[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Friday, September 27, 1996
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[English]
The Chair: Order.
I welcome students from the grade 10 and 11 class of Cam McGregor at Inuksuk High School.
Thank you for coming to see us. We're glad to have you.
Our witnesses this afternoon are Mr. Roger Sévigny from the Department of Social Services of the Municipality of Iqaluit; John Clay from the Youth Justice Committee; and one other.
Mr. Doug Sage (Baffin Region Superintendent, Department of Health and Social Services, Government of the Northwest Territories): I'm Doug Sage and I'm from the Department of Health and Social Services.
The Chair: Thanks for coming.
Do you have a formal presentation that you want to make? If that's the case, go ahead, and then we'll have some questions for you.
Mr. Roger Sévigny (Assistant Director, Department of Social Services, Municipality of Iqaluit): I'll be speaking mostly off the cuff. I'll give just a brief outline of what I want to talk about.
The Municipality of Iqaluit social services department until recently was in a unique position in that we were the only devolved social services department in all of the territories. So we've had a reasonable amount of freedom in developing services and in doing things in our way.
No doubt Mr. Sage will speak about doing things in their way.
We like to think that our department is community responsive. Sometimes that becomes difficult within the guidelines provided for us, but whenever we do provide services we look at providing those that best meet the needs of the municipality of Iqaluit.
We are a generic social services department in that we provide services to our clients in a whole gamut of areas. We provide child welfare services, social assistance, family counselling, both youth and adult probation services, parole services, and quite a bit of counselling.
Our history with young offenders goes back to when the Young Offenders Act came out. At that time most of our workers were called upon to work with young offenders. We primarily took care of the probation side of it, although we did get into some custody through optional home custody placements. At that time there were no custody placements in the eastern arctic and any of our youth sentenced to open custody or secure custody would be sent out to the western arctic.
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The optional home custody placements we utilized were primarily foster homes, and we had varied success. Some went very well. Some were not especially successful. But it sure was better than sending our kids to a foreign - for lack of a better word - situation.
Our young fellows ended up in Yellowknife at a group home there operated as an open custody centre, at the young offenders' wing of the Yellowknife Correctional Centre or in Hay River. This is about the same as sending somebody from Montreal to serve their sentence in Newfoundland, and it made about the same amount of sense. There was a difference in culture and language. It was very difficult and it made it especially difficult to provide any kind of rehabilitation.
I believe yesterday you toured the young offenders' facility. This facility was developed primarily because more and more of our youth were being sentenced to secure custody and were being sent out to the western arctic. Once it was built we discovered something very important. The number of young offenders going to secure custody from the eastern arctic - certainly from Iqaluit - went right down. I know they now have a great number of individuals in secure custody from the western arctic. So it's nice to see the tables turned.
However, I also note with dismay that there are some young offenders there who are serving open custody sentences. I go on record as saying that our department has great difficulty with this type of arrangement. We feel it actually is in contravention of the Young Offenders Act in that it does not provide the proper placement relative to the offence.
In 1986 our department instituted a new position, that of the youth worker. The aim of this position was to place all of the young offender work with one person, to centralize it. Another aim of this position was to create the youth justice committee Mr. Clay will talk about shortly.
A few years back the Department of Justice took over the corrections division, which, prior to that time, had been part of Health and Social Services. Before this occurred, our department was very involved in any placement of any young offender sentenced to custody. We had a great amount of say on where these young offenders would go and what type of services they would receive.
Since the takeover by Justice, our involvement is almost exclusively limited to probation services. We have little or no say in the placement or in the services offered to our young people while in custody. This in no way diminishes the efforts being made by the folks at Isumaqsunngittukkuvik. I think I know most of them personally and I think they're doing their best to work within certain guidelines.
There is another area we have had concern with. It seems we have a large turnover every year of RCMP officers. With this comes a whole different way of doing things. They come into town from wherever they've been and they have different ways of operating.
