[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Wednesday, October 9, 1996
.1537 
[English]
The Chair: We're back in session.
This afternoon we're welcoming Victor Doerksen, MLA, accompanied by a familiar face to us now, Paddy Mead, who's executive director of the young offender branch. Mr. Doerksen's riding is Red Deer South.
Welcome. I understand you have a brief to present, and then we'll have questions.
Mr. Victor Doerksen (Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta (Red Deer South)): Perfect.
I'd also like to introduce Lesley Gronow, the director of communications at Alberta Justice, who's with us as well.
When we get to the questions, Paddy may also answer some. I hope that's okay with the committee.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to provide you with the views and opinions of Albertans with respect to the Young Offenders Act and the issue of youth crime within our communities.
We look to the justice system to provide stability and to reinforce the standards, values and principles of our community. Unfortunately people do not perceive that this is happening when it comes to dealing with young people who break our laws. There's also a perception that youth crime is out of control in our communities.
Albertans have voiced their serious and legitimate concerns about the Young Offenders Act. People feel that for some young offenders, the present legislation, even with the amendments introduced in Bill C-37, is simply not stringent enough in its penalties for certain types of crimes. Albertans don't believe the Young Offenders Act has proven its value as a deterrent, and we all feel the need for greater assurance that we are being protected from repeated criminal acts. Albertans feel strongly that our concerns should be heard and dealt with responsibly and appropriately.
To ensure strong representation to the federal government on these concerns, in 1994 Premier Klein established an MLA task force on young offenders, on which I had the privilege of serving. I should note that at the time I was on the other side of the table; now I get the chance to be on this side.
I had the privilege of participating on this committee and learning firsthand the experiences and difficulties many people have with both the youth justice system and youth crime. We listened to Albertans in every region of this province and obtained many concrete and practical suggestions as to how the act could be improved. Even more importantly, we heard how we as individuals and as a community could prevent our young people from further criminal behaviour.
We tabled this report with the federal jurisdiction in 1994 and we will once again table this report today.
The Chair: Can you tell me where you tabled it in 1994?
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Ms Paddy Meade (Executive Director, Young Offender Branch, Correctional Services Division, Department of Justice, Government of Alberta): We've given it to your clerk already.
The Chair: No, where did you table it in 1994?
Ms Meade: Our minister sent it to your justice minister.
The Chair: Okay, thanks.
Mr. Doerksen: In listening to Albertans, one lesson became very clear. The protection of society should take priority over all other considerations and there must be accountability on the part of all offenders.
The consistent theme throughout this report is one of responsibility. In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power, but carries the ultimate responsibility. The people of Alberta clearly stated that we must take responsibility in dealing with our youth, and that young people themselves must take greater responsibility for their behaviour and its ramifications for the community.
It has become clear that there is a need to amend the act to reflect the realities that face our courts and our communities every day. Community opinion is clearly on the side of beefing up the act to strengthen our ability to respond to repeat and violent offenders. The current legislation provides penalties that are not stringent enough either as a deterrent or as an assurance that the public will be protected from repeated criminal acts.
On the other hand, it is also clear that only a small portion of the young offender population is responsible for the most violent of crimes. We need to amend the act to firmly address this small number of young people who most threaten our public security, without scrapping the entire system and unjustly penalizing those who commit lesser offences.
Madam Chairman, I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss the key recommendations stemming from our public consultation process and contained in our report.
The first is on publication of the identity of young offenders. This issue was one of the most prominent areas of concern to Albertans during the MLA task force consultations. While the MLA task force did not support a general lifting of the ban on publication of identity in all youth court cases, Alberta supports a partial lifting of the ban, which would allow for the publication of the identity in cases involving serious offences. Alberta also recommends an amendment to the act to allow, upon conviction, publication of the identity of chronic repeat offenders and an amendment that allows for the publication of the identity of young offenders convicted of an offence involving serious crime.
We also recommend an amendment to the act to allow the provincial director to disclose information about a specific young offender to those involved in areas such as education. We have developed and are developing protocols between the justice and education departments in Alberta to allow that to happen.
On the minimum age, Alberta does not support a general reduction in the minimum age of the Young Offenders Act. It is important, however, to acknowledge that the public is concerned about the offender behaviour of youths under 12 years of age. The Alberta MLA task force acknowledged the role of other child-serving systems in addressing offending behaviour of under-12s and made separate recommendations to the Alberta government regarding review and amendment of the Child Welfare Act, as well as coordination of services with a focus on prevention and early intervention.
It should be noted, however, that Albertans are very concerned with criminal behaviour of this age group, particularly where youth are involved in serious offences. Alberta recommends an amendment to both the Criminal Code and the Young Offenders Act to reduce the age of accountability in select cases, at the Crown's discretion, in order to address serious offences committed by children under 12 years of age and for those in this group who exhibit a pattern of offending. The amendment would require that a court hearing be held to determine if the accused child had sufficient capacity to understand the nature of the criminal action he or she had committed. If the child had the capacity, the offence could then be processed through the criminal justice system.
On maximum age, Alberta supports significant amendments to the transfer positions to adult court rather than a general reduction in the maximum age jurisdiction. The recent Bill C-37 amendments to the transfer provisions are viewed by Alberta as not going far enough to address concern with serious and chronic offenders. Alberta's primary recommendation in this area is that transfer to adult court should be a matter of crown discretion.
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The enumerated offences limited to 16- and 17-year-olds occur very infrequently and are not inclusive enough. Serious personal injury offences, such as sexual assault causing bodily harm, sexual assault with a weapon, kidnapping, forcible confinement, impaired driving causing death or bodily harm, criminal negligence causing death or bodily harm, and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle involving cases of police pursuit, should also be included.
No provisions have been made to address the chronic repeat offender. Alberta recommends an amendment to the act to allow the presumption of adult court for 16- and 17-year-old chronic offenders who have been convicted of a number of previous offences that demonstrate a pattern of offending.
Alberta is concerned with the current lengthy, complex and duplicated process for determining transfer to adult court. Alberta supports amendments to the Criminal Code and the act to streamline this process. Alberta favours transfers to adult court as the preferred mechanism to access longer sentences and address the needs of serious and chronic young offenders. We recommend that we amend the Criminal Code to require youths who have been transferred to adult court to have the same parole eligibility requirements as adult offenders. We also recommend an amendment to the act to allow the transfer of youths under the age of 14.
In the area of parental responsibility, the Alberta MLA report made several recommendations regarding parental involvement and responsibility, including requiring the youth court to assess parental ability to pay for the costs of family youth counselling and to limit the circumstances where legal aid services must be provided for a young person charged with an offence. Alberta would further recommend amendments to the Criminal Code and the act that would facilitate civil recovery from negligent parents for damages or losses arising from a criminal act of their children. Alberta also recommends amendment to the Criminal Code and the act to allow criminal charges to be laid against an adult who contributes to the delinquency of a young person.
On aboriginal young offenders, Alberta is continuing to work closely with the aboriginal community to address the specific needs of our aboriginal youth within the youth justice system. More importantly, joint collaborative efforts are being implemented to address the over-representation of aboriginal youth in the system and at risk for future conflict with the law.
Alberta is concerned that specific federal funds for aboriginal youth correctional programs ceased with the proclamation of the Young Offenders Act. Alberta recommends that the unique needs of this population, and the national need to reduce the over-reliance on custody for aboriginal youth and their over-representation within the youth justice system, be addressed outside the current federal young offender cost-sharing arrangements. Alberta requests that the federal government develop separate funding arrangements for aboriginal youth to ensure federal support and services to this population in cooperation with the jurisdictions.
Additionally, amendments should be considered to allow a youth court order for compensation to be filed as civil judgment against a young person.
In the area of diversion, Alberta is supportive of the use of police diversion and alternatives to the formal youth justice system. Alberta, for example, has enhanced the use of youth justice committees to provide for formal police diversion, to administer the alternative measures program, and to provide a sentence advisory role to the courts. Alberta supports alternatives in diversion to the formal justice system and the use of community-based dispositions.
Alberta also recommends that the declaration of principles within the act be amended to give the protection of society and offender accountability priority over all other considerations. What we need is a better, smarter young offender system that permits us as a community to treat the wide variety of youth in conflict with the law appropriately and effectively.
The concept of youth justice committees received a great deal of positive attention during the consultations that were part of our task force work. At that time, there were six formally designated committees throughout the province. One of our recommendations was that Alberta Justice should promote the further development of youth justice committees. Currently, there are now formally designated committees in 39 communities.
