EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, October 8, 1996

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[English]

The Chair: This afternoon we welcome, from the City of Edmonton Youth Council, Leslie Church, Ali Ahmad and Kent Teskey.

The normal procedure is that you would make a presentation to us. Please leave us some time for questions. Go ahead.

Mr. Kent Teskey (Member, City of Edmonton Youth Council): Thank you very much for inviting us to give our perspective on a very hot issue for youth and indeed for the population in general.

I took the bus here, and if you guys are ever back here doing a civic-federal joint bus committee, I have a lot of perspectives on that I'd like to share.

I would like to introduce you to myself and my colleagues. I am Kent Teskey. Leslie Church and Ali Ahmad are here as well. We are all members of the second term of the City of Edmonton Youth Council. None of us bears a title. The City of Edmonton Youth Council in essence is an egalitarian organization, where we have no titles and we basically attack the issues of youth.

I understand that the idea of a youth council might be different or unheard of for some members of this committee. I'll explain to you a bit about our inception, and maybe that will give you a bit of a perspective on where we're coming from.

In 1993 our former mayor, Jan Reimer, started the commission on safer cities that looked at ways of making Edmonton a safer place for all its citizens. One of the initiatives of that commission was to create a youth council to represent the views of youth to the city council directly.

In 1995 the City of Edmonton Youth Council began its first term, with 21 members originally. The City of Edmonton Youth Council is totally independent of the city of Edmonton city council. We have our own budget and we are independent of and are not accountable to the views of city council in any way.

We strive to be a voice for the largest range of society that we can possibly represent, be it ethnically, religiously, or by gender. We think we are making large strides toward getting there. We have a very good mix of the Edmonton mosaic, and indeed of the Canadian mosaic.

That gives you a bit of a perspective on what the City of Edmonton Youth Council really is.

When Leslie, Ali and I were told about this presentation, we had to go back and find out what we really felt about the Young Offenders Act and what it really is. We came to the conclusion that as our city is a diverse place for youth and as we are indeed diverse, the three of us, so too is this legislation. We're looking at a very vast piece of legislation that encompasses a range of ages, from 12 to 17, and a very diverse cross-section of the Canadian culture is represented.

We chose to look at the Young Offenders Act in the way that the government has chosen to enforce the laws of Canada for the youth of our nation and the means to provide adequate consequences for repeat offences.

In our discussions we felt there were three kinds of youth the Young Offenders Act really attacks and affects.

Our first group we'll call the people who don't make the newspapers. We're talking about the people who only encounter the idea of the Young Offenders Act in social studies classes, people who really will have no encounter with the law in any large way within their lifetimes. With a lot of the people we have talked to, we found that some of them feel there are places in the Young Offenders Act that are lenient.

In the second group of people we have our one-time offenders, people who, because of their hormones, around 13 or 14, make a bad mistake, are adequately punished and have not gone on to repeat an offence. To them this would be a reasonable consequence. It doesn't blemish them for life and they would indeed say this is an acceptable piece of legislation for their lives.

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Then we have the group of youths in our society who represent a small but very vocal minority. The media tends to pick up on them. Some of these stories are very extraordinary. They're about the chronic offender or indeed the very disturbing offences we sometimes see in our media. Although these represent a very small minority of what makes up a young offender in our system, I think it is a very important place to focus our views.

In that light, we have people who indeed perceive the Young Offenders Act as too lenient or acceptable or harsh. My colleague, Leslie Church, has prepared three perspectives - lenient, acceptable or harsh - to address some of the ideas that we have found in talking to youth about how we can deal with these three main scenarios.

I'd just like to make a quick comment that our views are our views...and from talking to diverse peer groups. We don't make any claim to be able to give you the Edmonton perspective. We are simply here to try to give you as much of a balanced perspective as possible.

With that, I'd like to turn it over to Leslie.

Ms Leslie Church (Member, City of Edmonton Youth Council): Thanks, Kent.

For nearly a century young people who committed criminal offences were under the control of the Juvenile Delinquents Act. As drafted in 1908, this law allowed children as young as 7 to be charged with criminal offences, and all juveniles could be locked away for unlimited amounts of time. Young people over 16 simply entered jail side by side with hardened convicts.

By the 1980s people agreed that the law was out of step with current ideas about young offenders and it was time for a change.

The Young Offenders Act was created to incorporate at least five main principles. Those five main principles that we've summarized are, first, that young people are responsible for their illegal acts but not as accountable as adults. Second, the Young Offenders Act strives to make sure that society is protected. It also addresses the fact that young people have special needs and require guidance and assistance. Alternative measures to court should be used as long as society is protected. Finally, young people do have rights and freedoms and the right to be informed of those rights and freedoms.

Since its conception in 1981 and subsequent application to society and to our social environment, the Young Offenders Act has definitely and without a doubt had mixed reviews. Many people see the act as being too harsh on young offenders, and those with an opposite standpoint see it as being too lenient. For various reasons, many people also have the view that the principles I've just outlined are not being met or, to go even further, that these principles themselves are under criticism.

What we're going to do here is a rather unconservative style of presentation. Instead of focusing on just one perspective, which would be my own, the three of us have come up with three different perspectives, which Kent has started to introduce to you. We're going to address the Young Offenders Act one perspective at a time, with possible changes that could be made to the Young Offenders Act and the benefits derived from these changes according to each perspective.

The first one we're going to take a look at is the idea that the Young Offenders Act is too lenient. This view stems mainly from statistics that show that youth crime is increasing, when in reality murder, for example, among youth is about 1/20th of 1% of youth crime. At the same time the reality is that this statistic is rising.

What we see is a rising violent crime rate among youth, which is causing a public outcry. Public outcry could change the current Young Offenders Act.

As an example, in Scarborough, Ontario in 1985 there was a 14-year-old charged with murdering a family of three. An avowed Satan worshipper, he claimed to have heard voices that commanded him to perform the murders. While during his trial the defence and the Crown agreed that he was probably legally insane and should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a lengthy stay, the sentence sent down by the judge was shocking. He was sentenced to only three years imprisonment. Of course, now we realize that due to recent amendments his penalty would have been increased from between five to seven years, but it still remains under contention whether or not the current Young Offenders Act is too lenient on youths who do commit these violent crimes. Is three years, five years, or even seven years a harsh enough sentence to apply to young offenders who seemingly knowingly commit these heinous crimes?

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The possible changes that come out of this perspective, and out of this case itself, illustrate the public concern that the Young Offenders Act is not encouraging young people to take enough responsibility, to accept enough consequences that, in the future, can deter their actions and stop them from potentially committing these crimes in the first place.

Some of the changes that we see from this perspective are the idea that, first of all, there should be a lengthening of the maximum sentence for violent crimes.

As I mentioned, many people still have the view that the current allotment of time for sentencing is not enough to significantly deter and stop the increase in youth crimes.

As well, there should potentially be a change of policy for transferring young offenders to adult court. It should be noted that the Young Offenders Act does have more provisions than the original Juvenile Delinquents Act to transfer youths to adult court. At the same time, society wonders whether or not this diversion is being used effectively to deter youth crime and whether enough young offenders are being transferred to adult court.

With this perspective, people question whether 16- and 17-year-olds are adults or whether they should be continually pampered as children. This brings us to another possible change, which is the idea of lowering the minimum age. The minimum age right now for charging a young offender is 12 years old. This does not deal with street-wise youth who are under the age of 12. At the same time, this does, as I've said, pamper youths of 16 and 17 years of age who quite conceivably are mature adults even though they may not be legally recognized as adults at that stage.

As well, we suggest changing restrictions on media in regard to publicity. This is the idea that society needs protection. What's happening now is that in the case of this 14-year-old, he was released in 1989 and his identity was withheld from the public. So this young man is on the street without the public knowing of the potential threat that he poses to society right now.

There is the idea of a change in policy regarding the fact that a youth must consent to treatment. This is a point in the Young Offenders Act right now that is under contention, as to whether the Young Offenders Act is too lenient.

Youths who are recommended for treatment still have the ability to refuse that treatment. In Ontario, between 1984 and 1991, only 12 youths on average, per year, entered the treatment that was recommended for them. So even though there might be treatment centres available to young offenders, the question is whether or not they are using them to their fullest capabilities.

That's the perspective that we see when we consider that the Young Offenders Act is potentially too lenient, and those changes tend to deal mostly with dangerous repeat offenders.

There's also another side to the issue, and that is that there are definitely parts of the Young Offenders Act that are too harsh. This perspective centres around two other ideas: first, that the disposition is too strict on less serious crimes; and second, that rehabilitation or treatment and alternative measures are not used as effectively as they could be in our current system and under the current Young Offenders Act.

The dilemma of the Young Offenders Act is how to balance the needs to protect society, one of those initial principles that the Young Offenders Act was created to achieve, and how to balance the protection of society with the need to rehabilitate young people who commit criminal offences.

What we're trying to say right now is that perhaps there's too much of a focus on society and not on the young offenders themselves in trying to rehabilitate the young offenders to become participating members of society.

In 1986 and 1987, 24% of the young offenders appearing in court were committed to custody. In 1983, which was the last year that the Juvenile Delinquents Act was in force, only 15% of the young offenders who appeared before a court were put into custody. So the length of time served tends to be longer under the Young Offenders Act, when, at the same time, one of the founding principles of this act was that young people require guidance and assistance and they should have the ability to use the alternative measures as long as society is protected.

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If youths are in custody for longer periods of time, why is youth crime increasing? The answer from this particular point of view is clear, and that is the idea that detention is not necessarily equal to or evolve to rehabilitation of young offenders. Why is this? It is partly because of the lack of funds and the lack on the part of Canada to be able to provide individual rehabilitative treatment centres and care for young offenders.

In Ontario, which has treatment centres, group homes, juvenile observation and detention centres, placement into any of these care facilities is often random and depends on availability of space at the time of sentencing.

You are not moulding the system to meet the needs of the young offender; you are moulding the young offender to meet the needs of the system and the constraints in the system. Those are coming into conflict.

With proper treatment, backsliding into crime can hopefully be cut by 25% to 40%. Without treatment, about 60% of juveniles tend to become repeat offenders. We ask ourselves if this could be one of the reasons why youth crime seems to be increasing.

At the same time, the provinces don't have the resources to build proper rehabilitative programs. The Young Offenders Act relies heavily instead on repayment through community service and custody. It can be argued that this whole idea of treatment that has been brought forth so many times within the Young Offenders Act is being ignored or sidestepped in favour of more available services, such as the issue of restitution and community service.

The Young Offenders Act might not necessarily be a problem by itself. From this perspective, if we had more funding and less red tape, if we were able to use this funding to improve our custody centres and develop better treatment programs, we might be able to focus more on rehabilitating young offenders, avoiding the problem of developing more and more repeat offenders.

The system of rehabilitation and treatment of youth is where they would be seen as victims in the proposed system, instead of being seen as criminals as they are today.

That addresses our second perspective that the Young Offenders Act is too harsh or not structured well enough to deal with certain offenders.

Finally, there's the idea that the Young Offenders Act is potentially acceptable, and this can be addressed by the idea that we do have a low murder rate. The public tends to get swayed by the media's representation of youth in a number of different issues, be it whether they're young offenders or they're just being destructive. The media tends to focus, in general, on the negative perception of youth in society.

We have to come back to the fact that this low murder rate, which is less than 1% of all offences committed by youth, is really insignificant when we take a look at the whole issue. In other words, why should we change the Young Offenders Act for so few, especially in light of the recent amendments that have increased the penalties for violent, destructive offenders?

Another issue is the fact that the rise in crime could be more apparent than real, and this again comes back to the idea of the media, which tends to focus on the large, extraordinary offences committed by youth, when it doesn't take into consideration the number of minor offences that are considered youth crimes.

As well, the Young Offenders Act is not necessarily responsible for the rise in crime. The reality of punishment is that, short of execution, one in three criminals, be they youth or adult, do return to crime. A lot of this has to do more with the environment of their upbringing rather than the institution of the Young Offenders Act.

Also, the age limits are potentially realistic. The age of 18 is used across the board as a symbol of adulthood. If we had young offenders who were under the age of 12, they likely wouldn't understand the criminal justice system. Besides, there are acts such as the Child Welfare Act in Alberta, which contains provincial provisions dealing with children, including confining children under 12 to treatment facilities. This is potentially better than bringing the full force of the law to bear on younger children.

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As well, in the Young Offenders Act you do have alternative measures, almost an escape valve, where young offenders have an opportunity to plead guilty and skip a court appearance. They get to move almost directly into other forms of punishment - community service, repayment, etc.

Our maximum sentence can be considered long enough. This is definitely a major point of contention in the Young Offenders Act. While you do have people who contend that your maximum sentences currently are not long enough, at the same time, if you look at giving seven years to a teenager, a lot develops in that time of life. To a teenager, seven years at age 16 might feel more like what 15 to 20 would for an adult. In this growth period, potentially shorter sentences are better for the long-term development and stability of a human being.

Many people argue that our principles are being supported, the principles we have outlined, that youths are being made to face court appearances, so they are taking responsibility; society is being protected as the courts try to deal with young offenders; and the provisions for guidance or assistance exist in the current system.

So you can see that any reform that is made to the Young Offenders Act must be broad, very wide in scope. We're not seeking to punish youth as if they are all repeats or dangerous offenders. I think this is a public misconception that has to be dealt with when considering any opinion that is expressed on the subject. There is a tendency for people to lump young offenders into the same category, that every young offender is dangerous, potentially a repeat offender.

That is not necessarily the case. Many pressure groups tend to focus on the idea that the Young Offenders Act must be harsher, must be toughened up, simply because of this perception of youth that every young offender is dangerous and a repeat offender.

These dangerous offenders must be dealt with in a singular, special unit so that there isn't this overlapping of ideas between what is a dangerous offender and what you have, as another youth, who is more likely to be a one-time offender, who the system takes care of adequately.

As well, what we see is that treatments must be given a chance to prove their effectiveness. They must be able to prove their effectiveness to the perspective of people who believe the Young Offenders Act is too lenient. We have to be able to show that through treatment, young offenders can be rehabilitated without necessarily being placed in custody.

As well, treatment must be given a chance to replace custody in terms of people who believe the Young Offenders Act is too harsh. This treatment must be given the chance to develop and it must be able to reinforce the initial principle of the Young Offenders Act, that young people do have special needs and they require this guidance and assistance.

Society needs this protection, but the young offenders in our society need this protection as well. For these reasons and from all of these different perspectives, you can see that there is demand for change in our current system, but the problems do come up in for whom and how we are going to change it.

Thank you.

The Chair: Is there anything you want to add to your presentation?

Mr. Teskey: On behalf of the City of Edmonton Youth Council, I'd like to thank a committee such as this, that gives the opportunity and is open to the views and the perspectives of the youth of this city. I think that's a valuable process, especially when we're looking at something that is so incredibly controversial in how people perceive it. I'm glad to see that so many different views are being pursued here.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. St-Laurent, ten minutes.

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[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent (Manicouagan): You said there were three distinct groups of people within your organization, that represent, it seems to me, most views of our society. In other words, you made numerous references to statements made before this committee and to alternative solutions to the problem on which we're working.

You said that you would communicate the names. You mentioned the case of a 14 year old child whose life would have been affected if his name had been made public. Does your organization favour this approach or doesn't it find it a little bit obsolete?

[English]

Mr. Teskey: From the perspective of the City of Edmonton's Youth Council's mandate, that indeed is one of the solutions we hear from the youth of Edmonton. As a council member, I would feel a bit arrogant to presume my own opinion onto that question, because I can't honestly speak for the rest of my council members.

Your position of where you are has to look at what is truly the best way to serve the public at the same time as you serve the youth involved so that they are not marked for life. I think that's what it all comes down to.

Do we serve a 16-year-old well by sending him into prison for the maximum term of sentence, where he can be exposed to influences that may or may not develop his criminal skills or develop his deviant nature, or are there other ways we can better serve the youth, better reintegrate him into society? I think that's a question we all have to address, but I think the forefront of the answer is that whatever perspective you take, it has to be in the interests of putting youth first - in the interests of society.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: Have you, within the framework of your analysis, met any offenders? If it is only a study that you produced in house, are there any offenders, ex-offenders, ex- prisoners or current prisoners within the new organization?

[English]

Mr. Teskey: Again, to move back to that, the second term of our youth council began in September. I can't speak for their experience with young offenders as a part of their background, but part of the constitution of the City of Edmonton Youth Council says that if you have a criminal record you are not eligible for application onto the City of Edmonton Youth Council.

Mr. Ali Ahmad (Member, City of Edmonton Youth Council): Actually -

Mr. Teskey: Was that changed?

Mr. Ahmad: - the way the City of Edmonton Youth Council works right now is that if you had a criminal record previously you are allowed to obtain membership on the council, but during your term of office, if you obtain any criminal record, engage in any criminal activity, your membership will be terminated and you'll be put in front of the board of the council.

Mr. Teskey: My apologies on that.

In terms of what that means to a council like ours, obviously we as youth council members can't guarantee that we have that perspective in there, but I think the diverse backgrounds we have sought in gender, religion and cultural diversity will fill any gaps we have in terms of the perspective we have with the actual young offenders on our council.

I can't speak to whether any of them do actually have a criminal record at this time. I believe that is confidential at this time.

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[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: I did not intend to go that far. You are called upon to represent the young and, through a consultation process, we are trying to develop the best possible legislation that would make it possible, for example, to come to a young offender's help before he becomes a hardened adult criminal. We have a job to do, but we need your help, in fact pretty well everybody's help.

You said that you were speaking on behalf of the young. Have you interviewed any offenders or was your analysis only based on the efforts of your group sitting round a table? Have you done any research in the various strata of our society? I do not intend to challenge your credibility and your work, but I'm taking notes and I want to know the basis of your analysis. You refer to three groups that reflect the opinions of most of our society. What is your research based on? Have you met any young offenders or did you stop people in the street? Did you meet any parents groups? Did you meet any police officers?

[English]

Ms Church: What we did to put together this presentation on such short notice was hold a round table discussion. We generated all the ideas we could between the bunch of us in order to develop what we considered was the research we had collected on what the different perspectives were that would come into play on this issue.

We are drawing from the members of the youth council the very backgrounds and the various dealings they have with other organizations. So as a council ourselves, no, we did not perform a study directly with the young offenders. What we are basing our presentation on, our information on, is the individual interactions the youth council members have had in the past with other youth organizations across the city.

One of the things about the youth council is that in order to become a member, the résumé you put forth for selection outlines the community service involvements and experiences you've had. So on the council we're almost more like a group that has networked and comes together to discuss the issues. We've tried to get 20 people together to represent all the issues and various organizations from throughout the city.

It's almost as if a number of the other pilot organizations in the city put members into this council so their voices can be heard. When we say we've discussed this as a round table discussion with the youth council, that means we are eliciting the perceptions of members from throughout the city.

Mr. Teskey: When I or when we as a group say something like we need to enforce treatment for young offenders - something like that, though an impersonal statement, comes from a lot of our backgrounds.

I volunteer occasionally at a place called Hope Mission, which for your interest is over by the old CN rail tracks. It's an inner-city mission. One of the people I've met there had been in trouble with the law in his formative years, a couple of times, and had never completed high school. At this point he's in the 25-age area and is struggling to try to get an education.