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We have spent a lot of time and effort in trying to develop the youth justice committee, and it means having to reintroduce the youth justice committee all over again.
We're concerned that not enough use has been made of the youth justice committee. We're partly responsible for that. We should be doing more selling to the RCMP. I don't think we have to sell the Crown any more; they're pretty well sold on us and they give us every opportunity.
John, I'm sure you'll say a few words.
When we read the act, one of the things that has bothered us is the way in which some of our youth are being treated in custody, especially the open custody placements. We are concerned that they are not being treated in the least restrictive manner. The emphasis seems to have become one of incarceration as opposed to rehabilitation.
I firmly believe that the Young Offenders Act strongly encourages rehabilitation. That's the aim of the Young Offenders Act, as I understand it, as I have interpreted it, and I worry when incarceration becomes the primary goal.
There's been a great amount of discussion about lowering or raising age limits. I cannot speak for the department on this issue because we have such a wide response from our workers as to what we should do. So what I shall give you now is my personal opinion.
I personally favour the lowering of the age for serious offences; that is, offences in which violence occurs. I also favour the lowering of the maximum age for certain offences. In other words, rather than having a young offender who commits a serious crime raised to adult court, I would prefer that the minimum ages for certain offences be lowered so that they would be dealt with in adult court.
I would also like to see within the Young Offenders Act a clearer mandate for youth justice committees. It's vague at best.
I think a lot of very good, positive work can be done at the youth justice committee level. Certainly our experience is that if you get them young, if you get them early, then you can be pretty well assured that you're never going to see them in the justice system again. That's the area we should be putting all of our energies into.
That's all I have to say at the present time. I would welcome any questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Sévigny.
Mr. Clay.
Mr. John Clay (Chair, Youth Justice Committee, Municipality of Iqaluit): Thank you.
I represent the youth justice committee in town. I've been on the committee since its re-inception in 1989, and we've been dealing with youth since 1990. In that period of time we've dealt with about 140 cases. Of those 140 different children - well, not all different - we have a recurrence rate of about 10%, so I think we've been fairly successful.
We insist on seeing the young people with their parents. We want parental involvement.
We also reserve the right - I guess that is the best way to describe it - of deciding which young people we will see based on the ability to succeed with these kids. If we know from our experience that a young person who's been referred to us is not going to be able to be changed within our resources, then we prefer to have that go through the court system. We want to work with kids with whom we can be successful, and that's part of the reason why our re-referral rate is so low.
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We have dealt with kids who have been involved in assault, break and enter, and in theft. The theft has been mostly of skidoos and snowmobiles and involved joyriding and this kind of thing. We have dealt with a couple of minor weapons offences as well, although those are very iffy.
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We don't deal with any drug-related referrals at all. Those go straight to court.
We work on a minimal budget. The committee is five people representing all age groups in town, from elders down to young adults, male and female, Inuit and non-Inuit. We have unilingual English on the committee. We have unilingual Inuktitut on the committee. We work in such a way that we don't go to interpreters unnecessarily.
While I said I am the chairperson of the committee, I suppose that a better way of referring to myself is as the spokesperson, because during any meeting with parents and young people the chair is a rotating one as to who can best deal with that particular individual. Maybe not all of us were sitting in on the particular meeting, because of conflicts or whatever.
Our emphasis is on rehabilitation, working with the young person and with the family. It's not on punishment. It's on trying to encourage responsible behaviour.
Usually the programs that we set up with the young people involve no extra costs. I think that in the six years we've been seeing cases our whole budget would have been less than $10,000. So I guess that, in this day and age, we are cost effective.
There are a number of recommendations. In 1994 we were asked to reply to a document, Toward Safer Communities, and we did, in a written format, to the committee in Ottawa.
Roger has already alluded to some of the things: changing that window in being able to deal with young people, being able to lower the minimum age at both levels, being raised to adult court, being raised up into the system, under 12 years of age -
The earlier we can intervene with kids, the better off we are. There's no use in waiting for somebody to reach their twelfth birthday before they can be put into the system, when they have to have some kind of intervention. If we have intervention mandated earlier, then we can get to those kids and we can change them.