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The first youth justice committees in Alberta were established in the aboriginal communities of Fort Chipewyan in 1990 and Wabasca - Desmarais in 1991. At that time, these communities were very concerned about the involvement of their young people with alcohol and criminal activity.
Recently our Minister of Justice, Brian Evans, announced a number of initiatives addressing crime. One of the recommendations of this initiative is that the direct diversion of offenders by police to either a youth justice committee or a sentencing circle for guidance counselling and/or direction be supported and encouraged. However, if an offender fails to comply with the directions of the youth justice committee or the sentencing circle, appropriate action will be taken.
In Alberta we have found that the development of youth justice committees has been an excellent avenue for involving the community in the youth justice system. Communities cannot only hold young people accountable, but also, just as importantly, can work to change attitudes that might have contributed to the offending behaviour in the first instance.
Alternative measures, agreements, or sentencing recommendations developed by youth justice committees reflect the knowledge and experience of community members. They involve the parents and extended family in addressing the young person's behaviour. Youth justice committees also provide an opportunity for the voice of victims to be heard and ensure offenders understand the consequences of their crimes.
Madam Chairman, members of the panel, I cannot understate the lack of public confidence in the Young Offenders Act. In Alberta we have worked on those elements that fall within our jurisdiction, and we have achieved a great deal. We would urge you to consider, once again, the strong and concrete recommendations contained in our report of 1994. We need to restore public confidence in the Young Offenders Act.
Thank you, Madam Chairman, for the time -
The Chair: Could I just ask a little favour? I'm a chair, a chairperson or a chairwoman. You can call me Mrs. Cohen - or Shaughnessy, if you want - but I'm not a chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Doerksen: Not a problem. I'm just reading from my script. I apologize.
The Chair: Mr. Ramsay, you have ten minutes.
Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank you for your presentation. I support much of what's in this presentation, but I'd like to ask you this. We have continually met with the problem of an area that doesn't involve justice at all - that is, the very young person who shows signs that they need help and assistance prior to their getting into difficulty, serious difficulty, in terms of committing acts that can't be called criminal acts because they're under the age of 12, and there is no such thing as a criminal act for anyone under the age of 12.
We have also heard from witnesses in Alberta that there are insufficient resources to deal with youth under the age of 12 when they come to the attention of the police or other authorities. In fact, we had a police officer here yesterday who indicated that there's no point in their referring youth under the age of 12 who have committed wilful damage or some act of violence because there are insufficient resources within the social services for them to handle it, because of manpower shortages and so on.
Would you respond to that?
Mr. Doerksen: Sure. I think it must be acknowledged that, first of all, we don't see the act as solving all of the problems of youth crime. It is a mechanism that we think some of our suggestions can help to improve, but it's not going to be the sole mechanism to solve all the problems.
.1555
In Alberta I think we're well aware of the social issues. We have made a move and are in the middle of a program for redesigning our children's services, an effort to bring together the social service department, the education department, health, justice and what we call our AADAC to look at and address those issues.
Mr. Ramsay: There are two areas emerging, and you touch on them in your brief: the small percentage of repeat violent offenders who have to be dealt with in a closed-custody situation, and those whom the act does not deal with. Those are the ones who are showing signs that should be addressed, which indicate that the families need help and the children need help. If there isn't intervention by a program of assistance, then eventually, as they reach the age of 12 and onward, they're going to become a criminal justice problem.
Are you satisfied that there is not a void left in this province as a result of the 1984 act abandoning the criminal responsibility for any act committed by anyone under the age of 12? Do you feel the provincial statutes are strong enough that with sufficient resources they can adequately deal with the signs that those young people need assistance and help?
That may be repeating my first question, but I think it's okay because it's very important. I don't know whether you have addressed this in your answer. Are the resources there to help those young people and their families so that they never become part of the criminal justice system?
Mr. Doerksen: The matter of resources is always one of debate. Some will say you spend enough and some will say you don't spend enough if we're looking at it primarily as a money situation. In this province we have looked - and the federal government is doing the same - at our entire debt situation and have said that across this country, with over a $500 billion debt, we still haven't solved all the social problems. So you can't ignore it, but it is a matter of debate. Some will say there aren't sufficient resources and others will say there are.
In our redesign of children's services we are certainly focusing on early intervention. That is one of the critical elements in that plan, and one that we hope gets addressed through the redesign.
Mr. Ramsay: I want to touch on another area that has to do with the dollars. As the dollars grow short, there is fierce competition for them by the established institutions.
We had a lady here yesterday who told us of a diversional program working in northern Alberta that was very successful - I think she said it was almost 97% successful - but the crown prosecutor in the area shut the program down. I have great concern about that, and it's not the only sign of the kind of competition going on that I have seen since becoming a member of Parliament and prior to that. There is this fierce competition within what I call the criminal justice industry to maintain their turf as well as the resources allocated to them by legislation.
Do you recognize that? Are you aware of the program that this lady talked about or any other program that shows very positive signs of dealing with youth in an alternative way and yet receives resistance from the established institutions?
.1600
Mr. Doerksen: Jack, I'm not familiar with the specific program you are referring to, but when we look at all of the programs, yes, I believe we look at which ones are effective and we allocate the resources to those areas.
I think one that I'm particularly pleased with is the response of the communities to the youth justice committees, because that is a concrete example of the community getting involved. We try to bring the offender and the victim together and produce a community response to the crime.
I'm sorry I can't address this particular program because I don't know about it, but effectiveness is certainly something you have to look at.
Mr. Ramsay: I notice that in your brief you address the issue of serious crimes committed by children under the age of 12. I have some concerns that in 1984 the federal government did abandon its responsibility in the justice area for children under the age of 12. You recommend that amendments be made to the act that would allow some of the more serious offences, if and when committed, to be handled under the criminal justice system. When that has been suggested in some of the circles that I move in, what I hear in opposition to it is that we simply want to lock up 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds. Is that what you're recommending here?
Mr. Doerksen: As we went around the province, this was an issue that was raised quite a number of times by various people around Alberta, and they didn't all have the same viewpoint.
In our recommendations we have stated that we do not wish to see the age of 12 lowered, but we do wish to give the Crown discretion to try to deal with serious criminal behaviour and, if the child is capable and understands the act, to deal with that individual through the Young Offenders Act. That's our recommendation.
Mr. Ramsay: What about the consequences of that? Why do that? If you have a social service system that will deal adequately with it as far as treatment is concerned, what's the purpose of doing that?
Mr. Doerksen: There have been examples where it has not worked that way, where the child under 12 knows full well what he is doing. There's no mechanism to deal with it under the Young Offenders Act. In many ways, our suggestion is to send more of a signal that there is a mechanism to deal with serious youth crimes committed by those under the age of 12.
Mr. Ramsay: But what you're saying is that there isn't such a mechanism existing today under your social services legislation. Is that what you're saying?
Mr. Doerksen: Not through the youth or justice systems.
Mr. Ramsay: Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Mr. Gallaway, you have ten minutes.
Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for coming, Mr. Doerksen. Just as a matter of interest, I think if it were announced that this committee had arrived to study the highway traffic act of Alberta, people would be surprised. In a sense, I'm equally surprised that there would be a provincial committee, comprised of provincial MLAs, studying a federal piece of legislation. Why?
Mr. Doerksen: When the premier established the task the public was - and is - certainly very concerned with the issue of youth crime. While the Young Offenders Act is a federal statute, the provinces have to administer it, so we feel very much that we have an interest and a stake in this whole issue. That's why we think it's important.
Mr. Gallaway: Okay. That's fine.
In your review, did you meet only with the public or did you actually review your internal procedures? As you have acknowledged, you play a big part in it. Did you sit down with the Attorney General or officials from that department and review the procedures that are determined exclusively by the Attorney General of Alberta?
.1605
Mr. Doerksen: That's a good question. When we first set out on our task force, the mandate, if you want to call it that, was strictly to deal with the issue of the Young Offenders Act itself. As we moved around the province and started hearing from people, it became obvious to us that it was more than just an act situation; it was also an administrative or system initiative.
So we did in fact table two reports, one that dealt just with the changes to the Young Offenders Act and one with respect to the administration of justice, in which we made some recommendations for the way our government administered justice in this province. So we did in fact cover both.
Mr. Gallaway: Was that tabled with Mr. Rock also?
