set aside the Young Offenders' Act for dealing with people under age 16? Would you see such a policy as being a danger or an advantage?

[English]

Ms Curtis: Our association basically feels that the age group is probably appropriate; we're holding kids accountable up to the age of 18. I think the problem stems from one of the things that we find and probably get frustrated with, and that's the kids who are 16 years old and 17 years old who are committing very serious offences and who don't seem be dealt with appropriately in the Young Offenders Act.

I think as a system we have to look more seriously at moving them into adult court. I think the act gives us every opportunity to do that, and I think the Crown needs to look at that opportunity more often. Therefore, a lot of these kids at the serious end of criminal behaviour would be dealt with appropriately as adults, as they should be.

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But I think that they should initially start in the young offenders system and be looked at. Then a decision can be made, given the offence and given the young person, that this is something that probably should be dealt with in adult court. The new amendments as of last December certainly give the Crown even more ability to do that. I think that's going to start to happen. But I think the act deals appropriately with most young people.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: When Bill C-37 amended the Young Offenders' Act and reversed the onus in the case of certain offences for the transferring of 16 or 17-year-olds to adult court, there was concern over disparity in the application of the Act in Canada, particularly because the Ministry of the Attorney General in some provinces did not want these people to come under the jurisdiction of adult courts, whereas others did. There is an interprovincial or intraprovincial disparity.

In the course of your work in the Province of Ontario, have you noted whether prosecutors apply the provisions of the Act uniformly from one judicial district to another? Does the Ministry of the Attorney General firmly support uniform application of the Act, whether it be in Northern Ontario, Southern Ontario or elsewhere?

[English]

Ms Curtis: I couldn't speak for the Ministry of the Attorney General, but I would imagine their policies indicate to the Crown what they should be looking at in terms of sentencing. If it needs to be transferred to adult court, I think they'll have some policy on that.

Over the last ten years we've had to work it out for appeals, etc., when they try to move kids up to adult court, what hasn't worked, what has worked, what the court sees as being appropriate reasons for doing that. I think jurisdiction is probably...[Technical Difficulty - Editor]...out there and is attempting to enforce it. With the new amendments having come in last September, it's really difficult to comment on how that's going to play, because we're only six months into them - and if they're going to be used and how they're going to be used. So at this point it's really hard to say what is happening across the province.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: Ms. Kinnear, you work with 16 and 17 year-old who have almost reached the age where they will have to appear in adult court. Have you also worked with people who have been transferred to adult court?

[English]

Ms Kinnear: In my working experience I've not dealt with a 16-year-old or 17-year-old who has been transferred to adult court. So I see it as being something that is not happening very frequently.

I would like to point out that in dealing with 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds I still view them as being young people. My own opinion is that they should still fall under the young offenders system. One of the reasons for that is that often a 16-year-old or 17-year-old who commits a fairly serious offence in comparison to an adult may well - not always - serve more custody than an adult would and within that custodial setting often would have much more specific correctional programming and intervention than an adult, who would probably end up in a detention centre.

I think that 16- and 17-year-olds are still at a level of development from which they have a lot of work to do yet before they become adults. I think the Young Offenders Act looks at those issues better than the adult system would at this point.

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To answer your first question, I have not had much involvement with young persons transferred into adult court.

The Chair: Ms Torsney.

Ms Torsney: I think it was you, Ms Curtis, who said to deal with a young person and with a family that is there and has emotional or support resources, whatever those may be...who never had an incident of contravening the law before, never even got into fights before, but he's been in a school yard fight and he is now reporting to somebody, a probation officer... Is that an appropriate way to deal with one kid and one school yard fight?

Ms Curtis: When we referred to one person at that point, it was around the alternative measures program, so that probably is an appropriate way for that young person to be dealt with, in the alternative measures program as opposed to being placed on probation. The way the crowns are looking at the criteria for alternative measures, it's all level one offences, possibly level two offences, which could be minor assault, common assault. So they could possibly get an AMI. What I'm saying is they probably should get an AMI and not go into the probation system. But that might not happen, given that he's charged with an assault. He ends up on probation for an assault, which is common assault.

We can probably all cite cases where a kid has been charged with assault for a push. I'm not downplaying assault per se, but yes, that kid probably isn't appropriate.

Ms Torsney: I just caution you. Lots of people listening may not know what an AMI is. We have to be very specific about the terms. You just said a push in the school yard, and I think all of us survived childhood, and some of us were probably pushed and some of us may have pushed in the school yard. We could be charged by the police with assault.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were saying these things. We could end up in a court proceeding and I could have been charged with assault for pushing another kid. I could have ended up in front of a judge, having gone through fingerprinting in a police station and everything else, and then I could end up in an alternative measures program, meaning I may have to do community service or I may have to deal with anger management...or what kind of things?

Ms Curtis: Or you could end up on probation.

Ms Torsney: I could end up on probation.

Mr. Eaton, you wanted to comment.

