EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, September 23, 1996

.0912

[English]

The Chair: All right, we're ready to proceed. I want to apologize for my tardiness. I was in the wrong place at the right time.

We have, from Civas Estrie Treatment Centre, Josée Rioux, who is the director.

Welcome. I think all of you have been briefed by our staff before, but we expect to hear from you and then we'll ask questions. So you go ahead and take as much time as you need to make your presentation. We won't short-change you at the end.

[Translation]

Ms Josée Rioux (Director, CIVAS Estrie): I'm sorry that I could not provide you with a brief on our CIVAS program in the Eastern Townships. I was contacted only last Wednesday and I did not have time to prepare a detailed brief. You'll therefore have to rely on the information I'll give you today. I will try to answer your questions as fully as possible.

CIVAS Estrie is a centre that deals with sexual violence and abuse in the Eastern Townships. It is the first organization of its kind in the Eastern Townships and it was set up in April 1992.

CIVAS is sort of the result of a Master's thesis that I wrote from 1990 to 1992. I visited places in Quebec involved with sexual offenders and I developed a program for the Eastern Townships based on our Eastern Township philosophy, regarding intervention.

As I said, the first group for adults began in April 1992. At first, CIVAS was involved only with adult offenders, be they pedophiles, exhibitionists, sexual offenders or peeping toms. We were involved with all types, but only with adults.

In November 1993, we developed a program for teenagers. Quite by chance I met the person responsible for programs and for the funding of innovative projects in the Canadian Department of Justice. As there was no program for adolescent sex offenders like ours in Canada, we developed a program at CIVAS and received a grant from the Department of Justice for three years. We are now in our last year.

Our meetings with the teenagers began in February 1994. Since then, we have always had at least 10 to 12 teenagers in our treatment program.

As the Eastern Townships is not a very large area, obviously we will never have 25 to 30 teenagers being treated at our centre.

These teenagers fall under the Young Offenders Act and also sometimes under the Youth Protection Act. We work within the context of both these acts.

Teenagers who fall under the Youth Protection Act and who come to see us before legal action is taken will not be summoned to appear in court if the program works.

A feature of CIVAS Estrie's program is the helpline for sex offenders. This is a helpline that is unique in Canada. Its purpose is to diffuse situations where people want to commit a sexual offence. From 8:00 in the morning until 10:00 in the evening volunteers are available to listen to these offenders.

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Since February 1995, more than 300 calls from people going through a crisis have been placed to this helpline. These calls can come from anywhere in Quebec even though we do not have a 1-800-line. Long distance calls must be made to reach us.

We also reach teenagers through this line because we have advertised in schools, youth centres and health clinics. Because the calls are anonymous, we have not been able to determine the proportion of teenagers calling us.

In February 1996, we set up a new program for male victims. We know that female victims often receive treatment through help centres and centres for victims of sexual abuse, but nothing had been done for men, whether they be teenagers or adults. This treatment program for men in need of help fulfilled a need in the Eastern Townships.

In February 1996, we started with one group but because of a lack of funding and other financial difficulties, we had to abandon this program in June.

The main goal of this service was to break the abused abuser cycle. A large proportion of our teenagers - around 60% - who are being treated after having committed a sexual offence, were themselves abused when they were younger. The purpose of this service for victims was to break that cycle, to ensure that they would not become abusers just because they were abused. We greatly believe in this service. Although we haven't excluded the possibility of continuing this service one day, for now, because of financial difficulties, the centre has had to drop this activity. In our opinion, this type of service is very important.

I forgot to mention that our centre is a non-profit community organization. Financing it is therefore difficult because Quebec still does not have a policy on sexual violence. Governments are not as involved as we would like them to be in the area of sexual abuse.

Our program for teenagers is a three-part program: social skills, sex education and relapse prevention.

We realized, through our studies, that social skills and sex education were severely lacking amongst sex offenders, be they teenagers or adults. Social skills include the ability to communicate with one's peers, self-esteem - which is usually very low for a sex offender and is usually why that person commits an offence - family relations and friendships... We want them to become able to express themselves within society, so that as teenagers they will have a socially acceptable behaviour and so that as adults they will not perpetuate this abusive behaviour.

Sex education includes anything to do with sexuality, from anatomy to seduction, because these teenage boys do not know how to make contacts with teenage girls and do not have girlfriends. We try to hold practical workshops for them so that they can learn to interact with others.

The last part, which I think is the most important one, is relapse prevention. That is the English term. This concept was developed in the United States for addiction workshops and it was adapted for sex offenders.

Any offence begins with a conflict and goes through stages. Conflict leads to discomfort, which leads a wave of sexual fantasies, then to harmless choices, which then lead to a high risk situation and, finally, to a deviant sexual act.

Our goal is to enable teenagers to identify each stage they are going through, to enable them to identify the means they need to diffuse each stage and to ensure that they will not relapse. This is very important and we can tell what stage that teenager is at because we do this within groups, in therapy. By identifying these stages, we can help them find the means, if the means they had already identified were not enough, to prevent them from relapsing.

Relapse prevention is the main purpose of this program because we can use this approach as a follow-up, whether it be for teenagers or adults.

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Follow-ups for teenagers usually last from 8 to 12 months. This is not short-term work. Sometimes a follow-up can last up until 18 months. It is very difficult for young people to talk about sexuality with an adult; in their world it is impossible to imagine. Establishing a connection with a young 12 or 13-year-old takes a little more than a week or two. Often it takes two months before they will talk about sexual problems and abuse. We usually need 8 to 12 months, 8 being a minimum and 12 months an average.

This program for teenagers includes one-on-one sessions and group sessions. We have observed that within a group, some experiences may not be mentioned by teenagers, out of embarrassment or out of fear of what others may say. We therefore feel that one-on-one work is very important. At the same time, in one-on-one sessions, some reactions may not always be appropriate and may be dealt with better within a group. A group is very intense.

The teenager goes to group sessions one evening a week because we do not want them to miss out on school and they meet a qualified adult once every two weeks. These adults are often social workers or sex therapists.

We also hold meetings for parents. I think that support for parents is important. The great majority of them do not understand why their children have sexually abused other young people. The support group is very, very important. It is also important that they understand how we work and changes taking place in the young person. We have young people coming to see us who manage to speak more about their feelings and experiences. When a parent is not used to hearing his or her child say that he likes one thing or does not like another, we consider that it is important to meet the parent.

We also conduct a large number of sexological evaluations of young people for the courts. The Youth Division asks us to make recommendations for treatment or draw up plans for treatment.

These are the services which the CIVAS Centre provides for young people. We work with the DPJ (Youth Protection Branch), in the area of both the Young Offenders Act and also the Youth Protection Act. The local community service centres send to us young people who have agreed to follow a program of treatment with us. Centres providing help and combatting sexual assault which take in victims also direct young people to us. Before the judicial process begins, they will generally ask us to take in a young person.

Anyone following a program of treatment with our organization must show a modicum of motivation. Obviously, if the individual concerned does not want to change his behaviour, we cannot do anything to help. The results are not up to us, they are up to the young person concerned, our client.

The person concerned must also recognize that he has committed a sexual offence. Otherwise, we cannot accept him in our centre. Because such recognition is basic to our work. There must be full acceptance of the program, and the person following it must be ready to comply with it in full. Those are the basic criteria for acceptance by us.

There are some cases we do not accept: people under psychiatric care, including those with a dual or multiple personality, and sex murderers. There are fewer such cases among young people than among adults. People suffering from schizophrenia and sex murderers are not accepted by us.

The major difficulties faced by our organization obviously concern funding. We hope that we will be able to continue to provide our services. It is clear that this is the last year we will be receiving funding from the federal Department of Justice. Next year we will have a shortfall of $50,000. We do not know yet how we will manage to make that up. We will be working actively on that question.

CIVAS operates with an annual budget of $140,000. It is not an enormous amount for four people working in this area. Last year, we served 105 offenders and 13 victims. I consider that to be a considerable number of people.

We have a problem with the Young Offenders Act. Generally, the young people sent to us are part of the alternative measures system, for which a maximum of six months is currently provided. It is difficult to do a follow-up since, as I explained to you earlier, a six-month or sometimes even a five-month timeframe hardly gives the young person concerned time to sign for the alternative measure, to come to us for treatment, to begin treatment and create a bond.

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Three of the six months under the measure are already taken. That is a major problem for us. It would be helpful if the measure could be extended.

Our helpline is available to young people and adults. We are very proud of it. A little later I will distribute to you flyers about the helpline.

When I went to a conference on sexual offenses in Toronto last year, everybody applauded our helpline. When an offender telephones us in the evening and makes an appointment for the following morning because he doesn't feel well, because he has committed sexual offenses and has not been prosecuted, we give him priority.

Two years ago, before the helpline, there were perhaps three people a year who volunteered to come and see us. Last year, between 25 and 30 people came to us for voluntary treatment. Through our work, costs are reduced for the judicial system and fewer children continue to be victimized. In CIVAS, our purpose is not to help sex offenders because we are sympathetic to their cause; that is not the case. I am not sympathetic to the cause of sex offenders. What I want is there to be fewer victims and women and children to be safe. For the people working with me and for myself, that is really our priority.

At the request of the federal Department of Justice, an assessment was made of our program for young people. I have brought a copy of the assessment report which was distributed across Canada. Two psychologists from the Institut Philippe-Pinel and the Université de Montréal, Luc Granger and Jean Proulx, came to assess the program. They found that the program is consistent in every respect with what is required. It is run in accordance with established principles. All the work with young people is properly structured. For us, that is important.

I would like to comment on the re-offending rate for young people. It is difficult to know whether a young person does re-offend. Because in the area of sex offenses, the hidden figure is important, since one offence generally conceals ten. It is difficult for us to say that we have a 90% success rate with our young people and that there have been no repeat offenses. That is very difficult to say. However, we are regularly in contact with youth centres in the Eastern Townships and we find that few of our clients have returned because of sexual offenses. They may perhaps have returned for other forms of delinquency, but not for sexual offenses. We consider that to be significant. However, it is still difficult to give a figure on the rate of recidivism.

That is all I wanted to say to you about CIVAS this morning. I would be please to answer any questions you may have.

[English]

The Chair: I'm sure we do.

Mr. St-Laurent, you have ten minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent (Manicouagan): Thank you. I experienced a rather strange situation on the lower North Shore, in a village in my riding. Someone from the Youth Protection Branch wanted to go and pick up a father suspected of abusing his children. Some people in this small village, which had a population of about 30, were opposed to the Quebec provincial police coming to pick up the person concerned. As far as they were concerned, it wasn't a shocking incident; it was regrettable, but it wasn't shocking.

You have studied this subject in depth and even written a thesis about it. Are there sectors of society with a particular tendency towards sexual abuse, or, as is the case with alcoholics for example, are these people found in all segments of society? Have you compiled any statistics on this subject? I would imagine you must have some information.

Ms Rioux: Within our organization, the people whom we meet can be divided into three categories; incestuous fathers, pedophiles and sex offenders.

Incestuous fathers are found in all segments of society. In social terms, there is no standard profile for offenders. We find more pedophiles among people on welfare. That is due to the fact that those who are better off can more easily indulge in sexual tourism. They have other ways of getting sex. Sexual tourism is frequently used. However, I do not believe that one segment of society is more affected than any other.

.0930

In some villages - I'm also from a remote region, the Lower St. Lawrence - incest is more prevalent. Some of these families are not as open and the father is a lot more autocratic. Incest is considered normal in these places.

When I worked at the YPB in Mont-Joli, in some of these villages, fathers said that it was normal to have sexual relations with their children. The father had had sexual relations with his child and his grandfather had had the same with him. People wondered why the police would have to arrest the father, because they considered the practice quite normal. Increased awareness and prevention are a must for these families.

As far as schools are concerned, they are well organized. The «Regroupement des équipes régionales Espace» also teaches prevention to young children under 12 in the schools and teaches them that if someone engages in sexual activity with them, they must say so, because it is not normal. For a family that has always experienced such a situation, it is not abnormal. That is very clear. It is like a young person who has always seen his father drink and then also starts to drink; it's exactly the same. It is the normal thing to do. There is nothing wrong with it. As social workers, it is up to us to teach prevention.