Mr. Doerksen: Yes.
Mr. Gallaway: We don't have it?
Ms Meade: We've actually supplied copies this afternoon with your clerk, so we have given you copies of both.
Mr. Gallaway: One of the things you've identified is publication of names. I would point out to you that section 38 of the act allows for the sharing of information with respect to a young offender at all stages of the system, from the day the charges are laid to the time this case is disposed of. Have you or your Attorney General instructed judges to follow this closely to in fact administer this section to invoke it on a frequent basis?
Mr. Doerksen: I'm going to ask Paddy to help me out on this one, but, as I understand it, one of the changes with Bill C-37 did allow for that sharing of information to take place. Certainly, in our report, we identified a number of the initiatives within that bill that we were very much in support of, and that was one of them.
Ms Meade: With respect to the issue of how we're administering that, we have established protocols between Alberta Justice and Alberta Education and other agencies. The judges are using it, and the Crown has been advised of the changes and encouraged to raise this in the youth court process.
Mr. Gallaway: The other part that really interests me about this report is that it starts out.... The fifth word is ``perception'', and the the opening line of the third paragraph is, ``Albertans don't believe that the Young Offenders Act has proven it has any value as a deterrent''. Is this report - because you've indicated that you've held a number of public hearings - based on anecdotal evidence presented by the public based on a belief or value system of the public? Did you in fact take the kind of information being given to you by Albertans and collate it into some sort of anecdotal graph, or did you in fact go back to people in your department to see whether there was in fact any reality to what people were saying? Often we will find that people's beliefs are incorrect. They're based on false assumptions or just erroneous information. How did you vent that out of the system?
Mr. Doerksen: That's a good point. We had a discussion paper that we released to the public ahead of time that did in fact detail statistics on certain aspects of crime, such as break and enters and so on. So we were quite clear in terms of the trends of youth crime. I think from information we have today the trend in some aspects of youth crime is on the decline, but at the same time it's also showing that there's an increase in violent youth crime, in particular sexual crime among youth.
We did try to lay out the information accurately, and in our reports we tried to faithfully represent the views we heard from Albertans.
Mr. Gallaway: Is this the report here?
Mr. Doerksen: It's called ``A Discussion Guide''. I don't think you have that.
Mr. Gallaway: You had these public meetings. How many people came?
Ms Meade: There was public consultation. The public also had the ability to write in, so we had both public presentations and written submissions. The number of public submissions, including written submissions, was approximately 600. Some were joint submissions from agencies and coalitions.
.1610
In follow-up to the first part of your earlier question, this in fact was reviewed by Alberta Justice, so it certainly had opinions of the public and information provided to the MLAs about how the system worked. In addition to public consultation, they toured every facility, met with young offenders, people in the system, and people in social services and other external systems like education.
Mr. Gallaway: You're telling me, then, that this report - this presentation today - is based, to the best of your knowledge, on empirical evidence as collated by social science research people.
Ms Meade: Yes, and the research area is Alberta....
Mr. Gallaway: We're talking about - and you've referred to it in your report - lowering in certain cases the age to 10 for certain types of offences. You've also indicated, because of the great interest with respect to the Young Offenders Act, that you've undertaken this review or that this review was carried out. Did you also consider having, or did you in any way have, a review other than the one that occurred after the Young Offenders Act review? Did you also, in tandem, look at your child welfare legislation? If you're concerned about 10-year-olds, they fall under that statutory umbrella.
Mr. Doerksen: Yes. I tried to address that question to Mr. Ramsay.
In the report that we addressed to the administration of Justice, we did also make some recommendations with respect to child welfare legislation.
So we did look at it. We did not do an in-depth review of the child welfare system because that was not our focus, but we did look at it from what we heard from individuals and we did say that this is an issue we have to deal with.
Mr. Gallaway: In light of your statement that Albertans don't believe it has any value as a deterrent in the Young Offenders Act and that, at the same time, you're recommending that the age be lowered to 10 for certain types of crimes, do you not think you're going to just kick some 10-year-olds into a system that in fact you administer and in which they're going to receive the same kind of treatment - or non-treatment - that they are receiving from you at age 12? How is that going to help anyone?
Mr. Doerksen: Hang on a second. I'm going to find where I said that.
Mr. Gallaway: It's on page 8. You recommend an amendment to the Criminal Code and the YOA to reduce the age of accountability in selected cases, at crown discretion, to address serious offences committed by children under 12 years of age for those in this group who exhibit a pattern of offending. I read that as meaning people under the age of 12.
Mr. Doerksen: I think we have been quite clear that we are trying to.... While we did not recommend the lowering of the age in the act, we did wish to give the Crown the discretion to apply to the courts to bring that particular case before the court.
If I'm missing something, I'm sorry.
Mr. Gallaway: Let's assume we have a 10-year-old who is running into problems that would otherwise be construed, under the Young Offenders Act, as criminal acts. This child is 10 years old and has a pattern of offending. You have child welfare legislation in this province that would deal with that child, and it's not working, so you're going to turn this child into the young offenders court, because the crown attorney is exercising his or her discretion. You're going to bring that child before a court, and then what's going to happen? How is that going to improve this child in any way? What's going to be different other than the fact that you're going to put this child into a different system?
Mr. Doerksen: We're not trying to treat this report in isolation from our direction under the redesign of children's services, because they do have to work together.
It's very often that departments operate in isolation from each other. Social Services doesn't know how Education is dealing with a particular child. Health doesn't know what the issues are. The focus of our redesign of children's services is to bring those departments together and say that we have to look at this child from a broad perspective - not isolate it to Justice or to Education or to Health, but to deal with it in a collaborative approach.
.1615
So while we've made some recommendations in our report, it is, in one sense unfortunately, in isolation from what we're doing in the redesign of services.
Mr. Gallaway: What mechanisms has the Government of Alberta put into place, then, to realize this collaborative approach amongst all these agencies, so Albertans can have some confidence in a system they don't have any in at the moment?
Mr. Doerksen: That is part of the redesign. We are spending -
Mr. Gallaway: My question is what mechanism have you put in place? You have to redesign. Have you done anything about the redesign? That's my question.
Mr. Doerksen: The point is we're in the process of the redesign. We have different regions -
Mr. Gallaway: Is this since 1994?
Mr. Ramsay: Madam Chair, let him answer the question.
Mr. Doerksen: We have different regions throughout the province. Each of them is looking at its own communities, because we want it to be community-specific, because there are different issues in different communities. So the design is taking place at a community level. I can't here today and definitively tell you what it's going to look like, because we're not quite finished the process.
I'm sorry. I can't be more specific than that.
The Chair: Annoying, isn't it, Mr. Ramsay? You might want to remember that for the future.
Mr. St-Laurent, ten minutes.
Mr. Ramsay: You can tell me off from another book, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Yes. Thank you for your help.
Mr. Ramsay: I wondered why you didn't mention it when he was intervening.
The Chair: Thanks for your help, Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Ramsay: You're welcome. It's always here.
The Chair: Mr. St-Laurent.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent (Manicouagan): The Research Department handed me a document entitled: "Rate of fluctuation in the daily average number of young offenders in custody 1990-91 to 1994-95, Canada and the provinces". It gives the average number of young offenders held in custody.
The Canadian average is 20%; three provinces have a much higher average, the second highest being Alberta with 39%. We all have work to do, that is clear, but Alberta seems to have an effectiveness problem.
You also say that, for a certain category of persons, the age limit should be brought down to 10 in order to bring them within the youth justice system. Alberta has greater difficulties than the other provinces. Newfoundland is the only province to be less successful than you. I am not blaming you for this. We are dealing here with statistical data. How do you explain this rush to put 10 year old children within a system that does not work?
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[English]
Mr. Doerksen: I'm curious about the 39% figure you mentioned. Is there a differentiation from province to province about open and closed custody?
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: There are three types of custody: temporary custody, open custody and secure custody;
[English]
secure custody, open custody and remanded. I have it here.
Mr. Doerksen: I'm going to ask Paddy to comment on the percentages, because I think she has a much better handle on those numbers than I would.
Ms Meade: It's quite true that in the Juristat, Alberta will show a large amount of use of custody, and in fact the custody rates are reflective of the judiciary and public in Alberta and how they see custody.
We are attempting to move to enhance alternatives to custody. We have seen some effect already since the Juristat of, I believe, 1993. But also, in Alberta, custody is custody. We don't have the option of probation with a residency or bail houses where there's residency. In our minds that would be custody. If someone is placed in a custody facility that is a child welfare facility, it still counts as custody.