Mr. Eaton: One of the points we're trying to make is that the alternative measures program right now is strictly offence driven. We're trying to say we have to look at the criminogenic risk factor. Kids don't enter the system doing break-and-enters. What we're saying is what you have to look at in terms of risk is that a child who is involved in shoplifting, when you do a review of that kid's background, may be more at risk to reoffend than the kid who did the school yard shove. What we're saying is you may miss some of those kids and it may come back to haunt you if they're not appropriately assessed on entering the system.

Ms Torsney: Because the school yard push is an assault, which we deem a ``violent'' crime, for those in the statistics, and shoplifting is a property crime.

Mr. Eaton: Correct.

Ms Torsney: A property crime can go into alternative measures.

Mr. Eaton: Right.

Ms Torsney: Even though the kid with the property crime, you find out, has been doing more serious crime -

Mr. Eaton: Likely will go into alternative measures, and in most cases in the Ministry of Community and Social Services before we even see them.

Ms Torsney: You know there are limited resources; you've mentioned this. If you were advising us not as probation officers but as people who have some facilities, people who know the system and who may have kids in the school system, what else should we be doing, outside of the Young Offenders Act, to deal with these ``violent assaults'', which are in fact in many cases school yard pushes?

Mr. Eaton: It's a bigger question. You were speaking earlier on about what would have to be done in the school. I have three children of my own in school now. You see kids who are problems in kindergarten and grade 1 and grade 2, and they become bigger and bigger problems. Surprise, surprise, when they're 12 or 13 years old they're in trouble.

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The resources have to be targeted at an early age. As I said earlier, kids don't all of a sudden just wake up one day at 15 years old and say, I think I'll rob a bank. It's usually progressive. The resources have to be targeted for early intervention with kids.

Ms Torsney: Mr. Eaton, as a parent and knowing the law, do you think putting a 10-year-old into the system is the appropriate targeting of resources?

Mr. Eaton: That's a good question. I guess the question revolves around the type of offence. It can border on the ridiculous, although sometimes I think my 2-year-old might do well in custody for a couple of years.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Eaton: But it depends on circumstances. It could be absurd. A 4-year-old could poke somebody in the eye with a stick. Do you have him in custody?

I know there's public outcry. Serious offences happen, and they happen to people, and we want some kind of result, some sort of retribution, some sort of correction. It's a tough question.

Ten-year-olds? My daughter is 9 years old. She's a fairly mature 9-year-old. If she were to, for example, steal a chocolate bar, should she go to court? No.

Ms Torsney: There should be other ways to deal with it in our community.

Mr. Eaton: Absolutely. I think we say in the brief that these kinds of cases should come before a provincial court judge who has some specialty in child welfare as well.

Ms Curtis: What we're suggesting along those lines is that the youngsters who are 9, 10 or 12 and commit serious offences - and we've seen it in the paper in the last few weeks - are the kids who probably should come before some sort of quasi-judicial proceeding to see if in fact they should be charged criminally. Do they understand yes and no, do they know right from wrong, or is this a mental health problem or whatever? Justice would be seen to be done at that point.

Ms Torsney: Ms Curtis, you mentioned that all these other people are usually more attached to children who are under 16 than to 16- and 17-year-olds, and that's probably a good thing. Do you see cases where you have a 14-year-old who in fact may do something a little more serious than a push?

Let's say he has been shoplifting and you find out in talking to him that he's been doing it for a couple of years. Maybe there are some supervision problems at home and you're trying to work with the parents on that. But he has younger brothers and sisters who are exhibiting the same kind of behaviour but have not entered the system yet.

How do you deal with those cases? I wonder if there is a mechanism where you can say, Johnny's brother is in need of help, we need to get the Children's Aid Society in here, he needs to go to an Earlscourt program, we need to do something. Is there a system where you can do that?

Ms Curtis: Our position as probation officers is as case manager. That means once I get a kid on probation, I do a pretty thorough assessment. I look at not only the needs of that kid but also how he fits into his familial system.

Yes, if I see this youngster's family needs some assistance with parenting skills or maybe their younger brother or sister is severely acting out, I'm going to try to work with those parents to refer them to agencies that may help them with whatever problems we're assessing are present. Of course, if we can address those problems, we're going to address the stress in the family and we're going to address the kid we have offending at this point.

We tend to deal with the whole system. It can be very intensive work. One of the frustrations we've found - and I can tell you any probation officer will say this - is wishing we could get the parents to report, never mind the kid.

We have both ends of the stick. We have very involved parents who know where there kid is at, what's going on and are interested in seeing some changes in their kid. Those are the ones we can usually say are going to be low-risk.

At the other end, we have parents who are non-cooperative and we can't get them to report. We can't get them involved in any other agency. We can't get them involved in family therapy. They refuse. And there's nothing I can do to compel them to do that.

Ms Torsney: Is a common occurrence that you identify a problem with a younger brother or sister in the same family where you're dealing with a kid who has gotten into trouble, and you're concerned? How often are you faced with the situation where there is no programming available and there is no support for those families? We heard that a lot yesterday.

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Ms Curtis: Frequently.

Ms Torsney: Frequently? Like...?