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So when we talk about treatment, there actually is a background of experience that draws us to these conclusions or draws us to these different perspectives. I think this is just one isolated story. It hasn't applied to my life, but I think Ali and Leslie could attest to the same sort of process.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: What role do you see for parents? You have made no mention of it in your presentation. Has your group looked into it? If we do not want it to be part of the problem, it should be part of the solution. I am trying to look at it from the point of view of the young. What part do you think the parents should be playing in the alternative solutions that you suggest to imprisonment or to early intervention, before any crime has been committed, as soon as a youth is likely to become an offender?

[English]

Ms Church: To answer that, yes, we do, and we realize the environment a child has grown up in plays a huge, extensive role in who they end being as an adult, as to whether they are a young offender or a non-offender.

When you take a look at the young offenders and you ask for parental involvement, I think one of the biggest issues that came up among a number of us was that it's difficult to ask parents for help in involvement with the young offender once the person has already deteriorated to that level. Once they've become a young offender, it tends to demonstrate there's been a collapse in the family structure before that time that has prompted the youth himself to become a juvenile offender.

Mr. Teskey: I think what we're talking about here is not just the relationship between the justice system and the parents. I think there are a lot of perspectives we need to look at - the experience of the young offender, if we take the stereotype, being taken home in the police cruiser and having the police take the kid to the door. I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done in forging positive relationships with the justice system, the police department and the community.

At Ross Sheppard Composite High School, where I'm a grade 12 student at this time, we have a city of Edmonton police officer who is assigned permanent duty at our high school. His role is not as a very well-armed security guard; his role in our school is to be a resource, to be a very personal extension of the police.

The police can be a very intimidating part of our society to go to. But with a program like this, I think it's important, at least on my local level, that such connections are being created in order that these positive relationships occur so we can have positive role models, number one, that will be able to really steer kids clear, and, number two, if problems should arise, you've got somebody in your corner who's working with you.

I think that's an important way that we really need to forge relationships between the justice system and the community. I think that's an excellent example of how that's happening right now.

Mr. Ahmad: Just to add, as well, we do recognize that parents play an important role. Sometimes parents are doing a good job, but then we get the one foul-up that a child makes. I think if something like that were to happen, getting parents involved would be a good idea.

The way I'd go about doing that is just through a therapy or counselling session with a trained professional. The parents have to be involved. We can't totally shirk them from their responsibilities, but we have to give them a means and a method in order to get involved constructively.

A type of therapy session, which allows them to decide which way they're going to proceed and allows clearer heads to prevail, would be the best method of getting the parents involved at an early stage. If we do get them involved at the early stage, there's a good chance the second, third and fourth offences will not occur. That's the best way to go about solving the problem.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ramsay, ten minutes.

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

I'd like to thank the members of the youth council for appearing today and providing us with their input. I understand this input comes from your contact with the youth who have not been involved in crime or certainly not been involved with the Young Offenders Act in a formal way. Is that right?

Mr. Teskey: I think that's true to a large degree. I think we would, all three of us, associate ourselves with the majority who regard the Young Offenders Act as a social studies part of the course. I think that would be a majority of our opinion. But I think in a lot of ways we did make connections in the community and did actually bring a fairly balanced perspective to you today.

Mr. Ramsay: Then, if I understand you correctly, you may have had input from young offenders.

Mr. Teskey: Yes, I think all of our community backgrounds would indicate that we've had contact, during our teenage years, with various organizations where people who would have been involved with the Young Offenders Act would have been prevalent.

Indeed, that would have influenced the way we would have looked at this, because the Young Offenders Act would have ceased to be an impersonal piece of documentation of the law and would be something that - I think each of us could say we had a friend who had an actual impact with it. I think that definitely tempered our views and allowed us to bring you a very balanced perspective today.

Mr. Ramsay: When you say impact, do you mean contact?

Mr. Teskey: Yes.

Mr. Ramsay: I understand.

Under the old Juvenile Delinquents Act there were treatment options that changed or disappeared under the YOA. To a certain extent, through the amendments the justice minister brought forward a year or so ago, some of those treatment options have been returned. Inasmuch as the Young Offenders Act does not provide a legal avenue or framework for children under the age of 12 to receive treatment, how do you feel about that?

Let me just add to that. We talked to an individual this morning who's in the maximum penitentiary out here, who started committing offences when he was 5. Alberta is not like Quebec, which has the Youth Prevention Act, a provincial statute that allows for the early intervention with those children who are under the age of 12.

The Chair: No, it's not prevention; it's youth protection. They don't prevent children in Quebec, they protect them.

Mr. Ramsay: Yes.

It grants authority for the provincial authorities to move in when they see any sign the child is in jeopardy or needs help, including if they commit what would otherwise be a criminal offence.

We don't have anything quite as strong as that in Alberta. So what would you recommend for children like this 5-year-old or this individual who at the time he was 5 was getting into trouble and was moving down that path that led up to where he is now?

Mr. Ahmad: I'll answer your question. To a large extent, at that young age we have to assume there is some parental responsibility for that child. Though in any legislation where you would have the children coming in, the children being protected, I think it should also affect the parents in a more family-type of setting where it's felt the family unit itself is going and getting the type of counselling that's necessary, instead of pulling the child away from his family setting and then returning him back to it.

As I said before, any type of therapy you would have for those younger children, younger than the Young Offenders Act, should also involve the parents. I think that probably would be the best way to go.

Mr. Ramsay: Would you recommend a legal framework that would authorize that?

Ms Church: I was under the impression we had a legal framework in Alberta here with the Child Welfare Act, which does give the province the legitimate right to do that, to take a child into custody, if necessary, under the age of 12. In fact, that is what you would call the pre-Young Offenders Act aimed at children to whom the Young Offenders Act does not yet apply.

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I think if you start looking at creating a body of law that would apply, like the Young Offenders Act, to children under the age of 12, you're getting into risky territory in the sense that you could be doing more damage to a child at that age by having the harsh penalties that are the consequences listed in the Young Offenders Act rather than having something a little less structured, such as the Child Welfare Act, where you have more leeway to use the different avenues of treatment and counselling - even custody, if absolutely necessary - than you do applying the full force of the law on a young child.

Mr. Ramsay: Okay.

Mr. Teskey: Just to come back to where you are, I guess it all comes down to how much we can see into the future. When I was 11 years old I didn't even think about getting into a car and driving away, but now there are kids hot-wiring. A perspective you have to look at is, how much do we trust the judiciary to make these hard decisions about very special case scenarios?

Mr. Ramsay: The question we're examining, or at least the one I'm looking at, is what is the best way to deal with an 11-year-old who's hot-wiring cars? We've had that in this city where it's happened over and over again. The result of that exhibition has simply been the police taking the child back home to his parents. If there are provincial statutes to deal with it, they're not being invoked. Those authorities are not being invoked.

The question is, should there be established a legal framework from the federal level that would deal with those youths who are getting into difficulty beyond what we have at the provincial level in, say, Alberta? Regardless of what the treatment is, as stated in the Young Offenders Act, the treatment, or whatever adjudication, must take into consideration safety of society and the best interests of the child. What is the best way to handle that child? Do the parents need help? Does the family need help? Do they need parental education, or whatever it might be?

Right now we have a bit of a vacuum, at least in this province, where these young children are getting into difficulty and there does not seem to be a legal framework that will allow the child welfare workers to move in and with the consent, support and cooperation of the parents move them into a program of treatment that will eventually get them back on track.

Mr. Ahmad: If that is the problem, there should definitely be a type of legal framework to deal with these forgotten youths. But I think also, when developing this framework, you have to take into consideration that at under 11 or 12, or even younger than that, it has to be a family counselling session. The exposure to peer pressure, for example, at so young an age, although it is present, wouldn't have that impact. At so young an age we have to gauge the family situation before we take any action.

So a framework such as that should include the parents in the counselling.

Mr. Ramsay: Finally, then, do you feel, from your experiences as a youth council, that Alberta has a proper and adequate legal framework to deal sufficiently with youths who are under the age of 12 and beyond the application of the Young Offenders Act?

Mr. Teskey: I think part of our problem right now is that we're tending to mix our perspectives. I would agree with Madam Chair and with my colleague that we do have the Child Welfare Act, but I'm forced to wonder whether its implementation was ever intended to deal with something of this magnitude.

In the same sense, I have a friend who works in the family and social services ministry for the Government of Alberta. They place troubled children of a young age in foster care. I think if we start looking into this 10-and-under issue, we really do delve into the idea of whether our social safety net is truly adequate. I'm not sure if we can simply legislate that we will do this to children, and this will fix our problems. I'm not sure whether the safety net underneath is adequate to provide for this special-case scenario at this time.

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Mr. Ramsay: Thank you.

The Chair: Ms Torsney.

Ms Torsney (Burlington): Thank you, Madam Chair.

You provided us with a pretty terrific overview of what people in Canada are saying. Your perspective is Edmonton, but it's pretty reflective of the fact that, yes, there are those who think it is too lenient; yes, there are those who think it is too harsh; and there are some in the middle.

I'm wondering what you think. You've obviously done a lot of work to come up with these positions. At what grade did each of you learn about what the Young Offenders Act was?

Mr. Teskey: Grade 10.

Ms Torsney: You learned it where?

Mr. Teskey: In social studies. It was actually part of the Canadian aspect of the social studies curriculum for grade 10 in Alberta. There is an actual unit on the justice system in Canada, and a particular part of that unit is the Young Offenders Act.

Ms Torsney: How old are you in grade 10 here?

Mr. Teskey: About 14 or 15.

Mr. Ahmad: That happens even sooner in some places. It becomes established in the curriculum at a grade 10 level, but even before that we have contact with police officers who come into the school to give the presentation on the Young Offenders Act. They deal with it in career and life management courses, in the health class and so on. They do talk about it, and it is discussed.

So it happens quite early in schooling - for some. For others, the same opportunities don't arise.

Mr. Teskey: It's all a matter of curriculum, and it varies. But to answer your particular question, the first place it shows up in the curriculum itself, as an established part, is in grade 10.

Ms Torsney: Leslie, the same?

Ms Church: Yes.

Ms Torsney: What do you think about the act, having done all this research?

Ms Church: Personally, I think the act itself is adequate in Alberta. It is not necessarily the piece of legislation itself that is flawed; it is more that problems with the system are inherent because the implementation of the laws themselves are not being met with the intentions they were set out to accomplish. That's part of the reason why I've focused on some of the perspectives to do with the idea of funding.

I think the principles behind the act are there, and they should definitely be upheld in the sense that we do not need new legislation to reinforce principles that I think are sound. The problem is - and this is true for our entire legal system - our legal system in Canada, as far as I'm concerned, is being abused and overused. We do not have the resources within Canada to deal efficiently with criminals of all ages.

To focus specifically on youth, I don't think we have the necessary resources in Canada to give the individual attention that is so necessary to give to youth who are already straying from the right track. Once you've gotten off the right track, you need special attention as a child to bring you back to what society says is the way you should act and behave, to follow the code of conduct established in our Criminal Code.

Ms Torsney: With a carrot and a hug - or with a stick?

Ms Church: I'd like to see it more with a carrot and a hug, actually. I think that would be a more successful deterrent for crime. It has been shown throughout the world that execution, the institution of capital punishment, doesn't necessarily decrease crime rates or deter criminals. Detention does not necessarily promote rehabilitation. In this case, you are throwing youth into an environment that does not promote rehabilitation. It just promotes the sharing of these ideals between youths who are essentially undergoing the same types of problems.

Mr. Teskey: I think what you do is you give them a carrot and let them hit them with it. I know that's a rather odd image, but I think there has to be both sides. We can't just say to one perspective, ``Man, that was awful''. But to say to one perspective that you can do it this way...it can't be all-encompassing.

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I think we need to give the judiciary system of the country of Canada as many tools in their repertoire as possible to deal with all these incredibly diverse situations with youth that they'll deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Mr. Ahmad: I would add that the one place where the Young Offenders Act does work is for the first-time offenders. There's an old adage that people who need the second chance the most are the ones who don't deserve one. I think across the board we have to give everyone a second chance, but the place where most people run into problems with the Young Offenders Act is when the fourth, fifth or sixth offence occurs.

Once that happens, it becomes quite clear the established statutes we have in place just aren't sufficient. Any changes that will be made have to deal with that problem, that for first-time offenders who don't repeat their offence, it works great. The system has done its job. It's when we get into repeat offenders and serious crimes that there's a problem.

I believe in giving everybody a second chance. If it's at that place where they are a first-time offender and the problem does arise, where maybe the family needs some help, maybe it isn't the family; maybe it's just the child. That has to be made available for them.

Ms Torsney: One of the things that really bothers me is that once we have a legal framework, as you've mentioned, Leslie, everybody waits until things are defined by ``the law'' rather than working with young people before they're 12 with other tools, and putting resources in there to help them become a better person. Rather, we wait until someone's been victimized, a crime has been committed and the young person now has entered the legal system, which has its drawbacks.

One of the things that's been raised for us is that we should be publicizing the names of all the children - and you've raised this - so that you would somehow know who to hang out with and who not to hang out with. Or if you brought some kid home and your parents knew that kid had a record or had been in trouble with the law, they would somehow prevent you from hanging out with that child.

Do you think that would work?

Mr. Teskey: I totally disagree.

Ms Torsney: Would you like to elaborate?

Mr. Teskey: We can't persecute kids. High school in the 1990s is not the most fun place on earth. It can be a very cold place. If you brand someone, if you put a big stamp on their head that says ``criminal'', it creates an expectation, or it creates a mould.

Ms Torsney: But, Kent, how are your parents? If you bring home Johnny, who's troubled, don't they want to tell you not to hang out with Johnny?

Mr. Teskey: Yes, but the thing is, how does that change...? I understand a parent's perspective. I'm sure my parents would say they want to know if my friend Ted had robbed a convenience store. On the other hand, do we do Ted any big favours by totally isolating him from the community and putting the scarlet letter ``S'' on him? Does that help him? Does that help him reintegrate into society? I would argue no.

Ms Torsney: Do you think you already know who the kids are who are causing trouble?

Mr. Teskey: Yes, you know. I don't think by publicizing it we'd do them any great favours, because then the parents know, and that's a problem.

Ms Torsney: Do you think your parents could prevent you from hanging out with anybody you wanted to hang out with? You're a good kid, but....

Mr. Teskey: You make your choices. I think there comes a point in one's child's life where the parent has to say, gee whiz, I hope I trained them well enough to say yes or no. You just have to let them go. In an age like this, I can drive, I can take the bus. My parents don't walk down the mall with me with their hands in mine. It doesn't work like that any more. It's a whole different world now. We have to emphasize that parents have to take the kids to a certain point and hope that they taught them right.

Ms Church: On that note, though, when I made reference to that in my speech, I was speaking mostly to the fact that the people who hold that view tend to be the people who have been at some point victimized by young offenders and who feel it is their duty to make sure this doesn't happen again to somebody else by basically pointing out and isolating the individual who committed the crime. That tends to be one view as to why the Young Offenders Act is too lenient.

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Ms Torsney: In fact, Leslie, your example is the child who has done three years and who has technically paid back society by giving up their freedom for three years or whatever length of time is appropriate.

You mentioned that the community doesn't want them to move back. Where are they to go? Are they supposed to leave the country? You certainly can't change the facts; you can't bring back a loved one. Do you get a scarlet ``S'' on your head for the rest of your life?

Ms Church: I think this comes back again to another problem - the repeat offender. There's such a high percentage of people who, once they do commit a crime, are so liable to do it again that a lot of people argue that it's in society's best interest to make it public knowledge.

Ms Torsney: Sometimes because they're stuck with the Teds of the world.

Mr. Teskey: The problem always happens that people have served their debt to society and come out of prison, and if you have a system like this, especially when they are young, they just come into a bigger prison. They come into a world that has branded them what they are.

Where do they go to be accepted? I would argue that they go back with the element that has been branded like them. Do we truly serve anyone by creating cells of branded people who associate with themselves and probably will revert back to what they've done before? I would say no.

Mr. Ahmad: In most cases when people do try to reform themselves, they will try to hang out with people like Kent and Leslie and organizations like the City of Edmonton Youth Council, or organizations where they have an ability to get in contact with good people.

If my mom says I can't hang out with this person because they're bad, well, if everybody's mother and father were to tell them not to hang out with this one person, you've isolated him completely from society. That defeats the purpose of the Young Offenders Act. For petty crimes like theft and shoplifting, you've totally isolated that person and entirely defeated the purpose. Once you get into repeat offences and serious crimes, perhaps then....

Ms Torsney: Leslie, you mentioned a lot of statistics. I'd be interested if you could give us some of the references for them. For instance, the one that was very curious was the one about young offenders getting treatment in Ontario. I'm not sure I have any information that's even close to that one.

Ms Church: I can get it for you afterwards.

Ms Torsney: That would be great. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

You might want to consider this hypothesis, just in conclusion. You talked about youth crime being on the increase. You might want to question whether it's on the increase or whether more charges are being laid. In fact, that is the case in the province of Ontario, and I suspect in the province of Alberta as well. It may have to do with the way the system is responding to the act rather than -

Mr. Teskey: Or what tools in their repertoire members of the judiciary have, what alternatives they have other than charging them. That's a good point.

The Chair: Or the police.

Mr. Teskey: Exactly.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That was refreshing and very interesting. We're glad to have had you here. We thank you for your contribution.

We'll just rise for a couple of minutes until our next witnesses are in place.

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The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): I call this meeting back to order.

We are pleased to be able to welcome, on behalf of the Parent Support Association, Elaine McMurray, executive director; Joan Bever, program consultant; and Denise Blair, community coordinator for Calgary Youth Justice Committee Resource Team.

Welcome, ladies. I understand you have a plane to catch, so we'll move you along. I'll let you choose how you want to organize yourselves.

Ms Elaine McMurray (Executive Director, Parent Support Association): Thank you, and thank you for being understanding. Unfortunately, we're presenting a workshop in Calgary tonight. That's why we had to book the 4 p.m. Airbus.

I know you have our brief. I'm not going to go through it line by line, because I think it's fairly self-explanatory. We were very pleased, though, to be invited to appear in front of the committee to stress that we really need to consider the needs of parents as well in any changes to the Young Offenders Act. Certainly we heard the young people ahead of us, and some of their points are well taken.

Some of the particular cases we made were that a lot of times parents have been very accountable and up front, really working hard on parenting. But you get a kid who's insistent that they're going to break out at night. You go to bed and the kid's in bed - we do have a right as parents to go to sleep - and then the kid gets up and sneaks out.

The classic example I have is the dad whose phone rings at 3 a.m. The script goes like this:

Dad: Hello?

Policeman: I'm phoning you to inform you that I have your son here. This is the city police.

Dad: No, you don't, he's in bed.

Policeman: No, he's right here.

Dad: Can you wait a minute until I go check?

Because when Dad went to bed, his kid was in bed.

We can't lock our kids into the house. You wouldn't want to. What if there was a fire and the kid burnt up? That would be a worse consequence.

So there are cases of kids who are going to do it no matter what.

The sad part was that after all this, Mom and Dad had been very responsible, then Legal Aid wanted Mom and Dad also to pay. The parents say, well, they were responsible; they did make sure their child was in at night; they did ensure that he was in bed and had an alarm clock, all of those things. Why would they pay for Legal Aid? This kid needs to be responsible.

So we came up with a solution. Legal Aid always says they can't collect from these kids because they're minors, but why can't that be changed? Why can't it be that there are garnishees to future...?