So while we would accept that Alberta still has a high rate in the use of custody, that statistic is in isolation of knowing how the custody counts and how the options to custody are counted across the jurisdictions. That needs to be considered.
Mr. Doerksen: From the questions around the table, there seems to be a lot of focus on the minimum age and the recommendations with respect to youth under 12. I guess it bears repeating that we don't believe this is going to affect a large number of youth. It will only be a mechanism in place to permit the Crown to have that option if they think it's necessary. This is not going to be an open season on youth under 12.
We've also tried to clearly state that in our children's services, we have to work together in all of our various departments to address those issues.
But we are suggesting the mechanism does need to be there in those isolated cases where the Crown feels it might be necessary and appropriate to address those through the justice system.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: For your information, the statistics that I have here are from March 1995. What role do you see parents playing in the process? I came in a bit late and you may already have talked about this. Let's take an example that will leave no one indifferent. I'm talking about a child of 10. In Quebec, we visited a most interesting place called le Centre Portage. Inside, we were able to speak with young offenders who are personally experiencing the system and the way that type of problem is dealt with in Quebec.
We asked them: "If we brought the age limit down to 10, do you think that it would help improve the way the justice system works?" With a great deal of emotion - it was a special moment for all of us - , a young female delinquent about 16 years old who had been involved in prostitution and enough other things to end up in that place answered, tearfully: "A 10 year old does not need the arm of the law as much as it needs its mother's arms."
That was a special moment for all of us. It opened our eyes to a lot of other things. What would then be the role of parents within a justice system reflecting the changes you have suggested and making your work easier?
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[English]
Mr. Doerksen: The issue of parental accountability was probably second in items that were raised with us, in all of the presentations. The first one would have been on the publication of names, and the second one was on parental accountability.
We did make some recommendations. It's a difficult issue. Every one of your children - and I have four - is different. Parenting skills play a significant role in the raising of a child; however, children also have their own disposition towards what they're going to do with their lives.
We heard from both sides. Some presenters called for complete parental accountability. Another one said ``Hold it; the child or the youth also has to be accountable, because we raised our child in the best way we knew how.''
We did make some recommendations in our report to do with parental accountability. One of them was the ability for the judge to assess the parent to cover legal fees, for instance. It was there. It's a hard issue to know how to deal with.
Interestingly enough, the former act, the Juvenile Delinquents Act, had items such as sexual immorality, encouraging juvenile delinquency and parents paying the fines of their children. Those are three items that were removed under the Young Offenders Act. We have suggested bringing back two of those, so parents could be asked to pay for legal costs, and also so there would be a provision to address the issue of where there has been encouragement by adults in the juvenile delinquency.
The Chair: Mr. Ramsay, you have five minutes.
Mr. Ramsay: I have always had some difficulty with the minimum age. My difficulty is that serious criminal offences can occur - people can be killed, people can be raped, people can be assaulted - and the criminal justice system cannot deal with it. Provincial governments can deal with it, but not as a crime. They can only deal with it as a social need of the family, the child and so on.
Professor Bala, when he appeared before our committee, addressed that to some extent. He recommended going further than what you have recommended. He recommended lowering the age to 10. You've only recommended that the discretion be granted the Crown to take those young people into adult court based on circumstances. Obviously they'd be rare circumstances.
But I still have some grave concern that there can be serious criminal offences, serious acts of violence, committed by children under the age of 12, and yet they are not investigated as a crime.
Let me give you an example from talking to some of the people in northern Canada. They said if a snowmobile is stolen, they report it to the police. If they track it down and an 11-year-old has stolen it, that's the end of everything in terms of the offence against this individual.
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I have some concerns about that. If we're simply to say to that individual who lost his skidoo - it may have been smashed up or whatever - that there's nothing we can do about it, and there's nothing that can be done to that individual except treatment, then I have some real concerns about that.
Do you have any, beyond what your report has indicated?
Mr. Doerksen: Certainly in our tour around the province we heard both sides of the issue. In our report we have tried to present the balanced viewpoint that we thought came out, which does set up the mechanism to allow that to at least happen. We did not recommend reducing the age.
We've also moved, in terms of Alberta, to what we call ``police diversion'', where we encourage the police to use the youth justice committees in instances like this. So they will not go through the court system but will make an appearance before the youth justice committees and have some accountability to the community that way.
Mr. Ramsay: Would you have any concerns about youth under 12 who may be brought into the Young Offenders Act being dealt with through alternative measures, where all sorts of remedies and treatment and so on would be available? Would you have any concerns about that?
Mr. Doerksen: In our report and in our discussion today I think we're trying to draw a distinction between violent and serious crime compared with non-violent and less serious crime, maybe crime where it's a first-time instance for the youth. We're saying there needs to be stricter enforcement, stricter sentencing, for the violent and serious crime. There needs to be an ability to address that, and yet, for the first-time offenders and those of a non-violent nature, to address them through other mechanisms, some of which are alternative measures, youth justice committees, the diversion. It's whatever works. It's not perfect here, but we're trying to find the solutions to address all of these youth issues.
Mr. Ramsay: How am I doing for time, Madam Chair?
The Chair: You're finished.
Mr. Ramsay: Okay. Thank you.
The Chair: Ms Torsney, five minutes.
Ms Torsney (Burlington): I'm glad both that you've come here today and that the minister takes this issue seriously enough to charge five of you to go out and talk about it in the country.
I found it interesting that your quote at the top of page 15 says:
- What we need is a better young offenders system...a ``smarter'' system that permits us, as a
community, to treat the wide variety of youth in conflict with the law, appropriately and
effectively.
People don't want the Young Offenders Act to deter kids; they want kids to behave. They want kids to become good, healthy adults. We all know that a law doesn't necessarily deter people. Everybody here probably has sped in the last week on the highway, and yet it was against the law.
In a maximum penitentiary, we heard from kids who said they had been in Calgary, had been sitting around, and got no programming. We heard this afternoon that unless the kid has more than a 60-day sentence, they don't get any counselling, and there are disputes over who pays for anything they do get.
It seems to me there's been a real failure by the departments of social services and education. We heard that there will be a kid released from an open custody place next week who'll have to sit around, in all likelihood, before he can get back into the school system when the next semester starts. So where is the education department in providing alternatives to keep these kids focused?
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It seems to me that what people want is to be safe and they don't want to become victims. It's not the Young Offenders Act that needs to do that; it is our community. The community justice councils that you have are terrific because people who are involved with those really feel like they're getting something out of them.
But when you say to us on page 10 that they want the presumption of adult court for 16- and 17-year-olds who are chronic offenders and have committed a number of previous offences, if these kids had been to that open-custody facility for 30 days at a time, 16 times, yes, they are considered a repeat offender. But if they never got any help while they were there because no one can deliver them help unless they get more than 60 days, whose fault is it that they're back? Isn't it the fault of everybody here? Isn't it the department's fault that they're back? What were they doing?
You say in those exceptional cases you want these kids who are 10 and 11 years old to be moved up into the court system. Their first offence was probably not the serious personal injury crime; it was probably a lot of other stuff that should have been dealt with, and their parents, if they didn't have skills to deal with them, should have been delivered intensive programs. There should have been another way. It's really admitting that the system failed those kids and families.
My final comment is, you pointed out that all of your kids are different and they tap your skills in different ways. It's really great that you're a good parent. Here's my one complaint. There's not a lot of parenting skill programs going on in your institution, sir, and I would think most of these kids need that kind of help. One day most of them are going to become parents, and it scares the hell out of me that we heard from a kid this morning who plans to have a child within the next five years who thinks he has the skills, and God help us! I'm not here to assess him and I'm not sure I want him assessing me, but I don't think he has great parenting skills, by virtue of his upbringing perhaps.
Mr. Doerksen: It's hard to remember every point you raised -
Ms Torsney: There is a theme.
Mr. Doerksen: I think first of all we have to be very careful about assigning blame to anybody whether it be the system, the parents, or whomever. We are a society that has to look for responsibility from its individual members, and I don't think we can avoid that. As soon as we start assigning blame to the system, then we're taking the onus away from the individual and his or her own responsibility.
It was interesting. I had a personal observation about some of the young offenders who came to make presentations to us and who had straightened out their life. For them, it really came down to a time when they decided they were going to improve their situation. Despite all of the counselling and training we've provided, and we do try to provide a great deal, until they're willing to accept the help it's very difficult to have them change. That's a personal observation.