Parents must be involved. Many times, if we're working with a young person and the parents are not involved, the program is finished with the young person and they go back into the same set of circumstances as they were in before. They're not going to be changed. The same temptations are there. We have to change the whole milieu in which the kids are growing up.
We have to listen to what the kids are saying. The meetings we have are very informal. Parents, the committee, the young person - everybody gets to have their say and everybody listens to everybody else. Having looked at the facts in the case, we will come in and decide what we think might be a good program to work with that young person. We present it. If they have a better idea, then we're willing to go with that, because they know that it's going to work for them.
We don't have all the answers. If we did, then we wouldn't have kids in trouble.
In 1994 the Superior Court in Quebec did a tour through here and met with the committee. As a result of their investigation, Justice Jean-Charles Coutu was impressed with the work this committee has done to date.
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Last year we were contracted to go to Quebec, to Kuujjuaq, to help with the institution of two youth justice committees, one in Kuujjuaq, based on our experience, and the other one in Povungnituk. They should be up and running at this point, but we want to follow up with them.
I think to this point we've had tremendous support from the courts, from the Crown and, as Roger alluded to, we've had varying support from the RCMP because of changes in personnel. I believe with the current detachment - things are just undergoing change - we will get increased support for the next year.
I think I'll leave my comments at that point.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Clay.
Mr. Sage.
Mr. Sage: Welcome to Iqaluit.
By now you have a pretty good overview of most issues in the region.
I have two or three things to mention. I don't feel I have a whole lot of wisdom to add to what you've already heard. I'm sure you've heard much of this.
I guess my concern is, in a department tasked with many different social issues, the kind of children you're here hearing about are often lost because of the more glamorous, bigger ticket items the media likes to talk about. There are an awful lot of kids out there who don't get in trouble with the law and I think sometimes we forget this. I think we've got a few of them here today, which is nice to see.
I guess if I was looking for some changes, and if I had my two minutes to say what I would like done differently, I would like to see the bureaucracy reduced as it relates to raising adults who are charged under the Young Offenders Act. Many times we have people in their late 20s who are charged with a crime they committed when they were in their teens, and there is a lot of red tape and bureaucracy involved to get them raised to adult court. Naturally, we don't want to see 28-year-olds serving sentences in youth facilities. Everyone knows this application is going to be made, but the Crown and others have to go through the red tape to get it to happen.
Often this involves me, because I have to say why it isn't a good idea for this 28-year-old repeat sexual offender to serve time in a youth facility.
I think there may be other small issues like this, but if you could do something about this, I would appreciate it.
Another pet peeve I have is that currently, the way the Young Offenders Act is set up, it's an all or nothing proposition. You're either 12 years old and you can be charged or you're not 12 and therefore you can't. I know you have heard from the RCMP and crown attorneys and others. I won't belabour this point. But I don't understand why we allow a judge to voir dire a 6-year-old to give testimony in a criminal trial to see if they can tell the truth, to see if they know the difference between right and wrong, and yet we won't allow this judge to interview a child who may have committed an offence to see if they should be answerable for it.
I'm certainly not suggesting young children should enter our system the way older children do. But I still think if the federal government has moved in the direction of conditional sentencing in the adult system to show flexibility, something similar for very young children would work as well. I don't see why it couldn't.
I know you've heard this one before, but it's my time to say it anyway. Resources are a key problem, especially in the territories, because we are very dependent on the federal government for all our money. So when you twitch, we really feel it over here. We feel it more than the provinces do. I know you know this, but I have to say it anyway.
I guess one of the last things I wanted to mention is we don't have very many programs that relate to keeping kids out of the system. We tend to only respond as government when it's a problem. We don't respond well before it's a problem.