In terms of child support payments, they've come up with all kinds of really creative plans. You can't get a driver's licence until you've paid your child support. Why can we not tie driver's licences or gun registration or all of those things to payment for your Legal Aid bill? Legal Aid's not a freebie; you repay Legal Aid. It's not something you get.

I think that's one of the things we really would like to stress. Let's put accountability where it needs to be, particularly when that can be seen.

As well, we do agree that parents need to be accountable. We also agree there are parents who aren't. We know that. But we know there are lots who are. Let's put the onus where it belongs - on the court proving they're not good parents. I don't think I should have to prove to you that I'm a good parent. We set out to be good parents. It should be the other way around. That's a really important point.

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The main thing is this. Since we wrote this, our agency took a lead role in Calgary implementing youth justice committees from section 69 of the act. Section 69 is buried at the very back of the Young Offenders Act. I found out about it very accidentally. I was flipping through the act one day in my office when I came across it. I got busy, and I got together a lot of agencies, got some funding, and hired Denise to start doing this.

In Manitoba they've used youth justice committees very successfully. They're starting in Alberta in the rural areas and a little bit in the cities. What we would really like to recommend is that in the Young Offenders Act, section 69 should either be put in a more prominent position or be talked about in the preamble to the act, because that will answer a lot of the social issues that are missing.

When you use youth justice committees, you can include parents in the process, so that creates accountability. You can include communities. That would be a really big recommendation, that we really look to using alternatives like youth justice committees.

That answers a lot of the social issues that are lacking. While the Young Offenders Act applies from 12 years old and up, I think in youth justice committees that model could probably be brought into play with child welfare acts used for younger families. I think it creates a whole environment that we've missed the boat on. Here it is buried at the back.

So that would be our biggest recommendation today. Let's look at section 69. Let's see how we can get it more creatively implemented into the act so that people are aware of it and do start to use it.

Other than that, as I said, I think the things we're suggesting are pretty self-explanatory. We'll leave it at that. We'll be open for your questions.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent, 10 minutes, please.

Mr. St-Laurent: I shall stick to two specific issues, notably the issue of age. The people we have met during all these travels for the sake of the cause naturally offered all kinds of hypotheses about age. Currently, it is 12 years old. They are talking about lowering the limit to 10.

This morning, we met some young offenders from the penitentiary who told us that it was ridiculous to have a youth of less than 13 or 14 years old appear in court in our current justice system.

In Montreal we met young offenders who were very emotional and told us that at 10 years old, a child did not need the arms of a policeman but those of his mother. Such comments are serious food for thought.

I must confess that it is the first time that we talk to people that belong to a parents' association. According to you, how old should a child be to face a criminal court?

You are going to tell me that a mother would say: ``Never!'' But we have to probe further, because we need material to work with, figures, statistical data as well as your experiences in that area.

[English]

Ms McMurray: I think 12 is the lowest we can consider going, but - and I am a mother - I would not say we don't ever need to have a justice system. If a young person breaks the law and it's clear they've broken the law, they need to be accountable. However, I don't believe that children under the age of 12 have the ability to form criminal intent. I believe they do things; I think we all did things when we were youngsters, but they weren't criminal. They were just things we were doing on dares or whatever.

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That's where I think the social side of it has to be brought back into it, looking at things like parenting programs when the police pick up Johnny for stealing a car at the age of 10, talking to the family, telling them what's going on, asking what resources they need - not providing them; they're police officers, that's not their job - and if they're identifying that the family isn't cooperating, then calling child welfare or social services and telling them this is a family that is not providing and protecting this child from harm. The child who's doing those things is also at a high risk for harm.

So I think we really need to look at the social side of it for younger children. The options are there. It's been pointed out, though, that they're provincially mandated. I think that's the issue, and that's the breakdown.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: In some places, a rather interesting comment was made to us. We were told that it would be possible to determine among 3 to 5 year old children, those who, because of their behaviour, would need immediate help for follow-up support. The parents should also be involved because after all, at 5 a child is not normally left to fend for himself in the street. How do you feel about that?

Based on your experiences and the people you know, is it possible to detect such a need in a 3 to 5 year old child? Would it then be better to intervene immediately in order to prevent what would later be unavoidable?

[English]

Ms McMurray: Again, I believe it goes back to the social side of it. We've advocated for a long time that we need to work on educating parents. In our society, if parents go to a parenting class, people will tend to judge them and say they must be bad parents if they're going to a parenting class. I believe we need to reverse that, and say, wow, good for them, they're going to a parenting class.

When you buy a new car you're given a manual that tells you how to operate the car, but when you take a new child no one gives you any directions. The directions we have are from our own upbringing. If the child isn't performing the way you did....

For example, my daughter is very different from me and my brothers. I had quite a difficult time parenting her until I figured out I needed to get some parenting help. I'd never had it modelled to me how to parent a child of her temperament. That's not to say she's bad, and it's not to say I'm bad. It's just to say it was a situation we weren't familiar with. If I were taught to drive an automatic transmission car and bought a standard, someone would teach me how to do it.

When we can change the attitude in our society that when you have a child, you go and learn about parenting, then I think we'll come a long way. We're getting there. My children are adults. When I was expecting them, there were no prenatal classes. Now prenatal classes are the norm. Everybody goes. But the minute you have the baby, nobody goes anywhere, as though now you're supposed to know what to do.

When we're talking about kids zero to 12, and even teenagers, we really need to look at working with parents on parenting skills, supporting parents, asking how we can be better parents in society.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: We have used all kinds of hypotheses in our analyses. If the current legislation was changed, do you think that the parents should be involved in the consultation process and in the provision of help to the young offender, when he is put under arrest by the police? He immediately gets involved in a basic legal process and currently, not much attention is paid to the parents.

The legal requirements are taken care of and then the child is sent back home. What do you suggest?

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Do you suggest that parental responsibility should be included in the legislation and that parents should be made to take part in the follow-up with specialists, with professional experts in the area? What do you think we should include in the legislation to try to solve the problem?

[English]

Ms McMurray: We would suggest that no young offender, no matter what level of the system, beginning to the end, be released without a family plan. The family plan may include solutions such as family counselling or curfews for the kid or whatever, but the family plan must be done in conjunction with any other services with the family.

One of the things that happens with young offenders is that quite often there is involvement with child welfare services and perhaps the school system, and now the justice system. The family will have three different working plans that don't necessarily work together.

So a strong recommendation would be that all young offenders being let go be released with a family plan that incorporates any other agencies working with the family.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: Your group was obviously established because of a need to fill a gap in the system. How did your association start? What are its primary objectives?

[English]

Ms Joan Bever (Program Consultant, Parent Support Association): Our association was established almost 15 years ago by a concerned group of parents who felt there was nothing out there for them. They were people who felt there was a need to add to their parenting or to learn more about what they didn't know. They had a lot of kids who were acting out in ways they had no resource on their own to deal with.

A lot of the people we see at Parent Support Association have indeed had counselling, and continue to have counselling or be in family therapy, but they find that the support of an organization and the support of other people who are dealing with a lot of the issues they're dealing with is helpful.

The objective is to support one another, to support parents. In some ways, for some parents, depending on the time they come to our organization, it may be entirely showing and proving to themselves that what they have been doing they're right on with, they're on the right track, and they're supporting one another with that.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Laurent: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Torsney): Thank you very much.

Mr. Ramsay, you have 10 minutes.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you ladies for coming. I'm glad you're here.

My wife and I have raised four children. We're in the process of still raising two of them, and, yes, we have done all we can.

I recall what was said by Kent, who was in the panel ahead of you, that parents can only go so far. They teach their children what they think is best. They do their very best for them, and after a certain age all you can do is let them go and hope for the best, hope that what you've taught them, the values you have engendered, will carry them through the trials and temptations they will have to face.

When we look at the act and at what legislative framework we can bring about or reform or change what's already there to, one, protect society, and two, when children get into difficulty, help them, provide them with the training and rehabilitation they need, or the love and care they've missed somewhere along the way, or the reason why they may have rebelled against the love and care of their parents, we run into some anomalies.

First, it's not the age that a child should be subjected to the YOA. That's not the question. The question is, what do we do with children under the age of 12 when there is no, or a minus of, legal framework to provide services for that child? No one is going to come out of the air to say they're going to do this or that for a child. We cannot do things for children without a legal framework in which to do it. Parents are the only ones who can do that, because they have the duty and the responsibility to do that.

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But if it gets beyond the capability of the parent, or if the parents, as in some cases, simply don't care - they've either thrown their hands in the air or have never really had the commitment to their child that they ought to have had to bring them along - then what do we do without that framework?

As I've mentioned before, in Quebec they have the Youth Protection Act, which fills the gap from 12 to whatever age. It's a good act. They have the resources and the authority to move in when there's evidence that a child is in need of services, in need of help. They can work with the parents. They have the authority to do that. They can knock on the door and say this is what is happening to your child and we're concerned about it, and so on.

Under the old Juvenile Delinquents Act, there was the authority, through the justice system, to deal with children of any age who showed those signs, who committed a crime.

Right now we have an 11-year-old who committed a rape, or at least was accused of rape, of a 13-year-old girl in Ontario. What do we do other than turn them over to the Children's Aid Society and hope that the Children's Aid Society has the authority in law to do what is in the best interests of that child?

That's the question we have to deal with. Some feel that 12 is the proper age, as you have indicated, for the Young Offenders Act to click in. But in at least some provinces have we not abandoned the children under that age? How do you feel about that, bearing in mind of course - and I keep asking you a question and then interrupting - that under the old Juvenile Delinquents Act there were treatment options that were by and large eliminated under the Young Offenders Act? As I said to the other panel, to some extent that has been restored by the recent amendments to the act, but they were left with only sentencing options.

So what would you do with a 10- or 11-year-old who continued to steal cars? Do you think there should be a legal framework to protect society from that and to provide a program of treatment that may provide that child with whatever that child needs?

Ms McMurray: I believe the Alberta Family and Social Services Child Welfare Act is exactly the act you're talking about. It says everything you've just said, sir. It does say that any child who is at risk to himself or to society may be apprehended. That act maybe isn't being implemented, but to my knowledge it is being implemented. I know of many families of 8- to 11-year-olds where there was an issue, child welfare became involved and so on.

The Child Welfare Act allows for all kinds of creative counselling, family therapy, in-home support. There's a brand-new program just funded under the early intervention project of Alberta Family and Social Services that provides in-home support for children aged 6 to 12 to work with the parents on parenting skill-building. There are all kinds of programs. Perhaps those things happen, but we're not aware that they're happening.

I also read in the newspaper about the 11-year-old in Ontario. I'm not familiar with the Ontario ministry that deals with families and social services, so I can't speak to that. But in Alberta, the legislation is definitely there. It is definitely used, and used very well. It's under a major restructuring, not as legislation but as service delivery, right now. That's only going to make it better than it already is.

So I don't believe the change needs to happen.

Mr. Ramsay: I heard nothing more than the reports in the newspaper about the young boy in this area who was stealing car after car and was simply picked up by police and delivered home. It didn't seem, in that case at least, that the welfare programs were responding to the needs of that child.

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Ms McMurray: In fact, they were. Family and Social Services was highly involved with the family. All kinds of support was happening. This kid was a determined little boy. It didn't matter what you were going to do; unless you locked him up and threw away the key until he was 50, he was going to steal cars. Sometimes some people just have a mindset that they're going to do what they want no matter what you do. We all know them. They're not necessarily criminals, but those people are in our society. It wouldn't matter what you would do. It just wouldn't matter.

So they were involved.

Mr. Ramsay: Then it's your suggestion that the owners of motor vehicles are simply going to have to take the risk of having him steal their cars?

Ms McMurray: No, definitely not. I'm not saying we should just say that. I'm saying we have to acknowledge that there are the rare cases - and they are rare. Whenever it's in the newspaper, it sounds as though it's hundreds of kids. In fact, it was one little boy in a city of 825,000 people, one little child, and he got headlines day after day. We all felt as though every 11-year-old in Calgary was out stealing all of our cars.

In fact, the City of Calgary has responded through the purchase of the HAPS helicopter, which has decreased car theft 250% in the six months it has been in operation. Kids can't get away with high-speed chases any more.

Mr. Ramsay: However, the anomaly still exists that anyone under the age of 12 who wants to continue to do that can do so and create a threat to the private property of citizens and so on.

So although I agree with you that this is not widespread - in fact, the whole area of youth offenders takes in a small percentage of youth; in most cases our youth are good, and parents are doing a good job - we do have to look at that particular area. That anomaly is still there.

Should we as a committee ignore the anomaly? If we should not ignore it, are there any suggestions you would make about that anomaly other than what you have made, that we just leave things as they are?

Ms McMurray: No. I've talked about youth justice committees. Obviously the act is 12 and over, so that would be 12 and over. However, I'm not sure there can't be some modifications around youth justice committees. I'm not sure how it would work with interprovincial and federal-provincial issues on child welfare, but there has to be a way. Perhaps youth justice committees could become ``community well-being committees'', or something like that. It could be a place where the family of this 11-year-old could go, or the neighbours. If you go back to having the neighbours involved, this kid, when he snuck out, maybe....

When I was a kid, my neighbours were senior citizens. At the age of 18, one day I came home from a date. We were sitting outside, and the next day the old gentleman told my mother exactly what time I came home - in case she didn't know. That created a lot of accountability. I think if we go back to things like that, it will help.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. That's exactly ten minutes.

Mr. Gallaway.

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): We seem to have this attitude or this perception, as identified by our previous witnesses, that there is this continuum of opinion with respect to the act and how it's working. So I very much enjoyed what you had to say today.

We've also been asked questions about the child welfare legislation in the province of Ontario - or in the province of Alberta. We are in Alberta today, I guess.

Ms McMurray: If it's Tuesday....

Mr. Gallaway: We must be in Edmonton, yes.

If one were to assume that the child welfare legislation in Alberta, just for purposes of discussion, is not working, that in fact these young people under the age of 12 are not being dealt with, are not receiving help, whatever the situation might be, if that is in fact true, what would make you believe that lowering the age, then, to bring them into the criminal justice system would change the situation?

Ms McMurray: I don't think it would. I don't think lowering the age is going to address that at all. It's not addressing underlying root causes. Why is this kid's family in chaos? Lowering the age isn't going to do that at all. That's where child welfare services can be the loving arms of the mother. That analogy is very good. That's what child welfare is about - reuniting the family, working with the family, rebuilding, teaching parenting skills, working with the school system, all of those things.

A kid who's doing that is probably also experiencing difficulties in school, with friends, with all of those things. So working with this youngster in that more social setting....

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This is why I really believe that by lowering the age to include little kids, you're putting them in this great big justice system where they're really not going to get help. If anything, they're going to meet the big bad criminals, the ones we don't want them to have as friends. They are going to be out breaking into homes when they're 10. Let's say we arrest them under the Young Offenders Act for stealing a car, as an example, when they're 8. When they're 10, we're going to be putting them in jail for breaking into your home.

I think we're really setting ourselves up as a society, as well. We all know this. We know what happens in penitentiaries. We all know the teachings that go on. We know kids are going to get into drugs and all kinds of things there, no matter what we do. I don't think we want to see our little 10-year-olds in this situation.

Mr. Gallaway: I read the three case examples contained in your brief. Case one is where the 14-year-old eventually ends up stealing a car. In the province of Ontario, as an example, the Attorney General of that province has signalled he wants to introduce legislation at the civil end of the Young Offenders Act. So, in this first case where the 14-year-old ends up stealing a car and, let's assume, causes some property damage either to the car or to other people's property in the process, the province has signalled that the parents are going to be responsible for whatever the damages might be. In other words, you're going to have to get out your cheque book and write a cheque. How do you react to this?

Ms McMurray: My reaction as a parent is this. If you're going to make me responsible, then change the law so I can take my 14-year-old who I know is acting out and I can tie her to her bed. I can drug her so she can't get out at night. I can bar the windows and I can double-lock the doors so she cannot get out and I can sleep. I did not sign a contract when I had this child saying ``Thou shalt not sleep from this day until she arrives at the age of 18''.

I'm sorry. We are allowed to sleep. Children will sneak out, as this kid did. These parents had gone to great lengths to be good parents and had done everything they could. I think the onus has to be first on proving they were bad parents, that they were out carousing and doing all the bad things in the world and they had abandoned this child. Then maybe there's a point to this, but I think the majority of these kids have parents who are trying everything. I don't want a law that does all the things I said. I would not want to have to lock up my kid.

In fact, about five years ago, there was an exact case of this. There was a woman in Vancouver whose 14-year-old daughter was continually running down and working as a prostitute. Mom continually picked her up, night after night. She did tie her to the bed. The authorities were called in and the mother was charged with criminal assault, with illegal confinement and all kinds of serious crimes. I didn't agree she should be tying the kid to the bed, but this is how desperate this mother had become.

These are really difficult cases. We have to look at what kind of major treatment we need in this family. Bringing it to a civil case and making me pay is also not going to teach my kid anything. If anything the kid is going to say, ``Why should I care? My Mom is going to pay or my Dad is going to pay.''

Mr. Gallaway: In many municipalities across this country, school boards in particular have introduced what they refer to as zero tolerance policies. So if Johnny and Billy get into a little scrap in the school yard at recess, it becomes a police matter. At the same time, these types of school yard scraps that, in my opinion, have always been going on, are self-fulfilling prophesies supporting the view young offenders are more violent, are in some way worse today than they were at some mystical date in the past. So we can say we've got the statistics to show it because thousands more of these have been reported.

As a parent group, how do you react to these types of policies? How do you react to the fact that these school yard scraps - I'll characterize them as this - or conflicts between young people have always existed but are now being called criminal acts and may require some type of dealing in a court?

Ms McMurray: For a lot of the parents coming to our groups, this is an issue that pushes them over the edge. They are coming to a parenting group because they are thinking ``Gee whiz, this kid had a fight. It's always wrong to fight, but I had a fight when I was 14, too.'' Most people did. If you were a girl, it was biting and scratching. For boys, it was beating each other up behind the barn. You're right. Those things have happened and they'll always happen.

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But they are really upset because now their kid has a criminal record, a record of assault. Assault is in the major crimes category; it is not a minor crime. So you have a record of assault, and now, all of a sudden, the family wants to go to Hawaii for Christmas because they're wealthy enough to be able to afford to do so, but they can't go because the kid can't cross the border. The idea that we are using major sanctions is a really big concern.

I'm not saying I agree with school yard violence, by any means; in my best of all worlds, none of us would fight. It does exist, though; it does happen. Why aren't we bringing these two kids together, along with the parents, the way it used to happen? Mom and Dad A and Mom and Dad B and Boy A and Boy B would come to school and sit down to talk about what's going on, what happened, and what they are going to do about it. They would come up with those creative consequences within the family setting and without a criminal justice system.

If we charge these kids with assault, though, they sometimes end up doing some time because it is a major crime.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Do they not also kick them out of school frequently in Ontario?

Ms McMurray: Yes, there are issues with school now. Even though the Education Act says they have to go until they're 16, you get into some issues in which this kid has major consequences to deal with, and maybe the kid facing the biggest consequence wasn't even the perpetrator of the crime. He's just the one who happened to get caught - and we all know that happens, too.

So let's go back to looking at more community solutions. I know educators say they have enough to do and are busy in the schools. But it doesn't have to be teachers who do that. We could bring in volunteers, or all kinds of other different people who could do that. There are all kinds of mediation services.