Mr. St-Laurent: You said that last year, you treated 105 offenders and 13 victims. How many of the offenders were adults and how many were young people?

Ms Rioux: With respect to adults, we serve all of Quebec because there are only two other centres like CIVAS Estrie, one in Trois-Rivières, for people sentenced there by the courts and the other in Roberval, which is a transition home for sexual offenders. As a result, CIVAS can get its referrals from Gaspé on the Outaouais region. The clients are generally people who have been released from prison and who go to a transition home. We treated 68 adults and the rest were young people.

We only treat young people who live in the Eastern Townships, because young people cannot travel. A 12-year-old lives with his family. Young people cannot undergo treatment in another city. There is also a transportation problem. Some of our clients come to Sherbrooke from Lac Mégantic. They spend an hour and a half on the road, before even undergoing therapy. Young people cannot do that.

Centres like the Mégantic or Thetford-Mines CYPC call us most often and have a lot of trouble treating their young people because of transportation problems. We clearly do not have enough staff to travel around and provide therapy in another city in addition to continuing to do what we do at CIVAS Estrie. We only have two front line workers, a secretary and me. That is not very many for serving the 105 clients we did last year. The financial problem affects us at that level.

Mr. St-Laurent: Earlier on, you mentioned a statistic that is perhaps nothing out of the ordinary for you, but not quite so for us. You said that most of the offenders had been assaulted at a young age.

Ms Rioux: Most of the offenders had been assaulted when they were young by an uncle, a father or a brother. This might not come out during the assessment, but it comes out during treatment.

Mr. St-Laurent: What can you do to break this cycle? Perhaps it is a question not only of breaking the cycle, but also of providing information, going farther. In the end, you don't try to go farther, to determine who is guilty. From what I can see, you try to break the cycle at the point where you get involved. You continue your work, hoping to reap the benefits in the future. What do you do?

Ms Rioux: There is no point in going any farther, because if the victim doesn't want to lodge a complaint, we cannot do anything. Usually, the victim is older now, and so we have no power over the adults involved. In the case of a teenager who has committed sexual offences and who has been assaulted by his father, we notify Youth Protection so that the father can start treatment. We start with one problem, which leads to another, and so we end up with the father and the son, who have both committed sexual offenses, albeit different levels. We often have such cases.

To break this cycle at the right place, we have to work with men and youth who have been assaulted. But, like I was saying, it's a question of money. We do not have the money to hire one more person to work with these people.

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But it is very important to break the victim abuser cycle before a sexual offence is committed. Once a sexual offence occurs, we must deal with the offence, not the target. We also intervene to help the victim, but a person found guilty of sexual assault cannot join a victims group, because he has already adopted a deviant behaviour. That is clear. We are interested in both aspects of the problem, and so our work is two-fold.

Mr. St-Laurent: Yes, assuming that someone found guilty of sexual assault has already been sexually assaulted himself. In short, you treat him as an offender when the person who has been assaulted lodges a complaint. If not, he is treated as a victim, even if he has already been an offender. That is extremely complex.

Ms Rioux: Yes it is, but generally, thanks to psychological and follow-up reports done by the youth centres, we can always clearly identify the problem. If we don't identify it during the assessment, we know that during treatment, some aspects will be revealed. That is very clear.

We also focus on the sexual orientation of young offenders, usually because they have been assaulted by a man and have assaulted a boy. They feel confused about their sexual orientation. It is an important aspect of the treatment.

Mr. St-Laurent: Indeed.

I have one last question, Madam Chair. People talk about therapy and various other solutions. As someone who has studied criminology and as the head of an organization that does excellent work in the field, what is your opinion of the famous proposal to castrate sexual offenders?

Ms Rioux: From a medical point of view, I cannot answer that question because I am not a doctor. Deviant sexual behaviour can generally be explained in terms of the amount of testosterone produced by the testicles. So if a man is castrated, testosterone is no longer produced. According to most advocates of castration, if there is no more testosterone in the blood, sexual activity will stop.

But that is not true. Sexual activity depends on the pituitary gland and other androgens and hormones. The proof is that in pharmacotherapeutics, two anti-androgens are used to reduce sexual activity in men: Androcur and Depo Provera. If the dose is high enough, testosterone production stops. So these drugs have the same effect as physical castration. However, the effect is both chemical and reversible. Men commit sexual offenses even when they are producing little or no testosterone. So castration would have no effect on sexual behaviour.

Many of our members are opposed to castration. There's only one doctor in Quebec in favour of it. He is the only advocate of that solution. Quebec also has an association of sexual assault workers; which was set up to work with young people, hospitals, universities, communities, federal and provincial officials and the private sector. It covers everyone in Quebec working in the area of sexual assault. This association is holding a conference on Friday, and 140 of us will be present. None of the 140 participants will be advocating castration. We will advocate pharmaceutical castration but certainly not physical castration, because physical castration is irreversible.

Mr. St-Laurent: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Would you recommend that youth courts sentence youths to programs of treatment rather than to periods of incarceration? I understood from what you're saying that sometimes your programs do not have a sufficient amount of time to administer your treatment because usually it's six months and by the time they get there some time has already passed.

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We have heard witnesses - or at least I think it was in a brief or two - say that rather than simply sentencing an offender to a term in closed custody, perhaps the courts should look at a program of treatment. Would you favour that?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: We think it is better for adolescents to be treated at our institution rather than sent to a rehabilitation centre. Adults are a different matter, because I am not against them being imprisoned. But the time is so short for adolescents that many judges now decide to send a youth to the CIVAS Estrie Treatment Centre following a sexological assessment instead of sending them to a rehabilitation centre. Judges may also suggest a combination of treatment at a rehabilitation centre and time at our centre afterwards.

That gives us more time, because if the adolescent is on probation for a year, we think the ideal situation is for him to undergo treatment with us for a year. That is what we recommend to the CPEJ in Sherbrooke, and that is generally what is recommended to the judge.

We also think it is important to divert youth away from the justice system. As for alternative measures, if a youth does not appear in court, before a judge, obviously we do not always have enough time to work with him. That is what we would like to work on. Not every adolescent who commits a sexual offence needs to go through the justice system. There are alternatives that keep youths from getting a criminal record. But then, we don't have enough time to work with them.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: With regard to alternative measures, who does the assessment and who determines the length of time for the young person to be involved in alternative measures?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: An alternative measure lasts a maximum of six months. When we authorize an alternative measure, it is generally for six months. The person who assesses the case is a member of the CPEJ. There are three options: close the file because there isn't enough reason to intervene, recommend an alternative measure, or refer the case to court. The alternative measure is a maximum of six months. That is very clear. We don't make that assessment; the staff at the CPEJ do. But they too would probably like to be able to recommend 12 months.

In the cases referred to us, if someone must do community work for six months, an alternative measure may suffice. But when special treatment is required, in cases of drug addiction or a sexual offence, for instance, it is more difficult to achieve something in six months. Beyond that, the youth usually isn't interested in continuing because it is too difficult for him to get therapy from us. We therefore have less control over adolescence.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: In your testimony in the area of sexual abuse, you have indicated that incest is almost normal in some communities. Who's involved? Is it just the father in most cases or is it the mother as well? Does it go beyond the immediate family? Does it go as far as uncles? That's one question.

Is there not opposition to this kind of behaviour within the family? Is there not opposition by the opposing parents, or do both parents agree this is just one of those things that happens? Do both parents agree that it's normal? Don't they consider it abnormal? In the case of a father sexually abusing the son or the daughter, does the mother within that family and that community not object to it?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: In response to your first question, I would say fathers, brothers, uncles and third parties, such as a mother's helper, are equally like to commit incest. Mothers can also be guilty of incest. Perceptions are different, depending on the context. When a mother washes a child's private parts in the bath, it is seen as being different from when a father does so. A mother is a child educator and protector. However, we fare seeing more and more mothers who have committed incest. We now have women undergoing treatment at our centre. It is very rare. I would think that in Quebec, there are only five or six women in the justice system because of sexual abuse, no more than that. We have one at our centre. We are also starting to see cases of female daycare workers being accused of sexual assault.

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To answer your second question, a mother rarely discloses what happens within her family, mostly because the father or husband often has control over the family, which gives him tremendous power. An incestuous father usually controls all the family's doings. That's what we see. The usual profile is a very sociable man who is employed, and has control over the entire family. The mother usually will not talk about it.

Young victims, be they boys or girls, do not talk about their father's abuse, because they fear hurting their mother or causing a family breakup. If a teenage girl tells her mother that her father fondles her or sleeps with her when the mother is away, she knows that the family will break up. The police will probably lay charges. The father will probably be incarcerated. Often, every member of the family has that fear, which stops them from speaking up.

There may be several reasons for this. This behaviour may seem normal to them. A boy who knows that his father slept with his older brother and that it is now his turn will think that it is normal. But you usually encounter these situations in small villages. You see them less often in larger cities because a lot more prevention is being done. But for some people, it seems normal, and the mothers do not speak up out of fear of retaliation.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: Then the children that are abused really don't have anyone they can turn to. They don't have the mother they can turn to because of the reasons that you've given. They fear that it could result in the breakdown of the family.

Is this practice accepted in the adult population in those communities?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: It may be accepted in some places. But now, with all the help available to young people in schools, such as psychologists and other resource persons, adolescents talk a little more. It is much rarer now to find a family where everything is hushed up, where very little is said, because schools are there to help.

In the past, when teenaged girls spoke up and said they had been sexually abused by a member of their family, many people tended not to believe them. But now, thanks to all the prevention being done, people have the impression that incest is a new phenomenon. These situations are revealed much more often. We're not saying there is more sexual abuse by family members, but more cases are being reported. Incest should not be tolerated.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: If your program were to expand throughout the province, would that be looked upon as a threat to many of the adults who consider this practice normal? In fact, are you receiving any resistance from any quarter against the continuation of your program because of the fact that it's going to expose or has the potential to expose adults who have abused their children and consider it to be a normal part of their life because perhaps they've been abused or whatever when they were children? Are you receiving any resistance from any aspect of society, from anyone within society, about the expansion and the continuation of your program because your program does contain a very potential threat to uncover the illegal and criminal acts of parents?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: I haven't met with any resistance, because the centre does not advertise throughout Quebec. We know we cannot expand our services. Right now, no one in our region wants to start up a program like CIVAS Estrie. Financially, it's impossible.

I do not think we would meet with any resistance, even though it may be more difficult to get into some small places because an incestuous father has kept control. We are not the ones facing resistance; it is the CPEJ staff who must do the assessment and report abuse. They are the ones now having problems.

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They have trouble despite the fact that a program exists, because in every region where CPEJ workers do case assessments and report sexual abuse, they cannot provide any services to the offenders or to the victims, because there aren't any. But children do report cases of sexual abuse, and the father is taken away. We do encounter these situations. An incestuous father usually goes through the justice system and is incarcerated.

I do not think we would meet with any resistance. Perhaps in a few families, but not the general population. Even though the centre may be perceived as a centre to help sexual offenders, I still maintain that we are there to prevent repeat offences.

Sexual offenses are not the most popular offenses in Quebec or Ontario or elsewhere in Canada or even throughout the world. Obviously, when we say we need money to help the perpetrators, we meet with resistance. Obviously, we do not get as warm a welcome as a centre that helps victims.

I have been fighting since 1990 to have the treatment of sexual offenders recognized, not to have the act condoned. Very few of us want to fight for this, because it is a long and arduous task.

Yet when we do provide services in a city, most people are usually pleased because it reduces the number of repeat offences.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ramsay.

Ms Torsney, ten minutes.

Ms Torsney (Burlington): A lot of studies would suggest that if someone has been abused as a youngster and they don't get counselling, in all probability they will become an abuser in the future. Maybe we could get you some of the studies to help you fight for some funds.

I wanted to ask you, though, has the type of crime or the severity of the crime changed over the last couple of years?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: I do not think sexual abuse has changed over the years, but the age of the offenders has dropped. In the past, it was rare to have teenaged sexual offenders. There were far more adults. One must also bear in mind that some CPEJ staff thought that 12, 13, 15 or 18 year-old male adolescents abusing or fondling young girls was part of discovering one's sexuality. Today, that is no longer so. I feel that when someone touches part of another person's body without consent, that is abuse.