I have ideas, but not much wisdom, on how to do this better, and I know you've heard things like this before. One of the things I think we can do is start dispelling the myths and ask what young offenders are. They're not these terrible, horrible gangs of kids roaming the streets and hurting people. I know there are people who believe, ``Boy, if I had one of those kids in front of me, I'd just give him a good talking to and he would know what's going on''.
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There are a lot of misconceptions, and I think this group, as well as those of us at the panel, could be doing more to inform the public about what's involved in being a young offender. Rather than being worried about the labels, we should just be worried about the business of setting the whole thing right. Again, that's easy to say; it's not very easy to do.
With that, I close. I thank you for the opportunity. By now you're probably bored with hearing the same thing said several times. I appreciate your kind attention.
The Chair: Maybe the best thing about this process is that we're not actually hearing the same thing said several times; we're hearing a lot of new things here.
Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): I would like to hear more often what you've been saying, because I think you make common sense.
We have our various political parties represented on this committee and our parties have various positions. Our party has as its position very much what you're articulating.
When the federal government, under the constitutional head of justice, abandons the children and society by simply exempting violent crime, I have a great degree of concern. They simply rub out violent crimes for anyone who commits them under the age of 12. When it does that, I have very grave concerns about the responsibility of the federal government to protect the lives and properties of the citizens.
In the province of Quebec, where we just spent a week, they have a very good program, because they have filled that gap with the youth prevention program. They spend a lot of resources where I think they should be spent, and where my colleagues think they should be spent, and where I think everyone here thinks they should be spent. That's in the early detection and prevention area.
Not many other provinces do this.
The old Juvenile Delinquents Act, which was able to handle, under the constitutional head of justice, providing safety for the people and society and its property, could have worked very well if they would have simply expanded the treatment options that now are being addressed by acts like the Youth Protection Act in Quebec.
I don't think mercy can rob justice. I think you're right, Mr. Sage, when you say that certainly we should not be expecting children under 12 to be entering the system in the same way as older individuals, including adults, should be. But, from my humble viewpoint, we must not deny society two things. We must not deny them the safety and the protection they deserve, which I think has been eliminated by the Young Offenders Act since 1984. We must not deny society the educational factor, because the justice system, the legal system, forms part of our educational system.
When I was raised, I was taught from time to time about the law, about doing things wrong, what would happen to me if I did things wrong, what happens to people when they do things wrong. From time to time we used to hear cases of examples of what happened when someone did something wrong, when youth did something wrong. That was part of our upbringing, part of our educational system.
What do we have now? Well, what can the parents of children born after 1984 teach them? That, yes, it's wrong, but there is no criminal responsibility until you hit the age of 12.
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So I agree with some of the comments you've been making. What I'm looking for is a balance among the three requirements of the justice system, which are to protect society, to create the deterrent through a fair and just penalty, as well as to respect the rehabilitative possibilities of the individual, particularly when it comes to our youth. I like what I've heard from you. I'd like to hear more from you, but we have so little time.
I have some specific questions. I want to know why a 28-year-old repeat sexual offender would be held in a youth facility.
Did I hear you right? Was that your message, Doug?
Mr. Sage: Almost, but not quite. The fellow would be detained in an adult facility, but if he was convicted under the Young Offenders Act, they would want to make sure that he would serve his sentence in an adult facility, not in a youth facility.
Mr. Ramsay: Okay. Thank you.
We heard yesterday that some of the closed custody cases aren't sufficient in length for the rehabilitative programs to take effect and be of any use to the individual. How do you feel about that? Would any one of you care to comment on that? In other words, the question is why we are sending a person to a period of closed custody to receive the rehabilitative programs and treatment that are available there when there's insufficient time for the rehabilitative programs to take effect. In other words, it's like asking you to write an exam after spending in school only one-third of the time you should.