Mr. Gallaway: Let me just ask one final question. In your parenting affirmations, the third one talks about helping children to accept responsibility and to take charge of their own lives. I think that's what we all want as parents.

In dealing with youth, we have in the justice system this mystical idea called ``protection of society'' - and I shouldn't call it a mystical idea, because we all expect that society will be protected. In your opinion, this whole concept of protection of society.... I'm starting to form the opinion that many people - or the majority of people who have appeared before this committee - believe that protection of society means incarceration. How do you view having your children accept responsibility and taking charge of their lives, as compared to protection of society? How do you reconcile these two ideas?

Ms McMurray: When we can work with our children and teach them to be responsible for their actions, I think we'll have fewer criminal acts, because they will be responsible citizens.

Ms Bever: When you're talking about 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds, I think if we can start implementing the idea of people and kids taking responsibility for their actions at the younger ages, it will follow through. The school systems won't have the difficulties they're having and it will just carry on throughout. Indeed, kids will be starting to take more responsibility for their actions, and parents in turn will be giving up some of the responsibility that they take on themselves right now but which truly isn't their responsibility.

Mr. Gallaway: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Mr. Maloney has one quick question, and then I have to get you on the road.

Ms McMurray: I'm really sorry to have to leave.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): We're sorry we got delayed earlier this morning. We were at the maximum security penitentiary, which was quite interesting.

Mr. Maloney (Erie): In your case scenario number one, you indicate that if we were to recommend holding parents responsible, it should only be in such situations where we could prove the parents had neglected their responsibilities. What would be the sanctions that should be imposed if parents in fact had neglected their responsibilities?

Ms McMurray: As a first sanction, they should be taught how to be responsible parents, because maybe they don't even know how to do that. So parenting courses would be one thing. There should probably be some kind of family counselling or in-home support as well.

With in-home support, a family counsellor comes into the home and observes the interactions that are happening. He or she then teaches the parents about more appropriate responses when something in particular happens, how they can handle it. It is really hands-on teaching of how to be responsible parents. I believe most parents who behave irresponsibly don't know how to be responsible; they don't have the tools and the skills.

So that would be the main sanction, and it would probably be applied through a probation order of some sort so that it could be monitored for compliance, since just telling them to do it won't work. You have to say that you find they are not doing a good job as parents, that you want to help them do that, that they are on probation for a period of a year, and that during that year there are certain things they have to do. At the end of that year you could have some kind of testing mechanism to see if they are behaving in a more responsible manner.

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Mr. Gallaway: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Ladies, thank you very much for coming this afternoon. I know you don't really have time, but I wonder if you might take some time to think about what we heard this morning, particularly from the young people who had been in the young offenders' facility in Calgary. They said they got no treatment, no programming, and the only thing they learned was how to do bigger crimes - and they are now at the maximum security penitentiary here.

I was stunned by the fact that parenting skills were not part of the programming, because they are in a lot of the young offenders' facilities in Ontario. It is recognized that they may not have had good parenting examples - maybe they did, maybe they didn't - and that at some point, some of these kids will become parents and will know how to break the cycle.

I don't know if you're doing some work there currently or if there is some opportunity to get some changes in programming there, but it was a shocker to see all these kids saying, ``Just hung out; didn't do anything''.

Ms McMurray: Yes, that's right.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): They do push-ups. That's what they said.

Ms McMurray: It is a scenario that has to be worked on. Treatment options are available under the Young Offenders Act, and we really have to ensure that these things are happening for these young people and their families.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): Thank you very much for coming. If there's anything you've forgotten, you're more than welcome to send us a note. We wish you a good meeting tonight and a safe flight.

Ms McMurray: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Torsney): We'll rise for a couple of minutes.

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The Chair: We're back. Now we have Mark Genuis, from the National Foundation for Family Research and Education.

Welcome. We have your brief. Did you want to highlight aspects of it?

Mr. Mark Genuis (Executive Director, National Foundation for Family Research and Education): Yes, I would be grateful to take a few minutes and address the brief, if I may.

First of all, thank you kindly for allowing us to make this presentation and deliver this brief today. It's an honour. We've divided it into five parts. The first one, just as introduction, is to talk about trends in Canadian youth today. The second is just an overview of the topic. We address the question, discuss some relevant research, and address some summary and recommendation elements.

As I begin, please allow me to note that the focus of this presentation is not myself as a person, not my thoughts or philosophies. The focus of this presentation is to address the research in specific areas of child development and youth. That's the element from which we'd like to speak to you today.

The trends here are mostly from the Correctional Service of Canada and the references are at the back.

In our society today and our youth and our young adult population, the academic literature is fairly consistent in demonstrating that 20% of our young adults and youth population demonstrate at least one clinical level of emotional or mental disturbance. This is a time when in the past number of years in our area of the world we've talked a lot about individual freedom and the ability to pursue one's own personal dreams and so forth. When youth and young adults are presented with these things I would submit they are severely limited in their ability to be free in and of themselves.

The suicide rate in Canada for children aged 10 to 14 years has risen between 1955 and 1992 by 1,101%. This is directly from Statistics Canada. The population growth in this country has been considered in this number. You can see the graph underneath is a demonstration of it. As you can see, the front line is population growth. The back line, going up, is the suicide increase in children 10 to 14 years in this country. For children 15 to 19 years the increase is 600%. We now, according to UNICEF, have the third-highest suicide rate in adolescents in the world. We are ahead of the United States. For young adults the number in Canada is a 338% increase since 1955.

The reason I present these numbers as well as delinquency or crime numbers is that these children who present with these crimes also appear in many instances - not all but many instances - to turn violence in towards themselves as well as externally. In many instances these problems are related and in the same people.

The violent crime rate in Canada has risen 124% between 1986 and 1994. Homicides by youth in Canada rose 54% between 1986 and 1995. In 1986, youth accounted for 8% of homicides. Now this has gone up to approximately 12%.

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The Chair: I would like to ask a clarifying point because we get so many different statistics.

Mr. Genuis: I'm sure you do.

The Chair: I want to make sure we're all operating on the same basis here.

Are you including level one assaults in that, common assault?

Mr. Genuis: This would be directly according to the numbers in The Juristat and -

The Chair: So it includes level one.

Mr. Genuis: Yes, it would include level one assaults.

The Chair: Okay. Sorry.

Mr. Genuis: That's fine.

In Canada, in drug-related crime, it was 83% over the three-year period.

The next number is very important. Between 1990 and 1995 a steady rate of approximately 45% of those in Canadian youth courts were repeat offenders. What's more, 60% of these recidivists had three or more prior convictions. The concern about this, of course, is that it's often said in the general public that it's a small group of youth who are committing the bulk of the crimes, and there are two points to that.

First of all, it's about 45%, so it's less than half the crimes. As our crime rate increases, this small group also increases because it continues to be about 45%. So this small group is getting larger and larger, it appears.

As well, this past summer, 1996, out of the Solicitor General's office a document was reported where it was found that 75% of dangerous offenders and 70% of high-risk, violent offenders had criminal records as juveniles. So as our juvenile numbers go up, our concern is that the adult numbers for tomorrow continue to rise, and the rate of rise is somewhat concerning. When we see all these negative and concerning trends, we have to turn a focus, as we see it, to prevention.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs has a most important task in examining issues related to young offenders and repairing the damage that's been done by and to so many of our youth today. Perhaps one of the most sobering thoughts, though, is that regardless of the changes that are made to the Young Offenders Act, whether the committee tries to move more towards incarceration or responsibility, or more towards therapy and treatment, or a combination of the two, there will unfortunately be a number of children who are going to fall through the cracks, who are going to be beyond reach by the system, if you will.

So the most effective means of support - and the manner in which we would like to address the problem today and ask you to consider - to these youth and their victims is to increase efforts of government, and indeed all Canadians, towards prevention of adolescent pathologies in crime. This is what I'll focus on in the balance of the presentation.

The question we'd like to address is, how do children develop positive coping skills into healthy, productive and happy adolescents rather than into offending young people? I'll do so from a research perspective. The first area I'll address is what we call bonding or attachment research, and then I'll go into a specific area of non-parental care.

In 1951 Dr. John Bowlby of England was asked by the World Health Organization in the late 1940s - they actually published him - to look at the issue of juvenile delinquency worldwide and child development and try to put together some theoretical perspective according to all the data that exist as to how this develops and how we can prevent it.

Dr. Bowlby travelled the world, asked experts, looked at all the data, and in 1951 found the data to be so consistent that he put together what was called the theory of attachment. This tells us children bond or attach emotionally to their parents. When they bond securely, this bodes very well for their development into adolescence. When they bond insecurely, it doesn't bode very well and one of the outcomes appears to be juvenile crime.

In 1962 the World Health Organization published another document from a Canadian, Mary Ainsworth, and since that time there's been research conducted all over the world. There are some details here about that.

In 1994 I had the opportunity to conduct some research on the issue of attachment and its long-term implications by using some research designs that allow us now to begin to discuss causal relationships. I looked at childhood experiences, their influence on the bonding process, and the long-term implications of childhood bonding to parents.

There has been some other research in this area. One is by van Ijzendoorn and Bakermans-Kranenburg. They looked at what we call meta-analysis.

Very briefly, meta-analysis is, if you will, the next step beyond literature reviews. When people address you, you may hear a lot of talk about the reviews of the literature or reviews of the research. In science, reviews of the literature are becoming less and less relevant and less and less accepted. We are now working towards what we call meta-analysis, which is bringing all the information in a particular research area together, standardizing it and re-analysing it. That way we remove researcher biases - because researchers are human beings. If we remove researcher biases, we have a much more solid, much more technical, much more accurate way of understanding information.

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The results from the search are quite clear and consistent. We find that children who are insecurely bonded to their parents have difficulties later on, frankly. This attachment or this bond is a central developmental variable in childhood. Secure attachment to parents causes, or is directly related to, health, productivity and happiness in adolescence. Insecure attachment, on the other hand, goes straight the other way to clinical levels of emotional problems and behavioural problems, which includes youth crime.

The experiences children have are extremely important, but they're important in the way they funnel into this bonding process. The childhood experiences don't seem to cause the outcome. They seem to cause, in a combined manner, how secure or insecure this bond is to their parents, and then it's that bond that brings us the outcome. I hope you'll see the relevance of this discussion in a bit.

Some of the negative concerns or the negative influences on childhood bonding - just a couple of them that have been recorded - include regular non-parental care prior to the age of 5, sexual abuse, physical abuse, threats, long-term separation from either or both parents and low levels of parental involvement. If you turn that around, high levels of parental involvement in these children's lives works wonders for these children. It seems that parents do a very good job when given the opportunity or when taking the time.

Another topic in this whole area that's very important is attachment to the parental unit. The research in this area looks at whether children form bonds to each parent individually and separately or whether they appear to bond to both parents, if you will, as a unit, or together. All the research was quite clear. There was another meta-analysis published in 1991. We also looked at this issue, as did another researcher named Kenny in 1990.

All researchers have found that children's attachment to one parent in a sense is almost dependent on the security of their attachment to their other parent. So if I am insecurely bonded to one of my parents, this is a significant risk to the development of an insecure bond to my other parent.

For example, if two parents separate and one of the parents, or both of them, try to undermine the child's relationship with the other parent, what they're really doing is undermining it to themselves as well, whereas if parents work together, they produce great solidity and security within the children. So children's attachments work in combination and almost in a dependent fashion between parents. The research is very consistent.

In the next area, we look at one specific issue that's been discussed quite a lot lately in the press and in government circles - that is, the area of non-parental care. We're fortunate now to have several meta-analyses on this specific issue. As I discussed, meta-analysis is a manner of removing narrative biases and so forth, but you should understand that there are some limitations in this specific area. One of them is that a large percentage of the participants who've been examined throughout the world are in the mid-range of socio-economic status.

Second, the majority of studies conducted to date haven't examined as carefully as could be the issue of quality. That is getting better but it's not addressed as much as it should be. Meta-analysis generally has been criticized because of what we call a ``file drawer problem'' in the academic literature that significant studies don't get published. But meta-analysis is a way to overcome this.

Another criticism is that meta-analysis takes studies that use different methods to examine the same issue, but actually, academically this is not a very good argument. This is actually one of the greatest strengths, forming validity within the argument. If you have different ways of looking at the same issue and they come up with the same answer, you have a lot of strength in your findings.

So in understanding these things, these meta-analyses simply represent the most authoritative information available on this subject matter.

The researchers reported that regular non-parental care for more than 20 hours a week has an unmistakably negative effect in three of the four major areas outlined within the research, one of them being social/emotional development, another being behavioural adjustment, and a third one being bonding. We've talked about the importance of bonding to parents in childhood.

In terms of cognitive development, they found no real significant differences between children in regular care and those not.

You should also note that when we talk about the increased risk of insecure bonds, still, of those children in regular non-parental care for more than 20 hours a week, 50% form secure bonds to their parents. But if we look at the other side, 50% of them didn't. That means 50% of the population didn't form secure attachments to their parents, which is a dramatic increase over the baseline rate if we don't have the regular non-parental care in there.

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Also, when we look at mediating variables such as quality of care, age of entry, socio-economic status, family structure, and so forth, these variables have not been found to have a significant influence on the outcome for these children. What it appears to be at this point is a separation from the parent, not where the child is going. It appears to be the regular extensive separation from the parents at a young age. Again, that's regularly and more than 20 hours a week. In each of these analyses, parental care consistently and significantly outperformed regular non-parental care for these children.

I will now summarize and provide a few recommendations. First of all, I've discussed the non-parental care. Furthermore, regular non-parental care has a clear and negative influence on other areas of development that have traditionally been believed to be enhanced in non-parental care settings, such as social development and behavioural adjustment. These are found to be exactly opposite to what has been argued over the past 30 or so years. The National Foundation for Family Research and Education urges you, the standing committee, to place a substantial amount of focus and action on the positive development of children in Canada.

The prevention of youth crime is the most powerful tool for positive development of our society. Prevention is also the most cost-efficient manner with which to reverse many of our concerning trends. From the information we've presented, it's clear that parental care of children is one very powerful tool in the prevention of later problems.

We've presented this information for you to consider in your important work. We'd recommend the federal government work to enhance the economic strength of Canadian families, again because there is some national survey information, quite recent and consistent, which tells us the vast majority of parents, approximately 70%, in this country, if they had the economic ability to do so, have said they would focus much more of their time on the care and management of their families. In two-parent households many of them are working outside the home because they feel it's an economic necessity. If having children in regular non-parental care is a detriment to our society, we would suggest that if there are ways the government can work to make more opportunities available to the parents, it would be a wise decision to do so.

If we can increase the economic strength, we'll empower parents to choose directions for their own families rather than to have to work according to how they can make ends meet. These options would enable parents to increase their time and attention on the care and management of their children. It's a job Canadian parents have said they want and one they do well.

There are some more specific recommendations I'd be happy to address, but this is essentially the information I wanted to share with you.

I thank you for taking the time to listen to me. I'd be happy to discuss any specific points.

The Chair: Mr. Ramsay, do you have any questions?

Mr. Ramsay: I would like to thank Mark for his presentation.

If what you're saying is true, this is an incredible document you've filed with the committee, because what it's saying is in spite of all we can do, if the bonding does not take place, we're going to be fighting an ever-increasing rise in juvenile crime. That is what I understood from your presentation today.

I'd like to ask you this question. In the documentation that was prepared for us by the committee's research staff for our trip to Quebec, this matter was touched upon very lightly by one of the authors who made a submission. It indicated this kind of bonding was more important when it occurred between the child and the father than the child and the mother. That was very surprising to me, because I always thought the greatest bonding that took place was between mother and child.

The Chair: Could you assist us with the citation for that article?

Mr. Ramsay: Madam Chair, I don't have that document with me, but I certainly will dig it up. I have it back in my office. If anyone has -

The Chair: No, the researchers are not familiar with what you're talking about. That's why we're asking.

Mr. Ramsay: If anyone has read the documentation prepared for us for the trip we made into Quebec, it's in that documentation. It's available for committee members to read. It's there.

The Chair: I'm asking you to find it and identify it.

Mr. Ramsay: I will. You bet I will.

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What then are we looking at when we have so many marital breakdowns? What are we looking at when we have so many single parents, single mothers? If what you're saying is accurate, then not only are two-parent families with both spouses working and their children going to day care for over 20 hours per week at risk, but there are other situations, where there's a marital breakdown, a divorce occurs, one parent leaves or is separated from the children, or the mother is single. Would you comment on that?

Mr. Genuis: Yes, I'd be happy to comment.

Let me just begin my comments with a couple of prefaces. First of all, we would make every attempt to make sure that the information we're presenting is not from our opinion. We're trying to present to you the research and the most comprehensive information that exists from the research world today.

Let me restate that this is not my opinion I'm sharing with you and has nothing really to do with what I personally think, but it's very important to share.

You mentioned that the bonding doesn't take place. First of all, just as a textbook point, bonding always takes place. It's a matter of whether it is securely founded or insecurely founded.

Bonding to fathers is critically important, especially in this time when we have so much breakdown and so many fathers are abandoning their responsibility in all ways to their families. Perhaps if there is a document that exists that states it is so critical, surely it is critical. With respect to whether it's more critical than the bonding with the mother, there's no information I have ever been aware of or I've ever seen to indicate that.

When we look at the issue of bonding between parents, we find that we have a similar security of bonding to each parent together or to the parental unit. One question to be asked is whether children in fact, instead of seeing their parents as two individual people, see their parents as a parental unit, because the bonding appears to be dependent. It's a question that has to be addressed, because the attachment to both parents is very important.

When you ask what we are looking at down the road when we have so many single parents and so much marital breakdown, let me say that many single parents work and do absolutely everything they can. There are many, many successful single-parent families. There's no question of that. There are also many unsuccessful dual-parent families. Again, there's no question about that.

As researchers, what we would have to determine is how we can put people at the lowest risk or how we can put people in the situation that will allow the greatest success. What happens in society? Generally, the foundation right now is getting into a research project in which we're looking specifically at family structure. We have reviewed the literature from around the world. What clearly and consistently we find in the research, from real people, is that children seem to benefit from two married parents.

The government in Halifax conducted a 10-year longitudinal study, and it's published. I believe it's called ``Mothers and Children''. I can get the exact reference for it. The study was, I believe, from 1981 to 1991. The years may not be correct.

In this study, they broke down young parents and older parents - old being defined as 20 years or more. They looked at single parents and married parents. In the single group, interestingly to us, they included common-law spouses as single parents. What they found was that children who were in a situation in which their mothers were older than 20 or their mothers were married reaped many, many benefits, more so than children in other family constellations.

I wouldn't draw a whole number of conclusions out of that, but it's a very interesting finding. It's a longitudinal piece that has been conducted in Canada, so there is some important information there that requires examination.

Mr. Ramsay: Can the bonding requirement - the security you speak of - be replaced by grandparents, for example, or by a member of the extended family?

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Mr. Genuis: The extended family is a wonderful thing in this world. Can it be replaced? I'm not sure what you would mean by ``replaced''. Certainly for children, a bond to a primary caregiver, a bond to a person who would in their mind be someone who is there for them when they need it and who's going to be there ongoing, who is not going to be there this year and gone the next, and so on and so forth.... If they have a grandparent who is their primary caregiver and they can rely on them consistently, if the grandparent is going to be there forever in the child's mind, then certainly they could become quite secure with that grandparent. Their chance of success would be greatly increased.