So the EPEJ in the Estrie region now has a different view of things. I don't know about the other CPEJs that do not have treatment centres, but ever since we founded our centre and started providing services, perceptions have changed.

But a sexual offense is still a sexual offense. I know a father who committed incest with his children 25 years ago and who wanted to do it again with his grandchildren. His four daughters put their foot down and told him to get treatment. Years ago, he got one of his daughters pregnant, and she had to have an abortion. That happened 25 years ago. His offense did not change; he just waited for the object of his desire to reach the same age.

I have noticed that the offenders are getting younger. We see 11 year-olds committing sexual offenses. Families now talk openly about sex, and it is no longer taboo. In fact, it is so out in the open now that some people give their children too much sex education, to a point where young people want to experiment somewhat earlier.

We have a patient who was categorized as a pervert at the age of 10. When he was 6, he watched pornography with his parents or saw them having sex. He had been surrounded by it. At the age of 10, he thought it was quite normal to masturbate five or six times a day. There is a lot of work to be done, but I must say that 15 years ago, I don't think you would have seen someone that young sexually abuse young boys.

That is why I am saying that the nature of sexual abuse has not changed, but that it is being committed by younger people. That is why a youth intervention program is so important now, as is a victim intervention program.

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[English]

Ms Torsney: You mentioned that the young person, the ten-year-old, was consuming pornography and watching his parents. Have you seen any impact from the role of television or the availability of very graphic materials, whether it's through the computers or whether from television or movies?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: No, I did not notice any such impact, because generally speaking, teenagers do not have very much access to pornography, or at least I hope so. Our youths generally do not have very much pornographic material. There are always exceptions, but our youths generally do not have any. If they do commit a sexual offence, it's usually because they cannot interact with people of their own age. It is always easier with someone younger. You often see that with teenagers who babysit children and fondle them. The same goes for adults. Pedophiles, incestuous fathers cannot socialize with people of their own age; it is always easier to approach a child. A child does what you want her to. If you make it a game, the child will do anything you ask it to. Therein lies the pedophile's power. He wants to have power over the child because he doesn't have any over people his own age. Our job is to help the pedophile gain some power over people of his own age. The same applies to adolescents.

[English]

Ms Torsney: Is it your understanding that the young people you deal with understand the law? Do they know a lot about the law or do they laugh at the law? In Ontario, that seems to be a very common thing, that people think that young people just...or a lot of my constituents think that people just laugh at the law and wilfully break it. Are these children just not understanding, or what's your impression?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: Not among my clients. Perhaps among homeless kids or young offenders who commit crimes other than sexual offenses. Generally speaking, except for drug use, where the law seems less relevant to them, people do not flout the law. They may put up some resistance, but I think everyone does. Their crime is truly sexual in nature. They are not ordinary offenders. Rarely have they committed any other type of crime. If they do, it would be later on.

The best example I could give you is from the adult world. I once worked in a halfway house. I saw all sorts of criminals before specializing in sexual offenses. I met members of Hell's Angels, murderers, all types of criminals. But when you look at pedophiles, they rarely look like your average offender. If I were to walk through a halfway house, I would know if a person was a pedophile, because he wouldn't have any tattoos or behave like a criminal. Those people generally follow all of the rules of society, except those pertaining to sex.

Our centre rarely deals with young offenders, except sexual offenders. We have some because we have youths whose parents are criminals, in prison or on probation, but that is more unusual.

[English]

Ms Torsney: This is my last question. Some people would advocate, particularly in the case of sexual offenders, that information on them be made known to the wider community, that we somehow can protect ourselves if we know that Johnny down the street is a sexual offender. It is said that I need to know that for the protection of my children and myself, and also in the case of young people that somehow it will make them act better if they know that their name could be published in the newspaper. What are your comments on that?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: That issue was already debated on television, on the Droit de parole show. I am against disclosing someone's name or publishing a photograph because I think it is pointless. All it would do is make the offender change cities and start over elsewhere.

If you were to give me the name of an offender, if I didn't work in the field of sexual offences, in four days I will certainly have forgotten it, if there are ten others in the newspaper. The same goes for somebody's picture. You can change your physical appearance.

It is like resorting to revenge. From a criminological viewpoint, it would be like going back to prehistory. You would be going back to private revenge. I think that is far from the ideal solution. It would just make the offender change locations, to remain incognito and to re-offend.

.1000

I think the ideal solution is to treat the individual. Look at the Val-d'Or case, which has been in the headlines a lot lately. People want to post the picture of the sexual offender, who wants get treatment and do something to avoid re-offending, but there is nothing available for him in Val-d'Or. The only think available is private practice and he cannot afford it because he is on welfare. That is why I am fighting to have treatment available to sexual offenders throughout the province of Quebec.

Right now, I am on a committee that is currently drafting a sexual violence policy. We are recommending the government provide at least minimal service in every region so that the Val-d'Or case does not happen again. Posting the photograph, publishing names in newspapers and disclosing all that information will not change an offender's behaviour in any way.

A sexual offender is like an alcoholic. If you close every bar in the city and stop selling alcohol, he will just move to another city and continue drinking elsewhere because you didn't get to the root of the problem. It's the same for sexual offenders.

[English]

Ms Torsney: Actually, if we can just clarify that. I got confused. Your budget is $140,000 a year for four people. Does that include the telephone line or not? Yes?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: Yes, everything.

[English]

Ms Torsney: And you had 105 aggressors last year and 13 victims.

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: Yes.

[English]

Ms Torsney: And 68%, I guess, of your 105 aggressors are adults.

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: Sixty eight of the 105 are adults.

[English]

Ms Torsney: Okay, which is just a bit less because it's only 105. You serve the Eastern Townships and, by telephone line, lots of people in other parts of the province.

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: People can call our hotline, but we cannot accept charges. It's impossible without budget. There are people from Sept-Îles who call the 819-823-4433 number and speak with a volunteer. One day, we would like to have a 1-800 number and be able to advertise throughout Quebec to meet increasing demand.

.1005

When a man loses power - I say man because most of the calls are from men - and is having trouble and problems, I would prefer him to call us rather than go to a park to commit a sexual assault. That is very clear to me.

It is really a question of prevention. I think that is the most fundamental service we can offer to an offender. The only way to reach them is through a telephone line where they can be sure of anonymity. We do not trace them. We are not there for that.

[English]

Ms Torsney: Do you get referrals from the kids' help line?

[Translation]

Ms Rioux: We have Tel-Jeunes. All our lines with information about us are connected to our offices. But there again, even thought Tel-Jeunes covers the entire province of Quebec, it is difficult for youths to make a long-distance call to the Eastern Townships.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent, you have five minutes.

Mr. St-Laurent: No. That's fine, Mrs. Rioux.

[English]

The Chair: We don't have any more time. I'm sorry. I was thinking that we started half an hour ago.

Thank you very much for your contribution. It was very helpful. Good luck.

We'll rise for two minutes while our next witnesses get ready.

.1010

.1012

The Chair: We're back on the record and we welcome Mr. Normand Bastien, who is the director of the Centre communautaire de l'Aide juridique de Montréal, youth division.

Welcome.

[Translation]

Mr. Normand Bastien (Director, Centre communautaire de l'Aide juridique de Montréal (Youth Division); individual presentation): I apologize for not having a brief. I will try to speak slowly.

I have been a lawyer for 23 years. I have been Director of the Montreal Legal Aid Service for the youth division for 17 years.

I had the honour of being a member of the task force established in 1990 by the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Social Affairs to study the Youth Protection Act and the enforcement of the Young Offenders Act in Quebec.

That task force produced two reports commonly known as reports Jasmin 1 and 2. The second report, which deals with the Young Offenders Act, has been available since the spring of 1995.

I also had the advantage - not necessarily an advantage, but at least the pleasure - of co-chairing a Quebec Bar association committee on legal representation for children, a committee which tabled a report in February 1995 containing a great number of recommendations on how lawyers are to behave if they represent children or teenagers, be it for cases of youth protection or young offenders.

I personally had the pleasure of tabling a brief on Bill C-37 in September 1994. I also sent a brief to the Senate committee on the same topic. I'm sure you see why I'm so eager to make a few comments on your study.

To avoid any confusion, I must point out that I am appearing as an individual here today. The opinions I might express are strictly my own. Briefly, the bureau I run, which usually has about a dozen lawyers, handled an average of 2000 cases per year between April 2nd, 1994 and March 31st 1995, for a total of nearly 22 000 cases involving young offenders. That obviously covers every type of possible crime, including murder.

.1015

Since there are a lot of questions, I could not give you an opinion on each of those cases, but I will for a given topic.

Your first questions are on youth crime. You are interested in community crime, among other things. Very briefly, I must say - at least this is my opinion - that life nowadays for our teenagers, especially those living in large cities, is such that they are often away from where they should be. An increasing number of them are no longer at school and they have tremendous difficulty finding work. They don't have enough education, and moreover, work is not necessarily available. Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer jobs, both for young people and for adults.

Ideally, we should try to get teenagers back to school, or into the work place, but we know that will not be easy to do. Before we can reach those goals, we first have to keep young people busy and take care of them.

We have street workers who bring people close together. We also have youth homes which are there to meet an important need. However, those groups spent more time finding money for the year to come than taking care of the youth in their charge. Every politician in Canada must ensure that those individuals get the funding they need, if only for two or three years, so that they can take care of those youths. They can be held accountable for that funding, if necessary. If they have to fill in an application every year and defend it, they are obviously not spending their time doing other work.

Unfortunately - this is an observation and I do not have the solution - , communities do not get involved in all the major discussions on delinquency. Yet they are the ones who are primarily responsible for making sure those people can be kept busy when they are not at school. There are fewer and fewer places for activities, activities are increasingly geared to the elite and the hours where youths would have access to facilities are increasingly limited, if not nonexistent.

Communities must do more than make rules banning knives and daggers in public places. They must do more. They must make sure that surroundings are relatively controlled.

I do not see why licenses are still being issued for slot machines near schools, etc. There are by-laws for that. Yet, in every neighbourhood with a big school, you will no doubt find an arcade or something similar. I think communities can do a lot to control that.

You talk about disincentives. I agree with the opinion presented in the Jasmin Report on the Young Offenders Act, that the disincentive for young people is directly proportional to the risk of being caught. It has nothing to do with a potentially long sentence or with any consequence of the act.

.1020

Whenever a youth thinks he will not get caught, he will be inclined to engage in such behaviour. Shoplifting is inversely proportional to the number of employees in a store. For economic reasons, staff has been reduced and individuals have more access to the merchandise. Obviously, people will want to get something for free.

Police do not patrol as much and this has a direct impact on break ins in residential areas. It is time to think about all this. As soon as you make economic choices or do anything to reduce preventive measures, at the end of the day people are going to take advantage of it.

There is also less patrolling around the schools and nearby parks, and everyone that knows, you don't have to do any studies on this - that, just like arcades, those are places where there is a great deal of drug trading, among other activities. Everyone knows at what time they occur, but patrol cars are virtually nonexistent in those places.

Right now, the main recognized investigation principle is the simplest one; informing. If someone does not report a given activity, there are no police officers there. It seems to me that if those choices are acceptable for adults, and this is not my view, we cannot let young people embark on such transactions and allow such things to take place around schools. There must be more patrolling of neighbourhoods around schools. It is not the schools' responsibility, because they already have enough trouble supervising school premises. The authorities must ensure that the areas around schools are patrolled.

There's another element that always surprises me in relation to prevention. In the past few years, we've had many different ways of identifying predictive factors. In 1990, we've made available a study conducted by a research group on childhood psychosocial maladjustment by the Faculté des Arts et des Sciences of the University of Montreal, more particularly by Professor Tremblay. They came to the conclusion that as early as kindergarten, it is possible to identify with a relatively high degree of accuracy certain factors that lead the individuals identified to behavioral problems associated with pre-delinquency. It's very easy. There have not been any large scale studies about this, but teachers often make these observations at the kindergarten level. These factors are aggression, hyperactivity, short attention span and anxiety.