Ms Curtis: We're finding that with the finite resources, of course, the criteria for agencies intervening is very narrow. For example, Children's Aid is really looking at protection issues only. When I started to work in this business, they had a broader mandate. They would work with behavioural problems and they would get involved in those kinds of families. But now it's become very narrow.

Ms Torsney: To those who have already been in conflict with the law?

Ms Curtis: No, the Children's Aid Society is for children who are in need of protection. Usually there has to be a bruise; there has to be evidence of abuse before they will become involved.

Ms Torsney: And in terms of programming for kids who need anger management, kids who need to...?

Ms Curtis: The children's mental health agencies across the province are stretched. I work in Durham region, where you can look at an average waiting list of anywhere from eight months to a year to get into a children's mental health agency - to get assessed.

Ms Torsney: We heard that from parents - that until their kids get into conflict with the law, no one is going to help them.

Ms Curtis: That's right.

Ms Torsney: So now we've got a kid with a record who has victimized somebody in our community, because although all the adults know the kid is going to victimize somebody in the community, they only want to find the resources once the kid has been in the criminal system, criminalizing -

Ms Curtis: That's right. I frequently find Children's Aid workers saying, okay, you get him counselling, probation officer. And my response is, wait a minute, this is a crown ward of the CAS. Don't you have some responsibility here to provide counselling for this kid? You're saying he needs it.

Ms Torsney: They're not doing it out of neglect; they're doing it because they don't have the financial resources.

Mr. Eaton, do you want to add something?

Mr. Eaton: As we said earlier, we can't be all things to all people. As agencies narrow their focus, we have too, and we've been told not to be as much involved in child welfare issues and that we've got to separate those issues from the mental health, from the YOA issues.

As Judi said earlier, it hasn't been uncommon in the past for agencies - and I won't say which agencies - to say to parents, have the kid charged and probation will have to... We're always the people who have to do something. The kid will come to court and he'll get an order to reside as directed by a probation officer, or attend counselling as directed by a probation officer, with some provisos to that - that is, we set it up and we pay for it. But now, with our resources shrinking, we're being told: no way, no more.

Ms Curtis: We're being told, look at the criminal kids, put your focus and your energy and your resources there...

The Chair: I want to thank you very much for taking the time and for doing really a great job. Very often in the front line, people don't get the opportunity to participate in policy development, for whatever reason. Your presentation was just excellent. I have a whole list of people who want to continue to ask you questions, but we've got a schedule, so thank you very, very much.

Mr. Eaton: On behalf of the association, thank you.

The Chair: Okay, we're going to rise for a couple of minutes while the next group, the Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law, take their place at the table.

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The Chair: I want to introduce Sheena Scott, executive director of the Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law.

You spoke to us the other day, didn't you?

Ms Sheena Scott (Executive Director, Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law): Yes, we did.

The Chair: Perhaps you could introduce your colleagues.

Ms Scott: This is Ben Moss. He's the chairperson of our board of directors. He was here before too.

The Chair: Go ahead, please.

Ms Scott: We are here today to support the Young Offenders Act and the youth justice system. We feel the act is a well-balanced act and it balances accountability with the needs of youth. We feel it is different from the Juvenile Delinquents Act, and it was modelled so for a reason. The Juvenile Delinquents Act was much more paternalistic and did not deal with the issue of accountability to the extent the Young Offenders Act does. It's somewhat surprising to hear some of the complaints about the act when what it does is make youth more accountable than they were in the past.

I want to start out by referring you to the summary of our submission, which is about a four-page document we've done. I don't think we're going to get to each of the topics we wanted to cover. We also did a lengthy submission to the committee, which you should have but which you don't really need to refer to now. We have also prepared a detailed brief on section 56 of the Young Offenders Act, which you can look at at your leisure.

I would like to start out by talking a bit about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is a very important international document, to which Canada is a signatory. Often it gets ignored, but there's a real push for the convention to be utilized, for it to be made practical, and for it to be implemented in our courts and in our system. In fact, they're working on judges' training at UNICEF right now in order to use the convention in making dispositions, for example, under the Young Offenders Act. So it's something you're going to be hearing about a lot more.

As I said, Canada is a signatory to the act. The convention sets out substantive rights for children to things such as access to education and social services, support for the family unit, adequate child protection services, and an adequate standard of living.

As the Liberal Party noted in the red book, when economic times are low there's a correlation with the increase in crime. Everyone knows that's a factor. So it's our submission today that federal money must be committed to these heads the convention protects in order to help prevent poverty and therefore to help reduce crime.

About youth justice issues, the convention deals with the promotion of a sense of dignity and self-worth; reintegration into society, which would be rehabilitation; access to information; legal rights and parental involvement; alternative measures; a full range of dispositions; a minimum age; custody as a last resort...and separation from adults in custody.

As you know, Canada reserved on the last point, because we have transfer provisions and we also have provisions for holding them in adult facilities in detention for brief periods when nothing is available. I just want to highlight that it can be a real problem. If you read The Toronto Star, or if you saw the news last night, you would have heard about the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre, wherein youth were held in an adult wing, dealt with by adult guards, and placed in adult segregation. Our organization has always felt Canada should not have reserved on that facet of the convention.