This has to be examined more carefully, because the data on this are just preliminary. One potential concern is that where families may use grandparents as day cares rather than a day care itself and so forth, the preliminary data we have been able to access indicate the children in these situations are at risk for insecure attachment to their parents. That's what the data tell us thus far. But there are many questions to be asked about this and it has to be specified further.

But clearly, extended families are a wonderful thing.

Mr. Ramsay: It's hard to draw conclusions. Your data indicate some profound conclusions, but I'd have to study the material and your presentation and the references more to be able to draw.... I'm almost afraid to draw the conclusions your data point towards. For one thing, they indicate to me that if the parent is taking the children to the grandparent, there is a risk of the security of the bonding. So I ask the question, if, say, the parents died at an early age and the child were placed in the custody of the grandparent, would that development of the bonding security you speak of be established in sufficient strength, the need for which you describe in your presentation?

Mr. Genuis: There are a few things to consider. One of the elements is if the parents are alive and they're working full-time, for example, and let's say the grandparents in the situation you're talking about take care of the children from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. or 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. or whatever, then what you have is children going to one situation regularly and then coming to another situation. They have a back-and-forth. If the parents, for any unfortunate reason, die, and the children are then moved in with grandparents, what you have is the grandparents taking over responsibility for being full-time caregivers for the children -

Mr. Ramsay: Without the inconsistency.

Mr. Genuis: - without the inconsistency, and that's a very different ball game.

There are all sorts of other elements that can come into it. But it appears from the data, and all the data around the world, that the main issue is not the quality of care the children receive, it's not the socio-economic status, it's not the structure of the family. It appears to this point that the concern for the children is the regular separation from their parents. The fact is that it's not that they're not being taken care of well in a day care. The fact is that they're not being taken care of by their parents. So there's that separation, which appears to pose the risk to these children in that bonding area. That appears to be the concern.

Frankly, the bottom line of the information is that parents consistently outperform non-parental care. All over the world since 1957, the data, when brought together, clearly indicate that parents do an excellent job, parents are good caregivers for their children. There are bad parents, there are parents who are neglectful, but by and large parents do a good job when given the opportunity to do their work.

The Chair: Are there any government questions?

Ms Torsney: I notice you are a PhD and...what's a CPsych - a clinical psychologist?

Mr. Genuis: A chartered psychologist in the province of Alberta.

Ms Torsney: Is this your full-time job, or do you also counsel families?

Mr. Genuis: I ran a counselling practice a couple of years ago, but I no longer do that. The foundation is now my full-time job.

Ms Torsney: And what's your PhD in?

Mr. Genuis: My PhD is in counselling psychology and my dissertation looked specifically at the long-term implications of insecure attachment in childhood.

Ms Torsney: I notice on your letterhead six individuals are listed. How many people or how many associations are members of the National Foundation for Family Research and Education?

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Mr. Genuis: The foundation is now formally beginning a process of broader membership. At present, direct members number approximately 10. The reason is, of course, that just over the past couple of days we have begun seeking memberships. We've spent the past couple of years conducting research, putting information together and preparing the organization to be able to step out and hopefully do some solid work in the study and support of families. So now that is the element.

That's the foundation, specifically.

Ms Torsney: So you're a charitable foundation, meaning you give tax receipts to people who make donations.

Mr. Genuis: Yes, we do.

Ms Torsney: I kind of was at a loss here; I couldn't figure out if your basic premise was that you went in looking for the research that would support bonding or if it sort of happened, and it actually was something you really struggled with and had to come up with for this conclusion.

Mr. Genuis: That's an excellent question. May I take a moment to just give you the history? Because that's very important.

For my Master's degree I looked at the issue of sexual abuse of boys. In our research, in the literature reviews of that, what we found fascinating was that sexual abuse seemed to cause - in the literature sometimes they would use the word ``cause'', sometimes they wouldn't - everything, and would be related to everything. Sexual abuse of boys, and of girls, seemed to cause all sorts of problems.

In a sense, it appears, as my supervisor put it, theoretically impossible for something to cause everything. We looked into other areas of research and found physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and so forth, seeming to be related to the same array of difficulties. We then began to search in that if we had all of these different difficulties causing all these different outcomes, what we'd be left with, really, is everything causing everything, which is a concern.

So we began to look for anything in the literature that may help us to explain this, or understand this, in a more meaningful way. One empirically driven approach was that of the development of attachment. It seemed to be a construct that, if you think of a tapestry, seemed to tie all of these experiences and outcomes together.

When we looked at the research around the world, it was very consistent. The findings were consistent in demonstrating that attachment in childhood has an effect. Attachment in infancy has an effect on childhood behaviour, and so on and so forth. Some studies demonstrated little effect. The vast majority found substantial effect.

We tried to take the data one step further, applying some very recent techniques, and these were our findings. It's an entirely empirically driven approach. It was a drive to help us understand how all of these different experiences seemed to come to all these different outcomes.

Ms Torsney: First of all, are you aware that there are differences between the child care situation in the United States and Canada?

Mr. Genuis: There are differences in the situation in child care all over the world, yes.

Ms Torsney: But one of the particular things about child care in the United States, of course, is that most companies have little or no parental leave programs, and certainly don't have the kind of taxpayer-supported parental leave programs we have in Canada. So little babies can go into child care there. Babies one week or two weeks old have to be in child care.

Mr. Genuis: Yes.

Ms Torsney: So when some of your studies are from the United States, I really wonder if that doesn't create a different picture.

The second issue about child care that's been quite interesting is that the opportunity to intervene and to recognize when children are being abused - physically, emotionally and sexually - presented itself in the past, it was when children arrived at school at the age of 5. Now, because there is more interaction with authorities and there is a system that demands that authorities report these incidents, there's an opportunity to intervene and to assist children who are being abused in their homes, or somehow neglected. So child care can actually be a really good thing for a lot of children.

Mr. Genuis: I'll address those two points. First, with regard to the United States, we certainly in Canada also have very young infants going into regular non-parental care. In the United States are many instances where age of entry is very young. Age of entry will be 1, 2 or 3 years old.

That's why, when we looked at the research information, when the researchers conducted the meta-analyses, they controlled for age of entry specifically and they found really very little effect.

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My understanding is that there are some updates and that they may find some other effects with regard to age of entry. But at this point, the best information we have informs us that prior to the age of 5 we have this significant risk. With the information in the United States, you just simply control for the age of entry - because there is a whole wide range - until the data becomes valid and appropriate. That's one point.

The other point is with regard to screening for abuse. If there is a good way of screening for abuse, we would most certainly want to use it, because, without question, no child deserves to be abused. That point is well taken. The other element of it, though, is that the vast majority of parents don't abuse their children. For us to work toward the plan where we're putting all of the children in day care so that we can see if their parents are abusing them doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, because then we're putting the children at risk for insecure attachment by doing something else with them.

So if there is an appropriate screening method and an appropriate prevention method...absolutely, it's an excellent point. It doesn't appear, though, that putting the children at risk in another area is the most effective and efficient way for our country to move forward in this area.

Ms Torsney: I noticed that you used a lot of statistics at the beginning of your presentation to focus on trends. Are you aware of the 1995 crime data that in fact show the largest drop ever recorded in violent crimes in Canada? How does this affect your basic premise?

Mr. Genuis: There is no question the number of violent adult crimes has dropped, and that's a wonderful thing. In fact, I've had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Scott Newark, the executive officer for the Canadian Police Association. He is very -

The Chair: He's on your board of directors.

Mr. Genuis: Yes, he is on my board of directors. He's very pleased about this. It's a terrific thing. Our concern is that the same thing isn't happening within the violent youth population. That is a substantial concern.

Ms Torsney: If someone were to just glance at your presentation and your conclusions, do you think they'd come up with the answer that child care sucks or that child care is somehow evil for our communities?

Mr. Genuis: I hope they would come up with the conclusion that parents frankly do an excellent job. When it comes down to it, parents do outperform non-parental care. That's not to say that child care sucks, but, frankly, it is a risk.

At the same time, I hope they would also come away with the point that parents in this society should have the opportunity to choose whether or not to use non-parental care. If parents so choose, they should certainly have that opportunity. On the other hand, if so many parents who are working say they would prefer not to be working in the external world but would prefer to be working taking care of their families -

Ms Torsney: Paid work versus unpaid work.

Mr. Genuis: Thank you very kindly. Such parents should be respected for their tremendous contributions and perhaps given an opportunity, as a tremendous benefit to our society.

Ms Torsney: I would be interested in knowing if your board members in particular could identify what the family support programs are at their companies. I know there's a survey about companies that are good to work for, and I'm not sure that some of them made it on...and whether they had ``family friendly policies'', as it's known. I think the other -

Mr. Genuis: Can I address that, please? You have made an excellent point. Just for the record, that point is very well made and very well taken, and it's a very important point to address. One area that we are currently involved in.... Many people - whether they want to or don't want to - need to at least keep some sort of involvement in the paid workforce.

We're now speaking with one company in Canada about trying to marry, if you will - pardon the expression - our information with creative programs, particularly for parents of young children, in order to give them a choice and an opportunity so that if they wish to spend more time caring for and managing their families and not be ostracized from the corporate workplace.... We're trying to see if there is a way to do this and support the employee as well as help the company's bottom line. We're now in the initial stages of hopefully putting together a solid, empirical pilot project to do that, because - I agree with you - that is very important.

Ms Torsney: One of your board members is from Ernst & Young. I'm not sure that their partnership program would allow people to take time out to care for their young children. We can check that, but that certainly has been one of the grievances levelled against anybody with a partnership program, whether they're accountants, consultants or lawyers.

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The other question I had is, are you aware of the National Anti-Poverty Organization's research related to very young families?

Mr. Genuis: I'm not familiar specifically with research on very young families. Can you explain this to me?

Ms Torsney: One of their issues is that something like 40% or more of the families where the head of the household is under 30 are living below the poverty line. This may also have an impact on their role within communities and the health of those families and of those children.

Mr. Genuis: There is no question poverty is a stress. There are two issues to raise, although not necessarily two conclusions to make. One of them is a question of the poverty line itself. It is my understanding that our poverty line is relative and so it changes. I don't know if people who are just under the poverty line would truly be considered in poverty.

Ms Torsney: Just to clarify this point, usually if you're considered to be living on the poverty line it means in any given week you run out of food for your family on Wednesday. So this is really below the poverty line.

Mr. Genuis: This would be what we would call serious poverty. Thank you.

The other point is that although this is a substantial concern and clearly the inability to eat would be a substantial risk to a family, poverty doesn't appear, from the data, to make bad parents. There are many poor outstanding parents who build very good young people. I think we have to be concerned about directly relating poverty to inability, because it doesn't seem to work this way.

Another study often quoted in this area is the Perry Preschool Project. We recently received their 27-year follow-up from their study. It was very interesting for me to note the Perry Preschool Project is not a day care program at all. The Perry Preschool Project is a family support program. Children begin at the age of three years. They go for two years. It is about 12.5 hours a week and not more than 20 hours a week of separation, and there are weekly home visits of an hour and a half.

The other thing is the Perry Preschool Project shows children who are only of a certain ethnic origin, only in extreme poverty, only in very high-risk families and with marginal intellectual capacity. I would be concerned people would try to use this information to generalize on the whole population.

Also, there was with that an understandably laudable goal that, by the way, they were very successful at. One of their laudable goals was to get these people to do more than graduate from high school. I'm not sure this is our greatest goal for our whole general population. It is important and it is a wonderful thing, but in Canada we now have a number of people who are successfully completing high school, successfully completing post-graduate school and going on very successfully in other areas.

So this particular study really can't be generalized in any way, shape or form in the day care debate.

Ms Torsney: Do you have children?

Mr. Genuis: Yes, I do.

Ms Torsney: Who takes care of their full-time care?

Mr. Genuis: Josée, my wife, now takes care of them full-time.

Ms Torsney: Is this ideal just for your family or is it ideal for families?

Mr. Genuis: I'd say this is ideal for our family. There is no data that it has to be the wife or mother, and this is why you won't hear me say the woman should be focusing on this as her full-time job. You won't hear me say that.

We have twins. They weighed three pounds when they were born, so it was a very challenging time. Josée continued to work part-time and I was home part-time, so we traded off. As the foundation has grown, it has demanded more of my direct time. So we've made this choice. She is running a small business out of our home and focusing her main job on the care and management of our family. This is, for our family, what now works best.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Torsney.

Before we go, I hate to dwell on statistics but I have an interest, at least, in allowing us to be consistent. You said homicides by youth in Canada rose by 54% between 1986 and 1995. I think you should check this, because our information is they've remained constant.

Mr. Genuis: It would be a pleasure to check this. The numbers, I think, are 47% and 64%. I looked at this yesterday. It was in a Juristat titled ``Homicides in Canada''. The statement from the research team said homicides in youth stay steady. This was the statement. But when you look at the numbers, although there are fluctuations -

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The Chair: So your analysis is actually better than theirs. Is this what you're saying, Mark?

Mr. Genuis: No. What I'm saying is instead of looking at the research conclusions, we now try to look at the actual numbers. That's all. The actual numbers are -

The Chair: We can, perhaps, share the numbers we have with you. They don't support what you're saying.

Mr. Genuis: I'd be very grateful, because this is a government publication. If there are inconsistent publications, I'd be interested in working with the proper and correct one. If your numbers are correct, and these are incorrect, we can correct the Juristat.

The Chair: Thanks.

Mr. Genuis: Thank you very kindly for your time.

The Chair: We'll adjourn. Then we have one more group.

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The Chair: All right, we're back on the record, and we have a round table to end our day today.

First of all, I want to welcome all of you. I'll just go around the table to identify you: Maureen Collins, from the Edmonton John Howard Society; Henri Marsolais, from the City of Edmonton; Martin Garber-Conrad, from the Edmonton City Centre Church Corporation; Jim Robb, from Legal Aid; Christine Leonard, from the John Howard Society of Alberta; Sue Olsen, from the Edmonton Police Service; Carola Cunningham, from Native Counselling Services of Alberta; and Patty Ann LaBoucane, from the same organization.

I know this is, in a sense, a kind of artificial way to have a discussion, but it seems to have worked for us in other communities. We like it because it gives us an opportunity to have a large number of people and to bounce around some concepts and some ideas.

Maybe the best way to go about this is to have you each just give us perhaps two minutes to set us up - or something like that - and then we can ask questions. Do you want to start on behalf of the John Howard Society, Maureen?

Ms Maureen Collins (Executive Director, Edmonton John Howard Society): I'd be happy to.

I'm the executive director with the Edmonton John Howard Society. We are the direct service branch of the organization. We offered to help Miriam pull together a few people who I know are very interested in the discussion topic today.

I guess our interest is twofold. We do a lot of educational services in the schools, centring around youth, crime prevention, and taking responsibility on what the law means. We've been doing that since the early 1980s. We also operate a young offender group home here in the city - and I understand your committee will be visiting that tomorrow between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.

I hope the discussion will partly look at the kids who are falling between the cracks; at how we may address the issues of prevention and early intervention when we recognize the kids are at risk; and at how these kids and their families are in difficulty and the kids, if there aren't any interventions, are very likely to end up in the justice system as youths and possibly as adults. I'm also concerned that we turn to the topic of keeping kids out of incarceration whenever possible, so that those who need to be there can be resourced adequately because they pose a danger and are likely to stay in the system.

The Chair: Great.

I should point out that this is a great way to introduce yourselves. Let us know where your areas of interest are and we'll take advantage of that, believe me.

Mr. Marsolais.

Mr. Henri Marsolais (Director, Mill Woods Centre, Community and Family Services, City of Edmonton): I'm Henri Marsolais. I'm the director of a social service centre on the south side. The main reason for my involvement here is that over the past 10 years I've been in the management of the alternative measures program. In the past year I've been directly involved in the implementation of a youth justice committee for Edmonton. My main interest, I suppose, is looking at the whole area of restorative justice and involving the community in a very direct way in that process.

The Chair: Mr. Garber-Conrad.

Mr. Martin Garber-Conrad (Executive Director, Edmonton City Centre Church Corporation): I'm with an organization called the City Centre Church Corporation, which has a couple of programs that deal specifically with young offenders, although not exclusively with young offenders.

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Crossroads Outreach deals with juveniles and young adults involved in street prostitution, with outreach support, some follow-up housing, and a new program called Kids in the Hall, which is an employment training program. A large percentage of the participants have been involved with the young offenders system.

My quick perspective on the Young Offenders Act is that relatively little is wrong with it and what is wrong with it is not going to make a serious contribution to fixing the problem. The problem with youth crime must be dealt with under the rubric of crime prevention, particularly crime prevention through social development, and it must begin with early intervention.

Secondly, one of the main things wrong with the Young Offenders Act is too much incarceration, considerably more than is provided for under the adult system.

Thirdly, there are too few programs - I realize that's not primarily a federal responsibility - for young people who do get caught up into the system. There needs to be much more along the lines of housing, employment, mental health treatment, treatment for abuse, and other kinds of programming.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Robb.

Mr. James C. Robb (Senior Counsel, Legal Aid Youth Office): Thank you. I'm the senior counsel to the Legal Aid Youth Office, which is a special pilot project set up in 1993 to deliver legal services to young offenders in the youth courts of Edmonton and Calgary, where the vast majority of young offender cases are dealt with. Between the two cities we probably deal with something in the neighbourhood of about 2,500 youths a year.

Our project, however, is not just a legal office. We actually operate quite unconventionally, and certainly in an Alberta context quite uniquely, in that from our standpoint we do not want repeat business. We do not want youths returning to our office. Therefore we have our own youth workers, who work exclusively, without regard to legal result, at getting help for youth, primarily in the areas of alcohol and drugs, which probably are in the background of 90% of the crimes we deal with. Right now we have youths in programs from B.C. to Labrador.

We have also started work over about the last year to a year and a half on the problem of resource creation. It's not simply a matter of cutbacks. There are huge jurisdictional cracks that a lot of kids fall into. We try to bridge those gaps by partnering with agencies, some of which are present here at the table, to try to develop resources: alternative supervised housing, anger-management counselling, employment. We're now working on trying to develop a program for sexual abuse treatment. If you're a sexual abuse victim you're facing a waiting list of a year to a year and a half at present.

With that, you might have guessed that my perspective is not one that the court system will ever actually deal with youth crime. After three years in the business, if you will, exclusively working on young offender matters, I'm more firmly committed to that view than ever before.

My view is that there is a certain small percentage of hard-core career kids in the system. That does not represent the vast majority. My perspective is that Canada greatly over-incarcerates. I think there are hidden problems of racial stereotyping in our system. Some 87% of the kids in the little kids unit of the EYOC are native, 60% overall are native at the centre.

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Unless we start to come to grips with the real problems in the system, we are not going to change anything. Measures designed purely to overload an already overloaded system and increase incarceration will only bleed away even more resources from the very fragile, and frankly very skimpy, resources available right now to get at the real problems in the system.

I'll stop there.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms Leonard.

Ms Christine Leonard (Executive Director, John Howard Society of Alberta): Thank you. We are the provincial arm of John Howard in this province, and we are not a direct service office. We are a research and education office.

John Howard Alberta has taken an interest in the amendments that have happened to the Young Offenders Act over the years since it was put into place. We produce a wide variety of public education materials on the Young Offenders Act. We've had an interest over the years.