I'm summarizing this. There is no doubt that this study shows that there is a link between these factors. It is possible to make predictions quite accurately. But from the moment when you identify these people, you have to do something and intervene. However, for many different reasons that are probably quite justified, at least from an economic standpoint, we are seeing an enormous level of disengagement in terms of intervention with these individuals.

In order to intervene, the crisis has to be a major one. Thee are no major crises at seven, eight, six or five years of age, except if a child is the victim of sexual or physical abuse or is simply abandoned. But a child of 4, 5 or 6 years of age never has the kind of serious behaviour or difficulties that usually lead to intervention. Therefore, we wait until 10, 11 or 12 years of age before we intervene. And when we do so, it has to be a massive intervention and we don't even have the means to do that. All we have left is a rehabilitation centre, which is extraordinarily expensive.

.1025

Right now, we have the impression, or I should say I have the impression, that certain major players who do not have the means to intervene hope that individuals commit a crime early, around 12 or 13, so that they can intervene quickly without having to make all the necessary assessments which are expensive to carry out. When you intervene in prevention, you have to do it with parents. You have to go and seek out the parents, conduct assessments, go to see the school whereas it's very simple to intervene when a youngster has committed his first break and enter. You have a nice police report and then you intervene.

But by proceeding this way, we are discrediting the Young Offenders Act because like it or not, the legislation will treat this first offence as a first offence.

The Young Offenders Act is not a protection act. It is no longer a protection act as was the Juvenile Delinquents Act. The Young Offenders Act is legislation intended to punish. This means that the action that will be permitted regarding the act committed will be a reaction that is relatively proportional to that act.

Hoping that we will intervene for 18 months with a 13 year-old because he has committed one break and enter in dreaming in technicolour. And hoping that we will intervene in the long-term for a first offence is to discredit the Young Offenders Act and raise false hopes. Youth Protection Acts are better suited for that.

All these kinds of problems the Young Offenders Act deals with will be dealt with only half way for the simple reason that the legislation does not extend to the parents. We cannot, under the Young Offenders Act, order parents to correct the situation they've created. We only involve one person who will have to respect certain conditions and submit to all kinds of examinations. That's the youngster himself. The parents are left alone.

The youngster is withdrawn for a certain period and put back on the right track, but he is sent back to his original environment which will not have improved and then we're surprised to see that an enormous amount of recidivism occurs.

Youth protection legislation allows us to intervene for a duration that is not linked to the act committed, but is related to a problem that has been determined. Certain laws allow us to intervene both with parents and children. I don't think we should wait until an offence occurs before intervening if we are able to obtain the necessary assessment. Goodness knows that studies are produced very quickly.

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that we have noticed an increasing disengagement by the schools. For all kinds of reasons, when the Youth Protection Act was first implemented in the early 80's, school were doing an awful lot of reporting, but we've noted that they no longer do so unless they're really fed up.

Relatively simple cases of parents who move, parents who do not come to pick up their young children, parents who forget their children in school, are no longer reporter to Children's Aid Authorities because the process is longer. You have to wait one, two or three months before the authorities look into the problem, and schools don't have that kind of time.

Therefore, if we want prevention to be meaningful, we have to do what Professor Trépanier called "investing in primary and secondary prevention". The Young Offenders Act enables us to intervene in a preventive manner at the tertiary level, by ensuring that an individual who has been caught will not become a repeat offender.

You've also expressed interest in the degree of knowledge that young people have of the Act. I would like to talk about the lack of knowledge by adults of the Young Offenders Act. The Young Offenders Act is known by adults through the media who unfortunately, mention this legislation when there is some high profile case. We have the impression that what adults know or retain about this legislation is simply what they hear in the media.

.1030

Thus, adults think that juveniles remain unpunished, which is not the case. Unfortunately, the fact that we allow this myth to be perpetuated means that every year, this legislation is called into question, whereas there is a great deal of prevention. It should be pointed out that, at least in Montreal, 90% of youngsters who appear before a youth court end up pleading guilty to one of the offenses they have been accused of within 30 or 40 days of their appearance. No one is unduly acquitted. The large majority of young people leave with at least probation, often three to six months. The very minor cases get community work and, generally, when it's a community work case, it is settled through alternative measures.

Adults are also extremely demanding of juveniles. And yet, if adults stop buying stolen goods, we would clearly solve a large part of the problem of breaking and entering. When an adult is involved in buying stolen goods, all judges give him a first chance. This is a consumer who took advantage of a chance. He gets away with it with the lightest of sentences. If you eliminate these adults who buy stolen goods you will solve the vast majority of break and enters committed by juveniles. It is not true that youngsters steel a sound system to bring it home. Generally, as soon as it leaves the home, the sound system has been promised to someone, to some adult.

Young people reproduce our own behaviour, be it our adult behaviour as parents or a behaviour seen on television or elsewhere. When we as adults regularly go through red lights with children in our car or park illegally, it is clear to them that we take law and order lightly. We shouldn't be surprised that youngsters have the same reaction and end up disregarding authority and any kind of rule.

In my opinion, we made a mistake when we simply abolished the crime of enticement of child that existed in the Juvenile Delinquents Act without replacing it with something similar. I believe that, in 1996, it's high time that we re-establish an offense under the Criminal Code which would be to permit, encourage or entice an adolescent to commit a crime, whatever it may be. There's no doubt that right now, the fact of having had a juvenile conflict is an aggravating circumstance in sentencing. In my opinion, that is not sufficient. It should be a separate offense similar to conspiracy.

Let me move on quickly to the legal system. I believe that it will be well nigh impossible to reconcile the need of adolescents and the protection of society outside a specialized jurisdiction. I don't want to start a long lecture on that. I will allow others to speak to that. I see that the Bar Association will discuss it, but I would like to say that personally, I found that jury trials at the juvenile level are incompatible with what we want to do in our Chambre de la jeunesse. I understand that the need to increase sentences for major crimes forced us, given the Canadian Charter of Rights, to consider longer periods of incarceration and therefore to offer trial by jury.

We must realize that under current legislation, there is a major inconsistency. It's the entire remand system which is misplaced, in my opinion. The remand system must remain, but it must take place after the verdict. Since the 1982 amendments, we have come to see that an individual of 16 or 17 years of age who bears the burden of proving that he should remain in the Chambre de la jeunesse, must subject himself to psychiatric assessment ordered by the adversary and predisposition reports. He will have to be questioned about his firm intention to not re-offend. He will have to be questioned on his ability to feel remorse.

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As lawyers, we have an obligation to inform the young person not to discuss the facts of the case because he will someday go to trial, possibly in adult court. Therefore, the assessment of the youngster in major cases is bad and incomplete. We've noted an increasing number of remands based solely on the total lack of remorse, when a young person has refused to discuss the facts of the case.

Because the court will take the facts of the case into consideration, the individual who comes to testify is often a police officer whose testimony is considered inadmissible at the time of the trial. We have the police officer testify with triple and quadruple hearsay, with the report from his colleagues. He testifies about the facts of the case. Rest assured that in terms of the facts of the case, this will be the absolute worst case scenario for the individual. When we get to trial, this individual will not even testify. This means we cannot question him about the contradictory evidence he has given or the vague answers that he may have given when he could have clarified the situation. This is an individual who comes as a witness but who will never testify.

In my opinion, the remand must take place at a different time. We can do this for adults With regard to adults, according to the chapter on dangerous offenders, the request is made after the verdict but before sentencing. It seems to me that that's when remand should take place. When an offender is found guilty, if the Crown thinks that the code of measures for juveniles is inadequate and inappropriate under the circumstances because of the facts proven or the guilty verdict, it should file a request so that the adult sentencing code can be applied, and that would be the point at issue.

Of course there would be technical details because when an individual runs the risk of incurring any sentence longer than five years you have to find a way for him to have indirect access to jury trial. I'll let the specialists find a way to have that done.

As for specific representations concerning the legislation, I think it's essential for you to re-introduce a detention in a hospital environment not only for a short period but also for a period adjusted to those periods provided for in the Young Offenders Act. If clause 20 (1)k) allows us to order the detention of an individual in a closed environment for seven years, the same period should be provided for in a hospital environment.

I think the hospital environment for young offenders should be considered differently from the one from adults. I think you have scheduled a visit to the Institut Philippe Pinel for tomorrow. You'll see there that in the juvenile unit of the wing juveniles are not in the same kind of hospital environment as adults would be. These are individuals who didn't have the defence of mental insanity or who were quite capable but where a certain pattern was detected that had to be corrected. In that environment, which is a safe environment, you have all the tools necessary to do it.

We can't afford to let an individual stay seven years in a centre without working when work is necessary, in other words, in a Pinel type environment. I travelled all over Canada and I especially went to Winnipeg in October 1995, and I unfortunately came to the conclusion that the Institut Philippe Pinel, at least on the juvenile unit side, was the envy of the rest of Canada as an institution. We have to find the means to send the young ones there. You have to go through a youth protection case to be sure the youth can be sent there. You have to convince a judge not to order confinement because if there is such an order, you can't send the person to the Institut Philippe Pinel.

Please, when provinces want to do something in that field and set up an institution, see to it we can use it.

.1040

In our legal system there are also inconsistencies. I am personally convinced that some young teenagers are just watching this go and are wondering, and rightly so, about how serious we adults are. The adversarial system is excellent and must remain, but there has to be some adaptation.

Everyone in the legal profession knows what a lawyers feels when you meet a youth four or five minutes the day before his appearance or even on that day and then you go into court and plead not guilty. But try and explain that to a somewhat delinquent juvenile or his parents. He's been caught in the act. He assaulted a police officer, he's admitted it to his social worker, to his school teacher and to his parents and all of a sudden this young guy he's seen for two or three minutes goes into a room and says: "Not guilty". We have to be allowed not to enter a plea, either guilty or not guilty, at that stage. We should be able to do that at a later date so there can be a first interview and an examination of what has been going on.

Don't imagine that a not-guilty plea is just pro forma. As a lawyer, before deciding that somebody is going to have criminal record which in some cases will stay there for a very long time: I just have to refer you to the C-19 clauses concerning the criminal record that specify it can be kept for five years or even longer - I want to be very sure that the guilty plea is entered for the right charges.

Secondly, the Crown itself acts the same way with juveniles as it does with adults. They throw in 12 charges all concerning the same events to make sure they haven't forgotten anything. When you look at all that later on, you'll see that there's evidence for only one or two of the charges. So, as a lawyer, I'm not going to plead guilty to the 12 charges just to settle the case. I want to make sure that one of the two charges mentioned by the Crown is really the one the individual is involved in.

I've often asked the Crown to forget that strategy with juveniles but they continue doing it because the more there are, the quicker they get a plea after that.

I'd have a lot to add, but I know you have time constraints. I'd like to draw your attention to another aspect as a parent rather than as a legal practitioner. The police have an obligation to inform parents when the juvenile is held in detention. Legislation provides that the parents will be sent a copy of all the summonses sent to the juvenile. But often the parents find out, the very day they're called to say that their child is being held, that the same child was picked up three, four or five times before, that nothing came of it and no charges were brought but that they had never been informed. Don't think the juvenile is going to tell his parents the police thought he did something but that there was no accusation.

The police should always advise parents that the child was questioned even if it's only as a witness or something else. It's asking a lot of the police, but what you have now in police stations are more and more technicians who are not police officers. You now have civilians who, a few days later, can inform the parents whose sons or daughter was questioned.

There's one last matter creating problems and directly linked to the Act. It has been decided, and I think it's healthy to do so, that the procedure used with young delinquents would be summary conviction. In itself, it's excellent but there is one problem. This procedure means the charge is laid where the offense was committed.

.1045

So juveniles domiciled in Montreal and holidaying in the Gaspé during the summer can be involved in a crime. The charge will be brought in the Gaspé even though the juvenile is in Montreal. In the area of criminal acts, we have the advantage of being able to bring the charge wherever the individual happens to be. It seems to be the departmental technicians should be able to make it possible to accuse the individual wherever he happens to be even though it's a summary conviction.