On the parenting skills part, I hear you. I think that comes down to our family make-up. Our attitude in Alberta is that we try to help out all of our youth within the family situation when it's appropriate.
Those are some comments I would have.
Ms Torsney: One of the most effective programs we saw was working with under-12-year-olds to teach them SNAP, Stop Now And Plan, some skills in self-control. Those kinds of things should be across all of the schools, children who have gotten into trouble or not, to teach them some skills, because you can't count on them necessarily having that. Yet the kids who have been in conflict with the law are desperately in need of those kinds of self-control things so that they could exercise control if they wanted to. It's not taking place in most of the institutions we visited.
The Chair: I would like to take a second to comment. I don't know that we're obsessed with the age thing, but I think it's fair to say that it's raised quite a bit. I for one have not...I run back and forth on the issue, but....
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Your report recommends that you'll have the Crown decide - I used to be a Crown, so I have a very big problem with that - to address serious offences committed by children under 12 years. Do you mean 3 years, 2 years, 6 years, 9 years? How old do you mean? Open-ended?
Mr. Doerksen: I'm sure that in your experience as a prosecutor - you were at one time, were you -
The Chair: Yes, I was.
Mr. Doerksen: - you also had to prove your case in court, and you would not take a case forward into court unless you thought it was worth while or necessary to have that case dealt with, in this case under the Young Offenders Act. There is still an obligation -
The Chair: I'll comment on that in a minute, but what age do you mean? You say ``committed by children under 12 years of age''.
Mr. Doerksen: One of the difficulties, of course, is any time you talk about age, what is the magic age? Why do we pick 12? Why do we pick 17? You pick an age and you have varying levels of maturity within that age, which is why I think we've gone and moved toward the discretion part, that the child also has to have the capacity to understand what he or she has done.
The Chair: I'm just trying to be clear. Would it be okay not to prosecute a child who is 12 or 13 if there were not...? Right now if you're 12, you're 12. We don't let a judge look into the issue of culpability or maturity and that sort of thing. Under this theory, would it be okay for a Crown or whoever is going to exercise the discretion to exercise the discretion not to prosecute someone who is 15 because they don't have the ability to be culpable because they're not mature enough or whatever?
Mr. Doerksen: I think you raise a good point. But that issue for those who are above 12 is also dealt with in the predisposition and the disposition reports. I think they would take that into account.
The Chair: After they're convicted.
Mr. Doerksen: No, during the process.
The Chair: No, after they're convicted. A predisposition report comes after a conviction.
Mr. Doerksen: I can't say I've given that a whole lot of consideration. It's a good point.
The Chair: That's fair.
Mr. Doerksen: Interestingly enough, though, under the JDA no age was recommended at all.
The Chair: No, I know that.
If a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old commits a violent act, let's say a sexual assault, and we have this new system you're proposing and we put him into the criminal justice system.... I'm at a loss. I think it's valid for you as a province...in fact, that's why we invited the province to come here and talk to us. We change laws and you guys get to spend the money, and that's how it works in the criminal justice system. But what I perceive here - and I say this with all due respect to your Attorney General and to your government - is a fundamental confusion, because you guys still get to spend the money. Funding it is still your problem.
If you have an 11-year-old who's out of control, why don't you just deal with it? Frankly, if he's not in the criminal justice system you have an awful lot more power to restrain and to control him or her, in many ways, than you do once it goes into the criminal justice system. The point I'm making is I don't understand why you need that tool. You already have tools.
I'll be blunt. Are you just trying to make some political points because you know a lot of people out there think we should be prosecuting 10-year-olds?
The point is this. Right now you could order your children's aid society to deal with 10-year-olds whose behaviour is extreme. Just go ahead and do it. You could order your police departments to refer those kids to children's aid and you could put the funding in place to deal with it. Believe me, if you get them in the criminal justice system, you're going to have to pay for it. They're not going to go to a federal penitentiary.
Could you comment on that? What good does it do you?
Mr. Doerksen: About making political points, I hope this isn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black or something, because we're all in the political business.
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We have really tried in our report to present a faithful representation of what the people told us they wanted to see from the youth system. Their points are more valid than yours or mine because they are the people we represent. The committee might have thought differently about what recommendations we should make, but we have tried to represent what we heard from Albertans to the federal government.
It is interesting that you would comment on the fiscal issue and who should pay. With the establishment of the Young Offenders Act, there was a fifty-fifty cost-sharing arrangement with the feds, which is no longer the case. We are being asked more and more to take over the funding side. In Alberta we support the effort to get the debt under control - there's no question about that - but we're also tied in some respect to what the federal legislation tells us we can do.
The Chair: But you didn't answer my question. If we take a 10-year-old into the criminal justice system and prosecute him and convict him of an offence, the way you're asking us to do, then he ends up back on your door and you're dealing with him anyway. We know there are effective non-criminal-justice tools to deal with someone like that. With us, if we get into it, you're going to have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
I find it hard to believe that you've thought this out. It may be what you heard from the people of Alberta, and there's nothing wrong with you telling us that, but ultimately you have to pay for it. You have to make the system work. What I think you should be telling us is what we can do to help you. If you're saying that lowering the age to 10 or leaving the age open-ended will help you, then pardon me if I ask you how. I just don't see how. You can still deal with this kid now if you just order your social services people to do it.
Mr. Doerksen: We are. I don't think for a moment that Alberta is the only place in Canada with issues surrounding social services and child welfare.
You need a number of tools. I said that the danger of looking at justice in isolation is that you try to pin it into that box, and you can't do that. We're recommending that there be a tool in the justice system that could be more effective when necessary in those isolated cases.
The Chair: Okay, but you didn't answer my question.
Mr. Doerksen: I'm sorry. I tried.
The Chair: There's nothing wrong with you responding to public opinion, Mr. Doerksen. I'm not suggesting that's an evil motive. We all do it. But are you just responding to public opinion, or are you telling me that by making it possible for your criminal justice system administration to prosecute a 10-year-old, it will somehow help you treat that kid or deal with that problem?
Mr. Doerksen: In some cases we are saying that yes, this can help.
The Chair: How? I want to know how it would help.
Mr. Doerksen: It gives you another tool. Within Alberta or within the justice system, there are a number of programs: the diversion programs, the alternative programs, any number. There are also tools available in social services, education and health. What I am trying to say is that we have to look at all the avenues at our disposal and use what we think is most effective. It's not going to be the same for every kid.
The Chair: How many 10-year-olds do you think fall into this category? How many children under the age of 12, in the past 12 months in Alberta, do you think have committed the kinds of offences that make you need this tool?
Mr. Doerksen: I think I've been quite clear in saying that we view this as being only in isolated situations. But we want to have the tool available.
The Chair: Okay, thanks.
Ms Torsney: May I ask a technical question? On page 12, the aboriginal young offenders act, the section starts, and it ends at the top of page 14, saying:
- ...amendments should be considered to allow a youth court order for compensation to be filed as
civil judgment against a young person. Is that only for aboriginal kids? That's still aboriginal
kids; that whole section is aboriginal kids.
Mr. Doerksen: I regret that this particular paragraph is misplaced. Thank you for drawing that to our attention.
The Chair: To assess your report, we would really like a copy of the backgrounder that people were responding to when they came to your committee. And we would like a copy, if possible, of the report made to the provincial government as well. Just as you are advising the federal government, it may be that we can't avoid commenting on social services issues. It's not that we want to get into that, but I don't know if we can avoid it. So it would be very helpful to us. It may be the only document like that in the country. We haven't heard of other provinces doing that.
Mr. Doerksen: Paddy will make sure that happens.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We will rise for a couple of minutes.
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The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Thanks. I call this committee back to order. We're very pleased to have Gary Dickson, QC, MLA, with us, who is the member for Calgary - Buffalo.
Thank you, Mr. Dickson. I gather you've seen the process so far. Hopefully you'll make an opening statement and then we'll have rounds of questions.
Mr. Gary Dickson (Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta (Calgary - Buffalo)): I have, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. Good afternoon and welcome to Alberta.
This afternoon I want to share with you a report, with a series of recommendations, that had been undertaken by myself and two of my colleagues, two other MLAs in the provincial legislature. I might just preface the review of my report by telling you that like residents of most other provinces, Albertans don't necessarily speak with a single voice. You'll find a range of opinions, values and perspectives, and I'd like to give you some of that flavour this afternoon.