In the last few years we've been working to educate the public on the benefits of crime prevention through social development, teaching them about how that can keep kids out of the system in the long term, but we need to invest in it now. As an organization, we don't believe amendments to the Young Offenders Act are going to make our communities safer. We believe long-term prevention is the answer.

The Chair: Thank you. Constable Olsen.

Constable Sue Olsen (Native Resource Officer, Edmonton Police Service): Thank you. I work in the inner city schools. One of the issues that come up for us as street police officers is that there is a gap with the under-12-year-old children who get involved in criminal activity. We're in a ``sit and wait'' process, waiting until they're 12 before we can get them into services and deal with them before they become more of a problem down the road.

The alternative measures program, from the perspective of aboriginal kids, is in some instances set up for failure for some of those kids. They don't have the resources at home, or they don't have the resources in their family or the community to help them make the commitment they've made through alternative measures, and therefore they're turned around into the system very quickly.

We're in a number of partnerships with many of these agencies here today, from Success by 6, which is in the inner city schools, to having police officers in the aboriginal schools and looking at the issues.

Again, we recognize the limitations as a result of resources. However, about the Young Offenders Act, there's varied opinion among us on whether you need to look at the entire legislation or parts of it. The longitudinal aspect and early intervention is I think where the Edmonton Police Service is coming from.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms Cunningham.

Ms Carola Cunningham (Program Manager, Native Counselling Services): Good afternoon. Native Counselling Services is an Alberta-based organization. We have over 150 staff at rural and urban centres. We operate over 36 youth justice committees and sentencing circles across the province. We run two young offender group homes and we have youth probation officers and youth workers.

We strongly believe changing the legislation will not put an end to youth crime. The issues behind youth crime are deep, and they start at the beginning of life. We're very interested in seeing some commitment from all governments to work in collaboration to assist youth in living in this society today. We're finding a horrific increase in the last nine months in violence among young offenders here in the city of Edmonton.

We're really strongly advocating open custody for young women. There's nothing available across the land, and the majority of female young offenders are of aboriginal descent. We also have a deep interest in cultural identity and being able to practice the ways of our people.

I'll have Patty address some of the issues around group homes. We really don't think government is playing a strong enough role with communities.

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The new shift here in the province of Alberta is in child welfare right now. It's called the commissioner's office. It's a service for children. They're talking about prevention, but it's not going to work unless Education, and Justice, and Social Development work hand in hand with communities.

We're asking to look at expanding the role of sentencing circles in youth justice committees. They're often tied because they're only allowed to deal with first-time offenders. We need to look at having an impact on kids who have been around for a long time and have never been given that opportunity.

We also acknowledge Sue Olsen's remark about children under the age of 12. There's a vast number of children who get away with a lot of things that aren't being pulled up, that aren't being dealt with, and the police are just waiting until they're 12 and then charging them for years prior. There has to be a way we can start getting these children to be more involved, even with youth justice committees or sentencing circles, to appear just as a community member to get some direction.

Of course, as all panel members have suggested, there are absolutely no resources. Caseloads are higher with probation. Probation is a good concept for young offenders, but if you don't have the resources to do your job, you don't have the power or the punch to carry that disposition through. Thank you.

The Chair: Ms LaBoucane.

Ms Patty Ann LaBoucane (Native Counselling Services): Good afternoon. My name is Patty LaBoucane and I also represent Native Counselling Services. I am a director of an open-custody facility named Kochee Mena, which in Cree means to try again. We provide culturally sensitive programming for aboriginal boys primarily between the ages of 15 and 17, all doing young offender time.

The first issue I'd like to address is that the focus for young offenders needs to be on healing. That should be our priority. We need resources allocated for culturally appropriate programming and programming that addresses the social needs of these young offenders.

In addition, ex-offenders - adults - working within child welfare systems can do so without constant supervision. However, within the young offenders system, and in my group home in particular, ex-offenders have to be under direct and constant supervision to work with young offenders. It should be noted that some of the best healers in the aboriginal community have experienced incarceration in the past. In order to facilitate this, the legislation needs to be changed.

Also, I'd like to reiterate that female young offenders are discriminated against, in that whether they have open custody or closed custody they serve it at the same institution. They don't have the same opportunities for reintegration or programming that male offenders do. Also, most of those female young offenders are aboriginal. Thanks.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ramsay, I'd remind you that there may be several people who want to respond to one question and you have ten minutes. You might want to keep that in mind.

Mr. Ramsay: I'd like to thank the panel for coming here today. We don't have enough time with you. We never seem to have enough time. Obviously you people spend an awful lot of time in this particular area and you have probably more information than the time we're allocated will bring forward, but that's our schedule.

Patty, you said that the legislation should be changed. Would you tell the committee where you feel it should be changed?

Ms LaBoucane: That's with regard to adult sex offenders working with young offenders. My understanding of the legislation as it is right now is that they have to be under direct supervision to work with offenders, and I might be...I'll give it to you.

Ms Cunningham: In the legislation, it's specific that adult offenders cannot be mixed with young offenders. They're not allowed to be in the same building or on the same premises. They're not allowed to intermingle at all.

Mr. Ramsay: While they're serving their penalty.

Ms Cunningham: While they're serving, but many ex-offenders serve for the rest of their lives on full parole -

Mr. Ramsay: I see.

Ms Cunningham: - and are healthy, productive people in our society now. They are some of our best workers with young offenders. But they're not allowed to do that.

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Mr. Ramsay: How do you know they're the best if they're not allowed to work? Where do they demonstrate the bestness?

Ms Cunningham: In child welfare. They're allowed to work in places such as foster homes and Catholic social services with child welfare status children.

Mr. Ramsay: Good.

I'm concerned that today we have heard conflicting testimony about the legislative framework that allows the Province of Alberta to deal with children who get into criminal conduct and are below the age of 12. We heard earlier today from another panel that there is an adequate legal framework under the social services act to intervene when children under the age of 12 become involved in criminal activity. Sue, you and Ms Cunningham have both indicated this is not the case. Would you expand on that, please.

Const Olsen: Under the Child Welfare Act there's legislation to deal with child welfare issues. Under the Young Offenders Act there are certainly no charges to be laid on anybody under the age of 12. Yet the age of 12 is when a police officer will charge, and that's directed by legislation. Under the Child Welfare Act it can be deemed a child welfare issue and child welfare can take that particular child into their care, if they wish, and deal with the situation in that respect.

However, probably more often than not these issues don't necessarily come to the attention of child welfare. I don't pick up the telephone every time I come across a young offender who's 11 years old, to call child welfare and say, okay, we have this child, he's committed an offence, be it mischief, an assault, or whatever. First, child welfare in this province is dealing with enough cases from the crisis aspect, as much as it can.

So yes, there is the Child Welfare Act, but that's not to be leaned on from a policing perspective. We don't use it in that manner.

Mr. Ramsay: Does your policy prevent you from picking up the phone and notifying the welfare services of a child who, by their criminal behaviour, indicates he or she needs treatment or help?

Const Olsen: No, it certainly doesn't. In many instances, as you know, some of these kids are already within the system, or are already social services clients, as a result of the mom or dad or whoever. Where they fit into the system - are they a crisis, given the number of kids who are there and are at risk - I don't know. But no, nothing prevents us from doing that.

Mr. Garber-Conrad: To the best of my knowledge, the problem is not the legal framework. The Child Welfare Act does provide that. But in fact the policies and procedures of the child welfare department in this province, particularly in the large cities, and the volume of need and the relative seriousness of the problems they do have time to deal with, preclude their dealing with somebody under 12 merely because what they have committed would be considered a criminal offence next year. It makes relatively little difference whether an individual police officer calls child welfare or not. They have so many kids who are obviously and urgently, painfully, in need of immediate protection that they simply do not have time for everyone who isn't, and indeed for a lot of the ones who are.

The problem is not the legal framework. The problem is resourcing, as well as the ways in which policies and practices have developed around an understanding of what it means for a child to be in immediate need of protection.

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Mr. Ramsay: Let's just focus a bit on that subject. According to the Young Offenders Act, this committee and the federal government have no concern about any criminal act committed by anyone under the age of 12. We have no concern because it's not a criminal act. Only the federal government can define a criminal act.

I'd like to ask you folks on the panel who feel that the act is okay and ought not to be changed what happens if the.... I think it was the supervisor of the Syl Apps facility in Ontario who told me that there's a descending order of crimes being committed by younger and younger people. When I asked whether she foresaw the day when 10- and 11-year-olds would be committing murder, she said yes.

Professor Bala placed that kind of situation before the committee as well. What happens when a 10- or 11-year-old commits murder? Where do we go with that?

The federal government is charged with the responsibility of protecting the lives and property of its citizens, but through the Young Offenders Act we have abandoned that area of responsibility. We had that responsibility under the Juvenile Delinquents Act. Would you say that we should maintain that abandonment, if I can use that term, or do we have adequate protection for society from people under that age? Would you comment on that?

Mr. Garber-Conrad: With respect, we don't have adequate protection for society or healing for the children above that age. That's the real issue. Lowering the age to 10 or 9 and making those children eligible under the Young Offenders Act would give them the same crappy service that kids over 12 already get, which I believe not only doesn't protect society but ensures they will become adult criminals and harm themselves and society much more.

What I think this means in practice is that it's totally irrelevant what happens to the age. The real issue is resourcing programming treatment, healing, and prevention. Playing around with the age will have no effect whatsoever.

The Chair: That's ten minutes.

Mr. Ramsay: It's not according to my watch.

The Chair: Some others want to respond, Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: That's fine, Madam, but if you say I have ten minutes, I have at least a minute left.

The Chair: No, Mr. Ramsay, you don't.

Mr. Ramsay: Okay.

The Chair: Were there others who wanted to respond? Yes, Mr. Robb.

Mr. Robb: I'm actually old enough to remember being a lawyer under the old JDA. I started to work in this area in 1973 under the old JDA, which did allow for the charging of youths under the age of 12. Frankly, one of the things that appalled me after a long hiatus at a much calmer job at the University of Alberta was how little things had actually changed between 1973 and 1996. Indeed, they had become worse.

In fact, I defended somebody accused of murder under the old JDA. It does happen, but it is that kind of offence - that kind of scenario - that is floated to justify, I think, at times the sweeping and the increased criminalization of our youth, ignoring the real problems. There are other alternatives.

One of the things we have worked out, for example, with a school in a critical area of Edmonton is a program in which the police resource officers will refer youths to us who are younger than 12. It's when they're older than 12 that we see the warning signs.

.1840

These are things that can be done with or without legislation. You don't need a legislative framework to have a wake-up call to say that we have to start heading these things off at the pass and start trying to access resources for a lot of these kids.

Simply dropping the age down to 10 will have me in my capacity as a lawyer jumping for joy, because all that is ever achieved out of these measures is full employment for lawyers bleeding more and more resources away from where they're actually needed.

The Chair: Let's not pick on the lawyers too much.

Mr. Marsolais: No, no. Rather than pick on the lawyers positively or negatively, I think the answer to what we're looking for is not in the justice system at all.

I think the work with healing circles - this is largely in the aboriginal community - has demonstrated that the need for healing has to be done in the community. Legal systems don't respond to that. They certainly haven't responded very well.

The issue of working with citizens to offer a different kind of justice - this is restorative, healing justice - is really what we would like to address.

Legislation is fine, but I think the programs, directions and prevention have to be aimed at getting back into what's important in the community, in those families, and for the youth in where they live, rather than what's important in the institutions.

Ms Cunningham: Along the same lines, I just think about the money spent on reviews and lawyers who are getting richer because the law makes it that way. When I think about us going back to aboriginal original law, I see that we had four laws: honesty, kindness, strength and sharing. If you applied those laws, those principles, no one would murder, steal, or hurt anyone, and we'd work together.

That's incredibly idealistic in this day, but the issue today isn't law. The issue is that the moral fibre of society has completely broken down. The way parents parent isn't good any more, because kids don't listen to parents and parents don't listen to kids.

We have to go back to some real basic teachings. We have to empower communities and people to be responsible for their children. By expanding things like community sentencing circles and community justice committees to deal with their own people, it changes.

When I see a kid appear in front of four elders from the community and the old lady that he stole the axe from is sitting there, there's victim reconciliation happening. He recognizes who he stole from. This has far more impact than if he is sitting in a court and a lawyer says to plead not guilty and put it over, put it over, and put it over. Then nothing ever results. That kid learns to play the game and milk the system, and all we do is spend money after money.

I think about the money that's spent in court that could be spent on community resourcing. We could do a whole lot more.

Mr. Gallaway: I'll address this question to Mr. Robb, but I would hope that others would respond.

One of the factors we've been hearing about is that often there is a delay between whatever the event or occurrence might have been and the disposition. Particularly in dealing with young people, it is important for there to be consequences that are in some way temporally linked to the event.

I don't know if it's a problem in Alberta, but it has been identified as a problem in parts of this country that the court process spins this out for some indeterminate period of time, so by the time there's a disposition, there is no connection.

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What would you do to change the system - not necessarily the act - to ensure that this does not occur? How would you do it?

Mr. Robb: There are a number of factors involved. First of all, if I take a look at the Alberta context, I can comment on Edmonton and Calgary, the two largest centres.

It doesn't have to be that way. One of the things that is clearly coming out of our project is that dockets have been, over the last three years, vastly reduced in Edmonton and Calgary. When we started in Edmonton, we were looking at 18- to 20-page dockets. This is an accumulation of files over and over again.

The resolution of matters that should and can be properly resolved is much quicker now. I think that at times, the defence bar itself has to take a look at the manner in which it is conducting cases.

So that's one aspect. I think some tighter court rules - there are a number of specifics that could be put in place - have actually helped achieve that result.

For example, in our office, we meet once a month with the Crown on what's called a case resolution meeting. When we started three years ago, we couldn't get trial dates for six or seven months. That's if it goes the first time and isn't adjourned. Right now in Edmonton, I can get a trial date within a month. The system does not have to work that way.

As for dispositions, out of custodies right now in Alberta you're looking at generally six to eight weeks for the preparation of a pre-disposition report. That can be changed. We have an agreement now such that if a pre-disposition report is done within the last six months, we use that, plus an update, as opposed to reinventing the wheel. There's a lot of common sense that could be applied.

So when I take a look at the delays, I agree with you that all the classic studies on deterrents indicate that it is less the actual disposition than the fact that you are likely to be dealt with and dealt with quickly, and this is no more so than with youth.

I agree with you that whether the kid in the end is found guilty or innocent, if it has been dragging on for a year, is not the answer. In fact I don't want to see our system become more and more adult-like, which means there are numerous built-in delays.

As I indicated, a number of very common-sense things can be done right now, even in the absence of legislation. But I think in some areas where there are problems, the usage of the provision that allows for court rules to be promulgated - it's really not used very much - would be of great assistance in bringing that down.

The other thing that we certainly noticed is that a lot more screening of files could be occurring. One of the real problems, if you're really looking at youth crime, is that the more you overload the system, unless you're really going to expand the court's resources, the more problems you're going to have.

I can tell you as a lawyer that the ones who benefit are those who I think are 5% to 10% hard-core types. They're the ones who know to keep their mouth shut. If they're going to do a B and E, they wear gloves. They're the ones who are much more likely to want to play the games. The more you overload it, the more they can do so. They're the ones who, because of overloaded court or trial dockets, are likely to fall between the cracks. They're just much better at it.

I think that with better screening, you can reduce the dockets down so the police and the crowns can concentrate on the files that really should be concentrated on. Right now, in both Edmonton and Calgary, on first appearance - we do the duty counsel work as defence counsel in both youth courts in Calgary and Edmonton - month in and month out - it's now been consistent for more than two years - one-third of the cases are dealt with on the first date of appearance. It's over and done with. It's out of the system. I can tell you, that makes an extraordinary difference that I as a defence counsel should not like.

.1850

When we started, the number one defence was the unlikelihood of crown witnesses showing up, because there were too many files. Now, with the reduced dockets, that virtually never happens. In other words, we have to have an honest defence, if I can use that terminology.

It can be made more effective. There's no question about it. I think the greater usage of rules, under the provisions that do exist, would assist in that regard.

I don't know if that answers your question adequately.

The Chair: I want to piggyback on that question. Just out of curiosity, can you tell me how many of those one-third of cases that get dealt with on the first appearance, or the first time through court, should have been there in the first place? I mean, isn't that part of the issue?

Mr. Robb: Yes, that's part of the issue. Again, we get back to the screening. Of that one-third, about 10% are immediate withdrawals. In other words, we take a look at the file and it's clear that there's nothing there, or in some cases no offence has been committed. So they're withdrawn.

You can deal with issues of overcharging - for example, assault with a weapon: to wit, a snowball. You can deal with those kinds of things pretty adequately if you have counsel in there....

I must confess, this would be controversial with my defence counsel colleagues outside of my office. We have no financial incentive to prolong the matter. As duty counsel, our job is rather different. We are there to protect the rights of kids, and we will do so vigorously in the right cases. But a lot more can be done.

It's also been interesting; now that we've been able to reduce the dockets, we're finding there is a lot more discussion between crowns and defence as to what's the best thing for the kid. This may seem a radical concept at times, but it really is there.

For example, if my youth worker is developing a case plan that may have a kid going through five different programs, we may agree to adjourn the disposition, to give it a try. The less work you have in there, frankly, the more that is opened up as a possibility.

The Chair: Thanks.

Sorry, Mr. Gallaway. Go ahead.

Mr. Gallaway: I have one more question.

Ms Cunningham, you stated - and I believe this is the correct quote - that youth crime ``starts at the beginning of life''.

Ms Olsen, you identified a gap that I think you referred to as being ``under-12-year-olds''.

Then I heard some degree of consensus - I don't want to say everyone is in agreement - that in fact the child welfare legislation in the province of Alberta is generally an acceptable framework to deal with children under the age of 12. But I've also heard opinions expressed with respect to the old Juvenile Delinquents Act that if we were to lower the age to 7 or 10 or whatever it might be, in fact you would sweep these kids into the system. Somebody made the comment that they would receive the same crappy old treatment they're getting under the present system.

Obviously, a lot of finger-pointing takes place in this system between the federal government and the provincial government. In this time, certainly in some provinces, where we are undergoing severe budget downsizing or whatever you want to call it, if in fact the child welfare legislation, although the wording of it has not changed, but on the ground the definition of a child in need of protection, that threshold, changes, so that you say by definition it's not a problem simply because we can deal with this....

I wonder if you'd like to comment on that.

Mr. Garber-Conrad: I agree with everything you're saying. It certainly has been the case that we've simply changed the definitions, probably as much out of necessity as out of ill will.

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A long time ago, at least in the context of my work, the child welfare authorities stopped dealing with 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds. They were too old, and in a couple of years they'd be eligible for welfare and the authorities wouldn't have to worry about it at all. They gave up partly because they simply didn't have any resources to deal adequately with that age group.

So I think some of that is happening. It's not necessarily ill will. It's just the reality. For practical purposes, you eliminate a lot of the people you can't help anyway.

Contrary to the situations of some of my colleagues, I'm not old enough to have worked under the JDA, but, again, from what I've read and heard, that too was an inadequate legislative framework for dealing with things.

I understand your perspective as federal legislators. It's the tool you have so you look for a way to solve the problem with it, but I don't think this problem is going to be solved by legislation.