I'll go on to comment about some other sections of the act, but before I leave the issues of prevention and rehabilitation I just want to say that with CAP out the door and without federal directions to provinces on how they should spend their money, we really will see a lack of consistency. In order for there to be effective programs there should be federal standards, there should be federal dollars. Youths who are now spending a longer time in youth facilities would at one point perhaps have been transferred to the adult system and would have been paid for by the federal government.

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In the red book the federal government promised that they would have rehabilitation services available to youth. I can't stress enough the need for effective, proper programming in the youth system, regardless of the duration that the youth is there.

Throughout Canada there are some wonderful youth facilities but there are some that are not. There are some that don't have enough access to therapists and other professionals for treatment needs. Federal standards and federal money must go into this type of programming. The authority for that would be based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Some of the issues that Ben and I are going to deal with in tandem are the role of the media, the minimum age, parental responsibility, publication, legal rights, and transfer. I don't know if we can get through all of that but we would like to try. I'd like to start with a few comments about the role of the media and certain politicians.

We all hear certain things about the Young Offenders Act, how horrible it is, how all youth crime we have is because of the fact that youth know too much or they can get away with everything. That's just not true. We know it's not true. Anyone who has spent a week or so in youth court knows that youths often have lengthier dispositions than adults. It's often a very harsh system in terms of the type of penalties youths pay. Youths may not know that. That may be part of the problem in that they're being misinformed as well.

I was at a community forum not too long ago at which there were both politicians and media. One politician in particular had a real lack of information in terms of what could happen to someone under the age of 12 if they were committing serious types of offences. He was pounding the table and blaming things on the Young Offenders Act and saying this couldn't happen in the system and that couldn't happen in the system when in fact there was legislation that could deal with that person and did. You're probably aware of the case I'm talking about.

Then, at the same meeting, the media went on to make a report. They didn't stay for the whole meeting, they didn't get all the information, they didn't talk to the right people, and again the clip on the news was misinformed. They said a young person could only be locked up in the mental health system for 30 days and after that they had to consent to any further treatment. That's simply not true. We'll get into that a little bit later.

In our submission, the community and the federal government have some responsibility to put out accurate press packages and information about the legislation to the press and to ensure that members of the government are informed before they go into the public forum. I realize that's a difficult issue. I don't know if Ben has anything to say on this issue.

Mr. Ben Moss (Chairperson, Board of Directors, Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law): It's been said often, but I think it bears repeating, that the media plays a role in creating some of the hype about the Young Offenders Act and how horrible it is. I think this can be traced back to the implementation of the act.

As was noted earlier, the Young Offenders Act is a radical diversion from what we were aware of before, which was the Juvenile Delinquents Act. As we know, not all of the provinces were incredibly happy about it. It didn't take responsibility for the public legal education that needed to be done so that people would be aware of the differences between this act and the Juvenile Delinquents Act, as well as the reasons for those changes.

We've heard a lot of outcry over the act. We haven't heard any real public debate about the philosophy that underlies the use of a piece of legislation like the Young Offenders Act. Rather, we've been arguing about different pieces of the act, smaller parts. We haven't actually ever looked at why we have a Young Offenders Act as opposed to another sort of system, why it is that as a society we think we should treat young people differently. I think it's necessary to do that.

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I think the media does its job as far as what they're ostensibly there to do is concerned. The bottom line is that they want people to watch the news programs and they want to sell their newspapers. And nothing sells newspapers like large, gory headlines.

I have been aware that they don't generally follow through on that. You'll hear the more interesting aspects of the case, but you'll very rarely hear what happens at the end of it or what the disposition actually looks like or any of the stuff that the judge is aware of at the time of sentencing. I realize some of this is due to the publication limitations on the media, which we think are important for various reasons that we'll probably be talking about later, but I think that is a big part. It's a lot easier to stir up sentiment with those kinds of headlines than it is to take the time to actually take an in-depth look at all of the issues that went into that case and that disposition.

Ms Scott: With respect to the minimum and maximum ages under the Young Offenders Act, it's our position that the ages should remain as they are. At one point I think the Solicitor General put out documents that suggested a minimum age of 14. Obviously there are going to be arbitrary ages set, and the ages of 12 years through 17 years were seen as the ages at which young people can be held accountable and are maturing. They're not necessarily mature. In fact, a 20-year-old might have as much difficulty understanding the process as the 17-year-old or 18-year-old might, but we had to draw the line somewhere. Also, the age of majority in most provinces is 18 although in some it is 19.

They are arbitrary ages, but they have a sound basis in terms of capacity, ability to understand criminal accountability, and adolescence as a state of life. Under provincial mental health legislation and child welfare legislation, there are more than adequate means to deal with someone under the age of 12 who has committed a serious behaviour.