The report, ``Taking Responsibility'', with its 49 recommendations, is the product of a consultation undertaken by myself and my two colleagues in 1994. The consultation started with a questionnaire that was distributed to 2,000 individuals and organizations in Alberta.
I'm afraid I don't have a copy of the questionnaire here, but it focused very clearly on the youth justice system. Our whole consultation started from the premise that we have a youth justice system. The act is important, but it's only a single element, and I think what we wanted to do was canvass Albertans in terms of their views on all of those other elements in the system, whether it was the appointment of youth court judges or correctional facilities or child welfare or education, all of those things that are exclusively within the legislative competence of the provincial government. We wanted to elicit Albertans' concerns and views in that respect too.
In response to the 2,000 mailed out, we received approximately 500 returned questionnaires and then undertook a series of meetings in 12 different Alberta communities, in some very small communities of 3,000 to 4,000 people as well as in the major centres in Alberta.
We received 50 very substantial written briefs. We spent a considerable amount of time in Calgary. We spent half a day with the youth services unit of the Calgary police service and had a similar experience in Edmonton. We had a number of round table talks in Edmonton and Calgary with representatives such as you've met with in the last day, I understand, people involved with community criminal justice agencies and organizations. As well I've had a chance to tour each one of the young offenders' facilities in the province of Alberta, including the Shunda Creek work camp near Rocky Mountain House.
In the report you will find a very short list of recommendations in terms of changes we thought ought to be made to the YOA and a much longer section dealing with changes we thought ought to be made that are within the legislative competence of the province of Alberta.
On pages 21 to 23 of the report you will find a couple of key recommendations that we had picked up from our consultation. The first one was increasing maximum sentences or dispositions. The second was simplifying the process to transfer 16-year-old and 17-year-old young offenders in particular in cases of serious personal injury offences, improved information sharing, and a sharper focus on repeat offenders.
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I have to tell you that we had this opportunity - legislation has in fact been introduced in the House of Commons, more or less parallel to our consultation - to get substantial feedback on the bill that was in front of the House of Commons at the time. On the basis of the consultations that we held in 1994, I certainly think it's fair to say that those amendments that came in December 1995, through C-19 or C-37 - whatever we're calling it - addressed quite clearly the concerns that we had been hearing from Albertans.
The second part of the report is focused primarily on provincial responsibilities. I had the opportunity to sit in for the last presentation, and I certainly heard a number of the questions and comments made by committee members. I can therefore say that when we did this, we got a great deal of feedback in terms of those changes that people felt should be made.
First, in terms of alternative measures, we found there was a very strong need in this province to expand the range of alternative measures - the section 4 provision in the YOA. We found, and noted with some dismay, a number of very excellent alternative measures programs that had existed in Albertan communities. For example, I think some reference was made before to some of the victim-offender reconciliation projects and so on. These were things that, based on all of the evidence, were having an impact in those communities, so we're very concerned that these are areas in which there have been cutbacks.
Albertans told us they wanted safer neighbourhoods and safer communities. When you spoke with people, you often found that many people had never had an opportunity to read the Young Offenders Act. In fact, what they were relying on was that people had invested in the statute the solution or potential solution for the whole of the problem with juvenile crime. But we found that certainly with those people who work in the system, and with those people with whom you would engage a discussion at our various open meetings, alternative measures made good sense to them. They wanted to see those measures promoted, not curtailed, restricted or eliminated.
You've already heard the recent success story - and I call it a success story in this province - of the promotion of section 69 youth justice committees. I more often refer to them as sentencing panels, but I want to tell you they are actually quite a recent development. If you go back to 1992, Manitoba had some 60 of those committees in operation at that time, and British Columbia had something like 25. But Alberta only had three, and they were largely in native settlements and communities in northern Alberta for the most part.
You've heard that there are now some 38 committees working around the province. One concern is that they still seem to be mainly situated in small communities. We're very anxious to see this program developed and expanded into the larger cities. There are some practical problems, but we've certainly heard from the Albertans with whom we have consulted that there is considerable opportunity to expand this system.
We've been told that it does two things. It gives the bigger community a window into this whole youth/juvenile corrections area, which most people don't know a lot about, frankly. So that's a positive. The other thing, I think, is that it brings home to young offenders that this is a community issue, thus responsibility is reinforced.
We have a major problem in this province in terms of a lack of open-custody facilities. When we went around the province, I think what we heard from people at centre after centre was that we just don't have the programs. Where we formerly had a range of open-custody facilities, they've been shut down because of budget cutbacks. So what you have in the Calgary Young Offender Centre, I suggest, are three populations in the same facility. You have young offenders on remand, awaiting a disposition. You have young offenders who are there for relatively minor offences but are still in the facility. They are supposed to be serving an open-custody disposition. But in the same facility you have the most serious young offenders, people who have committed very serious offences.
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That doesn't make a lot of sense to us. We thought it was important and what we've been told by Albertans is important. There has to be a much richer and broader range of options and facilities available in the province than currently exists.
The other concern we heard a lot about was the lack of treatment facilities for juvenile sex offenders. Again, what has happened with cutbacks, in both Edmonton and Calgary, where you had specialized residential treatment programs and facilities for juvenile sex offenders, is they've been eliminated, or cut back, or the province refuses to pay if a youth court judge makes that part of a disposition.
We had a case a couple of years ago in Calgary. A youth court judge was dealing with a very serious sex offender with a very frightening list of criminal activity, preying on women and girls. The youth court judge said the best treatment facility we can find in the province is this particular Phoenix program. It's a 24-hour intensive residential program. The provincial government said no, we won't pay for that; it costs us a whole lot less money to have this person stay in a young offender centre and send in a contract psychologist for two hours a week.
Certainly to the Albertans we talked to, that's not good enough. That's where we have to see some change.
The other issue we found in our consultation was a great deal of concern and a very consistent lament that we have a gap between our child welfare system and our juvenile justice system. What was repeated time and time again is if you have 11- and 12-year-old youth and they're in trouble and the child welfare authorities know that, they tend to back off. They tend simply to shrug their shoulders. We were told this by child welfare workers: we'll leave it for the youth justice system. It seems to me that's an ongoing concern Albertans have.
I will mention one other concern that has developed somewhat since the time of our report. It has to do with immigrant youth.
There was a high school in Calgary where a very in-depth study was done a year ago. It determined that the English-second-language students in this high school had a 70% drop-out rate. It's within the experience of most of the people we talked to in our consultation that youth who drop out of school, who aren't actively engaged in school, tend to be far more likely to be involved in the youth justice system. We think that's an area.... Once again, it's within provincial responsibility, but it's something we as a province have to address and we have to find ways of dealing with.
That is just a very short summary of the 49 recommendations we have. I would certainly be happy to respond to any questions the committee has, Madam Chair.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): We'll turn to questions. Of course, for those of you who haven't noticed it yet, at the top of page 8 the first recommendation was to expand parenting programs. It's my personal favourite.
Mr. St-Laurent.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Madam Chair...
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Could you try to sum up because we are running out of time?
Mr. St-Laurent: Of course. Your recommendations are spread throughout the document that you handed out to us and I read them over quickly. English is not my mother tongue, but am I right in thinking that, insofar as dealing with young offenders is concerned, your recommendations are stricter than what is currently being done in Alberta under the present system?
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[English]
Mr. Dickson: When you say stringent...we think our recommendations are more focused on dealing with what we think is the real problem. As I'm sure your committee has heard many times, there's always this issue about whether you are getting tougher or softer on youth, on young offenders.
Our focus, and what we've been told by Albertans they want to deal with, was solutions that were going to work. People told us they were less interested in rhetoric and in appearances of getting tough than they were in things that have some proven impact in terms of making a community safer.
Sir, I'm not sure I'm being responsive, but the 49 recommendations we heard from Albertans were focused very much on things people believed would be an improvement over the system as we have it now.
[Translation]
Mr. St-Laurent: Among other things, you recommend that prevention be made a priority. You recommend the creation of a group whose task it would be to inform young people at the very beginning of high school and perhaps even before that. The group could go from school to school and warn young people of the consequences of criminal behaviour and of the repercussions that such behaviour might have both for them personally and for their families. This approach has been successful in certain places where it has been tried.