Once again, I'll let the specialists find out how it should be done. I must admit it that it does create a major problem. It's more and more frequent, because people travel a lot.

Thank you for your attention.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bastien.

We have some time.

Mr. St-Laurent for ten minutes.

Mr. St-Laurent: Thank you.

[Translation]

I'll continue with the summary conviction.

Down home, in Sept-Îles, a lot of people being held in jail were being held under summary convictions. The system, in other words the government, with taxpayer's money, had to pay for their trip to Montreal or Quebec City and, of course, they had to be accompanied by officers. This involves huge sums of money. I quite agree with you.

Mr. Bastien, you told us about the reaction of lawyers representing juveniles. You also mentioned the possibility of delaying any plea of guilty or not guilty. Concerning professional behaviour of lawyers, I know, because I've seen it myself, that there's a bit more to it than that when a lawyer is defending a child who has been molested and when we hear the aggressor describing the situation in the witness box. It's almost inhuman, both for the lawyer as well as the poor victim.

Do you also want to say a few words about that behaviour or are you looking strictly at the matter of law?

Mr. Bastien: No, especially not the matter of law. The Quebec Bar Committee was looking at everything except that matter. Lawyers have adequate training in that area.

Let's take the Quebec lawyers' code of ethics, for example. There are many clauses in there and each one of those clauses starts with the word "client", but nothing is said about the age of that client.

As an adult, when I'm dealing with an adult client, even though it may not be desirable to do this sort of thing, I can always say: "There is nothing to that. All the cops are crooked. They didn't do their work properly and so forth" to justify my billing or to prove that I'm a good lawyer.

Now you shouldn't have the right to do that with the juvenile. We shouldn't have that right because we are first and foremost adults and professionals. The juvenile sees us as an adult first, and if I put down the law or if I hold the police or the legal system up to ridicule and tell him we'll get out of this using the Charter, I'm just entrenching him in his position.

I have to represent him professionally by explaining all possible and adequate means of defence, and I also have to be careful about how I present all that and explain the rule of law even if it's only to get across the meaning of the not guilty plea. That requires some time and not everyone necessarily takes it. But we're especially not given the time.

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You know that the time frames are important in juvenile matters. I'm one of those who think that time doesn't have the same meaning for youth, but I'm also sure that if we try to go too fast, we're neglecting another side of the story.

We shouldn't forget that a young offender who's committed a crime comes to us with very low self-esteem. As we all know, self-esteem is something you always have to work at. Generally, the young offender has lost any confidence he might have in any adult around him, whether his parents or his teachers, or the social worker looking after his case.

When I get to deal with him, as an adult and a professional, I have to meet him very quickly and put in a plea of not guilty. You can't expect me to win that person's confidence in the following few minutes just because I'm a lawyer. I have to earn his confidence little by little, and certainly not by reciting the Criminal Code and explaining legal rules to him, but rather by listening to him and trying to get him to trust me. Only then will it be possible to get set to represent him and, in 98 percent of cases, get him to admit the facts. But that's something you have to build up, and it's a process that has to be built up.

That's why the report insists on the fact that trust is not automatically given, but has to be earned. If you're a lawyer, the kid isn't going to tell you that he doesn't want you anymore or that he doesn't trust you because he won't say that kind of thing to an adult he doesn't know. He will be able to say it to his parents or his friends. So I have to listen. As a lawyer, if I can see that he's never trusted me or doesn't trust me anymore and that I can't get half the facts out of him that I need, I think my duty is to drop the case instead of pushing on to justify some sort of work schedule and force the child to say or do something.

Of course, I can tell him to plead guilty, and he will do it, but later on, when you get to the pre-sentencing report stage, he'll just deny the facts. You have more and more people pleading guilty and then denying the facts. So there is very often a lack of communication and mutual trust. That's why, as a lawyer, I'm putting the problem to you and telling you that time is needed to do this sort of thing.

It's also desirable to have the possibility of access to training, not only in law, but also in psychology and other areas. We think it's important to know how to address teenagers. We have children and we didn't always succeed as we would have liked with our own teens. When we're dealing with other people's teenagers, it's important to be able to ask the right questions and find the best way to deal with them.

Mr. St-Laurent: Mr. Bastien, I'd like to change the subject and talk about street workers. I think you've been doing your job and defending delinquents for some years now, but when you started doing thins I don't think they existed. So, as a professional in defending delinquents and also as a father, can you tell us if there has been any improvement, because I imagine that there hopefully hasn't been any deterioration? Could you tell us what you think about street workers?

Mr. Bastien: First of all, you're quite right in saying that there were far fewer street workers. In any case, we didn't hear about them. At the time, those people were more like volunteers with a sort of calling.

I can say that in the big cities that I know well, there are more and more young people who aren't in school or part of the labour force, and they're on the streets. That need was responded to by having social workers work the streets to reach them. Systems had to be found that weren't institutional because the institutions would not have been able to reach them. This year, youth houses were also set up.

We have to realize that this is modern day reality and it's far from being satisfactory, but that is the situation. It's sad to see that more and more young people have less and less money and that the majority of them have drug problems which make them even less trusting of adults. In any case, they won't go to see street workers alone, they'll always bring along two or three friends. It's the same thing for youth shelters. They have to put something of their own into it to feel like coming back alone, ask for help if needed and be guided in the right direction.

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Generally, the young people who frequent street workers don't ask for help but get help anyway because solutions are suggested, especially in the area of addictions. I think it's very important. We have to seek out young people where they are and, most often, when they're dealing with social workers, they don't commit crime.

Mr. St-Laurent: You mentioned that the Young Offenders Act didn't have any hold over parents. I find that's a major defect. How do you think we can remedy that? Should we add anything? Of course, I'm asking you for something specific, but I think that we can give a broad enough response in that sense. Could you tell us if you'd like to see us add into the bill something about parental responsibility or automatically sending parents a copy of notices of warning concerning a criminal act? What solutions do you suggest?

Mr. Bastien: One of the first things - and I think it's crucial - is that the parent, no matter that our opinion might be that his or her presence is good or bad, must receive information regarding the delinquent activities of the son, whether accused or not. I think parents must be informed about any investigation concerning their child even though there may be no solid proof concerning the offence.

Concerned parents who want to get involved will be able to take corrective action. Of course, there will always be those parents who congratulate their children for not getting caught. On the other hand, those who want to do something about it will be able to. So I maintain it's important for parents to be involved.

But there's another aspect that might turn out to be a problem and I've already said something in my comments. Under the Young Offenders Act, if a son is found guilty of break and entry, you won't be able to order the absent or addicted father or the mother with specific problems to go into therapy. Theoretically, the judge has no legal grounds to order that.

That's why I was saying that this might be done in the youth protection area. The Young Offenders Act allows to recognize that a crime has been committed and that it entails a punishment. It allows us to understand the reasons leading to the crime. Actually, you have added a principle requiring an attempt at understanding what led an individual to committing a given act.

If the crime leads us to the understanding that there's a problem in the family unit, it seems to me the protection aspect should intervene. However, it's a heavy burden to bear because you have to open two case files and get two different systems involved. Even if one of the aspects is set aside, you are going to have to start all over again six months later. The young offender is going to have to go through his probationary period. The conditions will be respected by his presence in a rehabilitation centre for six or 18 months.

During that period, parents aren't going to improve because they'll get the impression they're getting a respite. As the juvenile isn't around, he's of no further concern. But the parents' problem won't have been solved. And when you hand the youth back to them six or eight months later, then you're putting him back into an environment that hasn't changed or that has even become worse. Then, if the young person repeats, he's going to be blamed for not having used the opportunity he was given. At the same time, we've done nothing to correct and improve his environment.

So I believe we should try to come up with the necessary means to help our youth. If we can't do it through the Young Offenders Act, we should at least ensure a minimum. You have said that the provincial director and the Youth Protection Agency were two entities. In your enabling legislation, you did not say that the provincial director would necessarily have similar authority in the area of protection.

The provinces decided to join those two responsibilities and put them under the same individual. Thus, if we merge these responsibilities and hand them over to one individual, then we should be able to open one single case file and settle it. Perhaps we should think about giving this responsibility to a single individual or case worker. Maybe there should be an independent arm for young offenders and maybe people should be encouraged to use both Acts when necessary.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ramsay, you have ten minutes.

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Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have been very impressed with your presentation. I believe your presentation has come from an honest and sincere concern for the interests of the child and you do not represent any special interest other than that. That's very encouraging to me, particularly when it comes from a defence lawyer. So I could listen to you much longer than we have time to listen and I could ask you many questions about what you have said, because what you have said makes sense to me.

You said the Young Offenders Act is no longer an act of protection, as was the Juvenile Delinquents Act. I took many notes and I was writing quickly and I may not have taken that down accurately. If I understood you correctly in your statement on that, would you elaborate on that?

I connect this with one other thing you said. You said there should be a new offence in the Criminal Code to deal with adults who encourage children, youth, to get into difficulty with the law. Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act there used to be an offence of contributing to the delinquency of a minor or juvenile. Would you recommend that it be reintroduced, or that something similar be reintroduced, and would you elaborate a bit on what you mean when you made the statement that the Young Offenders Act is no longer an act of protection as the Juvenile Delinquents Act was?

[Translation]

Mr. Bastien: As to the first part of your question, I had the opportunity to discuss that reality at length, in other words the difference between the Juvenile Delinquents Act and what the 1982 Young Offenders Act used to be. The text of that thesis is soon to be published in the University of Ottawa Journal.

There was a symposium at the University of Ottawa Civil Law Faculty on a subject I was interested and I think that Mr. Dupuy was there. In the light of the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court in 1992 and the comments made on young offenders as well as the comparisons drawn by the Supreme Court justices with the old legislation, I have come to the conclusion that the Young Offenders Act was healing legislation that sought a remedy rather than a punishment. In other words, the crime committed was an opportunity to be made aware that there was a problem and, no matter what the offence was, we were only looking for a solution to the problem.

In the case of an offence against a municipal bylaw which was covered by the Juvenile Delinquents Act at the time, if it led us to understanding that an individual had been abandoned by his family, we could step in under the offence in question for 18 months or two years. At the time, you could even put young people away for an indeterminate period. The offence was of no importance and there was no relation with the corrective measure.

With the Young Offenders Act, we got accountability. It said the young people would be accountable for their actions but to a lesser degree than adults. That statement of principle alone led to sanctions, the consequences of the action. For any action, there was a sanction which meant that unconsciously or consciously - because I don't know what the law makers were thinking at the time - a code was created where rigid standards were observed up to the moment of the verdict.

To arrive at a guilty verdict, the Charter is respected, the principles are respected and procedure is respected. But once the individual is found guilty, you forget the Criminal Code and you "heal"; you look for a remedy or corrective action. But, unfortunately or fortunately, there's always a degree of proportionality depending on the perception of each and everyone whereas for shoplifting, even if you identify a major problem, the Young Offenders Act doesn't allow us to step in for 18 months. It only takes into account the offence that was committed. There is a proportionality there which was increased with the amendments to C-37 which became C-19.

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In Bill C-19, you have introduced a rule preventing the judge from using placement without dropping all the other measures in clause 20. That didn't use to exist. Today, it is statutory and the judge cannot use placement as a consequence of the action without explaining why none of the other measures provided for in clause 20 will be retained except placement. That did not exist and now exists since December 1995.

So it's becoming more and more true now that there is an element of proportionality in the sanctions depending on what crime was committed.

That's the first part of the problem and the first distinction. While you were away, Mr. Dupuy, I mentioned I had the opportunity, in Ottawa, to elaborate on the distinction on the Young Offenders Act and the Juvenile Delinquents Act and the two different approaches. That text will soon be made available in the University of Ottawa Journal. I proofread it recently and, in theory, it should be published in October. I'm just drawing your attention to that.

Could you refresh me on the other aspect of your question?

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: It had to do with a new offence under the Criminal Code.

Mr. Bastien: What I want is not really the same thing.

[Translation]

Clause 33 on enticement of a minor said nothing about consent. At the time, for example, clause 33, provided that an eighteen or nineteen year old boy, an adult, who had sexual relations with a seventeen girl was accused of enticing a minor. There were distinctions that did not work.