Mr. Sévigny: I think the problem is not so much the length of time of the sentence, but rather it comes down to the bottom line of funding. You can get funding for rehabilitation while the young person is incarcerated, but once they leave, that funding dries up. So while you might want to continue that rehabilitation process while the young person is on probation, no funding is available. So if you're wanting to do a specific rehabilitation program, you have to look at being able to do it within the time constraints of the custody.
That's not necessarily the best way of doing it. My way of looking at it would be that it would be very preferable to have an ongoing process, because if you continue the process once the youth is out of custody, while the youth is on probation, it helps to reintegrate that youth back into the community, and there are fewer of those safeguards while they're in custody. They have to work at it harder.
What I have seen happen is that the kids go to custody and they get into a program. They have a very strict way of doing things. There's a set routine. They come out of custody and that routine is gone. They don't have to follow this any more. They think, ``Well, that's it. We've done our time. We don't have to worry about these programs any more.''
I would really like to see more funding available within the probation side of it so that the rehabilitation process will be an ongoing one, even beyond the probation period, because there are many times when it's an ongoing problem. You can't, for lack of a better word, cure the problem in a very short time.
Mr. Ramsay: That principle is recognized in the adult parole system, where they move them into a halfway house rather than just drop them cold out into society again and so on.
I'd like to mention from the top end...where you have suggested that some of the more serious offences of the 16- and 17-year-olds should be dealt with through the adult court system. I see that as being a very wise and common-sense suggestion, and I think the recommendations we're making to the government, and whoever else will listen, is that very thing, that there would be a schedule of very serious offences, so 16- and 17-year-olds who know right from wrong, who are very close to maturity.... If they commit these offences, they injure people, they take people's lives, they rape someone, they sexually assault someone, then they should move automatically into the adult system. Yet today, when the offences for murder for a young offender are moved into adult court, although it's a life sentence, the parole eligibility is far different from the parole eligibility for adults.
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So there is a recognition of the age of the offenders, even though they are moved into adult court. Those kinds of considerations could be made through amendments to the law. Yet at the same time, I think the principle you've articulated here is well recognized.
I may come back if I have time, Madam Chair, but that's everything for this round.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Gallaway.
Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Thank you, Madam Chair. Like Mr. Ramsay, I too want to hear more.
Mr. Clay, you say the youth justice committee focuses on rehabilitation. Is this correct?
Mr. Clay: Yes.
Mr. Gallaway: I'm not certain if there is some consensus here. For example, Mr. Ramsay has said society wants three factors considered when sentencing someone. These are protection of the public or of society, deterrents and, thirdly, rehabilitation. Does your youth justice committee take into account deterrents? Do you take into account protection? Do you take into account rehabilitation?
Mr. Clay: I think we take all three into consideration, and they're lumped into trying to develop a sense of responsibility. The young people, when they see it, recognize they have made mistakes and they've gotten into trouble. In many cases, their parents know minimal details about it, so they have to face their parents. We can't fine, we can't incarcerate, but we can work with these kids to help them so that when they're faced with the same set of circumstances the next time around, they're not going to exhibit the same behaviour.
If it is an assault, for instance, we try to give them ways of being able to handle the situation that provoked the assault in the first place. This is through counselling or through whatever means we determine are very appropriate for this young person.
At the same time we ask them to pay back through community service, let's say. Community service is a very nebulous thing, but under community service we've had young people working in the schools, helping the janitors after school, taking graffiti off desks and off walls, helping out in the day care centre, working with younger kids, looking after them and providing assistance.
We have them do anything that will build responsibility, and it's not in one lump sum. If we say we think you should be giving about 20 hours of service to the community, it is not 20 hours and then you're done, you're out, bring in the next case. It is worked out over a period of time, and it usually involves them having to show up for about an hour a day.
They're exhibiting responsible behaviour by taking this on themselves. Yes, I've got 20 hours to work off. At an hour a day, this is 20 days or four weeks. We give them a reasonable time limit in which to work this time off. We throw in a little bit of sick leave and other sorts of social benefits, if you will, recognizing they're people.