I do not remember exactly the rather trifling answer we got this morning when we asked a young man what the justice system meant to him. In effect he answered: "Ha! What a joke!" One of his friends got caught and it was a joke. But how could he know that it was a joke? He didn't know anything about it. He only knew that his friend had been taken away in a squad car. To a certain degree, he had gained prestige within the group, which is an important thing for a young person. But that prestige was of course to no avail because his friends weren't able to go along with him. Anyway, that's the impression this young man was left with and, until it happened to him, he just had no idea.
He said that if he had been made aware of that - as is done in certain other places - , people would have gradually changed their attitude towards him. This does not take place overnight, but by deciding, in Alberta, to make crime prevention a priority, are you willing to go so far as to send people out to the different schools in order to make young people aware of the repercussions and consequences of criminal behaviour?
[English]
Mr. Dickson: Sure, I think that's one of the things that would be very helpful to do.
What's happened in the past is the provincial government hasn't been engaged in that, but there have been a number of community agencies - I think of the John Howard Society, for example - that have a public education component and they've certainly gone into schools and provided that kind of information.
I'd also share with you that there is a graduate student working for her Master's thesis, who had in fact done a survey of youth in Lethbridge. She had done an assessment in terms of how much young people know about the youth justice system, how much accurate information they have. What she found was really interesting.
Those youth who had gone through the system would in fact respond by saying it's real tough, that it's no picnic spending time at the Calgary Young Offender Centre and going through this process. The youth who had never had any direct involvement, who had never been to youth court, who had never been to a young offender centre, who had never spent any time talking to a policeman, tended to be the youth who would tend to minimize the act or the seriousness of criminal activity. That's parallel with some experiences that have been put to us by others, perhaps not on the same empirical basis.
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I think there would be a great deal of value.... As I say, we don't do very much of that in Alberta, other than through these agencies, and the agencies have all been experiencing major funding cutbacks. So as a province we're doing less of that kind of public education than had been the case perhaps two or three years ago.
[Translation]
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Mr. Ramsay.
[English]
Mr. Ramsay: This ``Taking Responsibility: Findings of the Alberta Liberal Caucus Youth Justice Consultation'' panel was prepared in 1994, before the amendments to the Young Offenders Act took place.
Mr. Dickson: It was before they were enacted, but my recollection is that the bill had been introduced in the House or there had been a discussion paper, because most of the groups we talked to - and certainly we met with police and youth court judges - were conversant with the proposal, and in fact ultimately it was passed and became law. That was very much a fixed target, if you will, at the time we were consulting with Albertans.
Mr. Ramsay: I'm wondering about that, because on page 22 your recommendations are for fair but tough amendments to the federal Young Offenders Act and to increase the maximum sentence for first- and second-degree murder from the present five-year sentence. Is that not now redundant?
Mr. Dickson: Oh, absolutely it is, and perhaps I didn't make that clear before. I think what was happening was changes were being undertaken in the House of Commons by you and your colleagues at the same time as we were doing the consultation. The point I tried to make at the beginning was I think in fact you and your Parliament deserve credit, because you have responded very clearly to what we were hearing from Albertans in 1994.
Mr. Ramsay: So we have to read this with care, in that by and large, in some areas, it's outdated.
Mr. Dickson: Well, I wouldn't accept that, Mr. Ramsay. What I'd prefer to do is say this is what Albertans we spoke with told us at the time, and I congratulate members of the House of Commons and the Parliament of Canada, because it seemed to me in a very forthright manner and with some alacrity you moved to address the very concerns Albertans were telling us were at the top of their minds at that time. But they also told us of a number of other concerns and things they wanted to see changed, and these have not been addressed. Most of those deal with matters within the legislative competence of the provincial government.
Mr. Ramsay: Thank you. I understand that.
Mr. Dickson: I might just add that I congratulate your committee for having taken terms of reference broad enough to look beyond the act. I think it's important that what you've done is you've said you want to look at the youth justice system, not simply to tinker with a single statute. I think that's critically important.
Mr. Ramsay: Okay, let me be specific. You have a paragraph here that deals with disclosure. You found a substantial minority recommended that the names of young offenders should be published. Some indicated that all youth charged should have their names published, whereas others felt only convicted youths' names should be published and others believed only in the case of serious convictions should names be published.
Do you not think the section of the act that now prevents disclosure discriminates? We have visited northern communities where when a young offender commits a violent offence everyone knows about it. The whole community knows about it. So the disclosure requirement is redundant because everyone knows about it, and because of that everyone knows and can take advantage, in any way they see fit, to protect their children with regard to this young offender or young offenders. But they can't do that in the larger areas because of the disclosure requirement. Do you have a comment on that, from the study that you made and the information that you received from Albertans?
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Mr. Dickson: Sure. What we heard most often, particularly from police officers, from people who work with juvenile offenders - their biggest concern was that youth revel in notoriety and that some of the most difficult youth would like nothing better than to see their names on the front page of The Calgary Herald or The Edmonton Journal, or to hear their name mentioned on a radio or television broadcast. We often heard the concern that people didn't want to feed that sort of attention-seeking activity, because in fact what you'd end up doing, perversely, would be fostering the very kind of criminal behaviour that we're trying to get a handle on and trying to reduce.
Mr. Ramsay: Of course, that is only an assumption, and it is shared by some of the young offenders that we've talked to. But we've also talked to young offenders, one in particular this morning when we brought this issue up, who thought that sex offenders' names should be made public because they represent a danger and a threat. He went on to say that perhaps some other serious offenders should be included in that as well.
The defence against it - I've heard better defences on that, with due respect to you, and that is that rehabilitative possibilities would be eroded because we're labelling this person. I recognize that, but I also recognize the balance to that, the corollary to that, which is the safety of society. What we have to do is wrestle with where we come down on that. Do we come down on the side of the offender and make it easier for him to be rehabilitated - and it will; there's no question in my mind it will - or do we come down on the side, in those isolated cases, of the safety of society?
Mr. Dickson: With respect, I think you paint the options too starkly. Most of the people we talked to also were concerned about the difficulty in terms of reintegrating a youth back into the mainstream and that it might run counter to rehabilitation. But it seems to me that if we take what I suggest is a common-sense approach, there are some people who should know. If you've got a juvenile offender who is a sex offender, I think it's important that school authorities know that; it's important the local police service knows that; it's important the probation people know that. I'm not sure, quite frankly, that in a city of 750,000, the fact that the name is published in a paper is going to serve the purpose I think you want it to, which is that people can take steps to protect themselves.
Mr. Ramsay: Why not?
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): You're giving truth to that adage ``give them an inch, they take a mile''. It's now 8 minutes and 18 seconds.
Mr. Ramsay: All right, Madam Chair, I'm done. I'm going to Winnipeg.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): You're right.
Mr. Ramsay: I'll be continuing my questions there. Thank you.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Okay.
Mr. Gallaway, I think you have a question here.
Mr. Gallaway: Yes, I have just one question.
Your report, as given to us, contains four pages of recommendations to the provincial government acknowledging that they have a role in improving the youth justice system. Can you tell us what of these four pages of recommendations have in fact been implemented?
Mr. Dickson: You are referring to the provincial recommendations?
Mr. Gallaway: Yes.
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Mr. Dickson: I'd say very few of them. In fact, once you get past the good news stories, the successes such as the youth justice committees, you find that not only have we not been developing additional sentencing options for youth court judges, we've been closing doors. We've been eliminating a whole range of options that they had but a couple of years ago. We're doing less segregation of the different groups of offenders, and we're tending to put more young offenders from all kinds of criminal backgrounds in the same facility. Why?
I'm trying to avoid being partisan, but when you start reducing every program to how cheaply it can be done, and this becomes the highest and best measure of success, then the consequence is that you have all kinds of things that make the problem much bigger and more severe. You're not solving it.
In terms of the alternative measures programs, we don't see any significant changes there. There's very little change with community service. We find that with cutbacks, crown counsel tend to be overwhelmed by the caseload. Every time the province announces a new program to get tough with this group or that group, you talk to crown prosecutors who say they're swimming. They're desperate just to try to keep up with the caseload they have. They don't have time to be spending more time meeting with parents and dealing with parents of immigrant youth who have special language concerns.
I'd have to say that virtually all of these things that were recommended are still outstanding, with the exception, I suppose, of the youth justice committees, where the province has moved with some speed in the last three years.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Mr. Maloney.
Mr. Maloney (Erie): In your presentation you indicated that in certain situations child welfare workers who are having trouble with 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds will back off and wait for the youth justice system to kick in, in due course. In your recommendations you referred to making better use of community services and promoting more effective intervention.