Today, an adult can be accused of committing a robbery with a juvenile but there is no supplementary accusation for having enticed a juvenile to act.

I would like to see it clearly stated that complicity itself is not a crime but only participation in a crime. On the other hand, plotting should be considered as an offence. The fact that three individuals agree to commit a crime and the fact that they commit a crime constitute two offenses.

Personally, in the case where an adult entices a juvenile to commit a crime, I would like to see the adult accused, on the one hand, of the act as such, but also, on the other hand, of having incited a juvenile to commit an act. I think that would weigh more heavily both in the case of the criminal record and the sentence.

It's not a matter of searching out people and laying charges for the sake of laying charges but rather getting across the message to adults some way other than cracking down on young offenders through the Young Offenders Act. This message would make us adults realize our responsibility when we buy a stolen television or sound system, when we sell drugs or hire a young prostitute. When I say we, I do not mean to involve myself in such acts but rather to suggest that there is a certain trend to see such things as common-place. Adults will have to realize that they will no longer be able to get away with this kind of thing.

There is a growing awareness of these problems. People are now trying to think of a way of controlling sexual tourism. It's part of the same approach and action is necessary.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: We heard what to me amounted to really shocking testimony from our previous witness this morning, that in some communities incest is almost an acceptable norm. Now, we never have enough time with witnesses. I never got to the point where I asked the witness whether or not there'd been any charges against the parents as a result of information that surfaced. How do you feel about this? Do you feel there is strong enough enforcement of the law when incest and sexual abuse by parents surface? Do you think those laws are being properly and adequately enforced?

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[Translation]

Mr. Bastien: It is definitely inadequate and I think a more serious attempt should be made. The problem when a decision is made to intervene in a parent-child relationship by laying charges against the parents is that the family unit is destroyed. Of course there are other factors that can mitigate such interventions. The fact that the parents are involved should not prevent us from taking action.

I did intend to draw your attention to a similar point. Section 215 of the Criminal Code does specify a legal duty to provide necessaries of life for a child in the case of parents and a failure to provide for one's children is an offence although charges are no longer laid in such cases. However the provision remains in the Criminal Code.

Personally I can remember that when I started practising in 1973 there were lots of cases of parents charged with not providing for their children. It is no longer true now because the state has taken over and intervenes under youth protection and welfare legislation. Fathers can disappear and forget about their children, both parents can disappear and make no provision for their children without the justice system coming into play. I think it's high time we acted. I don't mean that everyone should be prosecuted but there are certain realities that still exist and that we tend to overlook.

Of course we have to exercise proper judgment. Offences must be punished. I'm thinking of incest, for example, something that was tolerated in certain environments for all sorts of reasons, cultural and other, although I don't think anyone really accepts it. But incest must not be tolerated and if charges are to be laid, then they must be laid. However, as for any other charges, there is always another way of dealing with certain cases.

As a matter of fact, an alternative measures process has just been introduced for adults. With Bill C-22 which came into effect on September 3, you have exactly this type of power. If the parents are guilty, they can perhaps be charged without being imprisoned through the use of the alternative measures.

[English]

alternative measures for the adults. It's now in force.

[Translation]

So for all these reasons I do think we have the necessary instruments but there must be the will to make use of them. I am not sure that this is true for everyone.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, and I agree with you.

The Chair: Mr. Maloney.

Mr. Maloney (Erie): Does that mean the Young Offenders Act is going to be a focus or lightning rod for criticism of the youth justice system?

You've done a comparison between the Juvenile Delinquents Act and the Young Offenders Act. Are there certain aspects of the Juvenile Delinquents Act that you think might have beneficial application to a new Young Offenders Act?

Can we take the good and bad from both and combine them for a win-win type of legislation?

[Translation]

Mr. Bastien: Let me very clear about that. I don't think that we should go back to the 1908 Act. The 1982 Act provided for a difficult but important balance. The Young Offenders Act, with the 1986 and 1992 amendments, particularly the 1992 ones, was turned into a get tough law. There is no doubt that all the provisions aimed at protection will be removed because when a get-tough approach is taken, procedural guarantees must be added.

Before someone is sent to a rehabilitation centre for ten years or even seven years, it is important to ensure that all the appropriate guarantees under the Charter are provided along with procedural guarantees. Whenever legislation is made more strict, then the individual must be ensured all the appropriate guarantees.

The 1982 Act provided for a relatively short period of intervention and thus was able to retain a great many of the protection elements relating to treatment. If you were to read over the principles set out in this act, you would see that the 1982 Act retained a great many of the principles found in a Juvenile Delinquents Act but that they came into play at a different stage, that is the treatment phase.

[English]

after the conviction.

.1115

[Translation]

There were a great many possibilities. The Act provided for a different degree of proportionality but the possibilities were enormous. I don't know whether it is a legislative phenomenon but it seems that when legislation is passed in Canada, certain aspects are toughened and others are relaxed so that the end result is quite different. I think it is this process that must be reviewed.

A choice has to be made, we must decide whether we want an act that allows for treatment after conviction or whether it is to be criminal legislation, pure and simple. If we do not want criminal legislation in the case of treatment, then of course we will have to reintroduce certain notions relating to protection and children's aid or aid to young offenders. Otherwise we should just forget it.

[English]

Mr. Maloney: Which approach do you feel would be better, and why?

[Translation]

Mr. Bastien: The 1982 approach.

[English]

The one of 1982 - I think the last one was not a good shot.

[Translation]

In my opinion, the 1995 legislation, Bill C-19 went a bit too far in the get-tough approach, particularly with respect to the necessary escalation when it comes to sanctions. Before the 1995 amendments, when an individual was convicted of break and enter, the only rule imposed on the judge was that he could not give a stiffer sentence than that which would apply to an adult in the same circumstances. That was the only rule.

For the first offence he could sentence the offender to eight months detention. It wasn't common but it was possible. With the 1995 amendments the judge no longer has this possibility but must first go through the probation period and justify why he has not chosen probation or other measures. As for detention in a secure environment, the judge also has to go through a number of stages before deciding on secure custody.

The Supreme Court decision in R. vs M. (J.J.) in 1993 states that the family circumstances can be taken into account to a considerable extent when choosing a course of action. But that is not necessarily the logic underlying the decision.

So in the case of a break and enter that would technically allow for up to three years and in circumstances where the family environment was totally lacking, before 1995 in the case of a first offence, the judge could decide to send the offender to a rehabilitation centre for a period of eight months. Since 1995, he no longer has this possibility because of the totally different rules established by section 24 and others.

Stricter penalties were established but at the same time an attempt was made to ensure that they would apply only as the last resort. Various stages and rules were introduced to this effect but the result has been to prevent action from being taken at the proper time. I am sure that there are now people who want young offenders to reoffend as quickly as possible so that an attempt can be made to provide a real solution. It doesn't make much sense but that's the situation we find ourselves in.

[English]

Mr. Maloney: You indicated that under your Youth Protection Act there are ways to involve the parents that the Young Offenders Act doesn't have. Could you be specific in that respect?

[Translation]

Mr. Bastien: The Youth Protection Act applies from the age of 0 to 18, at least in Quebec. A judge's observation that the safety and development of the child are compromised can be based on several grounds, one of which is closely related to the Young Offenders Act, namely serious behavioural problems. Such problems may include taking drugs, staying out all night, being a member of a gang, truancy etc. When parents are unable to deal with the situation, the court intervenes and declares that the child's safety or development is jeopardized.

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Assessments may indicate that in the circumstances, the young person must spend 18 months in a rehabilitation centre before recovering his autonomy.

This has nothing to do with an offence having been committed. It's merely a matter of making an individual assessment taking into account the person's problems and the intervention considered appropriate, that is 18 months in a rehabilitation centre.

This intervention is not limited to the young person alone. The person responsible for the case must provide assistance and advice, not only to the child, but also to the parents, in other words the centre must involve the parents and work together with them in solving the various elements of the problem during the 18-month period. If things go well, this 18-month period may be shortened as the result of a legal decision and the young person may be returned to his environment. In keeping with the judge's decision, the parents are required to be involved since they are an integral part of the case. As a matter of fact, the parents have their own legal counsel.

[English]

Mr. Maloney: What are the penalties if the parents don't take part in the program?

Mr. Bastien: In the protection law they can. They have to do that.

Mr. Maloney: What if they don't? What penal -

Mr. Bastien: Eventually, they do.

Mr. Maloney: Do you envisage a closer relationship between the child welfare mental health legislation and our youth justice system? Would that be beneficial?

Mr. Bastien: No.

Mr. Maloney: Why?

[Translation]

Mr. Bastien: No. If the two types of legislation are combined, we may be giving out the wrong message. In its present form, the Young Offenders Act sets out to sanction behaviour that society will not accept, behaviour for which young people must be held accountable.

Young offenders represented by a lawyer know that their behaviour will have consequences, this comes as no surprise. The lawyer will attempt to convince the court to hand down the lightest possible penalty but they know that there will be a consequence.

[English]

They know about that.

[Translation]

When it comes to protection, technically often the young person has nothing to do with the measure that will be chosen for him or for her. Take the example of a girl who is being sexually abused by her mother's new husband, where the mother is unwilling to lose her husband and decides to believe him rather than her daughter. The girl is a victim and ends up in a rehabilitation centre while the new husband carries on living as if nothing had happened. You cannot deal with these two types of problem by combining the two kinds of legislation.

One kind of legislation must deal with a family situation where a family is unable to meet the basic needs of one or several children. But in the case of young offenders, we are dealing with the behaviour of the offender. This behaviour may be explained by an inadequate family environment but the first consideration here is the sanction.

We must not continue to maintain, as has sometimes been implied, that the young offender is not responsible for his actions and therefore is not liable to any consequences. He has committed an act that may be understandable, but he is responsible for it and must therefore be sanctioned.

So we cannot deal with this type of behaviour through legislation the purpose of which is to protect or to ensure welfare without reference to any notion of responsibility. It would be a mistake to go back to that.

At the same time we must ensure that these two types of legislation work together and allow for certain economies of scale, when possible. We must not return to the past.

[English]

Mr. Maloney: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Maloney.

Thank you very much for your assistance today. We appreciate it.

We'll take a two-minute break until our next witnesses can take the table.

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The Chair: We are resuming with the Quebec Association of Alternative Justice Organizations.

Perhaps you could take a moment to introduce your members. I see the names: Mr. Simard, Ms Tamborini, Mr. Charbonneau, and Mr. Béliveau. I take it you want to go through your paper. Then we'll ask questions.

[Translation]

Ms Josée Tamborini (Director of Trio Jeunesse, President of the Regroupement des organismes de justice alternative du Québec (Quebec association of alternative justice organisations): Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to thank you for giving us this opportunity to present our point of view today. We hope that everyone has received a copy of our brief.

I'd like to introduce Mr. Luc Simard, who is a member of the board of directors of the Quebec association of alternative justice organizations and who is also responsible for an alternative justice organization in Sainte-Foy, Mr. Serge Charbonneau, our association coordinator and Mr. Denis Béliveau, our consultant. I am the president of the association and responsible for an alternative justice organization in the Outaouais area.

First of all, to give you some general background, our association of alternative justice organizations in Quebec is a non profit organization with some 39 member organizations providing service throughout Quebec.

We have more than 130 members who are in daily contact with young people who have been in conflict with the justice system and we also have a network of volunteer workers who act as supervisors.

These organizations have been implementing an alternative measures program for almost 10 years now under the Young Offenders Act. They attempt to provide alternative measures to the criminal justice system for the benefit of minors with the constant support and aid of community volunteers.

These organizations make an effort to reconcile the interests of the parties involved, to protect society, to emphasize the principle of reparation and to avoid the stigmatizing young people.

Let me provide you with some figures. In 1993, 10,992 young people were entrusted to our organizations throughout Quebec; 56 per cent of them took part in an alternative measures program, 33 per cent in a program under court order and 11 per cent were ordered to do compensatory work to pay for driving offences, for example.

Fifty-nine per cent of them did community work, 24 per cent of the adolescents were involved in measures aimed at improving their social attitude, 3 per cent in victim reconciliation measures and 11 per cent in compensatory work.