Youths can be apprehended, can be taken into the care of the Children's Aid, can be committed to a mental health hospital or committed to secure treatment. There are conditions placed on this. There are court reviews. There are processes for each of these. But I put it to you that if someone under the age of 12 is committing very serious behaviours, he has a mental health problem or a child welfare problem, and those are the systems that should be dealing with such children. They are children. If they're acting out to such an extent, they should be dealt with in the appropriate forum and by the appropriate agency.

There will always be the exceptional youth who will do something very serious when he is young, but he is the exception, and there are more than enough provisions in provincial legislation to deal with him. And if there are not, there should be, because it's a mental health issue or a child welfare issue. I could take you through the specifics of the different pieces of legislation, but I won't do that. They are there and people should make themselves aware of them before they say nothing can be done.

Ben has some experience in the mental health field as a worker in a hospital and he can speak to this a bit more.

Mr. Moss: During the year I was working in an adolescent in-patient hospital ward, we didn't have them for a long period of time, but we basically had them for a period of assessment. For the most part, those under 12 were brought to us because they had engaged in behaviours that were probably not as extreme as the case in the media at the moment; we had kids who had been accused of starting fires or of acting out in other aggressive manners towards care-givers, peers, and professionals they came into contact with.

It became fairly obvious fairly quickly that there was something about these 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds that you wouldn't expect to see in an average group of that age. These were not behaviours motivated by any sort of rational thought or by any sort of desire for gain - other than perhaps some attention - but there were obviously some very serious underlying mental health issues.

In my experience with corrections, these issues wouldn't be addressed adequately in that scenario. There is not a large enough worker-to-client population, and Corrections has its own mandate and is there for specific reasons. While I believe wholeheartedly treatment should be a part of that, it's not the major focus of corrections, nor has it ever been.

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So I agree with what Sheena said, that when mental health problems and child welfare problems are the primary cause of the behaviour, that's the best area to address them with, to deal with them proactively. I think that would have a much greater chance of reducing the amount of recurrence than dealing with them reactively and punitively. At age 11 or 12, a very impressionable young person being put into a system with a large group of people who have a variety of criminal talents could pick them up there without our addressing the underlying needs that cause those kids to act in that way in the first place.

As has been said, we do it all the time. Any age limit we set on anything is binary. It's either/or. I agree there is a lot of basis for assigning age 12 to 17. We've now extended adolescence a lot farther than we ever had, and we do not treat youth under 18 in any way as adults. Yet in this one arena we want to treat them as adults and we want them to bear the same responsibility without having some of the other stuff that goes with being an adult.

We heard on Monday about how perhaps there is some middle ground around discretion. We've already seen with other areas of the Criminal Code that discretion has not been applied equally across Canada. I would argue there are certain provinces where if you allowed the Crown discretion on the under-age-12 thing we would see a lot more charges than in others, therefore making it a problem with equality, in that where you're living would be much more pertinent to whether you got charged as a 12-year-old than the actual offence.

Ms Scott: I would like, then, to move on to the issue of parental responsibility. This is something I guess we're raising more as a response to some of the comments by the Ontario government. Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act parents could be required to pay fines, costs, or damages. There was no indication that this was useful or successful or deterred or affected crime in any way, shape, or form.

Many parents are already extremely involved with their children in the youth justice system, paying legal fees, passing out penalties to their youth, and coming to court. We see many parents who are very upset and very concerned and who take a very active role.

We see parents who get demand letters from major chains where their child has shoplifted and the chocolate bar was returned. The parents are being told the chain will settle with them for $300 or $400 in damages. We have these parents literally weeping in our office, when it's not something, from our position, that is legally tenable. These are people who are already very concerned.

If there are parents who aren't concerned, then to me that's a much more systemic problem, one that should be addressed through systemic measures. There needs to be more education. There needs to be more support for the family. There need to be more programs like the Earlscourt program you heard about, more community programs, more support for these programs.

I don't know if you remember Mark Persaud, who was before you on Monday, the high school student at Emery Collegiate. He took a parenting course in high school. He said it was a very valuable course. A lot of high schools are now offering that course. That's a very constructive way to deal with parenting issues. We have to look at solutions such as that and not at being punitive and penalizing parents.

We don't want parents who already have problems with their children, families in which there may be a child welfare issue or an abuse issue, getting angry at their kid and saying, look, I have to do this and this because of you, and then knocking the kid more. We don't want to contribute to that. I think that's one of the real risks of imposing the type of parental responsibility that has been suggested.

Mr. Moss: Just to add to that, Sheena was saying previously that under the JDA parents could be held criminally liable. It's my belief that criminal legislation should always be the last resort. I firmly believe for the most part criminal legislation works not because of fear of penalties but because of a form of consensus in which most of us don't go out and kill other human beings, not because we're worried about going to prison for 25 years but because we believe killing other human beings is fundamentally wrong.

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If there's a problem with parental responsibility and parents aren't being involved in their kids' lives and taking responsibility for those lives, I don't believe the answer to that problem is through criminal legislation. I believe finding or holding those parents criminally responsible for the actions of their children is not going to contribute to their being better parents or to their being more involved parents. It's like giving people parking tickets. It doesn't really cut down on the amount of people who park illegally. I don't think you could make the penalties large enough that they would have a great enough deterrent effect.