The kids turn up day after day after day. They're accepting responsibility. They're learning to pace themselves as well. They've accepted it, and we ask them to sign the contract. If they don't follow through with what they've said they were going to do, we always have the right to return their case to the court system, and we have done so in a couple of cases.
Mr. Gallaway: I don't want to minimize crime, but your committee deals with what I will call minor offences.
Mr. Clay: I would agree.
Mr. Gallaway: With respect to lowering the age for serious offences, do you think it's appropriate then to lower the age because we want people into the system who are not getting into the system now? Or is it simply that the social support systems are not working? In other words, there are inadequate resources from the territorial perspective to intervene.
Do you think a 7-year-old who steals a skidoo has a criminal intent, or do you think that child is a neglected child?
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Mr. Clay: Probably he does not have a criminal intent, but if it is unchecked all the time it's going to create a major problem.
If I was the skidoo owner.... It also depends on the perspective you're coming from. My concern is not so much that we get into penalizing now, but that we get in and do the intervention early so we won't be creating a layer of young people who are untouchable and then we suddenly get them in the system, where they are hardened. It's going to cost a lot.
Mr. Gallaway: It's going to cause us a lot of grief.
Do you think that using the courts to do that - because we're talking about a federal statute that comes from the justice department and therefore in some way must use the courts - is an appropriate use of resources, whereby you spend money in the courts that you could be spending on social services?
Mr. Clay: It doesn't have to get to court, though. As long as it's recognized that here is a kid who has a problem and that, left unchecked, it's going to get worse.... We need something in the act that says we can go in, we can intervene, that has a little bit of teeth and allows us to go in early before it becomes a major problem.
Mr. Gallaway: I think we're getting some consensus here then.
In that respect, you will have to acknowledge also that if you are given through a federal judicial statute the right to intervene, then we cannot give you or anyone else an unfettered, unilateral right to intervene, that there must be some judicial control on that. There must be some judicial rein saying that in fact the judiciary must state the nature and extent of your authority in any given case.
I go back to my original theory. Would there not be a better way of doing this by some other statute, rather than through a criminal law method?
Mr. Clay: There probably are other ways. There's not only one way for anything, and if there is a better way to do it, then I would suggest that, yes, we should try it. I don't know what that other way would be at this point in time, because if the kid is 11 years and 364 days old, and they say, ``I'm not 12, you can't touch me'', then where can we go to get that kid some help? I believe that when they are going out and getting into trouble at 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 years of age, it's a cry for help - whether it's a cry for help in rebuilding the family or whatever.
Mr. Gallaway: This might not be a fair question, because I'm going to ask you to quantify something. What is the percentage or the magnitude of people who come to your committee who in fact have obviously committed an offence but the problem is much more profound than the fact that this child has committed an offence? This child comes from a background or a family situation that is the real cause of it. In other words, there's neglect -
Mr. Clay: Yes, I think you're right that it is an unfair question.
I don't know. I've had a lot of dealing with kids over the years, in the north and wherever I've lived. I have 25 years of experience here. There are a lot of kids with a lot of problems, and sometimes what we're seeing is the tip of the iceberg.
It's the latest thing the young person has got into, and this time it's in court. I'll go back to the earlier intervention. If we had been able to intervene earlier, then maybe the young person would not have got to the point where the charges are there.
Mr. Gallaway: This was testimony we did not hear in this jurisdiction but in one of the provinces, where in a facility the child said that he was 10 years old when he first started to get into real problems. He was coming home intoxicated at 3 a.m.
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Under certain circumstances people would say this child should be brought before the court. In fact it is a cry for help. There is no question about this. But at the same time we're hearing, and we've heard it here especially, that the parents must also be involved. We are hearing that perhaps we ought to have a mechanism for getting the parents, or whoever has custody of this child, before the court as part of the process - I'm not saying as the accused necessarily or as the guilty party, but as somebody who may have contributed to the situation or needs to take control of the situation.