Organizations are making an increasing effort to focus on mediation with victims since this is an effective way of involving the adolescent and the injured party and encouraging them to find a solution together.

Through mediation measures, we are giving an increasingly active role to the parties involved so that adolescents can be better understood and we can address at the same time the lack of safety felt by many members of the community.

We believe that mediation does enable people to have a better sense of control.

I'll ask Mr. Simard to talk about the other measures.

Mr. Luc Simard (Director of Alternative Jeunesse Rive-Sud, Director of Regroupement des organismes de justice alternative): Our partner associations play a very important role in the accomplishment of our mission. It can probably be said that we have one of the best developed networks in Quebec as far as involving non profit organizations.

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These organizations involve community members, young people who wish to work with other adolescents for both program development and implementation. They are truly involved in all spheres of our organization and are essential partners.

This community participation is very important and has a significant impact, for example as regards acceptance of responsibility regarding young people and the justice system. Through its involvement, the community feels a little more concerned by what happens to these young people and by the Young Offenders Act. This also enables the community to demystify somewhat delinquency, what happens to young people, the Young Offenders Act, and also to have a more realistic view of the measures which can be taken in the case of young people. It helps to remove certain prejudices which may sometimes exist.

In order to do so, the community needs a lot of support and assistance, and that is what we provide.

We believe that community involvement has a very beneficial impact on young people, making them feel that they belong to their particular community when the latter becomes involved in helping them. Furthermore, the judicial process may sometimes be quite lengthy, and such involvement has the effect of giving it a human face when a crime has been committed.

As regards the measures as such, when we look at the improvement in social attitudes we see that the community is very involved in our programs and, in its own interest, feels motivated to volunteer help and support for young people. The young people themselves also asked to participate voluntarily in meetings with resource persons from their environment with whom they can discuss issues of particular relevance to them, such as drug dependency or violence for example.

We should now talk about community work. The performance of such work enables a young offender to understand that compensation has been provided following the perpetration of a crime, thus completing the process. An offence has been committed, and compensation or reparation must be made. Thus, a negative situation can be transformed into something positive through work performed for the community. Such measures are often very tangible and very valuable.

We consider the notion of reparation or compensation to be very important. This is an approach which can be easily understood by young people. I think it becomes more significant for a young offender because he or she can clearly understand the reason for it.

Obviously if there is direct compensation made to victims, the measure seems to be even more tangible; it is easier for the young person to understand it and there may be an impact in terms of the performance of the work. Symbolic compensation, through community work, seems to us to be an excellent alternative approach.

It is important to make it clear that the primary objective of this measure is symbolic compensation. If, as we sometimes observe, we are sliding towards other objectives than symbolic compensation, we will miss the primary objectives intended by this measure. We would then be asking the community concerned to make a different sort of investment, and I do not believe that would be desirable.

I would now ask Mr. Charbonneau to continue.

Mr. Serge Charbonneau (Regroupement des organismes de justice alternative du Québec): In view of the lateness with which we submitted our brief, I would simply like to go over the main points contained in it and address some more general issues of concern to your committee regarding crime in the broad sense of the term, that is the sense within which we must act, and the need for the legislation and other related subjects.

I would just like to remind you briefly that we appeared before you on November 1 1994 to share with you our observations concerning the bill under consideration at the time.

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We told you then basically the same things as we are saying today. There is nothing new in this period. Contrary to what some people believe and what the media reports, and these facts are documented by a number of individuals as well as being confirmed in your own consultation papers, there is in fact no real increase in youth crime. This finding is confirmed by recent studies.

Moreover, as stated in our brief, a task force has studied the application of the Young Offenders Act in Quebec and in no part of the brief is there any reference to a frightening increase in crime or a need to review the legislation and make it tougher. This was not at all the direction taken by the Jasmin task force.

These findings and observations of well respected criminologists such as Mr. Jean Trépanier and others suggest to us non-specialists that the crime situation has not necessarily deteriorated and should not cause us to feel more concerned about it.

The increasing climate of terror among young people in schools seems to be something which perhaps worries their parents more. Is this climate of terror due to a real increase in the number of violent acts or is it attributable to other factors?

We believe that there is certainly a serious problem. We must consider whether the Young Offenders Act and its provisions are likely to lead to a decrease in the number of acts of aggression in schools or moderate the climate of insecurity there. The answer is quite simply no. That would be far too simple, although it might perhaps be wonderful if things did work that way. That would be a magic pill. Addressing the phenomenon of violence in schools is far more complicated than that.

In fact, we have to be careful when talking about "addressing the phenomenon of violence" because we are not sure that there is in fact an increase.

We can say with certainty that when conflicts break out between young people in schools, some consequences may be far more serious than in the past. We find that young people are more often armed than they use to be.

We might perhaps propose the argument that instead of there being an increase in the number of acts of violence, there is in fact a reduction in the number of assaults in view of the likely consequences which are more serious for some people.

When we look at this question and determine how to approach it, we see that a partnership is really needed. Ms Tamborini will explain to you later some of the measures which have been tried to address this phenomenon.

Is there a link between crime in Canada and the Young Offenders Act? We have reiterated our viewpoint. We do not believe that there is any link between crime rates and the Act, but rather with the way the latter is applied.

As we mentioned earlier, what deters young people is the certainty of being apprehended. It is not the certainty of a long sentence or imprisonment; it is the certainty of being arrested. As we know very well, few young people are arrested, and the risks are negligible. This is an aspect which should be looked at.

Some people seem to be calling into question the utility of the justice system for minors. As we did in our brief, we reassert the value of the system. We did in fact hire the services of an expert historian who drafted the historical part of our brief. He explained that as early as 1857, Canada was taking measures with respect to young people. These measures or provisions sought to speed up the trial and punishment of young offenders.

With respect to the system for minors, a second point which has to be looked at is its severity. We support all the observations of Judge Jasmin and his colleagues in the report.

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There must also be provisions to take into account the specific needs of young people. We believe it would be a serious mistake to use an identical justice system for adults and minors, which failed to take into account the particular needs and state of development of minors.

The question of acceptance of responsibility, which was introduced with the Young Offenders Act, should be studied. We believe the mediation is a measure which should lead to a greater acceptance of responsibility. We must also look at the situation of victims within this system for minors. We should move away from this view which focuses solely on the offender and ignores the victim and his or her needs. I think that the justice system for minors should look at these issues.

As regards the work of your committee, it is important that the wrong message not be given to the Canadian public. The federal government has an enormous responsibility with respect to the perception of crime, and your findings will either help us or greatly hurt us in obtaining the cooperation of the community to accept young offenders.

We would ask you to present as objective and moderate an image as possible of the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency in Canada so as to avoid further stigmatizing young people, given their situation and the difficulty they have in finding a job and becoming full citizens of this country. We believe that great attention must be given to the image projected of young Canadians.

Ms Tamborini: As regards "peer mediation" programs, of which there are more and more in high schools, I would like to share with you an experience we had in Quebec. We observed the implementation of such a program in a school. During the first three or four months of the experiment, the students consulted volunteered mediators who came to the school to resolve conflicts.

However, the young people came after blows had been exchanged. After three or four months, word went around in the school and the students consulted the volunteer mediators before conflicts arose. For example, the young people knew that there was going to be a fight after school. They would go and consult the mediator so as to meet the other party and try to find a solution together.

Such experiences showed to us that parties involved in disputes are able to find solutions other than fighting and hurting people.

As a result of these programs, the number of complaints made to the police and reference to the Young Offenders Act has decreased.

The experiment also showed that the solutions developed by the people themselves were respected. There were no fights after mediation. We also noted that it greatly improved the atmosphere in schools. This is an important thing in schools where, often, there is a lot of fear. The program greatly reduced fear and trained young people for the future. Once someone has taken part in a mediation program, he or should tends to want to resolve conflicts subsequently.

Many parents and young people learned from this program and subsequently wanted to become volunteer mediators and continue the tradition.

Therefore it is possible. It is an alternative solution on which a lot of energy and money might be focused. It is a viable project and it is already being implemented in other parts of Canada. Peer mediation is not used only in Quebec. This is something which should be pursued.

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My colleagues may have something to add.

Our report contains our recommendations. In the future, it is important to specify the objectives of sentences handed down, to focus on direct compensation - we talked about mediation - and to invest in conflict resolution procedures.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. St-Laurent, ten minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: You addressed a point of particular interest to me, namely how to prevent crime or reduce the criminal instincts of certain people. Perhaps the term criminal instinct is a little strong, but well...

Last spring, I was asked to speak to students in the Law Faculty at the University of Ottawa. I told them that I was a strong supporter of a holistic justice system, as it is referred to in a more highly developed environment. Such a system has been considerably developed by aboriginal Canadians. It is used when someone has committed a crime, not necessarily a major crime. A council meets, bringing together elders and people from the community, as well as the victim and the offender, and together they try to bring the individual to accept that he has committed a crime. They look together for alternative solutions to enable him to pay his debt to society and avoid re-offending.

Of course, to apply that on a large scale in the present judicial system is not an easy task, but we must work on it. People thought the Eiffel tower could not be built, but once they were at the top, they realized it was possible.

How are things done in your organization? Tell me about it in five minutes. What is the process? How does it work?

Ms Tamborini: How does it work? First of all, we must know whether the teenager who admits he is guilty of an offence also wants to be involved in the mediation program. That is the first thing.

After the agreement on alternative measures is signed, we see the teenager. We contact the victim and we arrange a meeting. That meeting is conducted by a worker from one of the organizations and by a volunteer from the community. I don't know if that is a specific enough answer for you.

Mr. St-Laurent: I'm referring to holistic centres. I had suggested, among other things, a kind of hypothetical scenario in which there was a judge, someone who could give a ruling more easily, without a lawyer being present, at least at that stage, but where the victim would also be present, as well as the offender and some people from the community who don't necessarily know the offender. It is not that easy to find. I don't know how that could be done. Do you manage to do something like that? Does your group look somewhat like what I just described.

Mr. Carbonneau: At the present time, we cannot say that these initiatives are very common outside official institutions, because at the moment, a youth worker is always in charge of the case and is ultimately responsible for managing the situation. However, I find your question interesting. Is it possible to develop such a process, to extend it to a larger population, and thus to find avenues that might be more appropriate? We bet it is possible.

We are presently in the first stage in the development of that type of approach. It is a process that is part of the Quebec alternative measures program and it must abide by extremely strict codes.

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Such experiments should be developed further while maintaining governmental or institutional control of the process, so as not to create a parallel justice system, a form of justice that would be more or less vindictive. We must have a justice system which is in line with the parameters we established by democratic means.

How can we ensure institutions maintain control of these procedures, while having a process in which people are almost totally in charge of managing the procedures and finding a the solution to their conflict? We are very well aware that some experiments are being carried out. You mentioned some aboriginal experiments and there are others that are being carried out on a small scale.

In this kind of procedure, the young person no longer feels like a victim, like someone who is unjustly treated, since he is involved and admits his guilt. One might think, in a way, that his responsibility is lessened, by putting it in its context. As for the victim, the process is no longer experienced only as an injustice without any reparation or information concerning further procedures. The victim is an integral part of the process. There are huge advantages to that.

But we are still in a very fragmentary stage of development. It is one of the directions we are suggesting. We recommend that initiatives of this type be developed on a large scale, but that the government, the institutions maintain some control. It is a direction which should be part of the Act, in our view.

Mr. St-Laurent: Naturally, we could talk about this at length. You said earlier that there was no real increase in youth crime. My question is simple. If there is no increase, the rate has surely not remained stagnant. Was there a decrease?

M. Charbonneau: In our first brief, we dissociated ourselves from any attempt to find out arrest rates or statistics. In fact, several authors, and not only people who don't want to make a positive contribution to solving the problem, wonder whether police statistics are a faithful reflection of what is happening. I believe the findings speak for themselves on that. They are not. We even noticed today that they show a slight decrease in criminality.