I agree with Sheena that the way to address that problem is to encourage parents' involvement with their children and to provide the kinds of community support that support families and build the kind of consensus we all believe is necessary. Parents and families should be involved with their kids and take a great deal of interest in their children's activities and lives and be supportive of their children. You build that kind of consensus through education and community-based programs that allow families to form that type of cohesion.

Ms Scott: I'd like to touch on the issue of publication and protection of the identity of young persons. There's a very good reason these provisions of the Young Offenders Act are in play. I think the Supreme Court of Canada deals with it in the Southam case in a way that will be binding on us no matter what changes are made to the act. In other words, if someone fiddles with the act, it may be subject to a constitutional challenge with reliance on the Southam case.

The principle I'm talking about is that the Young Offenders Act is designed to recognize that young people aren't really as mature as adults, they may make mistakes, and there's a second-chance element to it. But there's also a rehabilitative element to it, and that's what Southam talks about. And the protection of privacy contributes to the rehabilitation. It helps keep people honest, because they're not out there labelled as criminals.

We've seen that to the extent necessary information is out there. If someone is a danger to the community the police can apply for the release of the name. The recent amendments certainly give a lot more leeway to who can receive what information and when, and the provinces are delegated some of that power.

Now, we don't agree with that. We feel the act was strong enough before the amendment. In our experience, everyone who needed to know already knew. But about making any further changes, the act is already more than strong enough in this regard.

Mr. Moss: On the issue of publication, most of the arguments I've heard in favour are that schools and teachers need to know this type of information in order to protect themselves and other students from these young people. It's been my experience, with most of the young people I've been involved with, that if they were acting out and were involved in the criminal justice system, their schools already knew it, first because the schools have seen them for a long time and with this type of behaviour pattern if kids are acting out and are a threat they're generally already known to their teachers and to their principals and to school authorities as being that type of kid. Also, often, most of that child's peers know he has some involvement with the criminal justice system, and that type of information very quickly gets around in schools.

It was very rare, when I was working in open custody, that any of the schools those kids attended did not know they were in open custody. It wasn't because of any formal declaration. It just was known. Partly the kid would have to excuse himself from class to call in and tell us he was there. It was those types of things. I don't believe it's necessary to have a much broader dissemination of that type of information in order to ensure that kind of accountability and safety for other students.

Ms Scott: You may have someone before you one day, a lawyer or a doctor, someone who at one time, when they were young, made a few mistakes. We don't want to prevent people from becoming constructive members of our society, although not everyone would agree lawyers are constructive.

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On to the next topic we wanted to address, then: understanding of legal rights in the system. I noticed it was talked about a bit on Monday. Our experience really echoes that of Ms Wong and other people who talked about it with you. Youths may appear savvy, but their true knowledge is very limited and their understanding is minimal. Their information is based on what they hear in the media, what they hear from their parents and what they hear from other adults, who don't necessarily know what's going on in the youth justice system.

As well, youths may appear very cocky. I have one client, kind of a big guy, happy-looking. He seemed to me fairly self-assured until he started asking me whether he was going to go to jail. He had tried to stop another kid from being hurt in a group home and was charged with assault. He had spent one night in custody after he was arrested. He told me it was the scariest thing, and almost cried, saying he didn't want to go back, he didn't want to go back. These are the types of young people we deal with.

In terms of the level of understanding, you heard from Dr. Peterson-Badali. Her study is available to you. I think it is a very sound study. But I want to give you a concrete example.

One of our lawyers does a lot of public speaking at high schools. He heard a story from a young man. This young man was under arrest and was at the police station. The police asked the young man if he had any outstanding charges. The kid thought about it and said no. They came back to him later and told him there was a theft thing on his record. He replied that he'd thought by the term ``outstanding'' they'd meant excellent, or really serious. And this kid could have been charged with obstructing justice. This was someone about 15 years of age. He certainly didn't have an understanding of what was going on.

One of the reasons there are lawyers in the system is to help explain the system to young people. It really sometimes helps to expedite the process; otherwise, you'd have judges doing the job.

With respect to section 56 of the act, it's really not as cumbersome as it's being made out to be. Part of the problem is that a lot of officers - and I've heard this from some officers myself - don't deal with youth on a regular basis and don't have the training. There's not much training at police colleges about the provisions of the act. It can be dealt with very simply by having a well-drafted form. I don't see anything wrong with making sure someone understands something before they define it. It's just basic common sense.

For each youth it's going to be different. If you start using section 24 of the charter, going into motions on every single case, you're going to cause huge cost to the system in terms of challenging statements and deciding whether statements will bring the administration of justice into disrepute. You'll have to have all kinds of evidence in terms of levels of understanding. Why not just have the process that's in place now, which is a means of guaranteeing that the constitutional rights of young people are met? It's kind of the means to the end, and the end is that everyone has constitutional rights, but for young people we need to set up certain means to ensure that their constitutional rights are met.