In the Northwest Territories the justice minister is one and the same person as the minister in charge of social services. Is there any merit in or is it possible to explore merging the departments or having a better connection between them? They would then be working as one machine as opposed to two with their own separate agendas and priorities and needs.
Mr. Dickson: Mr. Maloney, I'm delighted you asked that question. I was here when Mr. Doerksen talked about an attempt to integrate justice and social services.
It seems to me that it has been the stated goal of the provincial government for at least the last five or six years to do a better job of integrating youth services. It's usually the same population. They may be in the child welfare caseload this year and in the youth justice caseload next year.
This may be more of a personal observation. It seems that administrators and managers of two or three departments can do what they can to mesh programs, but if there isn't a strong political will at the top of those departments, the integration is a half measure. It never really gets to the point where there is a free flow of information and a smooth, seamless movement of youth from one system to another.
It will be interesting to see what happens in British Columbia, where they've created a new ministry for children's services and have tried to bring together the whole range of services for children. I find that very attractive. We had that in Alberta, I think. Twelve or fifteen years ago we had a department of children's services. I think there's a lot in that kind of reform to recommend itself.
Mr. Maloney: Under your recommendation on serving the needs of victims, you referred to victim service units. Could you explain what those are?
Mr. Dickson: The two major police forces in Calgary and Edmonton, and the RCMP in most other communities...well, certainly in Calgary and Edmonton, there are units attached to the police service. There is usually a social worker or two and some people trained to assist with the trauma that a victim of a serious or a violent crime deals with, post-offence. This would be a unit that would go out, if not with the investigating officer, then almost immediately after, and work with the victims and point them to different services they could access and so on.
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One of the scary prospects in Alberta.... There's been about a 30% reduction in the police budget across the province, and the effect of that is that a year ago Calgary very seriously thought about eliminating its victim service unit. They're trying to stretch dollars as far as they can.
Fortunately, that decision was not made, and we still have that unit in Calgary. But it's frightening to think that those kinds of services are sort of hanging in the balance, when arguably the need for them is greater and that service is more important perhaps now than ever.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Ms Cohen, I think you wanted to use up the rest of the time.
Ms Cohen (Windsor - St. Clair): I want to thank you, first of all, for coming and taking the time to track me down, as I know you did. I appreciate that.
I have a more general question. I think we're all concerned about the difference between public perception and reality in the system. I apologize, because I was out and I may be going over something that you've already talked about. My perception is that there's a real disparity in terms of what's real and what the public thinks is real - certain sectors of the public. Quite frankly, I thought I was going to find that less, but I find it in most parts of the country.
Committees like yours had help with that, because you can stop somebody in mid sentence and say, ``No, you're wrong; that's not true''. Today we found out, because of the excellent research of our colleague Mr. St-Laurent, that 40% of kids who enter the system in Alberta actually go into custody. If putting kids in custody is what should give the community some security, your public should feel a lot more secure than they seem to in terms of at least what the government told us.
Is that the case? Do you agree with me that there's a difference in perception and reality? If so, what can we do about it?
Mr. Dickson: Absolutely there is. I remember Dr. Doob at the University of Toronto - this must be 20 years ago - doing a report that received great media coverage. People would be asked - you would do surveys: what kind of penalty would somebody get for this? People would always grossly underestimate what in fact the courts were handing out. Nothing has changed in that respect.
I'd make two observations. The first is that, as public representatives, we have an enormous responsibility to share with our constituents the reality and I guess to avoid sometimes what seems to be a tempting opportunity to panic people a bit and play on people's fears. I think it's an irresponsible thing to do. At the end of the day, the more apprehensive people are, the more fearful they are. It tends to drive a clamour or a demand for more punitive measures by courts and for longer sentences. People become adverse to conditional release programs. What do we end up with? Well, what do we spend now? We spend $9 billion a year on cops, courts, and corrections. We're finding, at the other end, that there's no capacity to direct more resources to the serious....
I'm perhaps not being very responsive, but I just think that all of us, who have the privilege of being elected representatives and who have access to a lot of this information that many of our constituents don't, have to try to find ways of sharing that information. It's a closely held secret.
If you look at something Jerry Miller did in Massachusetts a number of years ago, he identified that a lot of the people in the state of Massachusetts didn't know very much about what goes on in youth correctional facilities. I'm not sure it's much different in Alberta. I've talked to a lot of constituents who have virtually no idea what it's like to spend time in the Calgary young offenders centre.
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Not only could elected people be responsible, but we could do more to allow the media greater access to what goes on on the corrections side of things - greater access to correctional officers and to people serving time. The more information people have, usually the less fearful they become, and often they're a little less punitive, because they start to have a more realistic notion of how safe or unsafe the community is.
I'm sorry; I've wandered quite broadly.
Ms Cohen: No, that's okay. I don't very often get to ask the questions, so it's kind of fun.
Do I have any more time?
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): You don't really, but....
Ms Cohen: That's fine.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): You speak of increased access for the media and what have you, but I assume you would be still keeping children's names confidential?
Mr. Dickson: Oh, absolutely. I didn't mean to breach that important rule about protecting the identities of youths in facilities.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Okay.
Committee members, do you have any more questions?
Mr. Ramsay: I have one very short one.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Do you promise?
Mr. Ramsay: If you agree that the public doesn't know very much about the Young Offenders Act....
I find that your report is based upon a survey. You sent out 1,000 and you got 500 back, from the very people who, you are agreeing, don't know very much about the Young Offenders Act. Yet your report is based upon their return of that questionnaire as well as your recommendations.
I find an inconsistency in what you have answered and placed on the record and in your basing your report as well as your recommendations on that kind of information, which has to be flawed, by your own response to that question.
Mr. Dickson: This wasn't a random mail-out of 2,000 questionnaires. We specifically went to youth court judges. We went to crown prosecutors. We went to police officers.
Mr. Ramsay: It wasn't the public?
Mr. Dickson: Oh, no. Certainly a segment of it was on public meetings and so on, but the questionnaire was very specifically sent to people who have some knowledge and experience in the youth justice system. In fact one of our best responses came from public crown prosecutors and police officers, who had lots to tell us, as well as a range of people who work in the probation area and so on.
We had a series of meetings in the 12 different communities, where people would come out. We'd often find there would not be the same emphasis on expert experience. We'd be hearing from Albertans, whether they were in Drumheller or in Lethbridge, speaking just on the basis of the knowledge they had.
Mr. Ramsay: Is that information contained within this report, that it's based not upon Millet, Stettler, Fort McMurray and all these other towns, but primarily upon the crown prosecutors and the people in the justice system who would have a greater understanding than the average person mentioned in the borderlines of these?
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): The question is, is the methodology behind your report outlined within your report?
Mr. Dickson: I'm not sure it is in the kind of detail Mr. Ramsay may want, but there's certainly reference to how we went about it.
Mr. Ramsay: I don't question the report. I question -
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): You want the methodology for how they gathered information.
Mr. Ramsay: Yes, in light of his answer to Shaughnessy Cohen's question.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): It's on page 13, I gather.
The other thing, of course, is the report that was done by the five Tory MLAs and that went to the minister was done through public consultations with a variety of.... I think we heard some meetings had only five people in them, so they would have had a similar or perhaps even more of a lack of information.
Mr. Dickson: It's interesting you raise that, because actually, if you look at the discussion guide that was published by the provincial government preparatory to that -
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): We'd love to have it.
Mr. Dickson: - they list something like 21 different questions for Albertans that they wanted feedback on. Only one of the questions touched on a matter of provincial legislative confidence. It was a question about alternative measures. Frankly, that was why we thought it was important to expand the focus. I'll tell you whether we can claim credit for it or not.
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As a consequence of us doing this consultation, the government task force produced two reports and, in what was basically midstream, it in fact expanded the terms of reference. So instead of advising people on what you ought to do in Ottawa, there was a second report that had some focus provincially. We therefore wanted to get that wider kind of focus because it's a bigger problem than a single statute.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Mr. Dickson, thank you very much for encouraging our chair to allow you the opportunity to present to us. It's great that you're here, and I note that one of your colleagues who was involved in the report is also in the room.
This will bring a close to our two days of meetings in Edmonton. We really appreciate the support that residents of Alberta have given to us and the dedication with which they're approaching this.
Mr. Dickson: Thanks for the opportunity.
The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): We're adjourned.