In the context of federal-provincial relations, I can certainly understand if you folks are frustrated as to what to do. At the very least, it would be nice if you guys out there in Ottawa or wherever could come down on the provinces around social services or social policy, that whole area you're getting out of, and try to insist on standards or a level of funding or whatever. I don't think changing the act will do the trick, nor will going back to the old act.

The Chair: Ms Collins, I promised you before....

Ms Collins: I know. You have been promising....

I'm going to reiterate something that Martin just said, because I know the struggle and I understand revisiting the legislation, but we'll never effectively legislate good behaviour, and that's essentially what we're talking about. How do you get people to lift up their shoulders and march straight?

You asked Jim a very telling question: how many of those kids should have been in court before? How many of those young people should have been there? They used to be dealt with in school yards. Principals now feel that they do not have the authority and they're afraid to touch them. The police used to exercise a great deal of discretion, some of which they feel has been taken away from them, and they're afraid to do so....

My experience, in working with both adults and young people, is - and I'm sure you're seeing it when you go across the country this time and talk to different people who are struggling, and I hope some of those people are parents. They say, ``I don't know what to do with my kid. I know there's trouble coming down the pipe here. What are my resources?'' They're just pulling their hair out. If it's their child, you can be darn sure they're not begging you to make the legislation tougher. What they're really asking for are resources to find the help for that family, because they probably have younger brothers and sisters coming along.

I think there's a whole movement afoot for meaningful community involvement and community solutions to what is essentially and fundamentally a community problem.

If the kid next door is throwing a rock through my window, I want my neighbourhood to be a community that is tight enough and close-knit enough so that, first, I'm told that, and, second, we can work it out. Sometimes that happens.

At the same time that you're hearing about sentencing circles and the positive work they're doing in youth justice committees and the amount of volunteer energy going into that.... From a good philosophical point of view, how can we make it better for this kid and this family in our community? Alternative measures? Dispute resolution? Victim-offender mediation? These are all good options and they're all within the existing legislation.

At the same time, the problem is that we tend to rely on the courts and custodial sentences to deal with youth. Those are the most expensive things we can do, and the community programs are having a tough go against the status quo. There is no motivation for the status quo to move. In the midst of shrinking resources, we're overtaxed on the system and we're underutilizing some really good will and some good initiatives in the community.

I see programs all the time, and I hear the justice minister, Allan Rock, talking about the promise of victim-offender mediation, but those programs spring up, last for two years, and then die.

I hear youth justice committees are doing phenomenal work in aboriginal communities, and beginning to in non-aboriginal communities, but the legislation says we can't support that in any way, not even to buy a $15,000 half-time coordinator to book the cases. Fundamentally, it's a shift of resources; it's not going back and asking how we can make the legislation fit, because you can never promise that a 10-year-old or an 8-year-old won't commit a heinous crime. But it's a red herring if we focus on that and miss the bigger issues.

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The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ramsay, you have five minutes.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Perhaps we should consider what a lawyer who appeared before the committee suggested when we were in Montreal. When we got talking about this age, the 12-year division, he suggested that perhaps instead of considering lowering the age we should raise it to 14 years. Is that the way we should be going? Many people who have appeared before the committee do not want 16- and 17-year-olds moved into adult court. Perhaps we should move the 12-year to 18, and if not, why not?

Mr. Marsolais: I think probably in effect some of the charges coming out of Alberta are in fact doing that. They're moving the age, depending on the offence. For instance, on the issue of shoplifting, which is the majority of the offences of young offenders of 12, 13 or 14 years of age, that is being reviewed now in terms of being eligible for a letter of caution as opposed to some form of intervention or charge in court.

So in fact maybe that's happening right now for certain offences. I don't know if that's an answer, but I think if you look at the offence and the nature of the offence and what's happening to the young offender in terms of their family and other issues, that may be where the answer is rather than the age.

Intervention, whether it's legal or social, I think should depend on what the situation of the young person and their family is, not strictly on the offence.

Mr. Ramsay: Then should we consider that the provincial social services should be dealing with acts of murder and rape and so on? Would you recommend that?

You can't deal with that in terms of the offence, the violent act that took place; they can't deal with that now, and neither can the Province of Quebec, which has a very good act that fills in the void. They have to come at it from the authority granted the provinces under the Constitution, which is a social concern for the welfare of the child who has exhibited a need.

But what is the responsibility? How do we balance the two requirements; that is, the interest of the child as well as the safety of society? That really is the question.

Mr. Robb: I was going to give one very simple answer.

We have just finished doing some tracking of kids who we had referred into an anger management group that we had partnered with another agency. Of the kids that completed the program - and granted, it is only a short time of tracking - after a year, 10% had reoffended. Of those kids who did not complete the program, 60% had reoffended, all in categories of violence. Those things are not accidents and they're not just happenstance.

In the same way, when we pulled about 100 files of kids off our computer, of the kids who we had managed to get into residential alcohol and drug programs, one had reoffended. Those kinds of statistics are gained, not just happenstance.

Quite frankly, some of these kids who have pulled out of the spiral are your 17- and 18-year-olds. Some of these kids have had 20 or 30 prior convictions. They have never seen alcohol treatment in our system, much less a residential alcohol treatment program. For me, whether they're 12 or 18, the litmus test is whether or not they are prepared to try to make an effort to pull out of the spiral. If they are not, then those are the ones who really have to be dealt with by your justice system. Although there will be slippages, a lot of these kids will make the effort. We've seen it over and over again.

.1905

Our frustration, frankly, is that we see agencies that do good work come and go in a flash. We have a hard time keeping track of agencies and what is actually out there for kids.

Mr. Marsolais: I guess it's a difficult question to answer, but I don't think it's a program or a department that's going to solve the issue you're talking about. I think it's our society that has to recognize that whether it's a violent crime or any other crime, it's a crime in, against and with society, and the solution is not necessarily in simple, active legislation. I think we have to rethink how we're dealing with offenders.

Ms LaBoucane: I want to talk about some personal experiences.

What I know from working with young offenders is that they learn best when their consequence comes right after their action. They learn best when they take responsibility for their action, when they have an opportunity to have a discussion and actually understand what they did and can say that they did take that, they did do that. Based on what has been said to me by every child I have talked to about their experience in custody, I also now know that when a child is in custody, it is a completely negative experience. Not one boy I have talked to has said they learned a lot or they felt good about themselves in custody.

Another thing that I do know because of Native Counselling Services is that when we empower communities to take responsibility for our children, we get tremendous results.

One possible solution is sentencing circles, but instead of having these children go through court before they see these sentencing circles, have them do victim reconciliation before they ever get in front of a judge. When they go through this circle, they have an opportunity to talk with their victims. If community members then deem it necessary for them to go into court and be charged formally, that can happen. My feeling on this, though, is that the reconciliation will happen right there the majority of the time. The consequence is immediate and they're going to learn.

Ultimately, what I think we want to do is teach. We're not trying to punish. If we're trying to punish, then we're doing a good job. If we're trying to teach, then we're not doing what we need to do.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Maloney.

Mr. Maloney: We have heard during these meetings that the Young Offenders Act is a joke, that we have adults using young offenders to do their thefts because they'll get an easy sentence, etc. We hear of youths coming back time after time and they're not being dealt with. So we have that aspect facing us.

We also hear that perhaps you'd like to see the youth justice committees and sentencing circles expanded to more than just first-time offenders. Sue tells me that sometimes alternative measures are doomed to failure, again perhaps because of a lack of resources.

What message are we getting here? Can you help me? What direction should we be taking?

Mr. Cunningham: I think the message is fairly clear that law, legislation, is not going to change the problem. It's a societal problem, and it's time that government departments start working together to pool resources and to help communities deal with issues right from day one. Help them in developing community plans and on how to address issues when they come up.

We encourage natural healers in our communities because they're all out there. Think back to when you were growing up. If you grew up on a farm or in a community, if somebody was sick or hurting in your family, the people next door came over and asked what they could do to help. We need to go back to that, and it's not hard to go back. We need to stop playing missionary government roles and telling people what's good for them. We need to let people tell us what's good for them and what will work for them.

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Mr. Maloney: Does anyone else care to comment?

Mr. Marsolais: I would like to comment. It is about the alternative measures program, considering that I've been involved for the last 10 years and feel that it's been put down a little bit here.

The issue there, I think, is that young offenders do take responsibility for their actions outside of courts. They will face some natural consequences for their offences, and, in the same light, they take some responsibility for reconciling with the community. So that part of the act is a very positive component, at least from my experience. I may get some critique from my colleagues here.

However, I think it has to be carried even further. I think the alternative measures program as a deterrent to court or as a way to avoid court is okay. More importantly, though, it's a method of getting the community more and more involved in the justice system.

With the youth justice committees that have been formed, at least in Edmonton, the citizens are saying they want to have a say in the youth justice system and they want to get involved and make a difference with young people. I think that's our society speaking. In Alberta, there's a variety of different kinds of groups that are meeting to try to avoid the justice system in different ways, and I think the writing is on the wall. Citizens are saying that if the justice system is not going to answer their needs, they'll try to find other ways to do it.

Const Olsen: My comment is on the alternative measures program. I believe in the alternative measures program. I've put youths on that program.

I remember one youth involved in a sexual assault who I felt was going to get the absolute best support from the environment he was in and whose behaviour at the time, I felt, was going to be dealt with in a manner that wasn't going to.... I just believed this child was not going to be a problem for us down the road. I talked to the prosecutor and he said he would go along with that.

I do, however, feel that if we're going to have alternative measures systems, we have to.... There are youth out there, particularly the aboriginal young offenders, who just don't have those mechanisms for support. Hence they come back through the courts. Hence we're back in through the system.

So I think that is where some of those kids are doomed to failure, maybe not because of the alternative measures program itself, but because of the way we may have been using that program, in that we're not recognizing when we make these recommendations or put a child on alternative measures that maybe he's not going to be able to do his community work because mom doesn't have a vehicle, or mom and dad have dependency problems and aren't going to be supporting his need for those kinds of things. I think that's where alternative measures fall down, and more so for the aboriginal kids than for one-time offenders.

Mr. Robb: I have just a brief comment.

When you take a look at Canada's incarceration rates of young offenders from an international perspective, we are not light in Canada and certainly not in.... The two provinces that usually stand out are Alberta and Manitoba. When you take a look at incarceration rates of native kids, it actually gets quite staggering on the prairies.

If you ask me whether kids believe it's light, the answer is yes. Every time we say it's a joke we promulgate our own mythology, and one of the biggest difficulties we have in getting a kid to face up to, for example, treatment options, is convincing them that it is necessary, if you will, for their legal good.

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So that's a problem. I'm not sure how we sort past that. Part of it is based on a self-promoted mythology.

When you take a look at our young offender centres, they were built to house 175. That's how many kids we were going to have to lock up at any given time. They regularly have over 200 in them. When we started, over 300 were in those kinds of facilities. I think you'll find the same sort of story repeated across the country.

But when I take a look at it - and I've said this publicly before - my project was designed to find out which, frankly, was cheapest - staff lawyers or judicature. I have fourteen lawyers and three youth workers. If you want a youth crime project, you reverse the ratio, three lawyers to fourteen youth workers working flat out at getting kids the resources they need and into the programs they need. Quite frankly, the most enduring work that will ever come out of our project has been done by three people in our office - the youth workers.

The Chair: Mr. Robb, is there anything written on your program?

Mr. Robb: No. Some day I'll write my memoirs, along with a description of the operation I went through....

The Chair: So we should just take you back to Ottawa with us.

Mr. Robb: Right.

Mr. Garber-Conrad: Please, take him.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Robb: I'm one of your prisoners; give me a break!

The Chair: Mr. Garber-Conrad.

Mr. Garber-Conrad: There are so many levels of myth. One is the myth around the young offender system being easy. It's certainly not true in terms of incarceration, particularly pre-trial incarceration.

Second, you have to believe that incarceration works. We have dozens of different jurisdictions just south of the border demonstrating that incarceration doesn't lead to better communities, safer societies, less crime or anything else positive. You have to stack these different levels of false belief on top of each other.

I also know about the serious habitual offenders the police department has identified. As a community member, I want to say, you know, this is really awful, and we have to lock these people up, not because it works, not because it's going to fix them, but for the safety of our community.

When we use those people as the rubric under which we talk about young offenders, that's absolutely ludicrous. We're talking about 60 people in Edmonton out of 6,000 or 2,500 or whatever, and we're never going to - nor should we expect to - get the same kind of policies or procedures or legislation that will deal equally well with both of those.

I think an argument could be made that those 60 people should be raised to the adult system, that we should lament the fact that as a society we failed them and all that, and get rid of the Young Offenders Act and not deal with anybody under 18. I don't think we'd be that far behind if we decriminalized everything but for those 60 kids under 18. We would simply have to insist that our child welfare departments actually did their job, or we'd have to insist that the government resource communities do the job they're not doing, or whatever.

Clearly, there are kids under 18 who need help, but I don't think there's a single scrap of evidence that criminalizing that process has assisted the kids or made the community any safer - except for that very tiny group of really bad kids. We clearly don't know what to do with them. We need to lock them up or send them somewhere or whatever. If we have those kids in mind and if we allow ourselves to be sucked in by the rhetoric generated by those kids, we're going to make absolutely the worst possible decisions about the rest of ``kiddom'', and especially about the safety of our community.

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The Chair: Ms Leonard.

Ms Leonard: You asked about the message. The act is only twelve years old. It has already been amended three times now. It's being reviewed. Each of those amendments made it tougher. They increased sentences. They increased the ability to move kids into adult court. Yet within two years of passing the last amendments we have repeated and very strong calls for a tougher act and more amendments. Clearly, the toughening we've done over the years hasn't accomplished what we wanted, and that's because it's not the answer. We can look to the United States to see that increased incarceration and toughening it up hasn't helped them, and it's not going to help us here in Canada. The message is that the act cannot change the youth crime problem.

Ms Collins: I hope you will pose the question tomorrow when you're both at the Edmonton Young Offender Centre and when you're at Howard House, because it's an interesting read you get and different kids will answer it differently. I get asked it by the big people all the time. I say I don't know, ask a kid.

There is usually a piece of bravado that goes with it, though. Not to undermine what they say, or what they actually believe, sometimes, you can only scare the heck out of them once, and that's the first time they're going to go to jail. They cannot show that fear, because they learn the prison culture very quickly even in kids' jail, because that's what it is. I know you've been across the country, so you've seen other EYOCs that are overcrowded. The answer is very different when you get them one on one, if you're able to walk away and actually establish a bit of a dialogue with the young person who is on the fringe but hasn't picked the course that's going to take them into their adulthood.

It's a really telling question, and sometimes I struggle with it, because lots of kids say it's a slap on the wrist and it's a joke. The piece behind that, when you explore it a bit with some young people who are in custody, particularly if they have been in conflict more than once, is that jail is a better option for them than where they're coming from. That's a horrible, sad reality for me.

In our group home we have kids who will come back, and there are success stories, and I know you don't hear about them a lot. Three or four years after they've finished with the youth custody sentence we have a Christmas party with whatever twelve young people happen to be in the house that day, that year. We have neighbours, we have friends, we have whatever. Some kids come back, because that's the best Christmas they ever remember having. These are kids who are adults now and who have passed out of the system. They remember that as being a positive for them. I think how sad it is that it's the strongest community connection they have had.

It's very telling for me, and that's why I think it's an important question to ask. I know you struggle with it when you look at the legislation, but I'm hoping there is a sense of political will that says the public wants communities to be safer, but they keep putting all their eggs in one basket; it's your job, for all our collective mistakes, to make legislation that will do the trick. For fundamental change, I think there has to be the political will to educate the public to say we've tried it and it hasn't worked very well, here is a better option for those 80% of people who should never have been incarcerated. Then we'll spend our resources on the 20% who absolutely are lost for life unless something fundamentally changes. That's about what the ratio is.

If you look at resources, we could pluck those kids out of EYOC tomorrow and put them through four years of university. The reality is that with the dollars we're spending to incarcerate them they couldn't make it through university. That's why they're in jail. It's such a waste of a resource when you look at a lot of those folks.

So please ask tomorrow, but take it with a grain of salt.

The Chair: I want to mention something that has been raised several times and ask for your comments on it. As we've gone across the country we've talked a lot about certain myths that have built up. We've talked about some of them today. An issue that was raised today and is raised often is the lower level of age, whether we should go to 10, which is yet another arbitrary number. The examples raised for that are the case of the young children who killed the toddler in England, and then the case of the sexual assault in Toronto.

.1925

The other day as I was reading the newspaper I saw that the two older kids had been sentenced. And I saw that the 11-year-old who said nobody could do anything to him because he wasn't 12 years old yet - and who outraged so many people - is still in secure custody. He's 11 years old, just going on 12 years now, and under our child welfare laws in Ontario they can keep him where he is until he's 16.

Jim, wouldn't that be within the range for a first sexual assault for an adult?

Mr. Robb: Absolutely. For a first sexual assault, probably...to be very frank, one of the mythologies, again, is around this incarceration rate. We think the kids who are in custody actually spend more time - real time - in custody than adults do, when you take a look at the fact that the majority of them are crimes -

The Chair: Except this kid doesn't have a trial.

Mr. Robb: Exactly. Separate and apart from the procedural implications, we see many kids who will spend more time actually in custody than an adult would for the same offence. I think that's been part of the build-up of the mythology as well. I certainly agree entirely with your statement.

The Chair: On the same topic - and I don't know whether I'm preaching to the converted, but I don't mean to - it seems to me that in the context of your quote that we give the same crappy services to younger kids, if we criminalize the behaviour of 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds or 8-year-olds and 9-year-olds or anybody under the age of 12, we're still throwing it back to the province to deal with. That's the structure.

When the Attorney General of Ontario came to us and said we have to lower the age to 10, I should have said to him, ``You still have to pay for it so why don't you just deal with it now?'' It's blunt and it's -

Mr. Garber-Conrad: Group homes are cheaper than young offenders' centres, from the provincial perspective.

Mr. Robb: Frankly, much of this issue is not a question of more money. It's rationalization of resources. At times I just want to play the advertisement, ``Pay me now or pay me later''. I know anecdotes are different, but we have to actually get a lot more sophisticated about analysing youth crime.

For example, some female offenders are incredibly difficult to work with. I think of a 14-year-old kid who had been sexually abused from the time she was 7 and a half years old to the age of 11. She ran away from home at the age of 11. When we got her, she was 14, had a record, and was doing up to 10 injections of cocaine a day.

The position of child welfare was that it was lifestyle choice so she was justice's responsibility. The position of justice was that they could only give her two weeks for that offence so she was really child welfare's responsibility. When you take a look at it at the provincial level, until we come to grips with the fact that a dollar is a dollar and it is what we deliver for the dollar that counts, I think we're going to have these problems.

Anyone who works with kids in this field just about goes crazy over the jurisdictional turf wars and fights and the ever-widening cracks between jurisdictions, which almost guarantee that kids will not get what they need.

As for that whole category in terms of young offenders in Alberta, there are two categories of offenders that are really getting - forgive the vernacular - a raw deal. They are aboriginal kids and females.

Females get nothing. They get nothing, but we're finding that so many of them have been sexually and physically abused. I don't even begin to get at the problems because I'm facing waiting lists of a year and a half. Frankly, the way we're dealing with those two categories right now should be a matter of national shame, and I'm not overstating it.

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Const Olsen: I would like to make a comment on the under-12 question.