We've done a brief on section 56. It's fairly legalistic. Our ultimate recommendation is that, really, section 56 doesn't go far enough. Maybe it would be better for the police just to hand youths the phone, tell them it's counsel, leave the room while they have a chat with their lawyer, and come back in a minute. That would really get over all of the hurdles if that were required in terms of right to counsel.

As well, in terms of having parents present, we want to encourage parental responsibility and involvement, yet it's not encouraged at the police station. This is an implementation problem. This is not a problem with the Young Offenders Act.

I have nothing further to say on that issue.

The last thing we wanted to address right now was the issue of transfer to adult court. Serious offenders receive a lot of attention from the media and from the public - and there's good reason for it - but they comprise a very small percentage of offences. We have transfer provisions that essentially go against the grain of all else in the criminal justice system, including the presumption of innocence, the basic tenet of our legal system that is also found in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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Federal adult penitentiaries have very little to offer youths. They've often been called schools of crime. You're all familiar with that. Youths who end up in the adult system will end up taking a correspondence course, perhaps, but there's not much else. They'll end up with a negative peer group, and that won't do anyone any good. I'm aware of youths transferred to adult court after a conviction of manslaughter who have been let out earlier than they would have been if they had been dealt with in the youth court system. I don't whether or not that makes anyone very happy.

Youths have a concept of time that is different from that of adults', so to a youth three to five years is a much more significant time, on a day-to-day basis as they're living that time, than it is for an adult.

More emphasis needs to be put on prevention and rehabilitation and less attention should be given to sensationalizing these matters. Let's do something with these young people.

On Monday, Brian Scully gave you an example of a youth who had done fairly well. Even though he was transferred, he was placed in the youth system after being found guilty. Again, that speaks to the importance of having programming in the youth facilities, having standards in the facilities and the federal funds to back up those programs so that we do have rehabilitation, so that we do have positive moves for these youths.

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You're always going to have sociopaths, and people with very serious mental health problems. If and when they get out of jail, whether it be an adult facility or youth facility, we have a mental health system. A lot of people forget this. We have a mental health system that can pick up the pieces and that should be picking up the pieces, because these people have a mental illness. They can be locked up under the mental health system.

We also have the dangerous offender provisions of the Criminal Code. It is those provisions and the mental health provisions that should be dealing with young people and young adults when they've completed their disposition under the Young Offenders Act or under the adult system. That's a very important point to keep in mind. A lot of people forget about that, because our criminal justice system really is meting out a sentence that's proportionate to the crime. It isn't there to act as a mental health system. We have separate systems, and we should be using them.

Mr. Moss: On the transfer provision, it is my personal feeling that there's something really wrong with the presumptive transfer. The reverse onus, putting the burden on the young person to prove that they're better served as a young person, seems a little strange to me. Previously, we had transfer provisions, and people were transferred under these provisions. They seemed to me to work well enough.

The only other thing I wanted to say, especially about presumptive transfers, is that our province at the moment is screaming about the cost of legal aid and how it is too much money, how we can no longer afford to fund this type of thing, and they're trying to cut back on what is getting paid for. There's nothing more unwieldy than trying to hold the transfer provision to pay for one. The burden for all the work and for providing the proof that this person should be served as a young person is going to be put on the young person and his attorney, who are going to have to come up with the resources.

In my opinion, the Crown and the police already have those resources, and have much more experience using them, to do up this kind of evidence if the onus is on them to prove the case. In terms of costs and effective use of court resources, presumptive transfers... Because you're going to have them fought in almost every case now rather than just those extreme ones, it's going to be a nightmare.

Ms Scott: Finally, I would like to deal with the issue of of diversion and alternative measures. I think more emphasis has to be placed on these measures. The government has to look to perhaps changing the provisions of the Young Offenders Act to make alternative measures mandatory rather than permissive. There seems to have been a little misunderstanding, because some people really did think it was mandatory and some didn't. If it was mandatory and a certain range of measures was set out, there might be more compliance and interest in using the measures. I think most provinces are coming around.

As I indicated to you on Monday, we have been involved in setting up peer mediation projects. They are wonderful, productive projects in which young people mediate with other young people and come up with solutions. They really contribute to reducing recidivism, in my position, because rather than fighting the other young person the next time you see them in the hall, you will have gotten to know that person, and perhaps respect some of their views. It will reduce that type of behaviour. We have provided you with an outline of setting up peer mediation programs.

We'll leave you with that, then, and answer any of your questions.

The Chair: Thank you.

We have a very limited amount of time. Mr. Langlois, perhaps one question, please.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: I will simply make a comment. The position you are defending sort of resembles the one I was advocating during the consideration of Bill C-37. I would however like some clarification from you, because I have some difficulty following you.

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On the first page of your brief, you say:

[English]

Money must be committed to early prevention of offending behaviours. Federal funds must be committed under a revised CAP system to education, social assistance and child welfare. The provinces must be directed how to distribute funds.