We notice that in the schools, at the present time, there is zero tolerance toward any act of violence, which is very different from the situation 10 years ago. When a teacher witnesses an assault, ordinarily, he should call in the police. So there is a significant increase in the number of assaults being reported and appearing in police statistics. We also know that for the past few years, there has been zero tolerance toward drug use.

In our view, these two situations are much more relevant in explaining the slight increase in the number of assaults. It is the number of common assaults, not aggravated assaults, that has increased significantly. We already showed that in our 1994 brief. If they are reported in greater numbers, it is simply because of the policies adopted by the schools.

Mr. St-Laurent: I agree with you. You are using data going back about ten years. I think that's the source of the confusion. I am 42 years old. Around 1970, I was in a school, like almost everybody at that age, and there were gang fights. As in all the schools, there were small gangs, not big ones. We are not talking about the Hell's Angels, but about gangs of teenagers. They did not use knives in their fights. No one got killed on the bus.

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Has there been a decrease in the crime rate at the same time as an increase in the seriousness of the offences? How do you explain that? Ten years ago, things may have been worse than today, but in 1970, that was 26 years ago... How can that be explained? I would like to hear your comments on that.

Mr. Charbonneau: We don't explain it using numbers or statistics. It is only a perception. We agree there is a perception that when two young people are involved in an assault, the potential consequences are more serious than they were ten years ago. That phenomenon is not taken into account. One must not believe that the fear or the feeling of insecurity shared by the population - I think we all agree on that - came out of the blue.

When there are incidents of assault, in our view, they are more serious. There is a higher risk of serious injuries. But there hasn't been any increase in the number of assaults. However, we share the view that there has been an increase in the seriousness of the consequences of assaults, and we must do something about that. Something has to be done. We agree on that. We absolutely share those concerns.

[English]

The Chair: I know. It gets interesting and then the time flies.

Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: I'd like to thank our witnesses for appearing this morning.

I'd just like to touch on this question of the perception of the increase in youth crime. I'm reading from a brief that's been sent to the committee. It's from the La fondation québécoise pour les jeunes contrevenants. It states this:

The increase in crime committed by young persons is a growing concern for individuals working in the social and judicial fields. Research carried out in August in 1991 at

- pardon me for my pronunciation -

Cité des Prairies shows a 248% increase in the number of offences committed by young persons before they reached the age of 18.

Also, the only indication in the recent Statistics Canada data indicates that the only increase in crime was in the violent crime of youth.

So I mention that and you might wish to comment on it, but I'd like to touch on another aspect.

You have indicated, as has more than one witness who has appeared before our committee, the reluctance to make full public disclosure of violent offences committed by young people. In this same study from which I have just quoted, I'd like to read this to you and again have you comment on it.

[A] study of 10,000 young persons by Wolfgang, Figlio and Sellin (1972) shows that those individuals who begin in puberty or, to be precise, at age 13 commit most offences before the age of 18 and those who begin at the age of twelve later obtain the highest average score for the seriousness of their offences.

Following exploratory discussions with various groups of persons working with young persons, we realized that they often choose not to report certain incidents in order...to give the young person a ``last chance''. Although there are no clear statistics on this phenomenon, it seems to be increasingly common.

A simple principle is being applied here: an incentive or pressure is created to persuade these young persons to refrain from any further criminal offence. However, this principle has limits and for some young persons the effect is contrary to that sought; it increases their feeling of impunity.

On occasion, people working in the schools are aware of the delinquent activities of some young persons and take it upon themselves not to divulge the information they have with the aim, among others, of not jeopardizing the schooling of these individuals.

To this might be added the parents, siblings and friends of the family, who are also often victims of criminal offences yet refrain from laying a complaint.

Furthermore, social workers and educators are sometimes told by the young person -

The Chair: Could you slow down? You're giving the translators quite a run for their money.

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Mr. Ramsay: This is all from a written text.

The Chair: Well, just slow down a little so they can -

Mr. Ramsay: Sure.

Furthermore, social workers and educators are sometimes told by the young person about certain criminal activities, and this is especially true of young persons covered by section 38(h) of the Youth Protection Act; as part of their supporting relationship these social workers and educators also give the young person in question one ``last chance''.

We might also mention the police officer, youth worker and provincial director who do the same thing when their turn comes.

Finally, it even happens that when the young person appears in court, the judge also applies the same principle and attempts to give the young offender his or her ``last chance''.

The offences accumulate and the phenomenon helps to create situations where the young person reoffends since there is no social disapproval of the unlawful act. All these ``last chances'' are generally not included in the young person's record and all the parties involved are not able to inform one another about the ``last chances'' given to the young person.

They go on to state that, in effect, this research clearly shows that for each offence that is known, a young person has committed 20 others in respect of which no charges are laid. Given this fact, the phenomenon of the last chance acquires dramatic significance.

Here's what I'd like to do. In light of this, when we choose not to disclose information relating to violent offenders, particularly repeat violent young offenders, and deny the heads of families the benefit of that knowledge in order to protect their children from getting involved with the drug trafficking or whatever, are we doing justice to the whole situation? Are we doing justice to the parents who are always seeking information to protect their families, their children?

Are we doing justice to the offender? This seems to be part of that phenomenon called the last chance. We're saying to you that even though it is the truth that you did assault or rape this person or did some other violent act, we are going to hide that truth from society in order to give you the advantage rather than give the advantage to society such that they might use it in order to protect the children.

Would you comment on that? I'm sure you have comments and thoughts and on that.

[Translation]

Mr. Charbonneau: I'm sorry, Mr. Ramsay, but I understood about 80 per cent of what you said. I don't really know how this thing works. In any case, I think you're asking me what kind of justice there is for the families. Is there justice when, over and over again, these young people are given one last chance, when we try to reduce the violence phenomenon? That is what I understood and I will make some comments on these issues.

First, I would not like you to have the feeling that we are here to pardon the young people who commit acts of violence. It is absolutely not our intention. We are wondering rather what kind of procedures we could use concerning young people who commit acts of violence.

Statistics cannot indicate to us the precise nature of violent crimes or their frequency. You are wondering what influences the perception that people have of the justice system. To what extent do people have faith in the criminal system and do they want to use it to deal with violent situations? I feel that is one of the fundamental issues raised in this text.

You say that people are giving one last chance to young offenders. One has to wonder why they do so. Do they do it simply out of leniency, in order to minimize these acts? I don't believe so. I think there is a lot of uncertainty for those people and that discretionary power at all levels should be reviewed. Are we making a choice between educating the young persons and cracking down on these types of behaviour?

Will the fact that we are having a situation come under the Young Offenders Act reduce violence and will it contribute to a change in the behaviour of these young people?

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I am convinced that at the present time, people no longer have faith in the ability of judicial institutions to solve the issue of violence and fits related behavioral problems. That confidence has disappeared. How can it be rebuilt? That is the question. How can we give justice to these people?

I believe we will have to focus more on the victims, on those young peoples' parents and on the kind of support needed to resolve violent situations. Action must be taken before situations of violence erupts. It is not only a matter of acting after the fact, but rather of giving the impression that there will be a sentence. A sentence is sometimes necessary, but sometimes not.

For young people, a sentence is not only a deterrent or a way to scare them. It would be a huge mistake to believe that. I don't minimize the need to take action concerning young people, but such action must be well thought-out, in the sense that one must take the whole situation into consideration. If I want to reduce violence in the schools, it is useless to remove the two young people responsible for the majority of violent offences.

They will only be replaced the very next day, so there is really no point. You imprison one young person for ten years and another one appears right away to recreate the same climate of terror. We have to deal with the person who creates that climate of terror and do something about it. Action must be taken to put an end to such a laissez-faire approach. The phenomenon must be considered as a whole and we must learn to take action against its causes.

It is not as simple as one might think. I must admit that we may have some solutions, but they don't spring up out of the blue.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Maloney.

Mr. Maloney: For which offenders do you advocate alternative measures, first offenders only, which the present law allows for, or beyond that? How many times does one have to offend before they really should be going through the judicial process?

[Translation]

Mr. Simard: Your question was: How many offences should a young person commit before having to appear before a court? It is difficult for me to answer that question. I don't believe it is necessarily a matter of numbers. Several factors enter into consideration. I think using an alternative measure is beneficial for a young offender who acknowledges his responsibility and is ready to take part voluntarily in such a process.

So when a young offender acknowledges his responsibility for what he did and when he is ready to engage in a reparation process, I am not convinced that it is necessary to set in motion the whole youth court apparatus. I hope this answers your question somewhat.

[English]

Mr. Maloney: At present under our act you really have just one opportunity for alternative measures. Do you advocate more than one opportunity, or do you think the law as it exists, one chance at the youth court level, is sufficient, insufficient, or more than sufficient?

[Translation]

Mrs. Tamborini: At present, the youth court can satisfactorily solve the problems. As Mr. Simard was saying, there is the whole alternative measures program, but there are also court orders for more serious offences committed by some young people.

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In our view, it would be desirable to maintain the present structure, to specify some objectives and to always tend towards alternative measure involving the community and the victims.

Mr. Charbonneau: I don't think that the youth court would be in a position to handle all the situations and any potential conflicts. I don't know whether that was the thrust of your question.

We certainly agree with all alternative measures being considered, but they would be insufficient to deal with all situations involving violence. This is why we raised the need to develop other options in order to avoid overtaxing the youth justice system. We must develop other ways of dealing with some situations, according to quite specific criteria that must be spelled out in the Act if we want justice to be done, so that we can try to solve the conflict earlier on. For example, we could allow law enforcement officers to close some files, but also to allow them to take charge of a youth and a victim and to directly apply procedures involving alternative or other measures. I think it would be something like this.

[English]

Mr. Maloney: Would you advocate a predisposition process before youth court, a diversion to a citizens' tribunal with perhaps a membership of police officers, members of the public and people associated with the probation? Is this what you're advocating? Should we codify that as a diversion? Instead of going to the courts, should we divert to, let us say, the community tribunal?

[Translation]

Mr. Charbonneau: These are obviously some of the scenarios that we could consider, but we would not replace the present justice system. The present justice system will always have to deal with some conflicts or situations that cannot be solved by community courts. If we are to create community courts, we should do so with the utmost care and prudence. Some of the measures being considered could perhaps end up being more harmful than beneficial for youth and victims.

I believe we should consider other ways to deal with all these cases, so as to facilitate these referrals and to make sure that when one is a witness, the last chance is not the last chance. There are things that can be done quickly. If we develop a lot of solutions of this kind, I think that people will put more trust in the procedure, at least initially. But I do not believe this to be the panacea to all possible delinquency situations. That is not our point in presenting this proposal.

[English]

Mr. Maloney: How can we balance the concept of alternative measures with the concern of the public, as it is perceived today, that we must get tougher with young offenders? That public considers alternative measures a very lenient disposition of the criminal problems among youth. Help us to help you.

[Translation]

Mr. Simard: Perhaps the public considers that the measures aimed at youth are more lenient and that more severe or heavy-handed interventions might be necessary.

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In my view, the answer is not to seek stiffer sentences or more severe mechanisms for youth, but rather to educate the public at large to demystify delinquency and the work being done in the area of youth.

According to one study, generally speaking, youth are often treated in a more heavy-handed way than adults. In my opinion, there is some work to be done in educating the public. What is now being done in cooperation with youth centres, supervisors and people from the community enables young people to better understand the justice system and helps to dispel myths and taboos.

Mr. Charbonneau: If you want to help us, you must have the courage to say so. Stiffer sentences will not help reduce the scope of the problem.

If you want, we can join our efforts to convince you that this is not the proper way to go. There are studies on the effectiveness of mediation programs. Having a victim and a young offender sit down together is not a traumatic experience for a youth, it is quite empowering and educational.

These kinds of experiences are worthy of being documented and assessed. So, let us do so, let us talk about such ideas more often, and publicize these approaches. Let us not think only in terms of sanctions. You will then be part of an emerging movement and you will have the political courage to say that severe sanctions will not reduce the scope of the problem. That is not to say that mediation is not a severe measure. The whole approach must be changed. In our view, the most empowering measure for both the victim and the youth is still mediation.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Maloney.

Thanks very much to all of you for your very helpful contributions.

We'll rise now. One group cancelled this afternoon so we're going to start again at 2 p.m.

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