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You mentioned that in most cases the parents come with the child to your committee. What would you say if the law contained a requirement that the parents must at least attend court with the accused?
Mr. Clay: For a young person, I would say yes, definitely, they have to be involved, because the young person is growing and we're trying to bring him up in the world to be a responsible, contributing adult. Without the nurturing and everything else that comes from family, he's not going to make it. If the family is not involved in some of the processes to help to keep him in this, or if they can't be involved, they probably also need some help.
I can think of one particular instance where it was the guardian who came in. He asked why he should be involved. We explained it to him. We didn't deal with it right there and then. In fact, the following week we got together. He came back and he said he had thought about what we had said and he was ready to work with us now. He is one of our greatest supporters, having gone through a very antagonistic beginning. But he has seen that what we're trying to do is help him as well. He was dealing with a situation that was thrust upon him. Basically he had asserted that he did not know where he was going. When we were able to work with him and the young person, he was then able to see a little bit of light for himself.
Mr. Gallaway: I have one final question, and perhaps somebody else would like to answer it.
In terms of what you have just said, there are these situations where children come from homes that are not operating in a very acceptable fashion, where there may be alcohol abuse or whatever. Let's assume a 12-year-old is removed from the home for a year and put into some sort of facility, yet is returned to the same conditions after having completed the sentence. How can this sentence serve in any way as a deterrent to future offences from that child?
Maybe somebody else would like to answer it.
If deterrence is one of the factors considered by the courts and society as important in sentencing a young person -
Mr. Sévigny: It is a deterrent in the sense that they're away from their usual lifestyle. They're away from their friends. They're away from being able to do the things they want to do. They have to live a totally different lifestyle, one that is highly regimented. That in itself, for many of our youth, is a deterrent. It doesn't solve the problems that may have precipitated the offence, but it still serves as a form of deterrent. It is not always the best deterrent, but it is a deterrent nonetheless.
The Chair: Mr. Anawak.
Mr. Anawak (Nunatsiaq): Thank you.
I think my colleague from the Reform made a comment about the differences in parties. I have a problem with the comment about having to protect society at all costs. I agree we have to protect society and feel justice has to be given out.
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I guess the underlying presentation this morning was prevention, not necessarily incarceration at any cost. That and rehabilitation I think are the key words in the presentations today.
Again, you have to remember that, in the carrying out of the justice system up here, the justice system was imposed without any involvement from the people up here. When we say ``fair justice'', it is fair justice from whose point of view?
Some people would say throw the person in jail and throw the key away, whereas we would say that that person has a heavy heart and we should do what we can to see how we can help that person to overcome his or her problems. So it's a case of different beliefs and a different way of doing things. In our case, I believe in the goodness of the person, that a young person who commits a crime is not necessarily a bad person, but a person in need of help.
I'm just trying to get a repetition of what was said earlier about the fact that there's a different way of dealing with offenders. While the underlying thing up here is that, yes, justice has to be done, the important thing to remember is that these people are still very much, first and foremost, human beings, who have to be dealt with in a way that would be best for the society up here.
I'm glad you asked the question about the involvement of parents. I think the attitude of ``Why should I be involved?'' came about because that involvement was taken away when the justice system came up here. Before that, there was always that involvement if something was wrong, but it was taken away from the parents and therefore it got to the point where they gave up on that involvement because they didn't have any way of being involved because of the delivery of that justice system.
I just make these comments. It is not really a question.
Even on the issue of deterrence, I think the underlying goal is always prevention. It's good to have the deterrents, but up here I think it's more important to try to prevent the kinds of crimes that young people are committing these days. I say this because I cannot emphasize enough that it's a totally different way of thinking up here, even while ensuring that society will go on in a way in which people want it to go on.
The Chair: I thank all of you for coming today. It has been a very interesting 24 hours for us to be in Iqaluit and to have the advantage of hearing from you three, and also from our other witnesses. It's been a great experience, so thank you very much.
We stand adjourned.