[Translation]

You are requesting federal funds for education, social assistance and child welfare, which are essentially areas of provincial jurisdiction. Under what constitutional provisions would the federal government have the authority to intervene in these areas under provincial jurisdiction?

You seem to be somewhat distrustful, perhaps rightly so, of the provincial government's ability to look after these areas. I personally believe that they are not carrying this responsibility well, and the voters are there to punish them.

The federal government seems to adopt a very paternalistic approach when asked to intervene because the provinces are not carrying out their responsibilities as we would like them to. I would like some clarification on your request for federal funds in areas which appear to me to be clearly under provincial jurisdiction.

[English]

Ms Scott: I think I can address that in a couple of ways. One is that we see these areas as being related very much to the youth justice system. People with educational difficulties, people with child welfare problems, people with an inadequate standard of living are the people who come before the youth courts. There's an intersection there, whether we like it or not. If we want to attack youth crime, then we have to give funds in these areas.

The other authority I would turn to is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Canada federally is a signatory to and therefore has some responsibility, regardless of the niceties, in terms of how to distribute money.

You say to the provinces that you are going to help them out and you are going to contribute toward preventing child poverty by the year 2000, or other such laudable goals. There may be conditions attached to that and the provinces may be willing to abide by those conditions. That's the type of proposal we're looking at. We would hate for it to be ruled out on the basis of a division of powers. I understand that it's a difficult issue, but I think it's been done before. It can be worked out and one can look to the convention.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Gallaway, do you have a brief question?

Mr. Gallaway: I have just one question, Madam Chair.

Thank you for your presentation. I haven't had an opportunity to read all of it, but I have looked at your presentation regarding section 56 and heard your comments on it.

It seems to me that one of the great myths we're hearing is that young people have a lot of rights and that in fact they are in some way seized with great knowledge of these rights. It's interesting to see the quotations from Mr. Justice Sopinka, who points out that the rationale for Parliament, including section 56, is recognition that generally young people have less knowledge of their rights and are less likely to assert and exercise those rights when they are confronted by a person in a position of authority, such as a police officer.

This morning we heard from police officers and from the chair of the board of education from Scarborough, who maintained that children know their rights and in fact laugh and thumb their noses at the law.

I take it that you're from a legal clinic. I wonder if you could comment on these two concepts, which are spinning in their own little orbit and yet are diametrically opposed to each other. Which is the fact and which is the myth?

Mr. Moss: I wouldn't totally rule out that there is maybe a very small percentage of kids who have either taken law class or have a real interest in the legal system and may have gone out of their way to study these things and would therefore know, but these are probably not the kids you're going to see running into legal problems in the first place.

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It's been my experience that there are a lot of kids who, through TV or whatever, have some belief that they know their rights. They may be able to parrot back to you that they have the right to counsel, but we're taking issue with that. We don't believe they really know what that means, because when you explore it with them further, they don't know that if they wish to exercise their right to counsel that means they no longer have to answer police questions, with the exception of identification stuff. They don't know they have the right to be assertive in that, that they can ask for it, that it belongs to them. It almost seems that most kids think it's something the police give to you and can also take away.

We also believe, and it's been my experience, that police officers are intimidating even to fairly sophisticated people. I'll be riding in the car with my mother and she may not have done anything wrong, but if the police pull you over and approach your car and demand your licence, there's a certain reaction: Oh my God, what did I do? I'd better cooperate, otherwise this could get worse.

I think this is a lever the police may use over young people, even though it may not be conscious. They're that much younger and they're so used to being in subordinate positions to adults, and then you have this adult who's vested with that much more power than other adults. Often their biggest fear may be that the police might tell their parents. If the police say something like, if you cooperate with us we can get this done with and out of here really quickly, the kid may think that sounds good and not foresee the long-term consequences of what that means and what waiving their right to counsel means.

We don't think section 56 is giving young people any extra rights. All it is there to do is to ensure that they have access to an understanding of the rights that our Constitution grants to every citizen and resident of this country. As was submitted to you on Monday, it is really not a huge hoop.

I think if it's a problem and if the crown attorneys and police are getting upset because charges are withdrawn because of violations of this section of the Young Offenders Act, then the remedy to that is in-service training for police. If the police are going to be in contact with young people, they should know how to do this. Therefore we wouldn't have these problems and the whole mess would just be avoided if section 56 were complied with.

Some of the bravado that people seem to be attributing to young people is their own misinformation. As we said, they may believe they're going to get off lightly and then find out that's not indeed the case. Inversely, if they actually believe they may be going into custody you're not very likely going to get a 17-year-old who's going to admit to his peer group that he's intimidated and/or frightened by the police if he may then have to share a cell with them.

I think that's a big part of it too; kids, especially young males, who make up the largest percentage of young offenders, don't like to admit that they're frightened or that they're not the toughest guy on the block. I think that's partly where that comes from. People misinterpret that as that they are really self-assured and not that it's just an act.

The Chair: I want to thank you.

We have our staff to worry about as well, so we'll take about 45 minutes and we'll be back here with five more witnesses this afternoon. Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned.

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