There are so few kids who are really involved in the extremely violent crimes. I think part of the problem may be what I recognize through my work. What are we going to do with these kids? We take them home and say to their mom that they just stole a $1,200 bike, or they just brutally assaulted some other little kid. These are things that we used to take home and moms and dads would then deal with a lot of these kids. Now they aren't dealt with in that way.

On the other hand, the provincial services aren't there to deal with them either. That's the gap. Where do you put these kids who are on the edge? Where can I slot a child who I know is not really a bad kid but is certainly getting into a lot of trouble? I can't deal with him federally because he's too young. I therefore try to deal with him provincially, but the services aren't readily available there. That's a problem.

You know, people just want to reduce the age because they see getting them into the system as the answer. You hear that more and more: ``We'll find a charge under the Criminal Code to get somebody into the system and to get them the help they need.'' I think that's a very sad state of affairs for how we're using the Criminal Code.

Mr. Robb: More than that, once they get into the system, they find out that the resources aren't there either.

Mr. Garber-Conrad: One of the things you hear being suggested for kids under 12 - and most days I hope it's in jest - is that we should be arresting the parents instead of the kid; arrest the whole family. The problem is that this won't help either because there are no services.

Some of these families have been crying out for assistance and are not getting it. We demonstrate every day that getting them into the criminal justice system doesn't make it any better. I find that compelling in a really weird, half-humourous way, yet it won't work either because there's nothing for them.

Mr. Marsolais: I'm just wondering whether or not the committee has looked at the experiences of New Zealand and Australia in terms of family group conferencing. If not, maybe we should look at that experience and at the fact that the money, rather than going into incarceration, went into programs that directed the victims and the offender together at some kind of conferencing. It seems to have a much more long-lasting effect. I therefore think that if we're looking at our justice system the way it is now, and at the fact that it has some very outstanding failures, it might not be a great loss to try something extremely different.

The Chair: It's tempting. When Mr. Robb was speaking about how many cases were saved on a one-day resolution, I was thinking about how much money that would mean. Wouldn't it be nice if, at the end of the month, a court administrator could say that Jim Robb and the crown attorney saved us $14,000 this month, and could then ask us to which social agency we want him or her to direct the cheque?

Mr. Robb: I suggested that 50% of what we save should go into child resources, which was met with raucous laughter.

The Chair: Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Madam Chair.

If we're going to absolve the parents of responsibility, where do we go next to absolve responsibility? I think there has to be a degree of responsibility maintained with the parents. I make that comment, but I have to get my question in here before my four or five minutes come up or Jim Robb will just waste it away on me.

That's not very kind, Jim, but we do have to enter a little humour into these discussions from time to time.

.1935

We have created institutions that were small when we started out. We created police forces and court systems, crown prosecutors and defence counsels. To do what? To provide for the protection of society, to provide a deterrent effect to all citizens, and to recognize the rehabilitative possibilities of those who committed an offence against members of society. I suggest that we've lost control of those institutions and that their interest is now a self-interest. They have lost the purpose for their existence.

So when I hear members of panels and other witnesses who appear before the committee say that we have to re-empower the community, what are they saying? That's what they're saying. They're saying that for some reason or other, this huge police force we have, or this huge temple we have - the courthouse - or the high-salaried judge we have, and so on, is not doing the job we intended them to do. We're spending all of this money hoping they will do that, though.

As the consciousness and the awareness at the community level becomes greater and greater, and more and more of us take on a sense of responsibility that perhaps has been ignored by the parents for one reason or another - the extended family and so on - we're looking for the resources. But as we look for the resources to do that, to pay the $15,000 for someone to do a very important job, what are we doing? We're bumping our heads against the vested interests within the justice system that don't want to give up the empire they sit on - and I use that word to describe it, although maybe I shouldn't.

I don't want to be disrespectful, but we have what I call a ``justice industry'', and it has lost sight of its purpose. Now we have mothers and fathers and concerned people who are coming forward saying we have to go back to the roots, we have to go back to the community, and we have to provide the meagre funds that volunteers need to get this job done in order to protect our children and to find them and bring them home, and to provide the safety in society that we're all looking for.

Jim, I think you've put your finger on it a couple of times today, and so did Mr. Garber-Conrad. We have to save our children while at the same time protecting society against that very small group of people who are a threat to your life and mine, and to my child and your child. That's what we have to do, but how do we do it when we have powerful vested interests saying that if we want to develop that program, we can go ahead and do it but we can't touch their programs, we can't touch their resources?

Those institutions should be working to rid themselves of the need for their existence. Instead of building more courts, more pens and more institutions, we should be getting at the cause, we should be investing in the cause of crime prevention and early detection and so on. But we don't have that support. Call any group before this committee and ask them what we should be doing and they'll say the same thing: ``We need the resources.'' I suggest that we have to bleed the resources off the back end of the system and into the front end, back into the communities. That's what we heard up north in Yellowknife yesterday: put the resources back into the hands of the communities.

I'm out of time.

Ms Collins: You've made a very eloquent statement, Mr. Ramsay. I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Fundamentally, the system needs to be jarred out of its complacency. There are some very good people who are trapped by systems and structures. It has evolved to the point where, for years, we have depended on what you called the justice industry, the corrections industry. It's a $9 billion industry. Unless there's something fundamentally done to shake the status quo, which generally means shifting resources purposefully, it will continue to be an industry and it will continue to fail miserably. The job is too great for any one segment, yet we have dumped all our failures right on the lap of the courts and justice. It's too costly and it doesn't work. So I think the status quo does need to be shaken up a bit.

.1940

Jim's project, by the way, is quite revolutionary, I think, in terms of the way it came to pass. It's at the end of a three-year phase, and so it will be under review.

It's hard to confront the status quo and have it changed, but I look at Ontario where their answer is to build multi- and super-pens for 300 and 400 people.

The Chair: And charge 5,000 young offenders with common assault.

Ms Collins: Those are the kids you're going to see tomorrow, graduating until we bump them up.

If you build them, they will come. I don't mean that facetiously, but we will fill them, and that's a wasted resource. If you close them down, if you have the capacity to look at it and say there is not one more penny going into capital structure items in this country, then we will find other resources and other ways of dealing with them that are less costly.

So it's a dilemma, and you put it very well, but what we tend to do is put everybody through that massive and costly system. I think what you've heard from several of us is that we need to be much better about assessing those who need the more expensive intervention, which may include incarceration. But we do kind of a one meal ticket for everybody, one chance at alternative measures, and then, poof, you're in the system and it's hard to get out.

Mr. Robb: I think you can start looking to the fact that, statistically, 65% of kids - and I'm just speaking roughly now - who appear in youth court for the first time never appear again. When you then take the next cut, in the next 35% you find that roughly 60% to 65% of those will stop after two or three times. Then you're down to the group, the final remaining amount, that will come back forever and a day unless there's intervention, I mean really strong intervention, and that can include jail and, at times, frankly, lengthy jail, because that's the only thing that's going to work.

The problem is with predicting. You have this mass of kids coming into the system. Which one is in the first 75% and which one is in this last 20% category? I think that's a major problem for everyone. I know it is within my office. We have some kids who are 12 years old who are way more difficult to work with than the 17-year-old who has 20 prior convictions. As impossible as that sounds, it's actually quite true. That's one of the key problems.

I actually tend to agree with a lot of what you say. At the end of three years I have a lot of frustrations. We don't even see most parents. Let's be frank; we don't see them. That's where I think we have to take a look at something that was mentioned before: family conferencing. The whole notion of family conferencing is taking a look at the family unit. In some cases, the problem isn't the family unit; in other kids' cases, it is. In court everyone knows you can only sentence the kid.

At the end of the day it's not a matter of criminalizing more kids or more parents; it's really - we're talking about a very common theme - what underlies it with this kid? With some kids, I still think - and I think I'll believe for the rest of this project, certainly - there's a very small group of kids that like the lifestyle, and frankly, you can usually spot them pretty quickly, whether they're 12 or 18 years old. In the other group, there are some where there are particular problems for them and there are particular problems for the family as a unit.

When I take a look at what some of the native communities are doing in and around things like domestic violence, they're 10 times more effective than anything we're doing in our system, and they're not making lawyers wealthy and they're not feeding the court system or the prison system. It has the sin of being effective. No one, frankly, talks much about them because most of them, strictly speaking, are illegal. They violate starting principles; they violate rules around timing of dispositions. As a citizen, I go crazy. This is illegal? It works. It's nuts. That's what we have to get at - those nutty portions of our system.

The Chair: Thank you.

.1945

Ms Torsney.

I'm sorry; Ms Cunningham. Don't be confessing about breaking any laws now.

Ms Cunningham: I feel like I'm on one of those game shows, trying to get to my buzzer.

The Chair: Borrow Sue's gun.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Ms Cunningham: I just wanted to acknowledge what Mr. Ramsay said, that the system's big and it wants to continue to make money.

I have a clear example. I remember in 1975, Native Counselling established one of the first alternative measures programs. It worked so well that the prosecutor stopped it because he had no business. It was a clear example of what you're talking about.

I also want to share with you an experience I've been through. I've worked in the adult system for 23 years. I was the first female aboriginal to run an aboriginal correctional facility. I didn't run it in the way most correctional facilities are run. I did a lot of nutty things, but I'll tell you what. We had the highest release rate for aboriginal offenders anywhere in Canada. We had the highest success rate of not reoffending. Part of the reason was that it was all based on our original laws. It was all based on humanness, bringing human contact into the system.

I made a show called Rage, and you may have seen the docudrama, The Making of Rage, on CBC. We're premiering it this October at the Colin Low Theatre. That's my plug.

In that show, I took five of the most violent offenders in our community and worked back through their lives. It was very clear that in childhood - in childhood - every one of those men could have changed direction if the right person and the right word and the right resources had been there. But it took some of them 45 years of total, hostile violence and being in and out of correctional facilities to eventually come to terms and go back to their childhood and become well again. Some of those men are very successful now. We piloted the project.

If we can do that with adult offenders, what can we do with young babies? How much would it take for them to go back to trauma in childhood? Not long. How quickly would they get well if the right resources were in place? Not long. That's when you bring the parents in and work with them. It can happen. If it can happen with adults, why can't it happen with children?

Children are our most precious gift from the Creator. It's the only gift the Creator gave us to take care of, and we do a very bad job. We dump all the money into adults. We dump all the money into all kinds of other things. The least-resourced system is for our children. They are our gifts.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms Torsney, the last five minutes are yours.

Ms Torsney: I absolutely agree with you. I guess I have a problem in that so many people seem to be advocating things.

I find it ironic that Mr. Ramsay would have set us on this last course, because of course every day we're faced with another private member's bill that asks for a minimum sentence. Every day we have a longer sentence being advocated, less access to parole, less access to helping, more opportunities to criminalize young people. It's just so ironic that we sit here finding a whole other solution.

I wanted to ask about the young people you deal with, and I know we'll meet some of them tomorrow. This morning we heard from kids who were in trouble from a very early age and didn't get the right resources, who did time in Calgary at the young offenders facility and got absolutely no programming. They were taught how to manipulate the system. In fact one of them actually mentioned that the difficulty of being in maximum security is you can't manipulate it. If only they had had some structure earlier on.

Somebody talked about the 14-year-olds and what happens with Child and Family Services. From talking to people who work with street youth in Toronto, I've learned that a 13-year-old street prostitute is of no interest to the local Children's Aid Society. They don't have the resources. They're interested in her baby, but they're not interested in her.

.1950

We have one police force in Toronto with two different divisions that have completely different attitudes toward kids. The kids know which side of the street to prostitute themselves on because one will bust the kids and the other busts the john.

It just seems to me we have such a hostile societal attitude towards young people. Perhaps the Young Offenders Act and some of the stuff we're hearing are just the worst manifestations of many of those problems.

We've heard a lot of people advocate that we should be publicizing the names of these children so we can protect ourselves from them and teach them a lesson and then they won't commit the crime in the first place. They say we should be much tougher with these young individuals. Put them into boot camp. Shape them up. Use the lash. In Winnipeg we're going to hear from the people who want to bring back the lash. They think this would be very effective.

One of the things we find so frustrating is that the media were here earlier but they aren't here right now. So they didn't have a chance to hear you. Many of you are saying don't change the act, but my constituents don't hear this. They hear what other people advocate on a daily basis. They hear that the act sucks.

I think the most sorry thing we heard was actually from a current judge in Toronto who was a former defence lawyer. He told us that this young woman in jail, in shackles, behind a glass partition, told him the Young Offenders Act was a joke and nothing was going to happen to her. She'd bought the story. He finally had to point out to her where she was and in what condition. We all laughed to hear this because it was just so bizarre. Afterwards I wanted to cry because it was so upsetting to realize this poor kid had bought it.

So how are we going to get this message out? How are we going to tell police officers they have different options? How are we going to tell people they're doing some good work? How are we going to treat our street youth in the Kids in the Hall program and other programs? Help us, because if we don't have changes, people are going to say you idiots never listen to anybody and nothing ever happens; you need to change the act four more times because it's still not enough. Keep changing it until you get it right.

Anyway, that was my tirade.

From one Paddy to another....

Ms LaBoucane: The first thing I wanted to address was bringing back the lash and that kind of stuff.

I know from personal experience, and only because I've mentored under Carola, who has taught me the only thing young offenders respond to is love.... This is the only thing they respond to. I can yell at them. I can swear at them. I can have a tirade. I can do whatever I want to them. Until I sit down and say I really care about you, I'm watching you kill yourself and I don't know what to do, I don't really get through to a kid. It is proven over and over again. Love is the only thing that works. Any person who works with young offenders who has any kind of connection with these kids knows it is only affection and it is only genuineness that works. I wouldn't have believed this until I worked in a young offender open custody facility.

The other thing is that when people are yelling for tougher sentences and more this and more that, what they're talking about is they want to feel safe. I truly believe the only reason people call for this is the need for safety. By empowering communities they're going to feel safe. In my mind, those who call for tougher sentences and lowering the age do so because they don't feel like they have any control over their environment and they don't feel like they can protect their children. By empowering communities we can address this.

The last thing I wanted to say is there is only one person here listening to this open forum. It wasn't advertised. There wasn't an opportunity for more people to be here to listen to what's going on, to listen to the people who actually work in the field. I think this is a crime in itself. There should be an opportunity for laypersons to listen to these kinds of discussions. They don't have the opportunity to work in the system or to come into contact with these children.

Thanks.

Ms Collins: I wanted to take a quick crack at this. I talked before about political will. I know you hear a lot of things as you travel across the country and you will get conflicting views. There is no simple answer, and that is what the general public wants. We put all our eggs into punitive measures. We've taken that thrust. I think you're going to need to be terribly courageous because it is a vote-getter to say we're going to get tough on crime.

.1955

I know this exists. In my limited sphere of activity, we confront it. So what we need to do, I think, is educate the public, use the media to put out a positive message and be brave enough to say we're going to be putting some current resources into prevention and early intervention programs because of what we've done in the past. And do you know what? You may have to buck the system to do this. I know politicians are elected for four-year terms, but over time we will reap the benefit. I absolutely agree with Paddy. What we're reacting to - as long as we react we can't be proactive and lead the way - is the perceived fear of the public. They are afraid because they have distorted facts.

We had the leadership conference for youth out here in Edmonton this week. There were 650 of the brightest and the best. They are going to be the leaders of tomorrow, and crime and the environment are very important to them. They are full of misinformation. These are very bright kids. After two of my staff, some politicians, and a variety of other people talked to them, 86% of them still wanted tougher measures. But more time and more education to say here are some things we're willing to try, and you have to go out on a limb to try them, will make a difference over time.

This is where the political will and the courage has to come in. It is easy for me to say lower the age or bump all those youths up to adults. Remember the YOA had principles in it saying we treat youth as youth. Now we've changed it and modified it to say, that is unless they do something really bad, and then they're adults. This is what the tinkering has done so far.

Mr. Garber-Conrad: I think there is still a small role for the federal government. The federal government could do some things along the lines of demonstration projects and some things that could be high profile such as public education campaigns. Most of us require about 110% of the resources we have just to deal with the people who come through our doors. This is without trying to maintain any kind of presence in the wider community advocating for these issues.

I think it could involve Health Canada and maybe - I don't know what there is in Justice - the National Crime Prevention Council. There's got to be a way to keep feeding this, even as you move things down to the provinces and all that federal-provincial stuff. You have some resources and there has to be a way to keep at least shooting out some little bits for demonstration projects and for different kinds of collaborations with communities. Bypass the provinces, if necessary, if they're so totally the other way. We know we can't ask politicians to be leaders, but you could at least spend some money getting the word out.

I think about some of the young women we work with. I try not to overdramatize, and we rarely run into 13-year-olds or 14-year-olds, but think of a 16-year-old who spends several hours at night on the street getting picked up by really grungy guys. She is assaulted with screwdrivers and beer bottles and raped in a variety of different ways. When she comes home, her boyfriend takes all her money. What are you going to do to this person to punish her? The Geneva Convention forbids most anything you could do that would be worse than life. And why are they out there on the street? It is better than being at home.

I don't know. This is not an answer. But somehow we've got to get this message across. People are not in those situations just because they want to be bad, or they want to have fun, or whatever.

Mr. Robb: I sure wouldn't have any easy solutions. We all know the studies indicating that, in public opinion polls, the public will extrapolate from one case and generalize. I'm in court every day. We see the press when there is a sex and violence case on the docket. That's it, folks.

Ms Torsney: You forgot to tell people you were going to talk about that.

Mr. Robb: Yes, right.

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Ironically, right across the board, from prosecutors to police, we may disagree on a particular kid. We may fight it out in court. Just speaking about Edmonton and Calgary, one of the great ironies is that very often we actually agree on the right approach. We all want less crime. The question is, how do we get there?

Frankly, one of the agencies we work best with is the ECP, the Edmonton City Police. They're in there working with us on preventive programs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Const Olsen: Edmonton Police Service.

Mr. Robb: I'm sorry. I mean the Edmonton Police Service. I'm old-fashioned. I go back to 1973 when it was the Edmonton City Police.

But when we say you have to have the courage, so do we. It's not easy. For a lot of people, funding is fragile. But I think there are also people who actually work in the field with these kids who are looking for this sign of courage. When this comes we also have to step forward into the light and say it was the right thing to do. If we don't, we've just left you hanging out to dry.

The Chair: Sue, I'm going to give you the last word.

Const Olsen: I think the government has to take a stand. I generally believe the Young Offenders Act is good legislation. I believe we don't have the resources, and this really is one of the problems.

But I do believe we do not hear enough from institutions or organizations such as the National Crime Prevention Council. We don't hear the public education message. What are they doing?

We hear about the high-profile, very violent crimes in this country. This in turn escalates the average person's fear of crime, especially if it's in their own city. This promotes the whole myth that they live in a violent city or a violent neighbourhood.

We have so few kids who are actually involved in these incidents. I think we forget that at times. A kid who commits a homicide or any crime that has a violent context to it obviously needs to be dealt with. But we don't promote the message that the kids who are bad kids represent only a certain percentage of the kids. The message that goes out from the media is the fear of crime; we all should be afraid.

Prior to my working in policing, I'm sure I would never have walked down 96th Street. I don't have this fear because I have a healthy respect for what is there. You just have to learn. You come to understand those communities and cultures. Those are the things we have to do. I think education is the process we need and the track we need to be on.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot for helping us out. It was great to meet all of you.

We are adjourned until 8 tomorrow morning for our next magical mystery tour.

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